Today I celebrated my birthday by hiking Blueberry and Speckled Mountains in Evans Notch, Maine -- 8.2 miles over two mountains. It was a cool day with great visibility. The beautiful views are always what I anticipate most about hiking, but today I discovered something I wasn't expecting.

Blueberries.

I know, since the mountain was named Blueberry Mountain, I ought to have expected blueberries, but mountain names don't always match up to reality, so I hadn't thought too much about the possibility of finding blueberry bushes on the mountain.

How did the blueberries taste? EXTRAORDINARY!

As a matter of fact,...

Having a six-month old child in the house is very interesting. One of the things that fascinates me is the way he studies us. If he can't see us, he's always turning his head to try to find us (finding Mama is a higher priority than finding Dada, but he does look for both of us). And when he finds us, he watches everything we do.

And he's started mimicking us.

If I blow a raspberry (I call it an "air zerbert"), he tries to mimic the sound (and has become quite successful at the task!). If I click my...

A year ago I went to see my dentist and he said to me, "Doug, you have great teeth. They are solid, the gums are good, everything looks great!"

This year I went back for my checkup and he said, "Oh, Doug, you have two big cavities, right between the teeth." Long pause... "Have you been flossing?"

Ouch. Of course -- that task I know I'm supposed to do every day, but I don't. Flossing helps to clean out the food particles between the teeth, so they don't cause the teeth to start decaying.

Do you floss? Every day? I...

It has been interesting, in the last few months, to watch our baby boy develop. One thing that has fascinated me is how drastically his attitude toward us has changed. When he was a newborn, of course, he didn't understand the concept of a person, let alone a parent. If he looked at us, it was with unfocused, unseeing eyes.

Gradually he became able to focus on us, and then, as time went by, he began eagerly looking for us.

Now, at just over five months, he doesn't just look for us; he also is very much aware...

The seminar on teaching to all ages which was originally located at The Problem Site has now been moved to this site. Follow the links below to read:

Spanning the Ages Part One: Teaching Children

Spanning the Ages Part Two: Teaching Teenagers

Spanning the Ages Part Three: Teaching Adults

Spanning the Ages Part Four: Teaching Senior Citizens

Spanning the Ages Part Five: Putting it All Together

In 18:3and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.Matthew 18:3, Jesus said: “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Saturday night is bath time for our little son. It's a big production, in which both of his parents are involved. Laura draws the bath water and makes sure it's the right temperature, and then I bring the little guy in and set him down into his tub.

Then, while Laura scrubs him, I hold him to make sure he doesn't flop over (a job which is getting easier and easier by the week!).

And how much of...

As a ventriloquist, I have quite a few puppets, and I use them to help teach Bible lessons. Last night Laura and I came to an interesting realization about my interactions with the puppets. First, though -- some information about my puppets...

I have three puppets that I consider to be younger than me -- they are a dodo bird, a wolf, and a French-speaking boy.

I have two puppets that I consider to be significantly older than me -- Doctor Jonas, and my hard-of-hearing, three-toothed Uncle Jim.

As we were chatting about the puppets last night, here is what we...

Jesus said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work." (4:34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.John 4:34)

Our cat made me think of that verse this morning.

Every night when we go to bed, we close the cat out of the bedroom, because if we don't, he spends the night walking back and forth across me, and I don't get a whole lot of sleep.

The consequence is that, by morning, Pumpkin is pretty much starved for human affection and attention. As soon as I get out of bed, he immediately starts pawing...

Whenever I hear the word "regeneration," I always think of starfish. After all, a starfish has the ability to regenerate a limb. If a starfish loses a limb, it will begin growing a new one, and sometimes in as little as a few months, it will have a brand new leg, and you might not know it had ever been injured.

But I learned something recently that I never knew about starfish: some species of starfish have the ability to regrow an entire starfish from the limb that is broken off!.

Sound crazy? It sure sounded crazy to me. Since...

Since I was awake this morning at 3:00 a.m., I flipped on the television to see if I could find out what was happening with Hurricane Sandy. After a few minutes of news, I caught a brief video clip of some rescue workers wading through waist-deep water down a city street. What were they doing? The voice-over said that they were rescuing people trapped in upper stories of buildings, who had ignored the evacuation order.

As I watched, I thought, "I wonder how these rescue workers feel about this -- putting their own lives in jeopardy in order to save...