The other night we hosted a meeting at our house.  If you’ve ever hosted a meeting, either at your home or at work, church, or somewhere else, you know there are challenges.  You have to stay focused and keep on task while not boring everyone out of their minds.  Here’s three ingredients we had at our meeting that could help.

1. A relaxed environment – We hung out in the living room and just had good discussion on the topics at end.  We didn’t stay too uptight but instead took an attitude of “hanging out” during the meeting.

2. An on-task person – At our meeting, this was my wife Amy.  I love having a relaxed meeting but that always presents the danger of straying off topic or not staying focused.  Amy is good at reminding me to keep at the work at hand.

3. Decaf coffee and cappuccino brownies – They taste good and food always make any meeting better.

Posted: February 19th, 2010 under Life at the Lansers', Show Notes.
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Life is full of firsts.  Especially life as a small child.  Over the weekend we discovered that Bekah, our one year old, was experiencing another first: her first ear infection.  This one definitely wasn’t on our list.  I don’t even know if there’s a place for it in that baby calendar/book of firsts we have at our house.  Regardless, we got the news at Urgent Care last night and medication started soon after.  Either Bekah was feeling hospitable last night, or the medication is already kicking in, because she slept most of the night away, with one small wake-up early this morning.  If this keeps up, the rest of may be able to finally get over our colds too.

Posted: January 25th, 2010 under Life at the Lansers'.
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Over the weekend, my wife and I attended the Weekend to Remember Marriage conference in Cedar Rapids.  (You can still register for this weekend’s conference in Coralville by clicking here.) Saturday night of the conference is date night.  The speakers wrap up a little before 5pm and give you the night to go out and have a date away from the kids and everything else.  Amy and I had another date that some might consider “not a date” but we loved it.

First we stopped at Michael’s so Amy could look for some scrapbooking items.  Then it was off to Old Navy in case there were deals on shirts for her.  Then, the goal: Barnes and Noble.  We wandered around until we found the games section.  There we looked over the selection and chose a card game called “Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot”.  It is just as ridiculous as it sounds.  Then it was back to the hotel room to play “Killer Bunnies.”  Then we ran out to a restaurant, got our food to go, and went back to the room where we ate and played another round of “Killer Bunnies”.

You might say, “You didn’t go out to eat? What kind of date is that?”  I guess the answer is, “It’s a Mike and Amy date.”  But that does bring up a good question: What is your idea of a great date?  Let me know.

Posted: November 9th, 2009 under Life at the Lansers', Show Notes.
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Recently, I’ve seen a lot of articles and series on improving something over 30 or so days.  “31 Days to a Better Blog” or “30 Days to a Better Man” are a few that I’ve seen.  And it got me thinking about what I could do for 30 days.  So I decided I would embark on a personal challenge: “30 days to being a better husband.”  The challenge I laid out for myself was this: for 30 days, I was going to serve my wife and try to be a better husband by doing something different and special for her each day.  I chronicled each day of the project in a blog online.  Yesterday was the last day of my experiment, so this morning, I emailed the link for the blog to my wife, to let her know what I’d been secretly working on for the last month.  It was definitely a challenge, but it was also fun and an chance to learn more about my wife, and myself.

So now, I’m going to throw down the gauntlet and challenge you.  Set aside 30 days and come up with something special to do for him or her each day.  And then, if you want, let me know how it goes.

Posted: October 13th, 2009 under Crazy Stuff, Life at the Lansers', Show Notes.
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This weekend my wife is getting together with some of her friends to put together “freezer meals”.  Basically, they plan on assembling, cooking, and freezing a large number of meals for later.  This is cool for two reasons.  First, it means we have meals on hand that are easy for even me to make at home.  Second, since our family is doing it with other families, we can all save money by purchasing supplies in bulk, which is really cool.

Do you have anything you’re doing for this fall, maybe even with other families, to save money?

Posted: September 30th, 2009 under Life at the Lansers', Saving Money, Show Notes.
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