My 4-year-old had my iPhone for 5 minutes. This is what happened.

First shot pulling out of the county offices parking lot. Everything is in focus!

On Saturday I had a rendezvous in the Gloucester County Parks & Rec offices to pick up my team roster of the 9-11 year olds I will be coaching this season. I took Judah (age 4) and Seth (age 3) with me since it looks like they will be my assistant coaches this spring. I think I will have them do some scouting and put them in charge of snacks. (Goldfish for everyone!)

Somehow after I had strapped them into their car seats in our stylishly luxurious 15-passenger van, my iPhone got in the hands of Judah. His seat is on the driver's side, right behind me. Right behind Judah in the next bench is Seth. They can't see each other but they can definitely hear each other and I will hear them comparing notes of what they see in the great big world flying by.

Judah (as we're passing houses): "Hey Seth, do you see that house?"
Seth: "I see it Judah!"
Judah: "Hey Seth, I see the moon! It's following us!"
Seth: "Where Judah? I don't see it."
Judah (pointing out the window): "It's up there!"
Seth: "I see it Judah!"

An inspection of my phone after retrieving it from him in the Walmart parking lot revealed that Judah is a very accomplished photographer. In terms of volume at least. In the course of five minutes he fired off 84 photos.

I think this is a shot on panorama mode that he kind of got artsy with. Shows Judah's creativity!

Basically our whole trip was documented by Judah. From leaving the parking lot to our arrival at Walmart we had a photographic journey. It was really cool to relive the whole journey. I'm guessing it was around three miles and now I know exactly how things look from the car seat right behind me. And now you do too!

Judah really captured the atmosphere of me driving. My razor sharp focus, my concentration, my attention to every driving detail...

After reviewing the photos, it made me wonder what goes through a 4-year-old's mind when the iPhone comes into his possession. What made Judah decide he wanted to go crazy with photos? Was he just bored? Was he exercising some creative juices? Does he aspire to be an Ansel Adams with an iPhone? Whatever it may be I definitely think the kid's got talent, though I may be biased. Of course, if you take 84 digital photographs in five minutes I sure hope at least a few of them are decent.

Capturing the essence of Seth. While pointing the camera behind him and shooting `blind.' Impressive, if you ask me.

Judah caught all the little details of our trip. His own feet. His little brother sitting behind him. His dad driving expertly with great skill and ability in front of him. The passing landscape. Even the most dangerous part of the journey -- the dreaded "Walmart roundabout" where dozens, perhaps tens of thousands, of motorists daily remain utterly baffled, confused and otherwise totally bumfuzzled by its elaborately mysterious and arcane rules. (Yield to the traffic in the roundabout, in case you are wondering about all those `elaborately mysterious and arcane rules' ... )

The obligatory shot of feet that you see people post on Instagram when they are traveling. Judah may just be going to Walmart, but quite obviously this is Instagram worthy material.

As I reviewed the photos, I was able to relive every single moment our journey. It was, um, captivating. It made me think that all the little things in life we miss. Or could miss. Unless we arm our 4-year-olds with smartphones and let them fire away in photo mode. I mean, I totally never get to see his feet pressed up against my seat. Sure I feel them, but I never actually get to witness it. Until now. I saw the four photos of his feet pressed up against my seat and exclaimed, "That's what it looks like!"

Buckle up! We're heading into the "Walmart roundabout" ... we're living dangerously!

As I surveyed the sheer volume of photos and how aggressively Judah fired away with that digital camera at his disposal, I thought two things:
1) I'm going to have to get a bag of ice at Walmart for his finger so he can ice it down.
and
2) I'm really, really glad he didn't have my iPhone in his crafty little hands on our trip to Oregon because at the pace he shot on our trip to Walmart that would have been 250,000 photos. Not good.

The final shot in the Walmart parking lot: #84

My Eye-Opening Experience At A Nigerian Boarding School

Doing the wash at a Nigerian boarding school.

I wanted to share a link to a post I wrote for my missions work over on another blog I've launched with the Transformational Education Network. It's an inside look at my eye-opening experience at a Nigerian boarding school. It was one of those experiences I will never forget. It's something I believe can be a call to action for those of us who follow Jesus Christ.

Check it out here: Boarding school

Adventures in Parenting, Vol. 1. `Hey Dad. Where Are You?'

Let's see...a Taco Bell run or this sunset?

Do you ever get to a late Sunday afternoon, take stock of your life, check your mutual funds, contemplate the meaning of life, wonder if anyone working on Wall Street who engaged in shady mortgage fraud and insider trading deals has a soul ... and weigh whether it's worth it to cook dinner?

