Darren LeBlanc

Well, since we have launched http://anthemofhope.com I have managed to get to sleep a little earlier, but life hasn’t slowed up all that much. Here are some quick bullets:

• Tim Barber (a fellow anthem of hope-er) and I met with the president of Valley Forge Christian College this week and he was overwhelmingly supportive. In fact, it was uncanny how much he was ready to endorse and support the movement. That was exciting. I’ll be speaking to the entire college there in the fall. 
• On the home front: Olivia is cracking my up everyday. Lately, she has been saying “sucker” – thanks to her aunt – which, while I tell her not to say it, it takes all my strength to not laugh in her face. Imagine this well spoken 2 year old, dropping her sippy cup and coming out with “sucker!”.
• Also, April 5th was my brothers birthday. I love him quite a bit…many of you do too. Happy birthday justin :)
• I found this link from Courtney’s blog. Buy a shirt and feed an orphan for a month. Check it out:  http://www.tinyrockstar.com/

Here is a note from olivia (you may have seen this already in the right hand column)

Tonight marks the return of Friday nights (and saturdays) to my little girl. If you have been paying attention to the happenings of Anthem of Hope, you have probably wondered how much time I got to spend with Liv. Well…this month has been very busy getting http://anthemofhope.com off the ground, but it was just a season. Weekends are back to you my little girl :)

We went to the beach tonight (her request) then out for pizza (again, her request) and finished with a date to the Lighthouse for some italian ice. A bath and an episode of Word World and she is off to bed.

I caught a shot of her doing the ABCs. She can do it on her own…but wasn’t playing nicely for the camera tonight:

And, I’d like to challenge all my fellow dads…we can so easily get wrapped up in work, or hobbies, or especially something that we thing is a great cause. But these super busy seasons, are supposed to be just that…seasons. They should be the exception, not the rule. I know that often in my life, I could have done a better job of making Misty a priority over work or church work. The last couple years were not this way…but there were certainly times that were. I do regret that. Work will always be there…family won’t.

Anyway, enjoy the weather. It’s getting nice in NJ :)

I’m terrible at remembering life. I mean, there are times when I remember lots of details (like what you got for dinner when we when to friendly’s in 9th grade) but for the most part I forget everything. I recently bought myself a blackberry curve so I had a Internet and a camera with me at all times (i have a work blackberry too…but that’s supposed to be used for govt business only – and there is no camera). My goal is to do a better job of documenting little bits of life so that Olivia and I can look back at this 20 years from now and remember silly little stuff.

On the right of this page you will see a new widget from utterli.com. For now, this will display the newest video I post from my phone. I am trying to post something up there most days (we will see if that happens). Anyway that’s all for now…just filling you in on the weird video box I added :)

If you want to watch the video just click the little play button on the screen. This one is funny cause its olivia quoting her favorite show Word World.

Sheep accusing Ant (who is all red) of stealing a pie:

Sheep: I caught you red handed

Ant: well, my hands are red, but so is the rest of me…so what?!

So, I often get looks from people wondering what “takes so much time” with Anthem of Hope. This inevitably comes when I tell them I’m up till 3am working everyday. (its 4am now…sometimes its a little later, others a bit earlier). So I wanted to give a little insight into a couple things from this week alone.

Video Shoot: We are doing 3, 15 second video clips for our website. Thats it…just 3 clips that are 15 seconds each. This is what that took:

• 15 hours online casting
• 1 full day of casting calls (team of 7 people)
• 6 hours of script writing (team of 3)
• 5 hours prep work for the shoot
• 8 hours, the day of the shoot (team of 10, plus 4 hired actors)
• Now, we have probably 20 hours editing and motion graphics left to do, and professional voice over narrative for the end and background music that has to be made.

Another thing this week was hiring the voice for the 3rd section of the Encouragement Disc. This is going to be a disc with 3 sections of scripture reading relevant to healing and faith. For this we got custom auditions from 67 professional voice talents before we found the perfect voice. If you want things to be be perfect, it takes time :)

Anyway, we have a great team. Please keep praying for us. We are hoping to launch our website very soon!

PS…I had such a good day today. Olivia and I played in the snow for an hour till her face was so red I made her go in (she wanted to stay out more..haha). It was nice.

