I announced this morning that I will be running for Vice President of the Missouri State Teachers Association at this year's Annual Convention. I am excited about the opportunities that this campaign will allow me. God has allowed a few things to happen in my life recently that confirmed that this is the time to step up and run. Unlike candidates who turn in paperwork in advance and go through the Open Hearing campaign circuit, I will be nominated from the floor of the Assembly of Delegates. It is something that has not been done since 1987, although it is an option every year. Watch for more posts about the campaign and an update on what's going on.

Following is the report I will be giving to the Southeast Region MSTA tomorrow.

Two hundred years ago this past Saturday, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returned to St. Louis to complete the expedition they had departed on nearly two and a half years earlier. They had just explored the Louisiana Purchase and had been given up for dead by the citizens of the young country. When they returned, the pair was treated as national heroes. On their return to Washington, D.C., balls and galas were held in towns they passed through. One senator told Lewis it was as if he had just returned from the moon. The men received double pay and 320 acres of land; Lewis was named governor of the Louisiana Territory; Clark was made Indian agent for the West and brigadier general of the militia. It was a milestone in our nation’s history that has been celebrated and taught in history classes for years.

Nearly fifty years later, 110 educators in Missouri met in the same city to form what would become the Missouri State Teachers Association. They came from all over the state * by horse and buggy, train, or steamboat. One hundred fifty years later, MSTA has had many milestones. We’ve even made it to Washington, D.C. We’ve thrown a few balls and galas over the years, but we really haven’t been treated as national heroes. Our accomplishments aren’t known by many and we definitely haven’t received double pay. Why? Because MSTA’s influence isn’t in the heart of the nation * it’s in the hearts of children.

MSTA is a state organization, with headquarters and staff to support its purposes. MSTA is a regional organization, with offices and field staff to serve and support local leaders. MSTA is a local organization, with over hundreds of community teachers associations to support and influence local education. MSTA is a personal organization, with over forty thousand members who teach in classrooms, drive busses, serve meals, take temperatures, file papers, and influence one child at a time. There is only one purpose for the services and structure of MSTA * kids first.

With that in mind, we are entering the season of resolutions and legislative priorities. The weeks leading up to the annual Convention give members the opportunity to influence the policies of their association. I would like to encourage all members to take a serious look at the resolutions of our association and take advantage of the processes put in place for the grassroots operation of MSTA. The ownership afforded members by these processes is a very unique benefit of membership.

I hope your year is off to a great start, and as we continue our journey together this year, I look forward to many accomplishments. When we come to the end of the journey, I hope that we will be able to look back and realize that, even if we’re not treated as national heroes, as long as we kept kids first, we have done what is right * we’ve accomplished our mission.

This is the first of many posts about my new baby girl.

I was awakened around 7:30 by the sound of trickling water from the other side of the bed. I could only imagine what it was. My wife said, “Either my water broke or I just wet the bed.” I was shocked!

From the time we found out we were expecting our first child, the due date had been October 13. I plugged in all the information on webmd.com and walmart.com. Both of these sites gave the same date, and the doctor’s six-week ultrasound confirmed it. So on September 16, I found it very hard to believe that her water had just broken.

We called my sister-in-law, and then the hospital. We were told that we should go to the hospital to be checked out, and I read in our pregnancy book that it’s better to err on the side of caution. But we already had plans for the day, and a visit to the hospital really didn’t fit into those plans.

Some time around 8:00, we started taking showers, preparing to go to our niece’s birthday party, and we thought we would stop by the hospital to let them tell us that everything was fine. But the water kept coming. Maybe it wasn’t an accident - maybe it was her water. We just didn’t believe it.

An hour and a half after we awoke, we were on our way. My wife kept telling me not to worry about taking anything because they weren’t going to keep us at the hospital. I still took the camera, under the pretense that I needed to take pictures at the birthday party.

When we arrived at the hospital, we went straight to the OB department. When we walked in, a nurse asked if she could help us. We just stared. Finally, I said, “she thinks her water broke,” and before I could say anymore, the nurse said, “I’ll take her back here, and you need to go to the emergency room. We’ll get some paperwork filled out.” The emergency room? I just assumed that’s where she would come out when they were finished checking her, so I went to the ER waiting room. I read a newspaper. I watched TV. I even fell asleep!

