December 2011 17th EditionTHE CHRISTMAS STAR.the church with kids in elementary school. As a part of the program, Susan has really

connected with h e r m e n t e e , Kelsie, as well as her family. Kelsie has also connected with Susan and our family, too. In June, Susan led a mission trip to Cape Town, South A f r i c a . T h i s was her second

mission trip to Cape Town, but this time, she led and organized the 11 day trip, working with seven other people from our church, serving through education, medical needs and prayer. Finally, Susan continues to be a good wife, a mom, and dog owner, too. This alone is a huge undertaking since she’s married to a high maintenance husband. Kaley, our 14 year old daughter, is a fresh-man in high school, and now stands face to face with me at 5’11’’, yet I’m still ahead of her in weight by 60 pounds, so she’s got nothing on me, I can still take her. Kaley is tall and beautiful, she just had her braces removed, and she’s in high school. Scary. A boy asked h e r f o r h e r number. Scarier. She gave it to him. “You what?! You gave it to him?! Why?! I don’t care if you felt bad for him, don’t give him your number. You give him my number! Yes, seriously.” He never called. Thank God that jerk never called. So, besides this introduction to boys, Kaley has been immersed in the academic side of high school. She takes all honors classes, which means she’s smart. Really smart. Smarter than me. (Yes, I know. That’s not really saying much.) Of all her classes, I

Lindsey brought boxes of Brainbows to school, and with the help of her art teacher, Mrs. Davis, the bows became hugely popular at the school. Girls lined up every morning to buy Brainbows, and Lindsey would sell around 50-60 a day, which meant Susan and Lindsey made 50-60 a night. They raised about $1500 in the first month. Brainbows became the latest craze at Farragut Interme-diate School. The local paper and local news station wrote and aired a story about it. The Brainbows were selling at school, special school events, and at a local cupcake store. The demand was constant through the remainder of the school year, and then

slowed down once school let out. This “slow” time was welcomed, since

Brainbows had pretty much taken over our dining room and Susan and Lindsey’s lives. Once summer ended and school started again, “busi-

ness” started to pick up again. It hasn’t been as crazy as the

previous school year, but Brain-bows are still being crafted, one at a

time, and sold at school, at special events, at a couple of local businesses and worldwide through the Internet and the Brainbow’s Facebook page. As of now, Brainbows has raised over $6000 for the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation. We never thought handmade hair bows would ever become so popular and raise that much money for a good cause, but it’s great to see how God can make something good out of what was very difficult for Lindsey and our family. As a part of the Brainbow venture, Susan and Lindsey went to San Francisco in May to be a part of the annual Aneurysm & AVM Foundation Awareness Walk. It was a good time for Susan and Lindsey to meet face-to-f a c e w i t h others they h a v e m e t t h r o u g h A V M s u p p o r t websites. Brainbows alone have kept Susan moving at a rapid pace, but Susan also continues working part time at our church as the director of Kids Hope USA, a mentoring program connecting members of

“Burning the candle at both ends”, “Trying to keep my head above water”, “Going balls to the wall”, and “No, I can’t play with you right now because I’m too busy, so why don’t you go watch TV or something, and don’t you dare start singing ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’, because I already know I’m being a terrible parent” have all been pretty accurate cliches, describing our 2011. We’ve been busy this year. Most of our busyness was born out of our desire to help out a little and to make a difference in our world, but quite simply, our desire exceeds our time. There never seems to be quite enough time to get it all done, but I won’t bore you with the unchecked items on our to-do list, but instead, I’ll bore you with our hectic real-life experiences from last year. If you read our last Christ-mas letter, or if you know anything about our family at all, you probably know Lindsey, our daughter, had successful brain surgery two years ago, to remove an AVM from her brain. (In case you’ve forgotten or if you don’t watch House, an AVM is a tangle of malformed blood vessels.) About a year after the surgery, Lindsey, being her crafty self, started making hair bows out of ribbon, buttons and hot glue. She brought a few to school for friends, and then other classmates expressed interest in buying the bows from her. Lind-sey had been wanting to raise money for the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation, and this simple demonstration of supply and demand

provided her the perfect opportunity. Susan and Lindsey started making hair bows and selling them for a few dollars a piece to Lindsey’s classmates, and then giving all of the profit to the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation. Kaley suggested calling the bows “Brainbows”, which was genius, and I created a Brainbows logo.

average of 15,000 words a day. I can say with certainty, that Rylee, our eight year old, did not participate in that study. If she had, the results would have been skewed to some-thing like 57,000 words a day. I mean that

q u i t e l i t e r a l l y , and I don’t m e a n figuratively. I feel it’s important to c l a r i f y , s i n c e t h e word “liter-ally” has taken quite a beating in 2011, often b e i n g c o n f u s e d

with “figuratively”. For example, “I literally died laughing.” And yet you live to tell about it, that’s amazing. Anyway, back to Rylee. She is our resident chatterbox. She’s always talking, singing or making some kind of noise. It makes no difference if we’re present or if she’s alone, she is talking. I’m not sure what this means. Perhaps she’ll grow up to be story teller, a singer, or a politician, I’m just not sure, but I’m sure she’ll be great at whatever path she chooses. She does love to write stories and songs, so who knows, maybe she will be a singer/songwriter. We’ll see. Rylee is in the second grade this year and is doing well. Strangely, her teachers think she’s a really quiet little girl. She may only speak 15,000 words a day, it’s just that she only speaks 74 of them at school and then all the rest here at home. Outside of Mrs. Maser’s class, Rylee is part of a Brownie Troop, where she makes crafts, “talks about stuff” and eats snacks. Eating the snacks is her favorite part. This should not surprise us, because she loves to eat. Y o u w o u l d never know it by looking at her, she’s a little thing - only 50% in height and 10% in weight on h e r m e d i c a l charts. Like Kaley, a n d l i k e

she’ll be waking around the same time as Kaley. Besides Brainbows, Lindsey has been living the life of a normal girly tweenager - clothes shopping, painting nails, hanging with friends, playing on her iTouch, you know, the usual tweenage stuff. Lindsey did have a follow-up MRI this year. The results were great, and the surgery was still considered a success, since there’s still no trace of the AVM. She will have another MRI in 2012 to make sure everything still looks good. At the end of last school year, Lindsey went to Washington, DC with several hundred other Knoxville students, who participated in the Safety Patrol program at school. All of the students were loaded into charter buses and then police escorted them to and from the nation’s capital to see different museums, monuments, historical homes and other key sites in DC, all crammed into three short days. They walked over 13 miles over the course of their trip. Since then, Lindsey has started middle school this year and is doing well in her studies, especially in math. She has also really taken an interest in art, and she plays clarinet in band, which she really doesn’t like... at all. Like Kaley, she h a s a l s o e x p e r i -enced an in t roduc-t i o n t o boys. An e i g h t h grade boy a p -p roached my sixth g r a d e Lindsey and said, “Hey hot chick, you want to go out with me sometime?” And unlike Kaley, Lindsey said, “No.” Then she walked away. That’s my girl. Lindsey says she’s not dating until she’s 25. Even better. Lindsey is a great girl with a big heart, and has a good head on her shoulders, which is apparent, since she didn’t fall for the super smooth line, “Hey hot chick, you want to go out with me sometime?” (I think most girls would have responded with, “You had me at ‘Hey hot chick.’” Or at least, that’s how Susan responded to me.) Now they say a person speaks about an

could only help in one - Visual Communica-tions. It was Photoshop 101, my kind of class. One of her assignments was to recreate a movie poster, using her own photography, fonts, etc. She recreated the poster for Super-size Me, and I was the model in the poster

with all of the french fries in his mouth. You see, I can help her with her homework. Outside of school, Kaley continues to take guitar lessons, and has even started playing in the church youth band. She also occasion-ally plays at a retirement home, with her friend Kayla, who plays violin. It has been good for her to play with other musicians, and it’s an opportunity for her to share her talent with others.

