A Sneeze, A Swim and A Snooze

This has been a little bit of a rough week, preparing for two and a half weeks out of the office and coming down with a very nasty cold. MelodyJoy developed a cough and a runny nose early in the week and let's just say that the concept of covering your mouth when you cough didn't come quickly to her. Actually, she did pretty well often . . . with the second cough or sneeze. The first one each time usually went unchecked and more than a few caught me full in the face.

Late this morning, after a long night of thunder and lightning, we headed over to the neighborhood pool. It was my first time there, even though we've lived here for ten months. MelodyJoy's not quite the water rat that her brothers were but she enjoys the pool a lot. Jeannette and Jordan both worked on teaching her how to swim and she's already fairly comfortable dunking her head under the water.



This afternoon was dedicated to napping and packing. Tomorrow I fly to Boston to attend the North American Coalition for Christian Admissions Personnel conference at Gordon College. This is always one of the year's highlights for me and I'm looking forward to taking five of my staff members with me, including three who don't start their employment at TUFW until tomorrow.

Quote of the Week

“Despair is suffering without meaning.”

Viktor Frankl, Nazi concentration camp survivor
Quoted in
Soul Survivor, by Philip Yancey, p. 215

Whole Lotta Catchin' Up To Do

I apologize for the lack of updates here lately. Every time I've thought of posting something, I've felt like I really couldn't afford the time. This post, therefore, is going to be a collection of random updates and musings in no particular order at all.

On Tuesday this week, I traveled to Chicago with Leo (my outgoing director of admissions) and Jeanne (my incoming Senior Admissions Counselor). It's kind of funny to think about going to Chicago since moving here. It's still a big trip in the sense that it's a three-hour drive each way and we don't go there frequently, but it's nothing like what a trip to Chicago was when I lived in Oregon or even Kentucky. Anyway, we drove to the city to meet with Mike Dessimoz (the "z" is silent) at Roosevelt University, right downtown on Michigan Avenue. We met with Mike in a building where a key scene from The Untouchables starring Kevin Costner was filmed.

Roosevelt made the decision this year to dramatically reduce its recruitment travel and replace it with heavy use of merit scholarships and telemarketing, and Mike had agreed to share what they had learned with us. That's something I really like about this business, the way that colleagues are often willing to share their insights with others, even though we are in a competitive environment. I had never met Mike prior to Tuesday and, in fact, had never even spoken with him by phone. Last fall, we exchanged some e-mails and he agreed to spend two hours with us giving us an overview of how this year has gone.

We had selected Tuesday as the day to go to Chicago for one specific reason: So that Leo could see his beloved Cleveland Indians play the Chicago White Sox. At the box office, we asked for the best, least expensive seats available and the guy put us in section 531--the upper deck directly behind home plate. Our seats were literally three rows from the top of the stadium and I sat in the very last row for a couple of innings. The sight lines, though, were very good and we got to see a fun game with strong pitching (Contreras vs. Sabathia, a couple of homers, some errors and a couple of bases loaded situations. It was a 2-1 game most of the way until Chicago scored a couple more runs in the 8th.

We tried to do the game somewhat "on the cheap," which pointed out to me how NOT family-friendly today's major league sports venues are. I paid $21 for parking at a church by the field, $21 for the nosebleed tickets, $2 for stale peanuts outside the park, $4.50 for a soft drink, $1.50 for a stale red licorice rope and $3.25 for a hot dog that was so old its paper wrapper had actually become embedded in the bun. Multiply that by a family of four and you have an outing that costs almost $150, excluding transportation . . . and that's without trinkets for the kids. Ridiculous. And I recently took a look at Cubs tickets online . . . forget about it . . . I don't think you could find any seat for under $40 at Wrigley.

I scored twelve free tickets to the Fort Wayne Wizards game tomorrow, and plan to go with three friends and their sons. It's dollar day at the park, so it shouldn't be quite so expensive an evening.

We have a nest in the little tree right by our back porch. Since the tree is so short, we have a great view of the mama bird settled down in the nest. I'll keep you posted . . . I suspect our backyard may become a much less friendly place once the eggs hatch.

Jordan's wisdom teeth appear to be fine now--or rather, the space where his wisdom teeth used to be is fine--but he's still not up to playing the tuba, I guess. Now Jameson is having trouble with his mouth . . . his 12-year molars are trying to come through and there isn't room for them in there.

My life at work has been crazy lately, getting ready for Leo's departure, for the arrival of three new admissions staff at the start of June at TUFW, for two-and-a-half weeks out of the office for the NACCAP conference in Boston followed by vacation, etc. I have the feeling that this may be a uniquely challenging year for me. At the same time, a lively exchange of e-mails amongst a group of my colleagues reminded me this week that I am very lucky to be working at TUFW. Some of these men who I respect very much and who are very successful in the field of enrollment management were transparent enough to share pretty bluntly how frustrated and burned out they are at times. And I bet their colleges' presidents have no idea how close these valued professionals who play key roles on their campuses are to walking away from the challenges and the workload of college enrollment.