It was probably twenty minutes later when a nurse came in to ask if I had filled out admissions papers. Me? It wasn’t my water! Why would I be filling out paperwork? The real reason I was sent to the ER was not to wait - it was to check in with the registrar and sign outpatient admission forms. Then I was supposed to go back to OB. That made more sense . . . I just hadn’t thought of that!

I made it back to the OB department and into the room where they had my wife hooked up to a fetal/maternal monitor. She was now in a hospital gown. I guess I had missed a lot while I was napping! When I asked if they had told her anything, she said she had no idea what was going on. Then a nurse came in and said, “Well, you’re dilated to six or seven.” And I asked, “Did her water break?” If you know much about pregnancy and childbirth, you probably know that was a stupid question . . . but remember . . . I was the one who had just spent twenty minutes in the ER waiting room!

By now it was a little after ten, and things were about to get exciting. I guess I was just full of stupid questions. We had just been to our first childbirth class the Monday before, and we still had two sessions left. The teacher of the class was the nurse who was now answering all my stupid questions. Before thinking, I asked, “does this mean we’ll have a baby today?” Well maybe she gets this kind of question all the time!

I had phone calls to make! But wait . . . I wasn’t ready. This definitely didn’t fit into my plans. Earlier that week, I had created a call list. I started with people to notify on the way to the hospital, and then I made a list of those to call once the baby was born. I had grouped people in the first category so that I had four calls to make, and then those people could call others in the category. It would definitely make for a less stressful day . . . had I had the list. Thinking we still had a month, I didn’t print the list.

I had to go half-way down the hall to get a cell phone signal. I started with my wife’s sister who was given her assignment and had to make the decision to cancel or postpone the birthday party. Then I tried my parents but wasn’t able to reach them. By this time, I decided that the next person I talked to would be assigned the rest of the calls. My uncle was given this task - one he readily accepted. I had to get back to the room.

Because my wife’s entire family was headed to the birthday party just ten miles up the road, most of them were there within minutes. My family arrived a little later. It seemed like information overload was about to hit . . . there was so much I had to remember from childbirth class, but there was so much more that I was having to find out along the way.

Sometime around 12:45, my dad went to the cafeteria to get me a barbequed hamburger, baked beans, and chips. I sat in the waiting room eating my lunch, and then I went to the cafeteria to say “hi” to my wife’s family so they wouldn’t think I was being unsociable. Then I headed back to the OB department to find the doctor preparing the room.

While I had been eating, the anesthetist was starting the epidural. What a God-send. When I returned to the room, my wife said, “I don’t hate everyone anymore. I don’t wish you would blow up.” And then came the next stupid question . . . “can I take some of that home with me?”

We had now been at the hospital a little over three hours. I asked the doctor how far she had dilated. She was now at 10. The rest of the conversation went something like this: “So we’re having a baby?” “We’re having a baby.” “Soon?” “Soon.” “Like how soon . . . within the hour?” “We’re having a baby within the hour.” Wow! The whole ordeal had just started a little over five hours ago, and now we were less than an hour away from the arrival of our first child. I couldn’t believe it!

If you know me, you know that I am very squeamish. I can’t watch the Red Cross first aid training video without passing out; I can’t stand the thought of pain; I almost passed out when the dentist said my wisdom teeth had to come out! So my plan for labor and delivery was to stand as close to the head of the bed as possible and not look at anything. But since when had any of this day followed my plan? It wasn’t about to change now.

The doctor said, “Since you’re in here, I’m not going to call in a nurse. You’re going to help me. Mock me.” I responded with, “What does that mean?” Now I have a Bachelor’s degree and I’m currently working toward my Master’s. I know what mock me means. But I didn’t want to do it, so I was hoping he meant something else. He said, “Do everything I do.” Luckily, he didn’t mean EVERYTHING! But I did hike up my wife’s leg and put her foot to my chest. As she would have a contraction, we would push on her legs so she could push the baby. I even had to get gloves out of the drawer for him! Keep in mind, this was about five minutes after I ate a barbequed hamburger and baked beans. I was now wishing I hadn’t!

After about thirty minutes of labor, the baby was almost here. I made it all the way to the episiotomy; I even saw the first cut. After that, I looked away until he finished it. I’d made it this far; I wasn’t ready to pass out now! The episiotomy seemed to make everything go much easier, and within a matter of minutes, the baby’s head was out and the doctor pulled the rest of the body out. When my wife asked, “what is it?” I choked back tears to say, “It’s a girl.”