When she’s not figuring out the taxonomic group and species of a canis lupus, or learn-ing new chord structures for Fire and Rain, she’s sleeping until noon, browsing Facebook, texting with friends, bossing her little sister, watching TV, denying her love for Justin Bieber, pet sitting, and sleeping until noon. Lindsey, on the other hand, only sleeps until 10am, but in a couple of years, I’m sure

Lindsey, Rylee has had an introduction to boys, too. No, it’s not in the “Hot Chick” sense, but more in the sense that her best friend happens to be a boy from our neigh-borhood. Her most favorite thing to do in the world right now is playing with Andrew. Why not? There’s playing involved, a lot of talking, and sometimes eating. It’s the trifecta of her favorite things. As long as Andrew continues to knock on our door and ask, “Can Rylee come out to play?” we’ll let her, but once he pulls up in a loud, rusty Nova and utters the words, “Hot chick”, Rylee will no longer be permitted to “come out and play”. Also like her sisters, she likes to watch TV and play on her new iPod Touch, however, she has yet to really enjoy the beautiful gift of sleeping late. She’s still young, she’ll learn. As for me, I cherish that gift, not as much as I would like, but it’s one of my favorite things. It’s like getting back at the alarm clock for all of the interrupted sleep it has caused. It’s like saying, “I pay no attention to you today. You mean nothing to me right now. My eyes will remain closed, and I will enjoy this cloud of blankets and pillows.” If I were keeping score though, the alarm clock would have an insurmountable lead over me, but then again, how could I possibly stay busy if I spent all my time sleeping? For me, 2011 started with a trip to New York City, or Brooklyn to be precise. I went on a video shoot for HGTV in early January, and then flew back home to hit the road, with the wife and kids, to Kansas City, to see my niece, Bethany, get married to Christopher Lee. It was nice to experience their wedding, but it was also nice to see all of my family again in once place. I went to NYC again in April with a friend, Brad, to go to the Mockingbird Conference, which showed how to find God’s grace at work in our world today. We also went to the Broadway show “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”. The show starred Daniel Radcliffe, also known as Harry Potter. Did you know he has an English accent? I then went to Brooklyn again in October for an HGTV Holidays campaign. I love visiting New York, but I would never want to

live there. When Susan went to South Africa, I took the girls to Atlanta for a weekend. Of course we hit IKEA, and then, our most favoritest taco place ever, Tacqueria Del Sol. We also ventured into a shady part of town for pizza. Garmin doesn’t tell you to roll up your windows and lock your doors. It should. The pizza was great, but as we walked from the car, I was trying remember some Chuck Norris moves from Walker Texas Ranger, just in case. We also went to the World of Coke, and ended our trip at an Atlanta Braves game. We’re not baseball fans, but surprisingly, we really enjoyed going to the game and we would like to go again. A few weeks later, Lindsey pointed out that the new Coldplay song, “Prin-cess of China” sounds very similar to the Braves tomahawk song they play at the game. She’s right. I can’t listen to the song without thinking of the Braves game. A big source of self-induced busyness this last year was generated by my desire and willingness to produce videos for ministries and organizations. From the beginning of the year until now I have been working on videos “on the side”. I spent many months working on a promotional video for Operation Inasmuch, a ministry showing churches great ways to serve in their commu-nities. I also worked on a video for Water Angels, a local ministry helping the poor and homeless in Knoxville. I also worked on some videos for our church, and more recently, I’ve been working on a recruiting video for a mortgage company here in Knoxville. I wanted to work on all of these videos and I have no regrets, but it’s been a solid year of work outside of work, so I think a little break is in order. Finally, as mentioned, I am still working at HGTV, I am going on my tenth year. This year was unusual because three of our six designers left to go to other departments or networks, and my boss of nine years quit to go to the USA network. When this many people leave, a hole is left, and those left behind are responsible for plugging the hole,

making sure the boat doesn’t sink. I say all that to say that my job has been unusually busy this year, as well. Since I was one of the designers below my boss, I have been acting as the interim design director. This has been a great, but new experience for me. Filling this role, as well as working on really large upcoming projects, has kept me constantly moving, a little frazzled at times and really close to my email on my phone. Occasionally there is rest for the weary

though, and one of those times was our family trip to Hilton Head Island i n S o u t h C a r o l i n a . T h i s summer, we did a whole lot of nothing at one of our

favorite vacation spots. When not doing nothing, we went to the beach, rode bikes, swam in the pool, ate some good food, and of course enjoyed one of my favorite things, sleep. Plus, we made a little day trip to Savannah, Georgia, and while we were there, ate at one of our favorite Pizza establish-ments, Vinny Van GoGo’s, who serves up slices of pizza bigger than a plate. We also had a little break this

year at Thanksgiving when we visited my

mom and step-dad, John, in Cham-

pagne, Illinois. We spent

some time with my

s i s t e r D e b b i e

and her family, too. Of course,

John, Susan and I participated in the

madness of Black Friday from midnight to

5am. We have done this for years, but I’m starting think it’s stupid. Don’t get me wrong, we scored some deals, but is it worth the fist fights in the parking lots? Those sweatpant-wearing soccer moms can get pretty scrappy. I still took her out, but it wasn’t without some effort. One other layer of busy was added this year by God himself, or at least the insurance

It’s awful, I’m a real jerk. “Oh my gosh, this is hysterical! Have you seen this talking dog on YouTube? The owner is talking about steak, and the dog is like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Oh, I’m sorry what were you saying?” “Todd, I was telling you how my wife is leaving me, and taking the kids with...” “Hold on, I’m getting a text.” It hasn’t gotten that bad, well maybe a little bit, but I think the irony of smart phones is that they connect us to so many people, but to

a degree, disconnect us from those right around us. Just about everywhere you go, you see people of all ages looking down at their phones, myself included. At work, I’ll walk from one building to the other, reading my phone the entire time. I probably pass a half a dozen people on the way, but don’t even realize it. I may see someone’s feet, but never their face. This idea of phone in hand and eyes glued to the screen, seems to paint a fairly accurate big picture of my life in 2011.

With eyes focused on doing this, finishing that, hitting the deadline, producing more, becoming better, serving here, and working there, I miss the important things happening right around me, and sometimes right in front of me. We are created and designed to be in relationship with God and people, yet in my busyness, relationships slowly get pushed out of the way to make room for more work, achievement and desire for success. Slowly, I am no longer really listening, engaged, or investing in others. How can I? I’m simply trying to manage my chaos. I no longer see the faces, just a phone and a few feet

companies call it “an act of God”. The huge storms, that hit all over the country in April, impacted us as they affected many of you. A storm rolled through on Susan’s birthday, giving us the gift of quarter-sized hail, leaving holes in our siding, broken and dented fixtures and a damaged roof. Never-theless, we still had a house, unlike so many of the victims of the storms. Following the damage, like so many people, we (when I say, “we”, I mostly mean Susan) have spent the remainder of the year dealing with insur-ance agents, adjusters and contractors getting the house back to pre-storm condition. Unrelated to the storm, our air conditioner units needed to be replaced, too. They’re not cheap, but oh so worth every penny. And lastly, we decided to have a screened-in deck added to our home. Why not? What’s one more thing? I designed it with

some 3D software, and we hired someone to build it. We absolutely love it. And now, I saved the best news of 2011 for last - We finally... you might want to sit down for this... we finally got iPhones! We waited so long for the marriage of Verizon and Apple, and finally, they tied the knot, which means Susan and I now have a new drug, the iPhone 4S, the best phone ever. Just ask Siri, she’ll tell you. You know how sometimes you wait and wait with anticipation for something, and you build up in your head that this something is going to be so incredibly great, but you’re disappointed by the actual reality of this something? Like, “I thought getting married to Bob was going be my romance novel dream come true, but now that we’re married, he drools, farts and snores, and that’s just when he’s sleeping. He’s worse when he’s awake. It’s not quite what I had imagined.” However, I can tell you that Siri is no Bob. The iPhone is everything we expected. It’s great! I have become one of those obnoxious people with their phone glued to their hand.

passing by. Work, serving people, achieving goals and the desire to succeed can produce some

amazing results, but when my f o c u s s i t s sharply on the stated, and my r e l a t i o n s h i p s become blurred in the back-ground, I start to miss out on what God is doing all around me and

in me. The Christmas story is about God restoring a broken relationship between humanity and Himself. He created a way to come to Him without fear of judgement. He showed love. Why? Relationship. We are made for it. Anything less is... well, less. It’s all too easy for me to lose sight of relationship with God, family, friends and others in favor of a daunting to-do list. It’s also easy for me to look for the “big thing” and aspire to do something great, but God’s greatness is often found in the simplest things right in front of me, my relationships with those around me. I wish there was some lasik procedure to keep my sights on these relationships, but ultimately it comes down to choices. For me in 2012, I think “No” is going to be the new “Yes”. “Dad, can you take me to the mall to meet boys?” “No.” “Does that mean, ‘Yes.’” “No.” You may already have all of this all figured out, but if not, we pray that your 2012 isn’t too busy and that you will see all God is doing in your life through your relationship with Him and those around you. So, put down your phone from time to time, spend some time with those you love, and even those you don’t love, and have a blessed year.

