The Uber Conference?

Disclaimer: The views expressed on this particular posting may not be shared by the entire Indiana Lesnet family.
I am up late suffering from allergy induced insomnia. Before bed tonight I spent a little time researching the potential expansion of the Big Ten Conference and read a pretty interesting article written by a student at the University of Texas regarding the addition of Texas to the Big Ten. You can read the article yourself here.

Anyway, since I am a proud member of the Purdue Varsity P Club and a Purdue football season ticket holder I feel that I can let the blogosphere know my thoughts on the expansion of the Big Ten conference. Mr. Jim Delany, if you read this and it helps to sway your thought process, you do not need to give me any credit.

I think that the most important thing is to make sure that any school that is added is an "it" school like the current schools in the Big Ten. All of the current schools in the conference are kind of like that guy in school who is the all-state athlete who carries that perfect 4.0 while dating the prom queen. By that I mean, the current members of the Big Ten are all ranked in the top 75 academic schools in the country and of course they all have big time athletic programs.

Here is my list of "it" schools that are currently NOT in the Big Ten (in no particular order):
1. Stanford
2. Notre Dame
3. Duke
4. Vanderbilt
5. Cal-Berkeley
6. UCLA
7. Virginia
8. USC
9. North Carolina
10. Wake Forest
11. Boston College
12. Georgia Tech
13. University of Washington
14. Florida
15. Miami (FL)
16. Maryland
17. Pittsburgh
18. Syracuse
19. Georgia
20. Clemson
21. Texas A&M
22. University of Texas
23. Rutgers
24. UCONN
25. Brigham Young

In order to be included on my list, the University had to have a respectable athletic program and be rated in the top 75 on US News & World Reports list of National Universities. There are some others in the 76 - 105 range that could be good candidates if the Big Ten cannot fill their expansion efforts with the 25 schools listed above (Va Tech, Colorado, Baylor, Auburn, Iowa State, Alabama, Kansas, Nebraska, Florida State, Mizzou, and Arizona).

Although any of the above 25 schools would be decent fits in the new Uber Conference, I believe that some schools should stay put. I think that the SEC and the ACC should stay as they are and the PAC 10 should grow and add a couple of schools from the WAC. With that said, any school currently in those 3 conferences should stay put.

I think that the Big East and the Big Twelve schools would be open to moving to the Uber Conference. The reason that I feel that the Big East is open is because it is quite frankly a conference without an identity as not all of the schools compete in football. The Big Twelve is a relatively new conference that tried to blend the Big Eight with the Southwestern Conference to create a decent regional athletic conference. The main problem with the Big Twelve in my opinion is that the academic prestige just isn't there as only 2 schools in the conference rank in the top 75 national colleges (with another 6 that rank below the lowest rated Big Ten school but still rank in the top 105, leaving 4 schools in the "Tier 3" or "unranked" category). I feel that the opportunity to align with other prestigious universities would be a better situation for the following schools:
1. PITT
2. Syracuse
3. Texas
4. Texas A&M
5. UCONN
6. BYU
7. Rutgers
8. Notre DameClearly the school that makes the most sense and has been invited before is Notre Dame. I believe that Notre Dame is a great fit for the conference and would easily keep its identity as a national program if they joined the right conference. Do I think that they'll jump? Well, I think if the schools from the Big Twelve in my list would defect, then Notre Dame would be forced to join.

Which brings me to the other 2 schools that would complete the new 14 team Uber Conference:

Clearly Texas is the crown jewel of the Big Twelve and getting them alone would make an extremely strong 12 school conference. Bringing along the Aggies of Texas A&M would make the move more politically palatable and would make at least one of Texas's biggest rivaly games a conference match up.

Here is my Uber Conference
East Division:
Indiana University
Michigan
Michigan State
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Penn State
Purdue

West Division:
Illinois
Iowa
Minnesota
Northwestern
Texas
Texas A&M
Wisconsin

These divisions would keep most of the protected rivalries and may make it possible to have protected rivalries in basketball. This is definitely an amazing affiliation of fantastic universities. The only negative that I see here is the Indiana's football team may never win another conference football game again.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. Philippians 1:9-11

Big News - New Lesnet Coming "Soon"!

