My two oldest daughters seem to be getting most of my attention on the blog lately. This last Sunday I got a chance to have some activities with the two younger ones and I wanted to share it with my readers.

Elaina has been bugging (I mean that in a nice way) me to help her make a covered wagon for one of her classes at school. I quickly got on Google (how did we ever get along without 232,000 search results at our fingertips) and found a great “how to” site with a video.

A few items from the garage and a hot glue gun and we were in action!

Where are we going today, Rover?

Wagon Ho!

Elaina and I had a lot of fun working on this together. She sat in my lap and watched every step of the process. It was not too hard to put together. I am not exactly the most craftsy person but the instructions were simple enough. Elaina’s concern was that we had enough space for the little girl and the dog.

To finish off the afternoon I had to perform a “Conservation Experiment” with them. This was for five extra credit points in my Human Lifespan Development class.
Continue Reading…

Between last fall semester and this spring semester I made a tough decision. I chose to take a full time position with my current employer.

This change was going to allow me to have more weekends off, but it was also going to take away two full days during the week that I previously spent with the tutors in the Academic Resource Center at school. These two full days with tutors played no small part in the “A”s I received in both English 101 and Math 40.

I am allowed to crack my book from time to time at my job but that is no replacement for ten solid hours of tutoring every week.

I told myself it was okay to make this decision because I needed routine over anything else.

This semester has proven to be very challenging as a result of this decision. I felt very confident at the end of last semester and just assumed I would do as well this semester because of the sole reason I was taking half as many classes. I was terribly wrong.

I am taking Human Lifespan Development (HLD) and Human Anatomy and Physiology (A&P). They are four and six credits respectively.

I am doing decently in the HLD class. My teacher is extremely knowledgable and the content is interesting. Much of it is theory and I enjoy it. Being a parent with a couple of teens and a couple even younger, much of what we are studying I am experienced. Still I am only varying a “B” in this class. We have had two tests and two quizzes. I received “B”s on both of the tests but I keep getting “D”s on the quizzes. I think quizzes stand a chance to hurt your grade more than help it. We only get twenty questions. It does not take much to bomb a 20 question quiz. I do have a middle-of-the-road “B” so I should not complain.

Continue Reading…

It took us a few years to get started on a family. Once we got started it all hit fairly quickly. We went from no children to four daughters in just five years.

Those early years were tough. I joke that Julie went three years without sleep but the truth is she really did.

I remember during those years a lot of older, and more experienced adults telling us it would get harder. I didn’t believe them. What could be harder than what we have been through so far?

It is starting to become clearer to me now. The two older girls are both in full puberty. They are just mean to each other. They barge into each other’s rooms unannounced looking for stuff. They have an endless vocabulary of snide comments for each other. I am not afraid to admit that it is very disheartening.

Last Saturday night I played in a volley ball tournament. One of my team mates is a friend from high school. Scott and Sari got started earlier with their family than we did. They have two amazing daughters. Both of theses girls played volley ball with us Saturday night. They are both college age and are such a joy to be around. They get along so well and are such great examples for my daughters.

The oldest of them, Jennifer, is a Sunday school teacher for my two oldest girls and she is also taking a group to St. Louis this summer for a missions trip. My two oldest girls are fund raising for this event. I have high hopes for them both this summer.

I want my girls to see how tough other families have it. I do not think they have enough perspective. My hope is we can expose them to plenty of other families that do not have things as good as we have them. Maybe they will appreciate their own lives more. Certainly a week being around some other adults that they look up to will help. I cannot imagine a better role model than Jennifer Williams. I have told Scott before that his daughter is reason enough to have my family at New Life.

I am sure my daughters are not struggling with anything out of the ordinary. Still, it is worth the effort to help them gain better perspective. That is something I have to stay on top of. I tend to get too comfortable sometimes and start acting like I should get my way all the time.

God have mercy on me. This is hard…

It is 11:45pm the Sunday night before I release this journal entry. Julie and I just finished a two night, three day, get-away to recharge. We generally only do this once a year on our anniversary. This year we needed a get-away between anniversaries.

When I get away from the house for these weekends I tend to get a little introspective. Without the business of life pushing at us we almost always get into conversations about our life.

Twenty-two years ago Julie and I planned out our life together. Income, cars, houses and ‘stuff’ never entered the conversation. We came to one simple agreement; we wanted a big family. The path by which we started our family did not necessarily follow that plan but the end result is the same. We dreamed of four kids and we ended up with four kids.

We are not unlike a lot of other families out there. This economy crash has caused us to start over financially. I am thankful that our income had nothing to do with our life goals together. We never believed that true wealth was measured by bank statements or FICO scores. When we planned our lives those many years ago, our idea of wealth was found in family size and little else. Today we are a family of six, and in my heart I feel like the richest man on the earth.

I am convinced that this overall thought process played no small part in why our family has held together so well through these massive changes. Had our sense of worth come from the stuff we had accumulated then the removal of that stuff would have seriously damaged our family.

I realize that signaling victory at the age of 41 seems silly. We have a lot of years ahead of us. Still, we set out with the goal of growing a large family. In this area we are victorious, and a little celebration is in order.

I am a pretty emotional person. The list of movies in which I have shed tears are long, and in some cases just silly. Julie has learned to ignore me out of politeness. Lydia, my oldest daughter still rolls her eyes and asks me, “Why are you crying?”

I just chalk it up to my very active imagination. I have this ability to over empathize I guess. It is almost dumb. Maybe I have some kind of disorder and need to be checked. Anyway, I digress.

Yesterday morning at church I found myself exceptionally emotional; scary, I know. On the first Sunday of every month we have something called BGMC. All the first through fifth grade boys and girls run around the auditorium with yellow “Buddy Barrels” collecting loose change for missions.

As I watched my two youngest daughters running, smiling and collecting change, my thoughts were drawn to my two oldest daughters. Jessica was sitting behind us with her best friend, and Lydia was helping in the Energy Zone with the Pre-K kids.

It seems like yesterday when my oldest daughters were small and carefree. They will be thirteen and fourteen next month, and I realized that in just five short years they will both be adults and most likely moved out.

My head was being pulled in two different directions yesterday. My family needs provided for, yet I just have a few short years to pour as much parenting into them as possible. I want to finish my RN (associates degree) and want a Bachelor’s, and eventually a Master’s degree. My concern is that if I over focus on those goals I will easily wash away the next five years with my family.

I have been spoiled for the last seven or eight years. I did not miss anything while I was self employed. I was able to make it to every event you could imagine. Over the last seven months I have missed [a lot] of events. Last Thursday Lydia had her first introduction night to high school and I was not able to be there. I was miserable being in Anatomy and Physiology class when I wanted to be with my daughter. Last Tuesday evening was their last band performance of the year and I missed that as well.

These advanced degrees will probably take a while. I am not going to spend the next five years of my life in college class rooms and miss this vital time in the lives of my daughters. The price is too high.

Besides, I do not think there is a treatment for lacrimal gland failure!