kylegilbert

This morning, my wife went in for her routine doctor’s appointment. The twins were at 35.5 weeks, just past the huge milestone of 35 weeks. When the doctor examined Keri, she found that she was already beginning to dilate, and Dr. Evitt was concerned that Keri’s water might break if we chanced waiting any longer before doing a C-section.

This fear was validated when she checked Keri again a few minutes later. She had already dilated several more centimeters and had moved into active labor. Today would be the delivery day for our identical twin boys.

About an hour later, after a quick setup, Keri and I were in the surgery room, and the doctor performed a C-section. Although both babies were entangled with the umbilical cords around their necks, they were both fine at birth other than lung issues because of their early delivery. They were born at 3:02 & 3:04 pm. The first baby weighed 5 lbs, 9 oz, and the second baby weighed 5 lbs, 7 oz.

From there, they took both babies back to the nursery to watch them. For a several hours it was totally up in the air as to whether or not they would need to be transferred to a hospital for care, but they gradually improved, and at 8:30 pm, they were brought back to our room for the first time.

As I write this, Keri and the twins are resting, and everyone is doing great.

Thank you for your prayers!

PS – Hopefully by this time tomorrow we will be completely settled on their names.

The other day, in the middle of mowing my front yard, my lawn mower of nearly a decade decided to give up the ghost. It was a sad thing to behold, and it left me using the weed eater to “fade” the hard edges so that the divide between newly mowed and uncut would be less apparent until I found a suitable replacement.

That evening, as I was talking to my brother-in-law, Taylor, who is a landscape/hardscape professional, he suggested that I might consider purchasing a reel mower – you know, the old-school kind that doesn’t have a motor. He said that it would save me from having to buy gasoline and that it was also a great way to get a little exercise. The idea was intriguing to me, and by the end of the night, I was determined to give a reel mower a try.

WEEK ONE: THE SHAME

A couple of days later I made the purchase, brought home the small box, and quickly assembled the pieces in front of my garage. Never again would I need to buy gasoline before mowing the grass.  To be quite honest, I felt a little bit of pride for purchasing such an earth-friendly alternative to the normal powered lawn mower. Perhaps I would start a new trend in our neighborhood.

That pride only lasted a couple of minutes.

What happened next was a swirl of emotions, mostly shame. Handlebars positioned about two feet too low, pushing a strange small object. The feeling was similar to pushing along a child-sized vacuum cleaner through the grass. Humbling stuff.

And it didn’t help that neighbors were taking notice of me. Cars were slowing down to look as they passed by, and my next door neighbors came out to mention how “cool and eco-friendly” the mower was.

By this point I was seriously annoyed with myself about the purchase.  It didn’t seem that it was working very well, and I needed to mow every inch of the grass multiple times. Why else had I never seen anybody use a reel mower before? It wasn’t just that the idea never came to mind, but like the typewriter, it was an antiquated and obsolete device.

And as for exercise, I’d have to say that I was disappointed. The effort was roughly equivalent to a slow walk around the neighborhood.

Thinking back to my purchasing experience, the placement of the mower box in the store should have tipped me off. It was located on a shelf about eight feet off the ground and had a layer of dust on top of the box. Now, I would have to relive my poor decision each week as I awkwardly trudged back and forth across my lawn.

WEEK TWO: ADJUSTING

Once I gave up the idea of returning the mower to the store or pitching it in the dumpster, the second week of mowing was a drastically improved experience. Before I started, I lowered the blades, and that seemed to help with the problem of having to mow the same spot multiple times. That change also helped me to see why people would describe the process as a workout.  But my favorite part was the quiet sound of the mower blades instead of an engine, so listening to music while mowing was especially enjoyable. And overall, I think the mower produced a nicely-even lawn.

FINAL THOUGHTS (FOR NOW)

You could end up with the best looking lawn on the block, but purchasing a reel mower is probably best reserved for people who don’t mind feeling (and looking) a little foolish. Be forewarned.

Oh, and wear long pants, not shorts, when mowing or else your shoes will be full of clippings. Trust me.