There's something about fixing Sunday night dinner that I find particularly agitating. Even daunting, repulsive and annoying. And I'm a dude who loves to cook. I can't put my finger on exactly why I don't like to cook on Sundays. After shedding my pastor duties after church I tend to "check out." You might find me in the garage piddling around making a coffee table. Sometimes I nap. I might take a jaunt to the store and act like I'm shopping for the week's meals and blow it all on ice cream and non-essentials like fancy coffee creamer and crazy cheeses made in Holland. Does this make me a bad person?

I mean, I'm usually a pretty good guy. I recycle. I put my shopping cart in the cart corral in the parking lot instead of in the space next to the van, even in hard rains. I clean up the lint screen in the dryer. I yield in the traffic roundabout and stop for pedestrians trying to enter crosswalks. I buy Julie raspberries because I know she loves them even though they're really expensive this time of year. Really expensive like cheeses made in Holland.

So we got to Sunday afternoon just before 5 p.m. and there were all these kids looking really, really hungry. The thought actually crossed my mind to cook something. The other thought I had was that they wouldn't starve if they didn't have dinner. I mean, we have bread and peanut butter in the house. But then I'm not going to eat a p.b. & j sandwich for dinner ... so I was faced with what's known as a "parental dilemma." You know the one. Where you have to decide if it's in the best interests of your family to eat at Hardee's or Taco Bell. I had a hankering for a burrito so the choice was fairly easy.

I got the lowdown from everyone of what they wanted from Taco Bell, loaded Seth in the van and took off down the street ... except I glanced at the sky and it was on fire. It's a three-block run down to the beach from my house and my intention was that I would race down there while obeying all traffic laws, snap a sunset photo and then get to Taco Bell before my children suffered privation leading to acute starvation and other health-related issues.

I got to the beach, told Seth to sit tight, ran out to the shoreline, snapped a photo and ran back to the van. Piece of cake. Except I knew that the show was just beginning. It would be a monumental sunset because literally the sky was aflame ... so I fetched Seth out of the van and we frolicked on the beach while I documented our interlude via my iPhone. Yes, I had total disregard for the well-being of my family. Yes, I got a phone call from someone high up in the Sabo household who was surprised to learn I had not even made it out of the neighborhood.

But I got some killer clicks.

Seth gets photo-bombed by the sunset.

Ultimately, I made it to Taco Bell. No one in the Sabo house had starved. They appeared perplexed at how long it took for me to make a Taco Bell run considering it's literally a few minutes away. But hey, boy did Seth and I make some remembories, as Evie used to say when she was a little girl.

Parenting Hazards 101: Tiptoeing Through The Toys

The parental equivalent of walking on hot coals.

I think I may need surgery. For the millionth time I have stepped on a toy, causing what I perceive to be irreparable damage to my foot. You would think after 25 years of stepping on 14 kids' millions or billions of toys I would have learned my lesson and taken proper protective measures. Yes, that's right. I should be walking through my house with steel-toed boots. It's every parent's nightmare: You are walking along engaged in something else -- say an iPhone where you are stalking someone on Facebook checking the weather or catching up on the stock markets in Asia -- and you make that fateful step.

A Lego.

A Thomas the Tank train engine.

A Barbie dolly's high heel.

A Lightning McQueen race car.

A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

A toy gun, a Paw Patrol ATV, a Planes "Dusty" airplane, a dress up high heel, a toy earring, any of a thousand different action figures, a toy fork, a Mr. Potato Head nose, a trophy from the youth soccer team, a battery, a light saber, a building block ... I think you get the idea.

I believe if I were to go under the knife a surgeon might find tiny fragments of toys embedded in my feet. Who knows, a surgeon might find enough Legos to make a house.

I bet if upon my demise I were to be mummified, a couple of thousand years from now archaeologists who would stumble upon my remains would puzzle over the collection of tiny plastic building block type things that appeared to have been deposited in the soles of my feet. I envision someone obtaining a Ph.D. writing a paper ascertaining the meaning behind it.

It's one of the great hazards of parenting. Every day we run the gauntlet of toys on the floor, hoping -- praying -- we won't take that fateful step. Of great concern is the nighttime "walk of death." Anyone with hardwood floors knows what I'm talking about. You are on your way to the bathroom in the dark of night, tiptoeing past the kids' bedroom to not wake up the baby and then it happens: You have stepped on Lightning McQueen and it's like they've dropped the green flag at a NASCAR race. The car slips out from underneath you and you are literally flying through the air, half-awake and trying to contain your bladder, and knowing that above all you cannot utter a single sound for fear of waking the baby and you land not just with a bone-crunching thud, but right on top of Luigi, Guido, Mater, Sally, Sarge and Fillmore, who are now embedded, possibly permanently, in your backside. Some people get tattoos. Parents get toys affixed to their bodies, though not by choice. Above all, remember you cannot utter a sound. You must suffer in silence.