The Christmas Star p.2

the church with kids in elementary school. As a part of the program, Susan has really

connected with h e r m e n t e e , Kelsie, as well as her family. Kelsie has also connected with Susan and our family, too. In June, Susan led a mission trip to Cape Town, South A f r i c a . T h i s was her second

mission trip to Cape Town, but this time, she led and organized the 11 day trip, working with seven other people from our church, serving through education, medical needs and prayer. Finally, Susan continues to be a good wife, a mom, and dog owner, too. This alone is a huge undertaking since she’s married to a high maintenance husband. Kaley, our 14 year old daughter, is a fresh-man in high school, and now stands face to face with me at 5’11’’, yet I’m still ahead of her in weight by 60 pounds, so she’s got nothing on me, I can still take her. Kaley is tall and beautiful, she just had her braces removed, and she’s in high school. Scary. A boy asked h e r f o r h e r number. Scarier. She gave it to him. “You what?! You gave it to him?! Why?! I don’t care if you felt bad for him, don’t give him your number. You give him my number! Yes, seriously.” He never called. Thank God that jerk never called. So, besides this introduction to boys, Kaley has been immersed in the academic side of high school. She takes all honors classes, which means she’s smart. Really smart. Smarter than me. (Yes, I know. That’s not really saying much.) Of all her classes, I

Lindsey brought boxes of Brainbows to school, and with the help of her art teacher, Mrs. Davis, the bows became hugely popular at the school. Girls lined up every morning to buy Brainbows, and Lindsey would sell around 50-60 a day, which meant Susan and Lindsey made 50-60 a night. They raised about $1500 in the first month. Brainbows became the latest craze at Farragut Interme-diate School. The local paper and local news station wrote and aired a story about it. The Brainbows were selling at school, special school events, and at a local cupcake store. The demand was constant through the remainder of the school year, and then

slowed down once school let out. This “slow” time was welcomed, since

Brainbows had pretty much taken over our dining room and Susan and Lindsey’s lives. Once summer ended and school started again, “busi-

ness” started to pick up again. It hasn’t been as crazy as the

previous school year, but Brain-bows are still being crafted, one at a

time, and sold at school, at special events, at a couple of local businesses and worldwide through the Internet and the Brainbow’s Facebook page. As of now, Brainbows has raised over $6000 for the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation. We never thought handmade hair bows would ever become so popular and raise that much money for a good cause, but it’s great to see how God can make something good out of what was very difficult for Lindsey and our family. As a part of the Brainbow venture, Susan and Lindsey went to San Francisco in May to be a part of the annual Aneurysm & AVM Foundation Awareness Walk. It was a good time for Susan and Lindsey to meet face-to-f a c e w i t h others they h a v e m e t t h r o u g h A V M s u p p o r t websites. Brainbows alone have kept Susan moving at a rapid pace, but Susan also continues working part time at our church as the director of Kids Hope USA, a mentoring program connecting members of

“Burning the candle at both ends”, “Trying to keep my head above water”, “Going balls to the wall”, and “No, I can’t play with you right now because I’m too busy, so why don’t you go watch TV or something, and don’t you dare start singing ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’, because I already know I’m being a terrible parent” have all been pretty accurate cliches, describing our 2011. We’ve been busy this year. Most of our busyness was born out of our desire to help out a little and to make a difference in our world, but quite simply, our desire exceeds our time. There never seems to be quite enough time to get it all done, but I won’t bore you with the unchecked items on our to-do list, but instead, I’ll bore you with our hectic real-life experiences from last year. If you read our last Christ-mas letter, or if you know anything about our family at all, you probably know Lindsey, our daughter, had successful brain surgery two years ago, to remove an AVM from her brain. (In case you’ve forgotten or if you don’t watch House, an AVM is a tangle of malformed blood vessels.) About a year after the surgery, Lindsey, being her crafty self, started making hair bows out of ribbon, buttons and hot glue. She brought a few to school for friends, and then other classmates expressed interest in buying the bows from her. Lind-sey had been wanting to raise money for the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation, and this simple demonstration of supply and demand

provided her the perfect opportunity. Susan and Lindsey started making hair bows and selling them for a few dollars a piece to Lindsey’s classmates, and then giving all of the profit to the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation. Kaley suggested calling the bows “Brainbows”, which was genius, and I created a Brainbows logo.

average of 15,000 words a day. I can say with certainty, that Rylee, our eight year old, did not participate in that study. If she had, the results would have been skewed to some-thing like 57,000 words a day. I mean that

q u i t e l i t e r a l l y , and I don’t m e a n figuratively. I feel it’s important to c l a r i f y , s i n c e t h e word “liter-ally” has taken quite a beating in 2011, often b e i n g c o n f u s e d

with “figuratively”. For example, “I literally died laughing.” And yet you live to tell about it, that’s amazing. Anyway, back to Rylee. She is our resident chatterbox. She’s always talking, singing or making some kind of noise. It makes no difference if we’re present or if she’s alone, she is talking. I’m not sure what this means. Perhaps she’ll grow up to be story teller, a singer, or a politician, I’m just not sure, but I’m sure she’ll be great at whatever path she chooses. She does love to write stories and songs, so who knows, maybe she will be a singer/songwriter. We’ll see. Rylee is in the second grade this year and is doing well. Strangely, her teachers think she’s a really quiet little girl. She may only speak 15,000 words a day, it’s just that she only speaks 74 of them at school and then all the rest here at home. Outside of Mrs. Maser’s class, Rylee is part of a Brownie Troop, where she makes crafts, “talks about stuff” and eats snacks. Eating the snacks is her favorite part. This should not surprise us, because she loves to eat. Y o u w o u l d never know it by looking at her, she’s a little thing - only 50% in height and 10% in weight on h e r m e d i c a l charts. Like Kaley, a n d l i k e

she’ll be waking around the same time as Kaley. Besides Brainbows, Lindsey has been living the life of a normal girly tweenager - clothes shopping, painting nails, hanging with friends, playing on her iTouch, you know, the usual tweenage stuff. Lindsey did have a follow-up MRI this year. The results were great, and the surgery was still considered a success, since there’s still no trace of the AVM. She will have another MRI in 2012 to make sure everything still looks good. At the end of last school year, Lindsey went to Washington, DC with several hundred other Knoxville students, who participated in the Safety Patrol program at school. All of the students were loaded into charter buses and then police escorted them to and from the nation’s capital to see different museums, monuments, historical homes and other key sites in DC, all crammed into three short days. They walked over 13 miles over the course of their trip. Since then, Lindsey has started middle school this year and is doing well in her studies, especially in math. She has also really taken an interest in art, and she plays clarinet in band, which she really doesn’t like... at all. Like Kaley, she h a s a l s o e x p e r i -enced an in t roduc-t i o n t o boys. An e i g h t h grade boy a p -p roached my sixth g r a d e Lindsey and said, “Hey hot chick, you want to go out with me sometime?” And unlike Kaley, Lindsey said, “No.” Then she walked away. That’s my girl. Lindsey says she’s not dating until she’s 25. Even better. Lindsey is a great girl with a big heart, and has a good head on her shoulders, which is apparent, since she didn’t fall for the super smooth line, “Hey hot chick, you want to go out with me sometime?” (I think most girls would have responded with, “You had me at ‘Hey hot chick.’” Or at least, that’s how Susan responded to me.) Now they say a person speaks about an

could only help in one - Visual Communica-tions. It was Photoshop 101, my kind of class. One of her assignments was to recreate a movie poster, using her own photography, fonts, etc. She recreated the poster for Super-size Me, and I was the model in the poster

with all of the french fries in his mouth. You see, I can help her with her homework. Outside of school, Kaley continues to take guitar lessons, and has even started playing in the church youth band. She also occasion-ally plays at a retirement home, with her friend Kayla, who plays violin. It has been good for her to play with other musicians, and it’s an opportunity for her to share her talent with others.

