Koebbe.com

So my genius, 30 year old husband figured out how to post a (rather long) video. I feel I must warn all that this was my first video editing project and the sound will most likely drive you crazy because there are several sections where the background music overpowers the person speaking. It’s something I want to go back and change but in order to get this posted as soon as possible I thought I’d just put it up as is.

I must also preface the video by saying you might want to grab a bowl of popcorn; it’s 36 minutes long. When I started out I was hoping to get enough footage to make a five to ten minute video. What a treat it was for me to sit behind the camera and for hours watch other people talk about how great they think my husband is.

Thanks to all who helped!!! Even though you’ve already seen it, happy birthday honey! This one’s for you. Jeff’s 30th Birthday Video

So as most of you know, last Friday was Jeff’s 30th birthday! Thank you to everyone who helped me make a video for Jeff - it was great and he loved it. You might have been wondering where the post is for it since I said I would be putting a link to it on our blog that night. Well, Jeff was going to help me post it that next morning and, as providence would have it, when we woke up that morning all the audio source files had disappeared. (Meaning all the music with the video was gone.) I spent this last week putting the songs back in and making cuts - and it took forever due to my computer being super-snail-slow since I have put hours of video footage on it. So last night I finally finished the music to be at least good enough to watch, and this morning we finished burning it to a dvd. Then when we put it in to show the family after Thanksgiving lunch - it does not work. :( But fear not! We will get this figured out and hopefully posted this weekend. Today I am very thankful to be married to a “tech guy” who can always figure out what to do next, because I would have been stuck several steps ago.

Since I feel I cannot just leave you with a “Sorry” note, I will depart with a short happening at our house this week. The plumber came to do some minor repairs. After coming down from the kids bathroom (which is also our guest bathroom) he said there was no problem with that toilet, “but there’s a lot of urine all over it...it smells really bad.” (Picture an animated, yet serious face on the plumber.) A man who has seen & smelled thousands of toilets was taken back by the sight & odor of ours. I always thought I was doing good to swoosh the brush around with some cleaner once a week. But apparently you should pay good attention to what makes it out and down the sides of your toilet...especially with potty training little ones. That night I gave the kids a bath and I’ll give you one guess as to what I did while they splashed around in the tub.

Happy Birthday Mimi! We all hope you had a wonderful and special day today. We love you so very much!

In honor of election week I am holding my own poll. The item on the ballot: Caden’s Rattail. To cut or not to cut?

See, his hair is coming in evenly everywhere else, even though it’s very little. But the one thick lock he’s got is exactly what’s pictured above. I was definitely going to cut it at first, but now I’m having second thoughts... I mean, when else can someone sport this kind of do? I think Caden’s rattail has become a little bit sentimental to me, when I don’t associate it with an large biker-dude from the 1980’s wearing leather and tattoos. And while there is a small cool factor considering the Jedi padawans wore braided rattails in the Star Wars movies, do I risk my child being associated too much with the movie since the word “force” is embedded in his middle name. Is or is this not one of the embarrassing, yet endearing, hairdos I keep him in for a stage of life so we can look back in pictures years later and laugh?

So what do you think? Let your voice be heard! Do I cut it off or leave it be? Polls are open.

Here are our pictures from Halloween last Friday night. We had a great time - it started off in a friend’s front yard where several church families in our neighborhood gathered for a pot luck of chili & cornbread, and then we moved on to trick-or-treating. The kids had a blast.

Our super-hero family consisted of Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, and a pair of Super-parents. There were so many cute kids in creative costumes, and I got just a few of them pictured below. I wish I would have captured them all!














“To the rescue!”
























Gotta love a good nose-picking! :)













Most of the boys were chasing each other in the front
yard. Notice in the second picture it is all the boys,
and Anna. That’s when I realized I had dressed my
daughter as a super-hero and all the other girls were
disney characters or animals. But it seemed to fit her
personality just right.

I think this pose from
Cinder-Rilyn was made
while watching all the
boys play fighting.















Malachi the lion was dressed a little too warm for the night’s weather. As his mommy was airing him out it showed you can take the lion costume off Malachi, but you can’t take the lion out of him!

... He is risen indeed!