All women over 40 have some way of telling if the baby is a boy or girl. For the past few weeks, everyone said this baby was a boy. We knew that meant nothing, and we definitely didn’t accept it as truth, but we were beginning to think that they must be right. But as I looked at that beautiful baby girl lying there with her umbilical cord still attached and covered in white slime, I was eager to welcome my daughter into the world.

Nothing in life is as miraculous as the development and birth of a baby. The past eight months have been wonderful, and they have led to the most amazing event I have ever witnessed. Seeing that new life enter the world is something that I will never forget. I’m looking forward to sharing life with her. I know she has many new experiences in store for me, and she has many lessons to teach me. It will definitely be a journey - one that I am so excited to begin!

Chances are you didn't wake up yesterday and remember what you were doing five years ago. You didn't relive the events of September 10, 2001, as you went about your day. Chances are, yesterday was just another day. But not today. Today is September 11.

Each morning, my wife leaves the TVs on as she leaves for work and I climb into the shower. Both the bedroom and living room TVs are tuned to Fox News, so I can hear what they are saying no matter where I go in the house as I am getting ready to start my day. Unfortunately, that's usually the only news I get in a day's time. Today on Fox & Friends, they replayed clips of the morning news from five years ago. I started subtracting an hour from the times they were showing and thinking about what I was doing then.

I can remember coming into my classroom that morning and turning on the TV. That was before I was married, but I still watched Fox News before I left for work, and then I usually turned on the TV at school to watch until the first bell. That morning, I watched a normal newscast, and when the first bell rang, they had just said that they believed a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. I turned it off. The next time I turned it on, both towers had been hit, and so had the Pentagon. The rest of the day, I watched as newscasters tried to make sense of the devastation playing out before our eyes.

I can vividly remember everything that happened that day - students who made comments, thing I did after school, and people I talked to that evening. That day was truly one that no one will forget. It was a life-changing day for Americans - both personally and as a country.

Leading up to this fifth anniversary, cable and satellite channels have been full of programming about September 11. From documentaries on the engineering aspects of the towers to made-for-TV movies about flight 93, there have been plenty of opportunities to learn more about the events that led up to that day and the fallout thereafter. And then there's the World Trade Center movie at the theater - a dramatization of the lives of two firemen rescued from the collapsed buildings. The information age has not failed to provide an over-abundance of knowledge about the event. Knowledge is good.

At our MSTA board meeting this past weekend, Executive Director Kent King reminded us that even if prayer does nothing else, it changes the pray-er. Knowledge works in much the same way. It changes the know-er. You see, five years ago, I was fresh out of college, a first-time homeowner, with a year-old blue Mustang convertible. I had been a teacher for four weeks. God had been good to me. I had all of that on September 10, 2001, and I still had it on September 12. The only difference was that gas for my car was almost double what it was two days earlier. I didn't know much about New York; I wasn't very politically savvy; hijacked airplanes were not something that I needed to worry about. That wasn't my problem. But knowledge changes the know-er.

The more I learn about the people involved on September 11, and the more I see how the tragedy impacted lives of real people, the more I understand that they were everyday, ordinary Americans, just doing their jobs. They really did make the ultimate sacrifice - willingly or not - for our freedom.

It seems like this year's news theme is "are we safer now than we were then?" A couple of nights ago, one Fox News viewer emailed a comment that I thought answered the question very well. He said that George W. Bush says we "are" safer, and Harry Reid says we "feel" less safe. They're both right. We are safer because we have captured many of the terrorists and we have increased national security. We feel less safe because we know about the threats now, and we didn't back then. We can never go back to the innocence that existed before that day, when we thought the US was not vulnerable to attack. We always have to be aware.

On my shelf at school, I have a book called September 12th, We Knew Everything Would Be Alright. It was written and illustrated by first-grade students of H. Byron Masterson Elementary in Kennett, Missouri, and published by Scholastic.