The Indiana Lesnets are due to grow by one on or around October 25th! Stephanie is in her 14th week of pregnancy and everything seems to be going well. This pregnancy is eerily similar to Stephanie's time with Kai as she has had the same severe nausea and fatigue. The big difference this time is that we have the Energizer Bunny of 2 year olds running around so it is difficult to find time to rest (or make it to the bath room for throwing up).We have also fenced in the back yard. Kiki is trying to figure out how to escape from it and Kai enjoys throwing stuff over the top and making daddy go and get it.


I took Kai up to Purdue for the Dave Rankin Track Invitational. There is a reunion each year at the meet so Kai and I headed up there while mommy went to work. Kai loved running on the track and although I don't want to admit it, I really enjoyed chasing him.

While we were at Purdue we went over to Ross-Ade Stadium to check out some of the football team's spring game festivities. They had a giant Drew Brees bobblehead doll. Pretty neat!

Mommy works a lot in April and so Kai was forced to live with a lot of daddy duty. This evening Kai really wanted his mommy. Such a sad little boy!Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaints? Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes? - Proverbs 23:29

Wicked Awesome!

This past weekend we went up to Northwest Ohio to visit family and go see the musical Wicked. As always, we had a great time and Kai got to see both sets of grandparents as well as some other friends and family members.

We left on Friday at a little before 1, which is Kai's nap time. It took a while for him to fall asleep but eventually he dad and woke up right before our first stop at the Lesnet homestead in Edon, Ohio. While we were there Kai not only got to see grandpa and grandma Lesnet, but got to see his great uncle Gary and a whole bunch of baby lambs.

Here is Kai feeding a lamb out of the bottle. Sure bet you didn't know that lambs drink Dr. Pepper!
Feeding lambs sure is fun!
Here's me (Chad) bottle feeding a lamb when I Kai's age. I know that you can't tell from the picture, but I believe that lambs drank Mountain Dew when I was a kid.
Real men (Lesnet men anyway) drive red tractors. Here's Kai getting his first alone time on one. Maybe grandpa or daddy can take him for a better ride this summer.
Until Kai gets a little older, he will have to settle for driving this red tractor around.
Kai with Grandma Lesnet.
Here is Kai with his great uncle Kris and great aunt Bev. They hung out with Kai while the rest of us went to see Wicked.
Here's Kai showing grandpa and grandma Eridon the cool fort that he and great aunt Bev made. I think that they used 5 chairs and several blankets. It may have been the best chair and blanket fort that I have ever seen!
We had a great weekend and we really enjoyed the time with family. The Wicked musical was fantastic and the story line for it was pretty smooth (although it became beyond predictable once I saw Nessarose's socks about 2/3 of the way through). I would highly recommend that everyone goes and sees it performed by an extremely talented professional company as it could be awful if performed by a lesser group than the one that we saw.

We had an action packed weekend but we still made it home in time to catch the entire Sunday coverage of The Masters.

Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness. - Exodus 23:1

Bad April Fool's Joke

Ok, ok, ok, I'm awake! It's nearly 2 in the morning and I am sitting here at the computer instead of staring at the inside of my eyelids.

I have not been making the time to get on here and blog awesome stories about the Indiana Lesnets lately. Frankly, I've just been too busy and the thought of adding something to the weekly to-do list doesn't excite me very much. There is a temporary light at the end of the tunnel coming up on the busyness so there should be more blogging.

Spring is in the process of springing here in Central Indiana and we have been enjoying it to the fullest! I have already played 2 rounds of golf and even got to wear shorts on the round that I played yesterday. I need to knock a lot of rust off of my very rusty swing and the winds need to simmer down a bit.

Kai did not want me to take his picture while we were at the playground but I learned that rapid fire pictures with the camera will eventually result in some good shots. Thank the Lord for digital photography!



Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare. - Proverbs 20:13

Posting Updates Once / Month!

It is March 27th and I sure better get some quality blogging in before tomorrow or I will have missed an entire month. I'm sure that most of you followers out there have become a little discouraged by our lack of updates and have lowered your expectations to posts coming a little less often. Although I am more than happy to live up to a lowered standard, I feel that updating this thing once a month is doable.

One of Kai's favorite books is "If I Ran the Circus" by Dr. Seuss. I'm not sure if he really likes the book or if he just likes to have mommy or daddy read it to him before bed because it takes a long time to read or if he likes it because it is so difficult to read. Either way, he asks us to read it to him almost every night.

The Murat Shrine Circus was going on down at the Pepsi Coliseum and since Kai likes the Circus book so much, we thought he would enjoy going to a real circus. Kai was very excited about going to the circus and could hardly wait for everything to get started...unfortunately, the Shriners really made the beginning of the show super boring. They spent the first 20 minutes of the show thanking all of their volunteers and pitching some light up toys...Kai was not amused.


The opening act was a trapeze show which Kai really liked. After that they did some magic tricks which seemed like more of a time filler than an actual performance. Well, at that point our son checked out and asked to leave the circus to take a nap.
Stephanie and I were bored too and were happy to take the boy home for a good snooze. A good addition to this story is that it was about 11:30 when Kai asked for a nap and his normal nap time is at 1. Another good point is that Kai doesn't particularly like taking naps.

Of course, March brings March Madness! The Indiana Lesnets enjoyed watching the Boilers make the Sweet 16 again this year.
Kai doesn't like to wear his jersey but he obliged daddy's request on the first Sunday of the tourney. Although he doesn't like to wear it I think he liked all of the attention that he got at church for wearing it.One evening our small group from church met up with another group for a special "state of the church" address by our lead pastor. Unlike our group, the group that we merged with doesn't do childcare so Jen Westberg, one of the moms from our group volunteered to watch the kiddos. It was a rainy day so she sent her husband Andrew and their kids out worm hunting during the day so that all the kids could paint with worms that evening.

Here's Kai checking out all those worms!
What was the media for your latest masterpiece? Paint and worms!
The worms missed a spot.
One thing I want to make sure that I put on here so I can remember later is the way that Kai sings his ABC's. Now Kai knows his ABC song all the way through and can recognize most of those letters as well but he's still a 2 year old so the way that he says things can be funny. Anyway, he calls them "baby c's" Get it? Baby c's and ABC's sound nearly identical...cute.

Well, that's March in a nutshell. We're still silly busy and know that April won't get much better but the blog has not been completely forgotten and I promise at least 2 updates next month.

The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. - Deuteronomy 28:28

Singular February Post - Whew, Busy Times!

As February comes to a close I thought it would be a good idea to get one blog post done before the month comes to an end!

As many of you loyal blog followers know, Stephanie and I are both in the corporate accounting business and this is our busiest time of the year at work. Thankfully things should begin to slow down now and I will start making time to update this here blog on a more consistent basis.

In early February, Kai got this sweet bank in the mail that Grandpa and Grandma Lesnet had custom made for him. He loved putting money in to it and suckered me out of over $100 on his first night with it.


Kai loves his piggy
Kai drew some lines on his face at school that day. The lines are pretty straight and make him look like one of William Wallace's men in Braveheart!
I went to the Super Bowl down in Miami.Check out the face value on my ticket. Holy Smokes!!!We had a visit from Grandpa and Grandma Eridon. Kai, Kai's monkey, and Kiki loved story time with Grandpa!
Kai and grandpa played in his ball pit.
Kai and I had a wrestling match. I had the camera and took lots of pictures while he was trying to get me pinned. Here are some of the good ones!

As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight. - Psalm 16:3

Kai Is 2!