The Indy 500 was great today! I don't think I've watched that race in at least ten years but today I, ahem, had to iron a whole bunch of my shirts so the race was a good distraction while I stood at the ironing board. (Don't worry, Jeannette did a few of them for me.) Open wheel racing has held no appeal to me for a long time but going from two racing leagues to just one makes it a lot more interesting to me and today's race was very exciting. I felt bad for all the drivers who were taken out of the running by the simple bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and were hit by other competitors.

The news that Stephen Curtis Chapman's daughter, Maria, was killed on Wednesday hit Jeannette and me very hard. I think the story of this tragedy is pretty well known so I won't rehash it here but, like many people, I think we feel like we know the Chapman family through Stephen's music and videos we have watched about their own adoptions. If it was not for their decision to adopt from China, I don't think we would have MelodyJoy in our family. They set the example for our friends who set the example for us . . . and then we also received a $1500 grant from their foundation, Shaohannah's Hope, named after the first little girl they brought home from China.

Maria was five years ago and was killed when struck by an SUV driven by her teenage brother. MelodyJoy is three years old and we also have a teen driver in our family. Our hearts go out to the Chapmans and especially to their son, who clearly was very close to all four of his sisters and must be carrying a heavy burden.

A little while ago, our neighbor and friend, Lance Clark uploaded about 250 photos that he took prior to the Blackhawk Christian School Junior-Senior in April. I finally got around to downloading some of them onto my computer and here are three I especially liked of Jordan and Becca Howard, his date that night . . .

Quote of the Week

"A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking... If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought the most of the next."

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Wisdom Teeth, Day 3

First Bike Ride

Jeannette bought MelodyJoy a little bike over the weekend and today was her first attempt at riding it. It did not go particularly well.

Jordan Lacks Wisdom . . . or Jordan Gets Puffed Up

Jordan had all four wisdom teeth pulled Friday morning. This photo is from Day 2 and his face is even a bit more swollen today.

We're Going to See the Wizard(s)

At the end of this month, we're losing three of our long-time admissions staff members at Taylor University Fort Wayne, Leo, Myka and Jennifer. Since we are a sponsor of the Fort Wayne Wizards minor league baseball team, they offered us one of their "luxury suites" for a baseball game. Luxury suite is in quotes, because it certainly was not on the scale of the suite we had at the Mariners games back in the early '90s. Basically, it was a 20x20 room with a table, a refrigerator, a TV and a counter with three stools, along with ten seats outside in the grandstand. Still, it free and we had a good time.
Our seats were directly behind home plate and the game ended up being a good one, despite the blustery weather and the noise generated by a couple thousand school kids.

In the picture below, Leo (and Paul to his left) are participating in the Y-M-C-A song. I think that's supposed to be an M. Hard to believe that YMCA could be a popular song with motions acted out by people of all ages at ballgames across the country 30 years after the Village People first sang it.
All in all, we had a good time. Lots of hot dogs and it was better than working.

Quote of the Week

“When you combine business head
with charity heart,
you get a much more effective organization.”

- Patty DeDominic

NACAC Election

If you're interested, you can read the statement that I submitted as part of the election process for NACAC this fall by going to:

www.nacacnet.org/MemberPortal/AboutNACAC/Governance/Assembly/Elections/

The new board members will be selected at the conference in Seattle.

Soul Brothers

A Double Holiday

Today was both Mother's Day and Phillip's 16th birthday so we had a double celebration. After church, we went out for dinner at the Panda Grill Buffet, then came home to open gifts.

Jeannette and the kids who qualify her to celebrate Mother's Day . . .

Jeannette's mom surprised us this week with a quick trip to Indiana . . .
My sister, Laura, sent Jeannette a handmade candleholder filled with shells she collected on the Gulf of Mexico . . .

Last night, while Jeannette and I were at our small group from church, Jordan went to Menards and picked up a swing for the backyard, brought it home and they all set it up before we got home. When Jeannette got up this morning, she glanced out the kitchen window and gasped when she spotted it under the pine trees. The flower basket at the right was Jameson's gift to Jeannette. Jordan and Phillip bought her some little accent lights to set around the swing area.

Jeannette's mom got caught up on birthday gift giving today. Melody got a little bathtub for her dolls and well as, believe it or not, little disposable diapers for them . . .

The boys were thrilled to open up a Mario Kart game for the Wii, along with two extra steering wheels . . .

Phillip made quite a killing himself on the gift front, getting books, a sweatshirt, a Wii remote and nunchuk, another GameCube style controller and his big gift, his own cell phone with a built-in keyboard and a texting plan . . .

Happy Birthday, Phillip!

Cute Candids

Phillip's Lazer X Party

For his 16th birthday, Phillip wanted to do a big party . . . like with his entire class from school. We didn't think we could handle all that so the compromise was he invited a bunch of friends to meet us at Lazer X for laser tag and arcade games tonight.

Jameson dominating a Star Wars game . . .

Phillip: The Face of Intensity . . .

It's not a night at the arcade without a little DDR . . .

The stone cold assassin . . .