Easter has just passed, and it was a wonderful time of reflecting upon that which cannot be understood - how Christ was raised from the dead by the power of God.

My pastor delivered a wonderful sermon about the resurrection yesterday, concentrating on how the resurrection is not something we ought to trivialize by comparing it to the signs of the spring season. The comparisons to eggs hatching, butterflies emerging from their cocoons transformed, life reappearing, and all the other images of rebirth are, quite simply, too frail. No, we cannot properly understand the resurrection through those comparisons.

Nor can we understand it properly when we think about it. It makes us uncomfortable. It troubles us. We can't really penetrate it with our minds. And, as someone who loves to know and to understand, that troubles me.

But I am comforted by my pastor's reminder that if the resurrection were something that could be understood by the human mind, then it wouldn't truly be as life-changing as it is for the Christian. If we could explain it, could understand it, then it would lose all of its power. But it escapes our grasp, and it always shall.

I have been reading through the gospel of Matthew these last few months, and I've been paying close attention to the way Jesus addressed the crowds, treated the downtrodden, and interacted with his friends, family, and enemies. As always, I come across a few things that He says and does that... well... bother me. Really, really bother me.

Whenever I read the gospels, I fully expect to be bothered or offended by something Jesus says. I know that if I'm not, then I'm probably not reading them closely enough. I can't put my finger on it. I can't exactly tell you what about the things He says and does bothers me. But I am glad of it. I need to be bothered. I need to be unsettled. I need to be confronted with where my thoughts and ideas deviate from His teaching. And once made aware of the deviation, I need to correct myself. And I am glad to do so... though it is not always easy.

Then there's reading about the crucifixion. I never know what to do, what to say, how to react whenever 3:00 p.m. rolls around on Good Friday. I want to gush, I want to be silent, I want to thank Him, I want to hide in a corner... and sometimes I wish I felt something, because like the resurrection, I just cannot really grapple with what happened. I know I ought to respond somehow, but I can only kneel and beg God's forgiveness for not knowing what to say.

But my pastor's words gave me great reassurance regarding my offended sensibilities, my inability to understand the resurrection, and my revulsion and confusion over how to respond to the resurrection.

Men and women, throughout the 2,000 year history of Christianity, have devoted their lives to living out proper responses to these things. And they all struggled with it. It was never easy, never clearly held in their minds, never fully understood. Even the Apostles had a rough time of it, sometimes tripping over their own words, sometimes acting in a manner contrary to what they believed. But they pressed ever onward towards the prize - the hope that at the end of all things, when we stand before Him and give our account, He will say "well done, good and faithful servant!" And that He will remember us, there in His kingdom. If we, the failing sinful who believe in Him, are in the company of the likes of the Apostles in our struggles, our doubts, and our failings, then we are in good company, indeed. "When I am weak, then I am strong."

In other news, I have finished data collection AND analysis for my Master's thesis. That means I only have to finish writing it up, and then it's done. We will defend at the beginning of the Fall semester, giving me all summer to plan my presentation and to work towards getting the paper itself published.

In the meantime, wedding plans proceed apace. The travel agent we considered turned out to be... less than helpful... so we will be planning our honeymoon ourselves. Beyond that, I have had little time to poke my head outside of the lab to see the world beyond.

The Jr. High Inner-City Denver trip has been a huge success. We've learned a lot about poverty and homelessness. We've learned a lot about our city and its needs. We've learned a lot about ourselves and response to such issues. I've learned that Jr. High students can be quite mature, at times,nd be quite fun as well. We've been working with ministry called "Open Door Fellowship" which is an amazing ministry that owns nearly one city-block worth of houses for former prostitutes, drug addicts, single moms, the disabled, etc. It's been an honor to work with them.



Now it's off to London for 3 days with my senior guys. They're a bit spoiled getting to go to London as their Senior trip, but fortunately our lay-over for Uganda is in London so we just moved our flight a couple days earlier. Each student (5 of them) gets to pick the one thing they want to see/explore in the city, besides all the common sites. I'm excited to get there and have no pressure to do anything - just relax, see the city and get ready for Africa.