"On September 11, 2001, many bad things happened. September 12th was a new day. We knew everything would be alright because... the sun cam up and the birds started singing again. We came to school the same way. We knew everything would be alright when we saw our teacher smiling at the door. We said the pledge like always. We sang the National Anthem very loudly. Our teacher sat and read us lots of good books. We had recess again. We knew everything would be alright because we had homework. 2+2 still added up to 4. Our thought for the day became "America United." We saw lots of flags. Red, white and blue suddenly became everyone's favorite colors. On television we heard our President tell us everything would be alright. On September 12th, our parents still tucked us in our warm, safe beds. Our parents talked to us about the bad things that had happened the day before. We knew we would be alright because our parents said they loved us. We knew everything would be alright because the stars and moon came out and America went to sleep. And the next morning the sun came up again."

Whether or not you agree with our political leaders, they are the ones God has given us. George W. Bush isn't perfect - he makes mistakes. He's human. He has chosen a staff of imperfect humans, and they all make mistakes, too. We would all agree that he has had a harder presidency than many of his predecessors. But how many times do we pray for our president and other leaders? Take time today, and every day, to pray for God's guidance in their lives. Many of them profess to be Christians, and President Bush often seeks guidance from respected pastors and Christian leaders. I believe that if we as Americans will lift up our leaders, God will work through them to bless our country.

The sun will come up tomorrow. When it does, if you feel like everything is alright, whisper a prayer to God * thank Him for freedom . . . thank Him for life . . . and most of all, thank Him for eternity, where we won’t even know the word “terrorism.”

Everyone's seen the show Home Improvement, where Tim Allen is the absent-minded Tim "the Toolman" Taylor. It's a very funny show. Sometimes my life resembles Tim's a little more than I would like - whether it's saying something stupid to my wife and having to talk my way out of it, or taking on a new DIY project and ending up with a bigger mess than I bargained for. The latest Taylorism that I have taken on is boxing in the carport on our house.

I started the project in early July, and thinking I could do it all myself. And for the most part, that has worked. I tore out the existing closet, took all the siding of the side of the house, framed in the new part, and tied it all together. I had a little help from my brother-in-law with the plywood - it's awkward and it's definitely a job for two people. Then came the drywall . . . and time to call in the professional.

My dad is a carpenter - he worked in residential construction for twenty years and has been in commercial construction for the past twelve. So he knows what he's doing when it comes to this sort of thing. He helped with hanging and finishing, and then last weekend we texturized the walls. I can definitely say that without his help, the finished product would look TERRIBLE! I'm horrible at finishing drywall!

I have now taken on the next two areas of this project simultaneously . . . painting and wiring. Now I ran the wires back when I was framing . . . over a month ago. So much has happened in the past month that I have now forgotten some of the details - and of course, I didn't make a diagram! So for the past four nights, I have been trying to wire the ceiling fan. It's not really a complicated matter - unless you think the hot wire coming from the junction box is actually the wire from the switch, and the hot wire going to the switch is from somewhere else. Needless to say, it hasn't been going well!

Then last night, after I had cut a few wires too short and pushed them back into the walls because I thought I no longer needed them, I figured out I did! So I had to cut holes in the wall of the closet and splice a short piece of wire onto the now-to-short one. Now that I have it all figured out, it works!

Painting has been another episode, since I had to start with primer, then a coat of paint - and we're not talking one color here - my office has three different colors. I'm also repainting the rest of the house, starting with the wall that stretches the width of the house, half in the kitchen and half in the living room. The blue painter's tape doesn't work on textured walls and ceilings, and I now have red paint drips on my wood grain baseboards - I'm not really happy about it!

But it will all come together - eventually . . . right? There are so many thoughts that can be pulled from this whole ordeal, and I could probably write a book about all the mistakes I've made and the lessons I've learned as I've tackled this project. The most important thing to me is that the project is expanding our home so that as our family begins to grow, we'll have room to spread out. And the love and determination that has gone into addition makes it an invaluable part of our home.

Just like home improvement, I routinely fall into the trap of attempting self improvement by myself. Yeah, sometimes I get it right, after weeks or months of trial and error. And sometimes I just give up and call the professional. God is the ultimate personal improvement expert. If I need to clean out cobwebs, repaint some walls, or even add on to my life, it works best if I seek his help from the start. Does that mean that's what I always do? Of course not - I'm driven by accomplishments, and if I can accomplish anything on my own, it makes me feel great. But I have to remember what Jesus told his disciples when they asked who could be saved: "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God." (Mark 10:27)

How many times have I said I would quit doing something? How many times have I said I would START doing something? How many promises have I broken to my wife, or to other people, or worse - to God? With myself, these things are impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.