inconvenience at SYMC

Well, I'm not having any luck finding free wi-fi internet, and on top of that the local CBS channel is showing the Notre Dame game instead of the UK/ Tennessee game. Not cool, people. Not cool. :(

what's up? oh, not too much

So here it is, late February, and I'm just now getting around to my first blog post of 2010. Sorry folks. It's not that there hasn't been anything going on to report... in fact, it's probably because of the opposite, too much going on that I haven't found (or made) the time to post.

Here's a little taste... (if nothing else, you can enjoy the pictures)

The kids are big stuff.

Kate has moved up to a "big girl bed" now. When she saw it, she said, "Thank you Daddy for making me a bed." Even though it's passed down from Amy's great-grandmother, she thinks I made it just for her. She so sweet. And on top of that, in the past few weeks, she's even graduated out of pull-ups at night. She really is becoming quite the big girl.

Ben has started taking piano lessons. Not only is he doing great so far, but he also loves it. As my mom can attest, I, however, was not so accommodating when I was a kid. He makes me proud, and I love to listen to him practice.

And Will and I have a new connection. I'm leading the music for preschool chapel, a new initiative with his preschool on Friday mornings. All the preschoolers love it, but I'm still not sure if he thinks it's cool or not that his dad is doing the music.

Also because of the snow-pocalypse of 2010, the kids have now missed ten days of school. But at least we've gotten to enjoy the snow a little bit.

Thanks to the Elswicks, we've had a couple great afternoons of sledding on the slopes in their backyard! Kate loves to push, and Ben and Will really enjoy the sledding. (I think Ben offers the most promise for a snow skiing companion in the near future!)

And then there was the water leak. One Sunday morning as I was getting ready to head out for church, I heard a hissing sound and looked up to see a water stain line across our living room ceiling. We turned off the water into the house and got a plumber to look at it on Monday. He couldn't find it the first time, but when the water had been turned on for a few hours, the water stain came back. The plumber came back and cut a hole in the bathroom closet looking for the leak. Couldn't find it there. So he cut a hole in the living room ceiling where he found the leak in the cold water pipe leading into the bathtub on the second floor. Leak fixed, but now we had a huge hole in the ceiling and closet.

Now, my drywall skills aren't all that great, but I think I did a pretty good job fixing the holes. I got the texture pretty decent but still need to see if I can match the color better with some primer. All in all, I'm pleased with my results.

On top of that, as our Christmas present from Amy's mom, we had all the carpet and linoleum replaced in our house. A very nice upgrade in our home, but it certainly was a lot of work and adjustment to have it installed.

In the midst of the chaos when our carpet was being installed, my cell phone was lost (while our home phone was disconnected because of the work being done). The next day I got online and found that someone had used my phone, and, long story short, I got it back by offering a "reward" and driving to the next town over to get it from a guy who handed it to me with a washcloth because he didn't want his prints on it. Honestly, I'm just glad to get it back.

It's been a very active time in ministry, too.

In January, I had the chance to pray with Faith and Angelica to receive Jesus, and I was blessed to have the opportunity to baptize them during worship. Truly, this is the best part of my job!

We also set some record numbers in 2010. On the 17th of January, we had the highest attended lock-in since I've been at GBC with 58 students. Here's a video with some of the kids dancing to the Nintendo Wii game, "Just Dance." (I think there's some dance footage of me floating around somewhere out there on the internet, too.)

We had a record number attend our annual winter retreat, too. We took 36 people (29 students and 7 adults) to Pigeon Forge a couple weeks ago. We had a great time together with our games and teaching sessions based on Francis Chan's book, Crazy Love. We also had a good time in downtown Gatlinburg, at the Comedy Barn, and at the outlet stores before heading back. It went remarkably smooth for the number of students who went. I have amazing adult volunteers that make this trip so much fun every year. We also collected a record number of warm clothing items for our association's annual Souper Bowl Party where they distribute the clothes to low-income individuals and families in the Lexington area. Last year, we collected probably about 50 or 60 items from our church to donate to the project. This year, the students turned it into a huge competition between the 14 adult Sunday School classes (complete with weekly skits and videos) to see who could donate the most, with the prize being a tasty continental breakfast for the winning class. The competition was fierce, and we ended up collecting almost 1000 items. Our students did a tremendous job, and I'm very proud of their hard work!

And just in this last week alone, we celebrated Chinese New Year (see Amy's blog here), Ben broke his bed by jumping on it (!), our youth group delivered 28 meals to some of our senior adults, and our church staff celebrated Mardi Gras (oh, and Ash Wednesday). And yesterday, because it was yet another snow day, we decided to get the youth together to shovel some snow and then go out to the movies and dinner together. A busy, but fun, week.

Oh, and every time I thought about sitting down to write a blog there was another big distraction--UK basketball!!! What a great season we're having! So, with that acknowledged, I guess you should expect my next update sometime after April 5th :).

camera phone

So I was copying the pictures off my phone and realized there were some highlights from the last few months that I've neglected to share with everyone.

A big one is Kate's first day of preschool. You may remember our first-day-of-school ritual. In the same way, I took Kate out for breakfast on her first day of preschool. It was later because she started later in the year, shortly after her birthday. And, as you can see, she picked a hearty breakfast from McDonalds to celebrate.

Ben and Will also helped our youth group with raking leaves. They had a lot of fun... and literally helped "grab a corner." I'm excited about my kids getting opportunities to be a part of mission projects.