When I see a parent limping, my mind automatically thinks, "Oof. That looks serious. Bet they stepped on a Lego." Short of getting rid of all the toys in the house -- I've thought of that more than once -- I don't know how to properly take preventive measures. Other than checking online with the iPhone for deals on steel-toed boots. During which I nearly broke my foot stepping on Thomas the Tank while on my way to fetch my credit card.

When Everything Is Right In The World

Striking a pose

It was Tuesday night and it was five of my boys and me. Again. The ladies of the Sabo house were off to women's Bible study, two kids were at soccer practice, one was at work and so it was the lads' night out. We made a quick stop at the True Value hardware store to pick up some supplies for my new found DIY woodworking projects and then headed for the beach at Gloucester Point. These lovely fall evenings (note the lads are in shorts & t-shirts and it's late October) are too alluring, too perfect not to enjoy with one of the last romps at the beach.

When we arrived down at the pier that juts out into the York River (you don't need a license to fish from the pier, which means fishing is better in Gloucester) the boys started hamming it up and I snapped some photos. Then we noticed lots of people with cameras around. A kindly gentleman ambling out the pier informed us that an Antares rocket was supposed to take off from the Eastern Shore and we should be able to watch it blast into orbit from the pier. It was 6:15 p.m. Lift off into the October sky was scheduled for 6:22 p.m.

Heading out for a better view of the rocket launch

News that we would watch a real-life rocket launch caused quite a stir among the Sabo boys. This was more than we bargained for. Are you kidding? This was really good news. Like, really good. You go to the beach trying to kill some time and you're going to watch a rocket streak into the night? For reals? Dude. From Gloucester Point to the launch site on the Eastern Shore of Virginia at Wallops Island, as the rocket crow flies, is about 70 miles -- it's double that by car -- so supposedly we would have a real good view from a safe distance.

I was armed with two cameras -- my iPhone5C and my Canon T5i -- and was really stoked to try the time-lapse feature on my iPhone. I figured that would be killer for a rocket launch. As we waited at the end of the pier, we encountered one variable that threatened to derail my photography efforts. Seth seemed intent on seeing if the water was still warm and kept leaning through the rails, even as Gabe wore him like a straitjacket. In the interest of safety I reluctantly herded my gaggle of Sabos back onto the beach. We still had an unobstructed view out over Chesapeake Bay where the rocket was allegedly going to streak into the nearly cloudless indigo twilight, but better yet, if Seth was intent on taking a dip at least we could fish him out before he got in way over his head.

It was 6:21. Seth was getting wet and was covered in sand, the four other boys were having races up and down the beach and some people behind us were getting the play-by-play of the rocket launch over some sort of hand-held device. It wasn't a Walkman, I know that. I was focused on the eastern horizon with my two cameras -- in between preventing Seth from becoming a mini-Jacques Cousteau. The people behind us, a mom and dad and two kids, started the countdown. The four Sabo boys slowed down then stopped to watch, their labored breaths mixing with the sound of the river washing ashore in tiny waves. Seth eyed the water.

Houston, we are ready for the rocket launch

The voices behind us got louder as the countdown got closer to one: "...three, Two, ONE! LIFTOFF!" We scanned the horizon, squinting intensely. My cameras were focused. I was prepared to blow up social media with our rocket photopallooza. We watched. We watched harder. Seth headed for the water before Gabe rassled him ashore despite his sharp protestations. And then we watched some more ... and then the cry from the dad behind us: "It exploded!" The boys looked at me. I shrugged. The boys went back to racing. Seth headed for the water.

I'm not going to lie. I was pretty bummed. I've never seen a rocket launch live, even from 70 miles away. The evening had taken an unexpected turn. It veered hard from your run-of-the-mill, ho-hum evening at the beach with five boys -- three, count them three, couples we encountered looked on in amazement at the collection of Sabos and remarked how full my hands were ... if only they knew -- into tantalizing excitement territory. I guess I shouldn't really be disappointed because just minutes earlier I had no idea I could have seen a rocket launch. But when the unexpected becomes even a glimmer of reality, only to literally crash to earth, there's still a sense of loss.

I've thought about this all day, actually. When the unexpected roars into your life, only to vanish seemingly as quickly. I won't go into details, but I feel a sense of personal loss on a completely different level. There was something unexpected that happened in our lives, only to be taken away. There's hurt, there's pain. It's not fun. I'm sad. I guess that's the best way to put it. Just sad. It's nights like these that I like to wander in to where our youngest is sleeping, in this case Seth. So peaceful. So beautiful. So perfect. Such a gift from God. I like to hear him breathe. I'll stand there and watch, listening to him breathe and for a little while everything is right in the world.