NON-Fiasco Christmas

One would think that Christmas at our home would be a fiasco… 6 kids and all… but it was incredible.
Sure the kids were up at the crack of dawn and woke us up 6:30… but it was our youngest son that slowed up the whole ‘presents’ thing. We finally dragged him down around 5 til’ seven. He perked right up when he realized what was amiss!
If you recall, the kids made each other presents.
And that was the absolute thrill of the morning.
Each child had their chance to present their hard work to the others one at a time.
The greatest fun I got was not just watching the kids open and squeal with joy at the gifts… but to watch the ‘giver’ squeal as the present was well taken. Awesome. Priceless.
The home-made stuff ranged from stuffed animals to a ‘carrot’ mobile and I even got a game [box, tokens, game board, and instructions!!!]
My youngest son, 3 years old, realized a few days ago that the others were wrapping gifts and placing them under the tree… so he began wrapping his own gifts. He wrapped a sippy cup for our baby… I wish it hadn’t had juice in it. He wrapped his own stuffed animals for the kids [which he quickly retrieved upon their opening]. I was in hopes of finding my glasses, which disappeared about the time he started wrapping!?
I’m sure they will turn up here pretty soon.
I haven’t looked ON the Christmas tree yet… they may be an ornament!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
God Bless You Everyone.

18 Years

I can’t believe it either. 18 loooooooooong years! :)
I remember Indiana Jones saying, “It’s not the years… it’s the miles.”.
My wife and I celebrated our Anniversary by doing the normal 18-year anniversary thing… we went rock climbing. Doesn’t everyone do that?
It was great.
There is a nearby indoor rock-climbing gym with a great facility.
One of the rock faces we climbed had about a 6 foot overhang [about 30 feet up or so]. The instruction we got was to keep our feet on the rocks somehow and NOT to hang like a monkey.
Well… my legs slipped and there I was, hanging by two rocks.
I lifted my legs back up but couldn’t get them to stick… and my forearms didn’t want to move either.
Dang.
So I came down the rope [belay].
Then my wife goes and climbs the wall like a gecko!
She had some difficulty on the overhang too, but managed around and up the rest of the face.
She rocks!
I swore to get back and do it again sometime… we even made plans to visit once a month.
Together! I hope this is a new thing for us… I really like it and spending quality time with her is great too.
We love the kids and all, but it’s nice to hang out together… just us.
We finished the evening off with some coffee at Starbucks and some very well prepared Vietnamese food.
Happy Anniversary Baby… Got you on my mind.

It's Snowing!

I didn't have to look outside the window here at work to know it was snowing... my kids have been flooding my email inbox!
They are so excited.
It usually only snows 1 day a year here in these parts - Virginia USA.
My kids are making a patch of snowballs and putting them in the freezer so they can throw them down my neck when I get home!
I layed down last year and made a snow angel in the 1/8" deep snow in our yard. :) The kids remember it all too well.
I'm glad it's snowing - sure I gotta walk a mile to my car - but hey, it's this white stuff the kids will remember for another year.
:)

Shopping

It's this wonderful 'giving' time of year that reminds me of how much...
I hate shopping.
:/

Quotable Quote

My wife finally had 'THE TALK' with my 10 year old girls.
They had recently heard about the 'Miracle of Birth' [friends having babies] and simply asked...
"Mom, where do babies come from anyway... you know, how does it happen."
My wife told them both gently and carefully so they didn't miss anything.
There was a slightly uncomfortable pause...
And then one of them said, "Oh, poor daddy".
:)

Triumphant Party

Just had our company's Christmas Party.
Heavy hors devours [pork loin and salmon], jumbo shrimp and some drinks... mostly chit chat.
It was good to see everyone with their spouses... you forget what they look like since we only see most of them once a year.
Guys were wearing whatever wasn't in the wash, but the women were testing out their newest dresses.
I'll never understand why some folks think these parties are supposed to be a 'show'.
Anyway.
All in all...
That was a GREAT Christmas Party...
[Please finish the sentence with a quote from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog]

If you don't know what I'm talking about you need to visit this link...
http://www.nbc.com/nbc/Late_Night_with_Conan_O'Brien/video/triumph.shtml

A friend sent me that link and I totally laughed out loud.
Triumph is an extremely rude dog... but hits a funny bone.