Olivia is a blast. Last night she was at Misty’s parents’ house and I showed up there at about 10:30 after my flight back from florida (spent 2 nights there for work). Well, olivia had seen my mother in law putting blankets on the couch (i wanted to sleep there so I was there when olivia woke up) and olivia asked who that was for. Upon hearing I was gonna be there, my little girl decided she was staying awake. So when I rolled in at 10:30, I poked my head in her room just to see her sleeping and she pops up and yells “Daddy”. It was a good 40 minutes and 29 hugs and kisses after that till she actually did go to sleep. I can’t say I minded too much.

Then tonight driving home, I looked back and she had rubbed her own spit all over her face.  After giving her a napkin, I told her not to do that. She gave me her standard Olivia response: “I HAVE to.” Oh, Olivia.

Other than time with her, this week hasn’t been all that great. I’m physically exhausted and there are things that are looming over my head causing stress. I know too many of you can relate. On top of that, the last couple days have been a touch less great on the emotional front. I am just missing my wife. I had to go away for a couple days for work…for some reason those are much worse than being in my own home…

I really have nothing to complain about…and if I did, I dont have the energy to do so. Good night.

 I just recently got the award in the mail from the Love this site! awards that many of you voted for us for. Well, way to go, cause we won the “relationships” category for 2008!!

In other news, my daughter has apparently jumped from 2 to her teens in couple days. Today she was writing on the white board (this is a normal daily thing) and after spelling her name (she gets the first three letters out then just starts banging the marker aimlessly) she started yelling the funniest thing I have heard in a while: “I’m reppin LB” – which apparently means “I’m representing Long Branch (where we live)”. Someone taught her this like 2 months ago…and she completely just started saying today. She does it cause we all laugh. Anyway, I caught her on video saying it later in the car. Also, I caught a clip of her writing in the “sation” on the windows. This is a new favorite thing.

Tonight was supposed to be a good blog night…I have about 3 or 4 ideas that need to be said soon. But…I fell asleep next to olivia’s bed and am just waking up now (3am)…haha. Oh well, I’ll write tomorrow. In the mean time, here are some pictures that Vanessa Joy just posted to my smugmug. This was the same shoot that we took the image up top on the banner for this page. Click the picture for the gallery.

PS…I’m so proud of my girl. Tonight, while doing our usual colorfest on my whiteboard, I told her to write her name. She said and wrote “O” then next to it, “l”, then we went back to “0″ followed by a series of dots that represented “v” “a” “v” “a” (or so so she said). Of course this was concluded with “I fell my name!! I fell my name daddy!”

PSS…things didn’t work out with the 3rd voice that we were looking for for the Anthem of Hope Encouragement Disc – so I posted a job for the voice talent community. We got some GREAT auditions. I think you all will be very happy with this first disc when its released.  (hopefully in april…the music takes some time).

PSSS…yes, valentines day was ok. I miss Misty, but holidays aren’t really any harder than any other day. Liv and I are doing ok. She still blows kisses to mommy most nights…

I took my date out to the mall tonight. She had a great time. The escalators are just about her favorite thing in the world. And when we are up on the second level she loves to look through the glass down at the people and wave. Occasionally she will catch someone’s eye and get a wave-back. This of course thrills her. Also occasionally, she will put her face on the glass and force me to speak strongly about germs and such. We walked through the whole mall just observing people riding the escalators. Letting her walk by herself next me makes her feel so grown up, like she is among all the big people…and just one of the crowd.

Tonight though, I was taken aback with my own Pharisaical tendencies. I passed a man who was speaking to his son in a way that I didn’t totally approve of. Immediately, I was filled with this sense of how much better I am than him. A few seconds later I came to my senses and nearly slapped myself. Please don’t get caught up on the fact that the manner in which this man was speaking was in fact wrong…that doesn’t matter. I want to ignore his ignorance for a moment and talk about my arrogance.

This is something that creeps up often and I hate myself for it. For instance, if I am in a group, I often have this instinctive compulsion to play “can you top this” during group interchanges. A few weeks back, I went to a photography expo with a few friends and 3 or 4 times during the day I found myself literally biting on my tongue while doing some serious coercing of my inner attention hungry demon.

Even in little things I find myself struggling with pride. My aunt Valerie told me that she has seen such a change in me over the past year. I immediately felt the need to explain why I may just have been a little more mature than she thought a year ago. Give me a break. And when I took those pictures of Acadia National Park a few months back, I don’t think I ever gave full credit to Artie Hughes who taught me a few things before I went. It was like “oh no, people can’t know that I’m only now learning how to use a circular polarizer” – yes, I struggle with pride.