And just last Tuesday, our church took some college students to the Kentucky basketball game. I had an extra ticket at the last minute, so I was able to take Ben with me. He had a great time with his dad and learned a lot about basketball... plus, he got to see John Wall break the UK single game assist record and experience the number one program in college basketball history. Go Cats!

UK basketball continued

And because I'm just that obsessive, I worked up this little chart for comparisons.

By the way, I failed to mentioned that I will get to see Coach John Calipari on July 17th (thanks to my parents).

UK basketball

*(warning: I'm a little bit obsessed with my college alma mater's basketball program) April 1, 2009. The day that may soon become a state-wide holiday. The day the University of Kentucky hired their new head men's basketball coach, John Calipari.

What has Coach John Calipari accomplished in his first 8 weeks as coach at UK (since the season doesn't start until November)? Not much... just the recruitment of the #1 incoming class in college basketball (and maybe the #1 class in the recent history of college basketball). (Oh, that and over 95,000 followers on twitter.)

Consider the two classes that have been talked about at the top of the all-time recruiting list: Michigan's 1991 class, "the Fab Five," and Ohio State's 2006 class, "the Thad 5" (named after their coach, Thad Matta). Here are their rankings when they signed with their schools--

* A few things to note about this comparison. First, Raymar Morgan, although offered a scholarship by Ohio State, ended up at Michigan State. They instead signed Junior College (JUCO) transfer, Othello Hunter. Also, the rankings are a little difficult because the major recruiting services (Rivals and Scouts) weren't around in 1991, so Michigan's rankings are based on Bob Gibbons' rankings. Also, this chart uses Scout.com; if you look at Rivals.com, they listed OSU's 4 freshman as #1, #13, #18, and #36 (three 5-star recruits and one 4-star). Either way, these were two amazing recruiting classes, both as prospects and, as we learned from watching them, in actual performance. Four of Michigan's recruits eventually made their way to the NBA, and three of the Buckeyes' recruits were selected in the first round of the 2007 NBA draft.

Both these recruiting classes ended up getting their teams to the championship game of the NCAA tournament in their first year (and Michigan got there again as Sophmores)... though each time they lost in the finals. Michigan lost by 20 points in the 1992 championship game to the Duke team that beat UK in the final four (you know, the game with "the shot" that CBS shows over and over again every year during March Madness). Then Michigan lost in 1993 to North Carolina, with Chris Weber's infamous time-out technical. Then, more recently, the Buckeyes lost in the 2007 championship game to Florida.

Now to Kentucky's 2009 recruiting class. Calipari has signed 6 players for the upcoming basketball season. (I wish I had a creative name for this class, sort of like "the Fab Five"... maybe "the Cal Six"?)

Name- position/ rivals.com ranking (& stars)/ scout.com ranking

John Wall- Point Guard/ #1 (5-stars)/ #2

DeMarcus Cousins- Power Forward/ #2 (5-stars)/ #3

Daniel Orton- Center/ #22 (5-stars)/#17

Eric Bledsoe- Point Guard/ #23 (5-stars)/ #37

John Hood- Shooting Guard/ #40 (4-stars)/ #45

(who recently won the Kentucky high school high jump championship... reminds me of Jeff Shepherd who was a high jump champ)

Darnell Dodson (JUCO transfer)- Small Forward/ nr (4-stars)/ nr

Now, granted, we don't know how this recruiting class will turn out yet, how they'll perform as a team during the game. But the reason I say this might be the best ever is because there are three things that have never happened before (at least since the modern era of recruiting services): one team recruits the #1 and #2 top freshmen in the country, one team recruits four 5-star freshman, and one team has 5 freshman recruits in the top 40 in the country.

Don't forget that this goes along with some strong returning talent. If Jodie Meeks (last year's leading scorer in the SEC), who currently has his name in the NBA draft, decides to come back for his senior year, we will have two returning first team all-SEC players with him and Patrick Patterson. On top of that, we have a leading shot-blocker in Perry Stevenson and a maturing scorer in Darius Miller (who looks like he was made for Calipari's "dribble-drive motion offense").

The only problem UK has is too many players for not enough scholarships. Here's where we stand now.

13 scholarships=

6 new recruits +

Patrick Patterson (Jr.) +

Darius Miller (So.) +

Perry Stevenson (Sr.) +

Ramon Harris (Sr.) +
maybe Jodie Meeks (Sr.) ???

So far we've already said goodbye to Jared Carter and Michael Porter (who graduated) and Donald Williams and AJ Stewart (who are transferring out). So, if Meeks returns and all the new players qualify academically, this leaves only two scholarships for these four remaining players:

Kevin Galloway (Sr.)

Matt Pilgrim (Sr.)

DeAndre Liggins (So.)

Josh Harrellson (Jr.)-- who, according to his facebook status, is officially coming back next year :)

All of this is translating into an amazing turn around in the Kentucky program. At the end of last season, all of the Wildcat fans were bemoaning our poor performance in the NIT, looking at the probable loss of Patterson and Meeks to the NBA, worried about our anemic recruiting, staring at the looming loss of "winningest program" status, and annoyed that we had a coach that didn't even seem to care. Now with the arrival of John Calipari and his recruiting class, we are projected to be a preseason top 5 team, a final four contender, an SEC favorite, and optimistic about remaining the all-time winningest program (and beating UNC to 2000 wins... by the way, it's currently 1988 to 1984, with Kansas at 1970 and Duke at 1876). The future looks bright.

Go Cats!

By the way, here are some good blogs for lots of UK basketball updates and links to news stories:

UK athletics page

Aaron's basketball blog

Kentucky Sports Radio