When she’s not figuring out the taxonomic group and species of a canis lupus, or learn-ing new chord structures for Fire and Rain, she’s sleeping until noon, browsing Facebook, texting with friends, bossing her little sister, watching TV, denying her love for Justin Bieber, pet sitting, and sleeping until noon. Lindsey, on the other hand, only sleeps until 10am, but in a couple of years, I’m sure

Lindsey, Rylee has had an introduction to boys, too. No, it’s not in the “Hot Chick” sense, but more in the sense that her best friend happens to be a boy from our neigh-borhood. Her most favorite thing to do in the world right now is playing with Andrew. Why not? There’s playing involved, a lot of talking, and sometimes eating. It’s the trifecta of her favorite things. As long as Andrew continues to knock on our door and ask, “Can Rylee come out to play?” we’ll let her, but once he pulls up in a loud, rusty Nova and utters the words, “Hot chick”, Rylee will no longer be permitted to “come out and play”. Also like her sisters, she likes to watch TV and play on her new iPod Touch, however, she has yet to really enjoy the beautiful gift of sleeping late. She’s still young, she’ll learn. As for me, I cherish that gift, not as much as I would like, but it’s one of my favorite things. It’s like getting back at the alarm clock for all of the interrupted sleep it has caused. It’s like saying, “I pay no attention to you today. You mean nothing to me right now. My eyes will remain closed, and I will enjoy this cloud of blankets and pillows.” If I were keeping score though, the alarm clock would have an insurmountable lead over me, but then again, how could I possibly stay busy if I spent all my time sleeping? For me, 2011 started with a trip to New York City, or Brooklyn to be precise. I went on a video shoot for HGTV in early January, and then flew back home to hit the road, with the wife and kids, to Kansas City, to see my niece, Bethany, get married to Christopher Lee. It was nice to experience their wedding, but it was also nice to see all of my family again in once place. I went to NYC again in April with a friend, Brad, to go to the Mockingbird Conference, which showed how to find God’s grace at work in our world today. We also went to the Broadway show “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”. The show starred Daniel Radcliffe, also known as Harry Potter. Did you know he has an English accent? I then went to Brooklyn again in October for an HGTV Holidays campaign. I love visiting New York, but I would never want to

live there. When Susan went to South Africa, I took the girls to Atlanta for a weekend. Of course we hit IKEA, and then, our most favoritest taco place ever, Tacqueria Del Sol. We also ventured into a shady part of town for pizza. Garmin doesn’t tell you to roll up your windows and lock your doors. It should. The pizza was great, but as we walked from the car, I was trying remember some Chuck Norris moves from Walker Texas Ranger, just in case. We also went to the World of Coke, and ended our trip at an Atlanta Braves game. We’re not baseball fans, but surprisingly, we really enjoyed going to the game and we would like to go again. A few weeks later, Lindsey pointed out that the new Coldplay song, “Prin-cess of China” sounds very similar to the Braves tomahawk song they play at the game. She’s right. I can’t listen to the song without thinking of the Braves game. A big source of self-induced busyness this last year was generated by my desire and willingness to produce videos for ministries and organizations. From the beginning of the year until now I have been working on videos “on the side”. I spent many months working on a promotional video for Operation Inasmuch, a ministry showing churches great ways to serve in their commu-nities. I also worked on a video for Water Angels, a local ministry helping the poor and homeless in Knoxville. I also worked on some videos for our church, and more recently, I’ve been working on a recruiting video for a mortgage company here in Knoxville. I wanted to work on all of these videos and I have no regrets, but it’s been a solid year of work outside of work, so I think a little break is in order. Finally, as mentioned, I am still working at HGTV, I am going on my tenth year. This year was unusual because three of our six designers left to go to other departments or networks, and my boss of nine years quit to go to the USA network. When this many people leave, a hole is left, and those left behind are responsible for plugging the hole,

making sure the boat doesn’t sink. I say all that to say that my job has been unusually busy this year, as well. Since I was one of the designers below my boss, I have been acting as the interim design director. This has been a great, but new experience for me. Filling this role, as well as working on really large upcoming projects, has kept me constantly moving, a little frazzled at times and really close to my email on my phone. Occasionally there is rest for the weary

though, and one of those times was our family trip to Hilton Head Island i n S o u t h C a r o l i n a . T h i s summer, we did a whole lot of nothing at one of our

favorite vacation spots. When not doing nothing, we went to the beach, rode bikes, swam in the pool, ate some good food, and of course enjoyed one of my favorite things, sleep. Plus, we made a little day trip to Savannah, Georgia, and while we were there, ate at one of our favorite Pizza establish-ments, Vinny Van GoGo’s, who serves up slices of pizza bigger than a plate. We also had a little break this

year at Thanksgiving when we visited my

mom and step-dad, John, in Cham-

pagne, Illinois. We spent

some time with my

s i s t e r D e b b i e

and her family, too. Of course,

John, Susan and I participated in the

madness of Black Friday from midnight to

5am. We have done this for years, but I’m starting think it’s stupid. Don’t get me wrong, we scored some deals, but is it worth the fist fights in the parking lots? Those sweatpant-wearing soccer moms can get pretty scrappy. I still took her out, but it wasn’t without some effort. One other layer of busy was added this year by God himself, or at least the insurance

It’s awful, I’m a real jerk. “Oh my gosh, this is hysterical! Have you seen this talking dog on YouTube? The owner is talking about steak, and the dog is like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Oh, I’m sorry what were you saying?” “Todd, I was telling you how my wife is leaving me, and taking the kids with...” “Hold on, I’m getting a text.” It hasn’t gotten that bad, well maybe a little bit, but I think the irony of smart phones is that they connect us to so many people, but to

a degree, disconnect us from those right around us. Just about everywhere you go, you see people of all ages looking down at their phones, myself included. At work, I’ll walk from one building to the other, reading my phone the entire time. I probably pass a half a dozen people on the way, but don’t even realize it. I may see someone’s feet, but never their face. This idea of phone in hand and eyes glued to the screen, seems to paint a fairly accurate big picture of my life in 2011.

With eyes focused on doing this, finishing that, hitting the deadline, producing more, becoming better, serving here, and working there, I miss the important things happening right around me, and sometimes right in front of me. We are created and designed to be in relationship with God and people, yet in my busyness, relationships slowly get pushed out of the way to make room for more work, achievement and desire for success. Slowly, I am no longer really listening, engaged, or investing in others. How can I? I’m simply trying to manage my chaos. I no longer see the faces, just a phone and a few feet

companies call it “an act of God”. The huge storms, that hit all over the country in April, impacted us as they affected many of you. A storm rolled through on Susan’s birthday, giving us the gift of quarter-sized hail, leaving holes in our siding, broken and dented fixtures and a damaged roof. Never-theless, we still had a house, unlike so many of the victims of the storms. Following the damage, like so many people, we (when I say, “we”, I mostly mean Susan) have spent the remainder of the year dealing with insur-ance agents, adjusters and contractors getting the house back to pre-storm condition. Unrelated to the storm, our air conditioner units needed to be replaced, too. They’re not cheap, but oh so worth every penny. And lastly, we decided to have a screened-in deck added to our home. Why not? What’s one more thing? I designed it with

some 3D software, and we hired someone to build it. We absolutely love it. And now, I saved the best news of 2011 for last - We finally... you might want to sit down for this... we finally got iPhones! We waited so long for the marriage of Verizon and Apple, and finally, they tied the knot, which means Susan and I now have a new drug, the iPhone 4S, the best phone ever. Just ask Siri, she’ll tell you. You know how sometimes you wait and wait with anticipation for something, and you build up in your head that this something is going to be so incredibly great, but you’re disappointed by the actual reality of this something? Like, “I thought getting married to Bob was going be my romance novel dream come true, but now that we’re married, he drools, farts and snores, and that’s just when he’s sleeping. He’s worse when he’s awake. It’s not quite what I had imagined.” However, I can tell you that Siri is no Bob. The iPhone is everything we expected. It’s great! I have become one of those obnoxious people with their phone glued to their hand.

passing by. Work, serving people, achieving goals and the desire to succeed can produce some

amazing results, but when my f o c u s s i t s sharply on the stated, and my r e l a t i o n s h i p s become blurred in the back-ground, I start to miss out on what God is doing all around me and

in me. The Christmas story is about God restoring a broken relationship between humanity and Himself. He created a way to come to Him without fear of judgement. He showed love. Why? Relationship. We are made for it. Anything less is... well, less. It’s all too easy for me to lose sight of relationship with God, family, friends and others in favor of a daunting to-do list. It’s also easy for me to look for the “big thing” and aspire to do something great, but God’s greatness is often found in the simplest things right in front of me, my relationships with those around me. I wish there was some lasik procedure to keep my sights on these relationships, but ultimately it comes down to choices. For me in 2012, I think “No” is going to be the new “Yes”. “Dad, can you take me to the mall to meet boys?” “No.” “Does that mean, ‘Yes.’” “No.” You may already have all of this all figured out, but if not, we pray that your 2012 isn’t too busy and that you will see all God is doing in your life through your relationship with Him and those around you. So, put down your phone from time to time, spend some time with those you love, and even those you don’t love, and have a blessed year.

Yes, I ate those fries.

Our little diva.