The little boy sure is growing up fast! A few days ago Kai turned 2 and that is what this posting is all about but before the big day we got a big snow storm!
Kai liked the snow but was glad to go in after a while.
Kai getting ready for his pre-birthday haircut. He doesn't look very happy about it does he?
He looks both happy and relieved to be done with that haircut. Sure looks handsome huh?
Making pancakes! Kai loves to help us cook and he loves pancakes. It was a great combo
We celebrated Kai's birthday at school on the Friday before he turned 2! Mommy and I took some popcicles and little goody bags for all of the kids to enjoy after lunch. The kids all loved the popcicles and Kai really liked having both mommy and daddy at school for a little while.

Here's Kai with his birthday cupcake. He couldn't wait for us to finish singing before blowing out the candles.
Kai got to lick the beaters and he really liked that!

Cheese!
Here's Kai and daddy enjoying Kai's birthday cupcakes...yummm!!


Kai scored this sweet whip for his birthday. He loves it and that's a good thing because that little thing was awful to put together. Hopefully presents in the future will be a little easier to assemble.As usual, posts this time of year (now through the first of March) will be quite sparse as Stephanie and I have some hectic work schedules. Be safe and stay patient with us, the updates will come.

If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks. - Ecclesiastes 10:18

Christmas vacation!

Many of you know that our blog is written by Chad and is then reviewed and ultimately posted by Stephanie as to make sure all info reported is correct and doesn't have any glaring grammatical or spelling errors. On our last post there was a line promising an update during Christmas vacation. That sentence was added by Stephanie during her review and I have purposely not updated during vacation just to spite her (not really)!

Here are some of the highlights of the time between Christmas and New Years when we were in Indy and Kai's school was closed.

Kai got sick early in the week, which was too bad. On the other hand, it was pretty sweet because he told mommy (dad was at work) that his ear hurt while lying on the floor crying. Stephanie took Kai to the doctor and found out that Kai had an ear infection. We started him on some medicine and he recovered quickly and had several days of feeling good before heading back to school.

Kai has taken an interest in helping mommy and daddy cook. He stands on a chair so that he can reach the counter tops and helps us pour all of the ingredients in to the mixing bowls and also helps us mix everything together.

One morning Kai helped us make some pancakes. He had helped with every ingredient and even helped with the 2 eggs that the recipe called for, so he took them out of the carton and put them in the mixing bowl. He was very proud of himself and pushed the eggs down deep in to the batter.

During our week we had dinner at King Chef, which we believe is the best Chinese joint in all of Indianapolis. King Chef is in the Crosspoint area of Indy which is around 96th Street and I-69 and is not really convenient for us to get to so we don't make it very often. Although it is a little out of the way, it is a place that we should make it to more often.

What kind of vacation is complete without a New Year's Eve eve date night at the Melting Pot? Our time off must have been complete then because that's what we did. Of course, it still wasn't all about us as we picked up Kai's birthday present from Wal-Mart after dinner.

On New Years Eve, we made these silly cake lollipop things. They are insanely labor intensive and are sweet enough to rot your teeth on contact. We made them for a New Years Day get together we were hosting with some of our friends. Fortunately for us, many of our guests liked them.

Our New Years Day party was fun! Most of our closest friends have been blessed with girls and in this gathering Kai was the only boy and the youngest of the bunch. At first Kai didn't want to play with them so he snuck upstairs to play with his legos by himself while the girls played downstairs in his basement playroom. He eventually warmed up to the girls and enjoyed playing with them.

The girls holding their lollipop cake treats high in the air to keep Kiki from stealing them. Even with their efforts, she still got one.

Kai keeps amazing us with everything he is learning. He is going through a phase where everything that is smaller is a "baby". He has a "baby coat" and his big coat. There is a "baby heart" on his stuffed dog and a big heart. He is very good at his colors now and enjoys telling us what color everything is.

Kai is also pretty bossy. He enjoys telling us to do and even points out places on the floor where we should sit while we play with him. He also bosses Kiki around as he sent her to her kennel for jumping up and eating some of his bread. Kiki is currently in Kai's doghouse for that stunt and he wants nothing to do with her. Poor beagle!

Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' - Matthew 7:23