I love developing blogs and websites on the WordPress platform, so I was totally stoked when I got a call from a friend of mine, Chris Kimball, who is a designer at Scripps Networks (the parent company of Food Network, HGTV, The Travel Channel, DIY Networks, and a few others).  They had recently launched their corporate blog and were looking for a quick turnaround on implementing the design Chris had put together for the blog.

A couple of days ago, after several late nights and a busy Memorial Day weekend, we launched the updated blog. Although we still have a few loose ends to tie up, things are looking great! It was a real pleasure to work with the team at Scripps, and I hope I have the opportunity to do freelance work with them again in the future.

You can view the thumbnails below or take a look at the finished project here.

So many great memories made over the summer, and some of them were captured in pixels. I’ve placed a few of my favorites here.

To help improve communications from our two-person communication team to the much larger church staff, we’ve recently implemented a new job workflow. While I know many people are happily using other tools, like Basecamp, we’ve found other solutions to be lacking in some of the key features that are important to our process.

Here’s our new workflow:

1) Ticket Origination via Web Form

Centralized Online Location for Requests

Request Form

This part is nothing new to our organization. For over a year we’ve had a centralized location where our staff can place  IT, graphic, video, or facility requests through an online site. (We use MachForm for our web forms.)

What’s new, is the way graphic and website requests are routed from that point forward.

2) Task Automatically Created in Project Management System

Task Management through Producteev

When the request form is submitted, that email ticket is set up to automatically generate a new task in Producteev, which we’re using as a task/project manager. We recently switched to Producteev because of its simplicity coupled with its impressive feature set and API. (But yes, I hate their logo.)

3) The Person Who Created the Ticket is Redirected to a Status Update Page

Status Update Page

Tag Names & Colors Instantly Updated through Producteev

This is my favorite part: Using the Producteev API, we redirect the staff person who created the ticket to a page that shows all the open and recently completed tickets on which our team is working. This includes the current status of each task, which we can update through tags in Producteev.

Overview

While I assume this system might not work well for every staff, we’ve already found it to be very helpful to ours for a number of reasons:

1. All requests are centrally located.
2. There are no required logins for a staff person to create a new ticket.
3. Anyone on our staff can easily see the status of all projects.
4. Status tags are simple to update, and since its integrated with our task management, it’s a seamless process for our communications team.

I’ve put together the video below to announce the newest step in our life and ministry.  Tip: make sure to watch the entire video.

Any time I’m working on a design project – whether it’s a website, a postcard, or creating a logo, finding the right fonts is an important part of the process.  If you’re like me, and you’ve amassed a large number of fonts on your computer, finding the right ones can sometimes be a daunting task.  Fortunately, there’s a website that I’ve been using for a few months that really helps with the process.

The site is called, WordMark.it, and it’s one of the best free design tools that I use on a regular basis.

All you do is enter part of a word or phrase to preview and then load your fonts.  The site will check the fonts you have installed on your computer and will let you preview those fonts all at once.

From there, you can select your favorites and even preview the fonts on a black background.  It’s very quick, simple, and helpful.

Check it out: WordMark.It

Never let loyalty and kindness leave you!
Tie them around your neck as a reminder.
Write them deep within your heart.

My mother-in-law wears a keepsake necklace.  Inside she has tiny photographs of my two children and the rest of her grandkids, and it’s always a special treat to them when she lets them gingerly open the locket to see the pictures inside.

Without her saying it, it’s clear that my mother-in-law treasures the necklace.  It’s a ever-present reminder of her grandkids and the special bond she has with each of them.

The passage I’ve quoted above uses exactly the same imagery as my mother-in-law.  Only, instead of photos of children, this locket contains two precious character traits that go unnoticed in our world today: loyalty and kindness.

Our culture is consumed with cleverness, humor, and popularity.  We all want to be in-the-know, and we’ve become obsessed with being beautiful and cool.

Tonight, I’m pondering what it is that I keep tucked away in my keepsake necklace.  I have a fairly good guess, and it’s not loyalty and kindness… but in this moment, I really want it to be.

Pretty sure this should be one of my focal verses for the next few months (or years).  You can read this passage as well as the context here.

What about you?  What’s your keepsake?