The Christmas Star p.3

the church with kids in elementary school. As a part of the program, Susan has really

connected with h e r m e n t e e , Kelsie, as well as her family. Kelsie has also connected with Susan and our family, too. In June, Susan led a mission trip to Cape Town, South A f r i c a . T h i s was her second

mission trip to Cape Town, but this time, she led and organized the 11 day trip, working with seven other people from our church, serving through education, medical needs and prayer. Finally, Susan continues to be a good wife, a mom, and dog owner, too. This alone is a huge undertaking since she’s married to a high maintenance husband. Kaley, our 14 year old daughter, is a fresh-man in high school, and now stands face to face with me at 5’11’’, yet I’m still ahead of her in weight by 60 pounds, so she’s got nothing on me, I can still take her. Kaley is tall and beautiful, she just had her braces removed, and she’s in high school. Scary. A boy asked h e r f o r h e r number. Scarier. She gave it to him. “You what?! You gave it to him?! Why?! I don’t care if you felt bad for him, don’t give him your number. You give him my number! Yes, seriously.” He never called. Thank God that jerk never called. So, besides this introduction to boys, Kaley has been immersed in the academic side of high school. She takes all honors classes, which means she’s smart. Really smart. Smarter than me. (Yes, I know. That’s not really saying much.) Of all her classes, I

Lindsey brought boxes of Brainbows to school, and with the help of her art teacher, Mrs. Davis, the bows became hugely popular at the school. Girls lined up every morning to buy Brainbows, and Lindsey would sell around 50-60 a day, which meant Susan and Lindsey made 50-60 a night. They raised about $1500 in the first month. Brainbows became the latest craze at Farragut Interme-diate School. The local paper and local news station wrote and aired a story about it. The Brainbows were selling at school, special school events, and at a local cupcake store. The demand was constant through the remainder of the school year, and then

slowed down once school let out. This “slow” time was welcomed, since

Brainbows had pretty much taken over our dining room and Susan and Lindsey’s lives. Once summer ended and school started again, “busi-

ness” started to pick up again. It hasn’t been as crazy as the

previous school year, but Brain-bows are still being crafted, one at a

time, and sold at school, at special events, at a couple of local businesses and worldwide through the Internet and the Brainbow’s Facebook page. As of now, Brainbows has raised over $6000 for the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation. We never thought handmade hair bows would ever become so popular and raise that much money for a good cause, but it’s great to see how God can make something good out of what was very difficult for Lindsey and our family. As a part of the Brainbow venture, Susan and Lindsey went to San Francisco in May to be a part of the annual Aneurysm & AVM Foundation Awareness Walk. It was a good time for Susan and Lindsey to meet face-to-f a c e w i t h others they h a v e m e t t h r o u g h A V M s u p p o r t websites. Brainbows alone have kept Susan moving at a rapid pace, but Susan also continues working part time at our church as the director of Kids Hope USA, a mentoring program connecting members of

“Burning the candle at both ends”, “Trying to keep my head above water”, “Going balls to the wall”, and “No, I can’t play with you right now because I’m too busy, so why don’t you go watch TV or something, and don’t you dare start singing ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’, because I already know I’m being a terrible parent” have all been pretty accurate cliches, describing our 2011. We’ve been busy this year. Most of our busyness was born out of our desire to help out a little and to make a difference in our world, but quite simply, our desire exceeds our time. There never seems to be quite enough time to get it all done, but I won’t bore you with the unchecked items on our to-do list, but instead, I’ll bore you with our hectic real-life experiences from last year. If you read our last Christ-mas letter, or if you know anything about our family at all, you probably know Lindsey, our daughter, had successful brain surgery two years ago, to remove an AVM from her brain. (In case you’ve forgotten or if you don’t watch House, an AVM is a tangle of malformed blood vessels.) About a year after the surgery, Lindsey, being her crafty self, started making hair bows out of ribbon, buttons and hot glue. She brought a few to school for friends, and then other classmates expressed interest in buying the bows from her. Lind-sey had been wanting to raise money for the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation, and this simple demonstration of supply and demand

provided her the perfect opportunity. Susan and Lindsey started making hair bows and selling them for a few dollars a piece to Lindsey’s classmates, and then giving all of the profit to the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation. Kaley suggested calling the bows “Brainbows”, which was genius, and I created a Brainbows logo.

average of 15,000 words a day. I can say with certainty, that Rylee, our eight year old, did not participate in that study. If she had, the results would have been skewed to some-thing like 57,000 words a day. I mean that

q u i t e l i t e r a l l y , and I don’t m e a n figuratively. I feel it’s important to c l a r i f y , s i n c e t h e word “liter-ally” has taken quite a beating in 2011, often b e i n g c o n f u s e d

with “figuratively”. For example, “I literally died laughing.” And yet you live to tell about it, that’s amazing. Anyway, back to Rylee. She is our resident chatterbox. She’s always talking, singing or making some kind of noise. It makes no difference if we’re present or if she’s alone, she is talking. I’m not sure what this means. Perhaps she’ll grow up to be story teller, a singer, or a politician, I’m just not sure, but I’m sure she’ll be great at whatever path she chooses. She does love to write stories and songs, so who knows, maybe she will be a singer/songwriter. We’ll see. Rylee is in the second grade this year and is doing well. Strangely, her teachers think she’s a really quiet little girl. She may only speak 15,000 words a day, it’s just that she only speaks 74 of them at school and then all the rest here at home. Outside of Mrs. Maser’s class, Rylee is part of a Brownie Troop, where she makes crafts, “talks about stuff” and eats snacks. Eating the snacks is her favorite part. This should not surprise us, because she loves to eat. Y o u w o u l d never know it by looking at her, she’s a little thing - only 50% in height and 10% in weight on h e r m e d i c a l charts. Like Kaley, a n d l i k e

she’ll be waking around the same time as Kaley. Besides Brainbows, Lindsey has been living the life of a normal girly tweenager - clothes shopping, painting nails, hanging with friends, playing on her iTouch, you know, the usual tweenage stuff. Lindsey did have a follow-up MRI this year. The results were great, and the surgery was still considered a success, since there’s still no trace of the AVM. She will have another MRI in 2012 to make sure everything still looks good. At the end of last school year, Lindsey went to Washington, DC with several hundred other Knoxville students, who participated in the Safety Patrol program at school. All of the students were loaded into charter buses and then police escorted them to and from the nation’s capital to see different museums, monuments, historical homes and other key sites in DC, all crammed into three short days. They walked over 13 miles over the course of their trip. Since then, Lindsey has started middle school this year and is doing well in her studies, especially in math. She has also really taken an interest in art, and she plays clarinet in band, which she really doesn’t like... at all. Like Kaley, she h a s a l s o e x p e r i -enced an in t roduc-t i o n t o boys. An e i g h t h grade boy a p -p roached my sixth g r a d e Lindsey and said, “Hey hot chick, you want to go out with me sometime?” And unlike Kaley, Lindsey said, “No.” Then she walked away. That’s my girl. Lindsey says she’s not dating until she’s 25. Even better. Lindsey is a great girl with a big heart, and has a good head on her shoulders, which is apparent, since she didn’t fall for the super smooth line, “Hey hot chick, you want to go out with me sometime?” (I think most girls would have responded with, “You had me at ‘Hey hot chick.’” Or at least, that’s how Susan responded to me.) Now they say a person speaks about an

could only help in one - Visual Communica-tions. It was Photoshop 101, my kind of class. One of her assignments was to recreate a movie poster, using her own photography, fonts, etc. She recreated the poster for Super-size Me, and I was the model in the poster

with all of the french fries in his mouth. You see, I can help her with her homework. Outside of school, Kaley continues to take guitar lessons, and has even started playing in the church youth band. She also occasion-ally plays at a retirement home, with her friend Kayla, who plays violin. It has been good for her to play with other musicians, and it’s an opportunity for her to share her talent with others.