We are going to have a fun time with this one for a while.
:)
Here... have Triumph poop on your friends website...
http://www.triumphtheinsultcomicdog.com/

New Christmas Family Tradition

Nothing deeply philosophical today [perhaps I have never been deeply philosophical so who cares]
Just simple blogging...

My kids are all making presents for each other this Christmas.
We've been helping them change their focus away from the commercialism that surrounds Christmas and back to good ol' home-grown family values.
Sure we get them all a stuffed animal, fill their little stockings and pick a 'biggie' off their lists.... but for the most part we we're trying to shift the big 'present-fest' to their birthdays while at the same time shifting emphasis to remember the TRUE meaning of CHRISTmas at Christmas.
Um... Emanuel... God with us....Christ born in a manger and all that.
:)
It's really been fun.
The girls are making... holy smokes... I nearly blogged what they are making for each other... I almost did a total blogging faux-pas.
All I can say is there is tons of glue, felt, beans, buttons, wood, nails, sandpaper, etc... all over our craft table and we are totally having a great time doing it.

The hardest thing is NOT making the presents for them. I have had to pull back my artistic guidance more that once as I encourage them to 'do it their way'. So what if they can't tell what it is when they open it... their sibling MADE IT!!!!!
This whole thing was a brainstorm I had last year and was even expected this year since it went so well in 2002.
Hey look at me... starting a family tradition!
Good luck with yours.

Rite of Passage

It's high time I put some thought into this.
My eldest son is about to turn 13... a teenager!
I can't believe it's been thirteen years.
Thoughts come to mind about the passage of Boy to Man.

Different cultures do it differently... like a show I watched when I was a kid about natives that had to tie vines to their ankles and jump from the tops of trees. They had to TOUCH the ground with their hand before the vine jerked them back up again. If they didn't touch... it didn't count. [Likewise if they miscalculated it and touched with their whole head, they were instantly taken from the gene-pool]. It what the very first bungy jumping I believe.
Other cultures have their kid go out on wild adventures alone and return "A Man".
Yet others take the kid behind closed doors and perform 'rituals' with/to them.

In today's 'rich culture' most kids kinda just grow up, often without rites and ceremonies... and even more often, without any guidance whatsoever.
Somewhere in the late teens they look around and wonder where to go or what to do... and in their 20's they look back and say... "I guess I'm here."... not knowing if they have actually arrived, since most of the trail markers are gone.
Some kids have a party where they are patted on the back, but I think real guidance is often overlooked.
Other kids get blistering drunk or high or pregnant or locked-up with their friends... or worst of all their ritual, their rite of passage is nothing more than 'FINALLY LEAVING HOME'.
It's more of a departure than an arrival.
In some families both the parents AND the kids look forward to it.

I certainly don't know all the answers... but I see much room for improvement on the way this is typically handled... or NOT handled as the case may be.

I see I need to give this some special thought.

If you're not cheating you're not trying.

Boy did I get a ration for saying that.
My wife couldn't believe I said it in-front of the kids.
She couldn't believe I said it at all... and then I really got a second dose when I told here I liked the saying because I believe it. But she wasn't going to sit around and listen to my defense/explanation... and so I can only hope she reads it here.
:)
Woof.

I defended the saying that I had heard echoing from my UDT/SEAL instructor.
It didn't mean to blatantly 'cheat' and be a deceitful schemer and a liar... it was more.
It means that life can sometimes throw you a curve ball and you may have to break a few rules to stay in the game.
That didn't sound any better...
It means that sometimes you will have to think outside the box to accomplish your goals - especially when the odds are stacked against you.
That sounded better...
There is the quick story of when I heard this saying - for the first time...