On the 31st of July we fly on to Entebbe, Uganda. We'll stay a night in Kampala and then head on to Lukaya for our mission project of building a shelter for orphans of the AIDS epidemic. We'll also be working in an orphanage for a couple days. And not to be too spoiled, we're taking a 2 day safari through the jungle. Being a Pastor to Students is hard sometimes...


I have lots to say about each of the trips so far, even about going home and seeing family like the twins and 99 year old grandma Doris (the lovely lady pictured above). I also have thoughts on my returning to Africa some 5 years after I was kicked out of the Ivory Coast. I'm not sure what to think of all that, but that event led me to this one, so trusting forward is all I've got.

Pray for us as we go, for 3 weeks in a foreign country is hard, no matter how many times you've done it. And to be in a place where we'll see things and experience things we've never seen before, never felt before, never eaten before, will be a trying but ultimately rewarding experience.

See you all at the end of August...

All of thought is but chemistry and electricity.

So why can't I explain these damn ghosts?

Even better news, you can watch the destruction of time and space as we know as it happens through web broadcast! Sweeeeeeet.

By now, everyone has heard of the floods in Iowa. What the press is now tilting to is the impact on the corn crop and the larger impact this will have on the economy.

So it seems that finally US consumers will feel the effect of Ethanol on food prices just as much as our international consumers are. There will be price increases not only on corn itself, but everything dependent on corn. The obvious list being meats (poultry and cattle are fed with corn), dairy (cattle again), and eggs (chickens chickens chickens). What else is dependent on corn? Our sad excuse for chocolate. High fructose corn syrup is found in all sorts of candies, drinks, sweeteners, what-have-you. Mainly because its a cheap substitute for the already overly priced domestic sugar that we produce. Dr. Pepper fans: get ready to pay higher prices to the good doctor.
Add to this the farmers strike in Argentina* (which surprise surprise, I support. Taxing exports neither helps the domestic, nor the international economy. It only helps government payroll), and the blooming demand for all staple goods from India and China, and it all spells out a pretty bleak picture. There's a phrase that a certain lewd robot makes in "Futurama" that aptly describes the situation. A cookie to anyone who can guess it.

How do we stop the impending food crisis of 2009, when our destroyed crop will start having a real effect on the economy, as opposed to the speculation that's going to be rampant in the next month on food prices?
We can start by repealing the ludicrous sugar tariffs. Cheap sugar imported would be a boon to our neighbors' agricultural economies, as well as allow us to produce GOOD chocolate with REAL sugar (as opposed to second rate corn syrup). It would also take pressure off of the corn ethanol business (if we have to live with this idiocy let's at least spread the love to other crops), since ethanol producers could simply use the cheaper sugar instead of the corn. There are related costs to this, but I've been over that before.

We can also go back to the recent farm bill, and actually use common sense. By that I mean gutting the corn ethanol subsidies to give farmers incentive to sell corn back into the food market. That "cheapening" would be reflected in the market. Farmers would suffer from lower corn prices on the market, yes. But they're less than 2% of our population. Consumers make up 100%. Do the "heartless economic math". Would you prefer millions to suffer hunger in our own country, or thousands of farmers (who coincidentally can still apply for benefits from the government). I understand we've already tolerated millions of other countries populations to suffer due to our prices, but the government only listens to American voters. But after all we do give them "foreign aid" right?**

We could subsidize research into other ethanol production that doesn't require staple crops. Switchgrass, jatropha, heck I've even heard of some one in Mexico farming algae for ethanol.

So. What to do about it individually? I dunno. Eat more pasta and bread (or other wheat based staples). Drink less soda (or no soda preferably). Eat more oatmeal and less cereal. Find a milk substitute. Drink more OJ. As a capitalist, I would just say check the prices and let the market decide. Corn products will go up in price relative to other staples. Just do what you do. Pinch those pennies to get the most you can out of your grocer. It's not the end of the world or civilization as we know it, or even the end of US economic prosperity. Just don't expect things to get better at the supermarket for a while. Although, I'm predicting Wal-Mart and CostCo to do REALLY well in the next year. Don't expect local stores to do well, especially if they rely on corn products of some kind.

*This seems to mostly affect the soy crop, wheat, and beef.
**Let me know if you want to hear about my... less than positive opinion on US foreign aid. Not as great as you'd think. Although I think most of you should already know about that. :P