When she’s not figuring out the taxonomic group and species of a canis lupus, or learn-ing new chord structures for Fire and Rain, she’s sleeping until noon, browsing Facebook, texting with friends, bossing her little sister, watching TV, denying her love for Justin Bieber, pet sitting, and sleeping until noon. Lindsey, on the other hand, only sleeps until 10am, but in a couple of years, I’m sure

Lindsey, Rylee has had an introduction to boys, too. No, it’s not in the “Hot Chick” sense, but more in the sense that her best friend happens to be a boy from our neigh-borhood. Her most favorite thing to do in the world right now is playing with Andrew. Why not? There’s playing involved, a lot of talking, and sometimes eating. It’s the trifecta of her favorite things. As long as Andrew continues to knock on our door and ask, “Can Rylee come out to play?” we’ll let her, but once he pulls up in a loud, rusty Nova and utters the words, “Hot chick”, Rylee will no longer be permitted to “come out and play”. Also like her sisters, she likes to watch TV and play on her new iPod Touch, however, she has yet to really enjoy the beautiful gift of sleeping late. She’s still young, she’ll learn. As for me, I cherish that gift, not as much as I would like, but it’s one of my favorite things. It’s like getting back at the alarm clock for all of the interrupted sleep it has caused. It’s like saying, “I pay no attention to you today. You mean nothing to me right now. My eyes will remain closed, and I will enjoy this cloud of blankets and pillows.” If I were keeping score though, the alarm clock would have an insurmountable lead over me, but then again, how could I possibly stay busy if I spent all my time sleeping? For me, 2011 started with a trip to New York City, or Brooklyn to be precise. I went on a video shoot for HGTV in early January, and then flew back home to hit the road, with the wife and kids, to Kansas City, to see my niece, Bethany, get married to Christopher Lee. It was nice to experience their wedding, but it was also nice to see all of my family again in once place. I went to NYC again in April with a friend, Brad, to go to the Mockingbird Conference, which showed how to find God’s grace at work in our world today. We also went to the Broadway show “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”. The show starred Daniel Radcliffe, also known as Harry Potter. Did you know he has an English accent? I then went to Brooklyn again in October for an HGTV Holidays campaign. I love visiting New York, but I would never want to

live there. When Susan went to South Africa, I took the girls to Atlanta for a weekend. Of course we hit IKEA, and then, our most favoritest taco place ever, Tacqueria Del Sol. We also ventured into a shady part of town for pizza. Garmin doesn’t tell you to roll up your windows and lock your doors. It should. The pizza was great, but as we walked from the car, I was trying remember some Chuck Norris moves from Walker Texas Ranger, just in case. We also went to the World of Coke, and ended our trip at an Atlanta Braves game. We’re not baseball fans, but surprisingly, we really enjoyed going to the game and we would like to go again. A few weeks later, Lindsey pointed out that the new Coldplay song, “Prin-cess of China” sounds very similar to the Braves tomahawk song they play at the game. She’s right. I can’t listen to the song without thinking of the Braves game. A big source of self-induced busyness this last year was generated by my desire and willingness to produce videos for ministries and organizations. From the beginning of the year until now I have been working on videos “on the side”. I spent many months working on a promotional video for Operation Inasmuch, a ministry showing churches great ways to serve in their commu-nities. I also worked on a video for Water Angels, a local ministry helping the poor and homeless in Knoxville. I also worked on some videos for our church, and more recently, I’ve been working on a recruiting video for a mortgage company here in Knoxville. I wanted to work on all of these videos and I have no regrets, but it’s been a solid year of work outside of work, so I think a little break is in order. Finally, as mentioned, I am still working at HGTV, I am going on my tenth year. This year was unusual because three of our six designers left to go to other departments or networks, and my boss of nine years quit to go to the USA network. When this many people leave, a hole is left, and those left behind are responsible for plugging the hole,

making sure the boat doesn’t sink. I say all that to say that my job has been unusually busy this year, as well. Since I was one of the designers below my boss, I have been acting as the interim design director. This has been a great, but new experience for me. Filling this role, as well as working on really large upcoming projects, has kept me constantly moving, a little frazzled at times and really close to my email on my phone. Occasionally there is rest for the weary

though, and one of those times was our family trip to Hilton Head Island i n S o u t h C a r o l i n a . T h i s summer, we did a whole lot of nothing at one of our

favorite vacation spots. When not doing nothing, we went to the beach, rode bikes, swam in the pool, ate some good food, and of course enjoyed one of my favorite things, sleep. Plus, we made a little day trip to Savannah, Georgia, and while we were there, ate at one of our favorite Pizza establish-ments, Vinny Van GoGo’s, who serves up slices of pizza bigger than a plate. We also had a little break this

year at Thanksgiving when we visited my

mom and step-dad, John, in Cham-

pagne, Illinois. We spent

some time with my

s i s t e r D e b b i e

and her family, too. Of course,

John, Susan and I participated in the

madness of Black Friday from midnight to

5am. We have done this for years, but I’m starting think it’s stupid. Don’t get me wrong, we scored some deals, but is it worth the fist fights in the parking lots? Those sweatpant-wearing soccer moms can get pretty scrappy. I still took her out, but it wasn’t without some effort. One other layer of busy was added this year by God himself, or at least the insurance

It’s awful, I’m a real jerk. “Oh my gosh, this is hysterical! Have you seen this talking dog on YouTube? The owner is talking about steak, and the dog is like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Oh, I’m sorry what were you saying?” “Todd, I was telling you how my wife is leaving me, and taking the kids with...” “Hold on, I’m getting a text.” It hasn’t gotten that bad, well maybe a little bit, but I think the irony of smart phones is that they connect us to so many people, but to

a degree, disconnect us from those right around us. Just about everywhere you go, you see people of all ages looking down at their phones, myself included. At work, I’ll walk from one building to the other, reading my phone the entire time. I probably pass a half a dozen people on the way, but don’t even realize it. I may see someone’s feet, but never their face. This idea of phone in hand and eyes glued to the screen, seems to paint a fairly accurate big picture of my life in 2011.

With eyes focused on doing this, finishing that, hitting the deadline, producing more, becoming better, serving here, and working there, I miss the important things happening right around me, and sometimes right in front of me. We are created and designed to be in relationship with God and people, yet in my busyness, relationships slowly get pushed out of the way to make room for more work, achievement and desire for success. Slowly, I am no longer really listening, engaged, or investing in others. How can I? I’m simply trying to manage my chaos. I no longer see the faces, just a phone and a few feet

companies call it “an act of God”. The huge storms, that hit all over the country in April, impacted us as they affected many of you. A storm rolled through on Susan’s birthday, giving us the gift of quarter-sized hail, leaving holes in our siding, broken and dented fixtures and a damaged roof. Never-theless, we still had a house, unlike so many of the victims of the storms. Following the damage, like so many people, we (when I say, “we”, I mostly mean Susan) have spent the remainder of the year dealing with insur-ance agents, adjusters and contractors getting the house back to pre-storm condition. Unrelated to the storm, our air conditioner units needed to be replaced, too. They’re not cheap, but oh so worth every penny. And lastly, we decided to have a screened-in deck added to our home. Why not? What’s one more thing? I designed it with

some 3D software, and we hired someone to build it. We absolutely love it. And now, I saved the best news of 2011 for last - We finally... you might want to sit down for this... we finally got iPhones! We waited so long for the marriage of Verizon and Apple, and finally, they tied the knot, which means Susan and I now have a new drug, the iPhone 4S, the best phone ever. Just ask Siri, she’ll tell you. You know how sometimes you wait and wait with anticipation for something, and you build up in your head that this something is going to be so incredibly great, but you’re disappointed by the actual reality of this something? Like, “I thought getting married to Bob was going be my romance novel dream come true, but now that we’re married, he drools, farts and snores, and that’s just when he’s sleeping. He’s worse when he’s awake. It’s not quite what I had imagined.” However, I can tell you that Siri is no Bob. The iPhone is everything we expected. It’s great! I have become one of those obnoxious people with their phone glued to their hand.

passing by. Work, serving people, achieving goals and the desire to succeed can produce some

amazing results, but when my f o c u s s i t s sharply on the stated, and my r e l a t i o n s h i p s become blurred in the back-ground, I start to miss out on what God is doing all around me and

in me. The Christmas story is about God restoring a broken relationship between humanity and Himself. He created a way to come to Him without fear of judgement. He showed love. Why? Relationship. We are made for it. Anything less is... well, less. It’s all too easy for me to lose sight of relationship with God, family, friends and others in favor of a daunting to-do list. It’s also easy for me to look for the “big thing” and aspire to do something great, but God’s greatness is often found in the simplest things right in front of me, my relationships with those around me. I wish there was some lasik procedure to keep my sights on these relationships, but ultimately it comes down to choices. For me in 2012, I think “No” is going to be the new “Yes”. “Dad, can you take me to the mall to meet boys?” “No.” “Does that mean, ‘Yes.’” “No.” You may already have all of this all figured out, but if not, we pray that your 2012 isn’t too busy and that you will see all God is doing in your life through your relationship with Him and those around you. So, put down your phone from time to time, spend some time with those you love, and even those you don’t love, and have a blessed year.

Hold hands, look at the camera, smile and jump on three!