SEAL training isn't all eating sand and carrying logs... we actually had formal classroom training too. Go figure. You don't learn about weapons,bombs and tactics by trial and error.
Anyway. One day we all found ourselves on the floor between desks pressing out 50+ pushups and barking out the count for each. [Someone must have asked a stupid question]. Anyway, the instructor stepped outside the room and down the hall but kept a ear tuned to our progress. It wasn't very long before one at a time we all started laying on the deck, still barking the count, but NOT doing the pushups. The camaraderie was incredible. You could feel the whoosh of TEAM flow thru you as we ALL joined in 'getting one over on the instructor'. We reached 50 and yelled 'HOOYAH' at the top of our lungs. [That was the way you asked to 'recover' back to your seats.] By now we were all 'up' and looking like we had done 50. The instructor stepped into the room with a huge smile on his face. "Don't even think for a second I don't know what you did". Instant internal panic. "Good job... If you're not cheating you're not trying... now HIT THE SURF." We all scrambled to our feet and climbed over desks and men out the door and into the nearby waves. We returned to our seats soaking wet and continued the class - pools of sea water widening under our desks.

Glean what you can from that... I learned something about being on a TEAM.

There are many stories like this that I will pass on to my sons as we go.
And God willing - they will be the kind of men that kill dragons for their wives. You'll see.

Sorry honey, It's a guy thing.

Sea of Sedan

Didn't see a single Hummer today.
No Mazerattis, no Porches, no Lamborghinis, no Corvettes... nothin'.
I drove home in the drizzly rain in a sea of sedans.
There was an SUV or a pickup here and there... but I would say 90% of America owns a car that looks pretty much like everyone else's car.
Do you remember when we were kids and you would ride in your parents sedan with your nose on the side window?
You and your siblings [usually boys do this] calling out car makes.
"There's a Chevy."
"That one's a Ford."
"Hey, I see a Dodge, no wait... it's a Chevy."
Kids these days just don't do that... all the cars look the same.
It's like... who cares.
Do kid's count cows still? You know... driving thru the country... you take the left side and I take the right... whoever gets a hundred cows wins... and a horse erases all your cows!
We used to play the Alphabet game too. Pulling A-Z off of signs, billboards, license plates... anything - to see who could get thru the alphabet first. I STILL play that game! My kids love it and even wanna try it on our way to church on Sunday.
Most kids I see these days are playing with a Gameboy or have earphones on... mostly so they don't hear their parents.
Sad.
Crazy how things change.

Hummers

Ok... who are these people?
I saw a Hummer parked in front of our office yesterday... and another one rolled past me on the freeway this morning.
What do these people do for a living?
I mean, isn't the H1 or H2 an $100k [one hundred thousand dollar] car?
That's more than the first house I bought when I got married!
I'm NOT complaining. This is America and you can spend your money on whatever you want to... but I just wanna know who these people are and what they do for a living.
They're NOT rocket scientists I don't believe.. because last I checked, rocket scientists earned only about 70k/year.

I don't know... perhaps I'll just ask the next guy I see that hops out of one.
If I do... I'll blog about it.
Promise.

4 Glorious Days

I had forgotten what a 4 day weekend will do for you.

Thanksgiving turned out to be fine.
I didn't overeat. Tempted, but I had discipline.
Friday was a wonderful day bike-riding and playing with the kids - sun up to sun down.
It's incredible how rejuvenating laughing kids are.
Saturday we purchased our Christmas tree [we always get it on Saturday after Thanksgiving].
We stuck it in a bucket in the backyard to drink... I think it helps.
We went and saw a great film too - Master and Commander. Very well done. Made me want to sail again.
Sunday after church we brought the tree in and trimmed it.
Lights on the house are up too.
I tell ya...
That was the longest funnest weekend I've had since last year.
Somehow there is something wrong with that.
:)