Some recent research by the Barna Group (an authority in church-related statistics) indicates that for 16-29 year olds who are not Christians, the #1 reason for hostile feelings towards Christianity is the perception of a certain swagger or arrogance that we Christians carry around. That makes me sad and I’m going to do my best to not support that statistic.

In his musings on Christianity (and the disparate lives of its purported Christians) Leo Tolstoy writes:

Blame me — I do that myself — but blame me,
and not the path I tread and show to those who ask me where,
in my opinion, the road lies ! If I know the road home, and
go along it drunk, staggering from side to side — does that
make the road along which I go a wrong one ?

Anyway, I am not always an arrogant jerk…wait… Here I go again…caring too much about what you think of me :)

So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 1 Corinthians 3:7

Ok, so it has been a long week. I can’t even tell you how much is going on in Anthem of Hope world. Tomorrow is our casting call for a video ad compaign we are doing. We have like 30 actors coming in to audition. Should be good.

Also, I got a call from the video editor and it looks like the video from Misty’s service will be done this coming week. I’ll need a bit of time to get it onto a DVD and have them printed, but it is coming very soon.

Speaking of Misty….I did talk about her today with Olivia. We talk about her often, usually Olivia says something. Today she saw her picture on the wall and said, “Mommy’s in heaven?” to which I of course reply, “yes honey, she is.” This was followed by her blowing of a kiss to the sky “I blow mommy a kiss”.

She is speaking pretty well, but doesn’t quite have the grammer thing down yet. Today was comical:

I often let her climb out of her carseat when we are parked at home. She comes and sits on my lap so that she can draw on the windows. The condensation makes for a good marker board. Well, today she noticed that the windows were ready for her artwork and she said: “it do got sation on it” meaning “it does have condensation on it”. This is important because sometimes we can’t partake of this ritual due to the lack of said “sation” on the windows.

Another funny thing is that she can’t quite get the “sp” sound out right. If usually comes out as an “f”. Now, I recently bought a large white board for my living room (i know i know…but we have Anthem of Hope meetings many nights after my girl goes to bed and I need a white board!) and we often draw on it. Well tonight I wrote “L-I-V-I” on the board. She walks over and says “L I V I – that fells my name”. Despite being happy that she finally recognized the letters without coaching, I was sent into an roar because of how cute she was talking about “felling” her name. I am so in love with this kid….I adore her so.

 Anyway, I need to get to bed. Tomorrow should be fun.

Started writing this the other night…

- – -

I had a series of fortunate events today:

1. I guess it all started with the blackberries. They were on sale. Marked down to a price lower than I’ve ever seen in this part of the country. My mother-in-law had Olivia and decided she was going to buy herself a boatload-sized package.
2. Olivia, in her usual fashion, devoured the majority of the blackberries, but in the process she managed to get a nice chunk of dark purple lodged nicely in her platinum blond.
3. This purple stain, of course needed to be washed out, so I planned on getting her a bath when we got home.
4. A slight delay put us at home late – just in time for our friend Heather to show up and cut our hair (this was olivia’s second cut with our world famous stylist friend).
5. By the time Heather left it was late and we didn’t have time for her normal bath…so I just quickly jumped in the shower with her (I do this with shorts on…sorry, parental nudity doesn’t sit right with me)
6. Now just before we got in, Olivia turned on the radio on my alarm clock (which is on the floor of the bathroom because I have been sleeping in the hall outside Olivia’s room this week while working on my room).  For about a year now, she has known that the little sleep button makes the radio come on and the snooze makes it turn off. She loves putting it on and off and on and off – and of coursing dancing to it the entire time. It was set to some classic rock station.

So anyway, my random bathroom located alarm clock is playing us classic rock. It’s late at night and we really need to get her in bed…but just before we turn the water off, the DJ announces a song that I know all to well. It’ s Eric Clapton, Wonderful Tonight. There I was, with the new object of my affection held in my arms…dancing to a song that I’ve only danced to with one other person. One other person, who happens to be the onlyother person I could truly ever call the object of my affection. It was beautiful to me. I squeezed her tightly and quietly cried. She was too busy trying to get water in her mouth to notice…but its probably better that way for now.