The Christmas Star p.4

the church with kids in elementary school. As a part of the program, Susan has really

connected with h e r m e n t e e , Kelsie, as well as her family. Kelsie has also connected with Susan and our family, too. In June, Susan led a mission trip to Cape Town, South A f r i c a . T h i s was her second

mission trip to Cape Town, but this time, she led and organized the 11 day trip, working with seven other people from our church, serving through education, medical needs and prayer. Finally, Susan continues to be a good wife, a mom, and dog owner, too. This alone is a huge undertaking since she’s married to a high maintenance husband. Kaley, our 14 year old daughter, is a fresh-man in high school, and now stands face to face with me at 5’11’’, yet I’m still ahead of her in weight by 60 pounds, so she’s got nothing on me, I can still take her. Kaley is tall and beautiful, she just had her braces removed, and she’s in high school. Scary. A boy asked h e r f o r h e r number. Scarier. She gave it to him. “You what?! You gave it to him?! Why?! I don’t care if you felt bad for him, don’t give him your number. You give him my number! Yes, seriously.” He never called. Thank God that jerk never called. So, besides this introduction to boys, Kaley has been immersed in the academic side of high school. She takes all honors classes, which means she’s smart. Really smart. Smarter than me. (Yes, I know. That’s not really saying much.) Of all her classes, I

Lindsey brought boxes of Brainbows to school, and with the help of her art teacher, Mrs. Davis, the bows became hugely popular at the school. Girls lined up every morning to buy Brainbows, and Lindsey would sell around 50-60 a day, which meant Susan and Lindsey made 50-60 a night. They raised about $1500 in the first month. Brainbows became the latest craze at Farragut Interme-diate School. The local paper and local news station wrote and aired a story about it. The Brainbows were selling at school, special school events, and at a local cupcake store. The demand was constant through the remainder of the school year, and then

slowed down once school let out. This “slow” time was welcomed, since

Brainbows had pretty much taken over our dining room and Susan and Lindsey’s lives. Once summer ended and school started again, “busi-

ness” started to pick up again. It hasn’t been as crazy as the

previous school year, but Brain-bows are still being crafted, one at a

time, and sold at school, at special events, at a couple of local businesses and worldwide through the Internet and the Brainbow’s Facebook page. As of now, Brainbows has raised over $6000 for the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation. We never thought handmade hair bows would ever become so popular and raise that much money for a good cause, but it’s great to see how God can make something good out of what was very difficult for Lindsey and our family. As a part of the Brainbow venture, Susan and Lindsey went to San Francisco in May to be a part of the annual Aneurysm & AVM Foundation Awareness Walk. It was a good time for Susan and Lindsey to meet face-to-f a c e w i t h others they h a v e m e t t h r o u g h A V M s u p p o r t websites. Brainbows alone have kept Susan moving at a rapid pace, but Susan also continues working part time at our church as the director of Kids Hope USA, a mentoring program connecting members of

“Burning the candle at both ends”, “Trying to keep my head above water”, “Going balls to the wall”, and “No, I can’t play with you right now because I’m too busy, so why don’t you go watch TV or something, and don’t you dare start singing ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’, because I already know I’m being a terrible parent” have all been pretty accurate cliches, describing our 2011. We’ve been busy this year. Most of our busyness was born out of our desire to help out a little and to make a difference in our world, but quite simply, our desire exceeds our time. There never seems to be quite enough time to get it all done, but I won’t bore you with the unchecked items on our to-do list, but instead, I’ll bore you with our hectic real-life experiences from last year. If you read our last Christ-mas letter, or if you know anything about our family at all, you probably know Lindsey, our daughter, had successful brain surgery two years ago, to remove an AVM from her brain. (In case you’ve forgotten or if you don’t watch House, an AVM is a tangle of malformed blood vessels.) About a year after the surgery, Lindsey, being her crafty self, started making hair bows out of ribbon, buttons and hot glue. She brought a few to school for friends, and then other classmates expressed interest in buying the bows from her. Lind-sey had been wanting to raise money for the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation, and this simple demonstration of supply and demand

provided her the perfect opportunity. Susan and Lindsey started making hair bows and selling them for a few dollars a piece to Lindsey’s classmates, and then giving all of the profit to the Aneurysm & AVM Foundation. Kaley suggested calling the bows “Brainbows”, which was genius, and I created a Brainbows logo.

average of 15,000 words a day. I can say with certainty, that Rylee, our eight year old, did not participate in that study. If she had, the results would have been skewed to some-thing like 57,000 words a day. I mean that

q u i t e l i t e r a l l y , and I don’t m e a n figuratively. I feel it’s important to c l a r i f y , s i n c e t h e word “liter-ally” has taken quite a beating in 2011, often b e i n g c o n f u s e d

with “figuratively”. For example, “I literally died laughing.” And yet you live to tell about it, that’s amazing. Anyway, back to Rylee. She is our resident chatterbox. She’s always talking, singing or making some kind of noise. It makes no difference if we’re present or if she’s alone, she is talking. I’m not sure what this means. Perhaps she’ll grow up to be story teller, a singer, or a politician, I’m just not sure, but I’m sure she’ll be great at whatever path she chooses. She does love to write stories and songs, so who knows, maybe she will be a singer/songwriter. We’ll see. Rylee is in the second grade this year and is doing well. Strangely, her teachers think she’s a really quiet little girl. She may only speak 15,000 words a day, it’s just that she only speaks 74 of them at school and then all the rest here at home. Outside of Mrs. Maser’s class, Rylee is part of a Brownie Troop, where she makes crafts, “talks about stuff” and eats snacks. Eating the snacks is her favorite part. This should not surprise us, because she loves to eat. Y o u w o u l d never know it by looking at her, she’s a little thing - only 50% in height and 10% in weight on h e r m e d i c a l charts. Like Kaley, a n d l i k e

she’ll be waking around the same time as Kaley. Besides Brainbows, Lindsey has been living the life of a normal girly tweenager - clothes shopping, painting nails, hanging with friends, playing on her iTouch, you know, the usual tweenage stuff. Lindsey did have a follow-up MRI this year. The results were great, and the surgery was still considered a success, since there’s still no trace of the AVM. She will have another MRI in 2012 to make sure everything still looks good. At the end of last school year, Lindsey went to Washington, DC with several hundred other Knoxville students, who participated in the Safety Patrol program at school. All of the students were loaded into charter buses and then police escorted them to and from the nation’s capital to see different museums, monuments, historical homes and other key sites in DC, all crammed into three short days. They walked over 13 miles over the course of their trip. Since then, Lindsey has started middle school this year and is doing well in her studies, especially in math. She has also really taken an interest in art, and she plays clarinet in band, which she really doesn’t like... at all. Like Kaley, she h a s a l s o e x p e r i -enced an in t roduc-t i o n t o boys. An e i g h t h grade boy a p -p roached my sixth g r a d e Lindsey and said, “Hey hot chick, you want to go out with me sometime?” And unlike Kaley, Lindsey said, “No.” Then she walked away. That’s my girl. Lindsey says she’s not dating until she’s 25. Even better. Lindsey is a great girl with a big heart, and has a good head on her shoulders, which is apparent, since she didn’t fall for the super smooth line, “Hey hot chick, you want to go out with me sometime?” (I think most girls would have responded with, “You had me at ‘Hey hot chick.’” Or at least, that’s how Susan responded to me.) Now they say a person speaks about an

could only help in one - Visual Communica-tions. It was Photoshop 101, my kind of class. One of her assignments was to recreate a movie poster, using her own photography, fonts, etc. She recreated the poster for Super-size Me, and I was the model in the poster

with all of the french fries in his mouth. You see, I can help her with her homework. Outside of school, Kaley continues to take guitar lessons, and has even started playing in the church youth band. She also occasion-ally plays at a retirement home, with her friend Kayla, who plays violin. It has been good for her to play with other musicians, and it’s an opportunity for her to share her talent with others.

When she’s not figuring out the taxonomic group and species of a canis lupus, or learn-ing new chord structures for Fire and Rain, she’s sleeping until noon, browsing Facebook, texting with friends, bossing her little sister, watching TV, denying her love for Justin Bieber, pet sitting, and sleeping until noon. Lindsey, on the other hand, only sleeps until 10am, but in a couple of years, I’m sure

Lindsey, Rylee has had an introduction to boys, too. No, it’s not in the “Hot Chick” sense, but more in the sense that her best friend happens to be a boy from our neigh-borhood. Her most favorite thing to do in the world right now is playing with Andrew. Why not? There’s playing involved, a lot of talking, and sometimes eating. It’s the trifecta of her favorite things. As long as Andrew continues to knock on our door and ask, “Can Rylee come out to play?” we’ll let her, but once he pulls up in a loud, rusty Nova and utters the words, “Hot chick”, Rylee will no longer be permitted to “come out and play”. Also like her sisters, she likes to watch TV and play on her new iPod Touch, however, she has yet to really enjoy the beautiful gift of sleeping late. She’s still young, she’ll learn. As for me, I cherish that gift, not as much as I would like, but it’s one of my favorite things. It’s like getting back at the alarm clock for all of the interrupted sleep it has caused. It’s like saying, “I pay no attention to you today. You mean nothing to me right now. My eyes will remain closed, and I will enjoy this cloud of blankets and pillows.” If I were keeping score though, the alarm clock would have an insurmountable lead over me, but then again, how could I possibly stay busy if I spent all my time sleeping? For me, 2011 started with a trip to New York City, or Brooklyn to be precise. I went on a video shoot for HGTV in early January, and then flew back home to hit the road, with the wife and kids, to Kansas City, to see my niece, Bethany, get married to Christopher Lee. It was nice to experience their wedding, but it was also nice to see all of my family again in once place. I went to NYC again in April with a friend, Brad, to go to the Mockingbird Conference, which showed how to find God’s grace at work in our world today. We also went to the Broadway show “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”. The show starred Daniel Radcliffe, also known as Harry Potter. Did you know he has an English accent? I then went to Brooklyn again in October for an HGTV Holidays campaign. I love visiting New York, but I would never want to

live there. When Susan went to South Africa, I took the girls to Atlanta for a weekend. Of course we hit IKEA, and then, our most favoritest taco place ever, Tacqueria Del Sol. We also ventured into a shady part of town for pizza. Garmin doesn’t tell you to roll up your windows and lock your doors. It should. The pizza was great, but as we walked from the car, I was trying remember some Chuck Norris moves from Walker Texas Ranger, just in case. We also went to the World of Coke, and ended our trip at an Atlanta Braves game. We’re not baseball fans, but surprisingly, we really enjoyed going to the game and we would like to go again. A few weeks later, Lindsey pointed out that the new Coldplay song, “Prin-cess of China” sounds very similar to the Braves tomahawk song they play at the game. She’s right. I can’t listen to the song without thinking of the Braves game. A big source of self-induced busyness this last year was generated by my desire and willingness to produce videos for ministries and organizations. From the beginning of the year until now I have been working on videos “on the side”. I spent many months working on a promotional video for Operation Inasmuch, a ministry showing churches great ways to serve in their commu-nities. I also worked on a video for Water Angels, a local ministry helping the poor and homeless in Knoxville. I also worked on some videos for our church, and more recently, I’ve been working on a recruiting video for a mortgage company here in Knoxville. I wanted to work on all of these videos and I have no regrets, but it’s been a solid year of work outside of work, so I think a little break is in order. Finally, as mentioned, I am still working at HGTV, I am going on my tenth year. This year was unusual because three of our six designers left to go to other departments or networks, and my boss of nine years quit to go to the USA network. When this many people leave, a hole is left, and those left behind are responsible for plugging the hole,

making sure the boat doesn’t sink. I say all that to say that my job has been unusually busy this year, as well. Since I was one of the designers below my boss, I have been acting as the interim design director. This has been a great, but new experience for me. Filling this role, as well as working on really large upcoming projects, has kept me constantly moving, a little frazzled at times and really close to my email on my phone. Occasionally there is rest for the weary

though, and one of those times was our family trip to Hilton Head Island i n S o u t h C a r o l i n a . T h i s summer, we did a whole lot of nothing at one of our

favorite vacation spots. When not doing nothing, we went to the beach, rode bikes, swam in the pool, ate some good food, and of course enjoyed one of my favorite things, sleep. Plus, we made a little day trip to Savannah, Georgia, and while we were there, ate at one of our favorite Pizza establish-ments, Vinny Van GoGo’s, who serves up slices of pizza bigger than a plate. We also had a little break this

year at Thanksgiving when we visited my

mom and step-dad, John, in Cham-

pagne, Illinois. We spent

some time with my

s i s t e r D e b b i e

and her family, too. Of course,

John, Susan and I participated in the

madness of Black Friday from midnight to

5am. We have done this for years, but I’m starting think it’s stupid. Don’t get me wrong, we scored some deals, but is it worth the fist fights in the parking lots? Those sweatpant-wearing soccer moms can get pretty scrappy. I still took her out, but it wasn’t without some effort. One other layer of busy was added this year by God himself, or at least the insurance

It’s awful, I’m a real jerk. “Oh my gosh, this is hysterical! Have you seen this talking dog on YouTube? The owner is talking about steak, and the dog is like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Oh, I’m sorry what were you saying?” “Todd, I was telling you how my wife is leaving me, and taking the kids with...” “Hold on, I’m getting a text.” It hasn’t gotten that bad, well maybe a little bit, but I think the irony of smart phones is that they connect us to so many people, but to

a degree, disconnect us from those right around us. Just about everywhere you go, you see people of all ages looking down at their phones, myself included. At work, I’ll walk from one building to the other, reading my phone the entire time. I probably pass a half a dozen people on the way, but don’t even realize it. I may see someone’s feet, but never their face. This idea of phone in hand and eyes glued to the screen, seems to paint a fairly accurate big picture of my life in 2011.

With eyes focused on doing this, finishing that, hitting the deadline, producing more, becoming better, serving here, and working there, I miss the important things happening right around me, and sometimes right in front of me. We are created and designed to be in relationship with God and people, yet in my busyness, relationships slowly get pushed out of the way to make room for more work, achievement and desire for success. Slowly, I am no longer really listening, engaged, or investing in others. How can I? I’m simply trying to manage my chaos. I no longer see the faces, just a phone and a few feet

companies call it “an act of God”. The huge storms, that hit all over the country in April, impacted us as they affected many of you. A storm rolled through on Susan’s birthday, giving us the gift of quarter-sized hail, leaving holes in our siding, broken and dented fixtures and a damaged roof. Never-theless, we still had a house, unlike so many of the victims of the storms. Following the damage, like so many people, we (when I say, “we”, I mostly mean Susan) have spent the remainder of the year dealing with insur-ance agents, adjusters and contractors getting the house back to pre-storm condition. Unrelated to the storm, our air conditioner units needed to be replaced, too. They’re not cheap, but oh so worth every penny. And lastly, we decided to have a screened-in deck added to our home. Why not? What’s one more thing? I designed it with

some 3D software, and we hired someone to build it. We absolutely love it. And now, I saved the best news of 2011 for last - We finally... you might want to sit down for this... we finally got iPhones! We waited so long for the marriage of Verizon and Apple, and finally, they tied the knot, which means Susan and I now have a new drug, the iPhone 4S, the best phone ever. Just ask Siri, she’ll tell you. You know how sometimes you wait and wait with anticipation for something, and you build up in your head that this something is going to be so incredibly great, but you’re disappointed by the actual reality of this something? Like, “I thought getting married to Bob was going be my romance novel dream come true, but now that we’re married, he drools, farts and snores, and that’s just when he’s sleeping. He’s worse when he’s awake. It’s not quite what I had imagined.” However, I can tell you that Siri is no Bob. The iPhone is everything we expected. It’s great! I have become one of those obnoxious people with their phone glued to their hand.

passing by. Work, serving people, achieving goals and the desire to succeed can produce some

amazing results, but when my f o c u s s i t s sharply on the stated, and my r e l a t i o n s h i p s become blurred in the back-ground, I start to miss out on what God is doing all around me and

in me. The Christmas story is about God restoring a broken relationship between humanity and Himself. He created a way to come to Him without fear of judgement. He showed love. Why? Relationship. We are made for it. Anything less is... well, less. It’s all too easy for me to lose sight of relationship with God, family, friends and others in favor of a daunting to-do list. It’s also easy for me to look for the “big thing” and aspire to do something great, but God’s greatness is often found in the simplest things right in front of me, my relationships with those around me. I wish there was some lasik procedure to keep my sights on these relationships, but ultimately it comes down to choices. For me in 2012, I think “No” is going to be the new “Yes”. “Dad, can you take me to the mall to meet boys?” “No.” “Does that mean, ‘Yes.’” “No.” You may already have all of this all figured out, but if not, we pray that your 2012 isn’t too busy and that you will see all God is doing in your life through your relationship with Him and those around you. So, put down your phone from time to time, spend some time with those you love, and even those you don’t love, and have a blessed year.

TODD & SUSAN KALEY, LINDSEY & RYLEE