March 2015

I really believe that baseball is a metaphor for life. If you have ever played baseball, then you know that hitting a curve ball requires you to either jump all over the ball or you have to sit back and wait for the break.

Think about it:

1) Disciplining your children – You can either sit back and wait and talk through the correction or you can jump all over them. Which way does a child respond better too?
2) Teaching moments – Do you sit back and let your child figure things out on their own or do you jump in and help them? Which way helps a child learn more?
3) Career – Do you sit back and let jobs/offers come to you or do you jump all over the market and make things happen? Which will get you further?

As we get closer to baseball season and my thoughts drift back to a simpler time when I loved grabbing my glove and throwing catch. But I got thinking this morning, as I was reading up on the Astros upcoming season, baseball taught me a lot about life. It taught me to rely on others, as 1 person was not going to completely win a game. Play hard. Put everything into the game and preparation and whether you win or lose the game, it really doesn’t matter. Give it your all. Watch what your opponent is doing and sometimes, you have to lay down the sacrifice bunt for the good of the team.

I remember growing up and playing with a lot of good players. Some went on and played Division I college baseball, others like me, faded into the sunset, but the life lessons that we learned on the field, have stayed with us for life. Because sometimes, life really is like hitting a curve ball, as it forces you to sit back and wait for the perfect moment. And in a split second, you are off and running after making contact.

Opening day is 6 days away!

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I was saddened to read last night that a friend that I’ve known since 4th grade passed away last night.  Life sucks sometimes. It is not fair. It is not always understandable and maybe we aren’t supposed to understand certain aspects of life?

I tried to remember last night how long that it had been since I had last seen my friend and I was ashamed to admit that it was over 15 years. Life had gotten in the way. We both moved away, I moved to a different state and vary rarely returned to visit, but it was during that time period that my friend also had a serious car accident as well. The accident left her with many life long challenges, but at no point did she not smiling.

Today my friend, we will not say goodbye, but sleep easy. Tonight, you are at peace, no more pain or sorrow. No more challenges. But, you will be able to continue that smile forever.

Life isn’t always easy, but it is how we choose to live it that matters the most and you did it with style and grace.

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If I had not heard it with my own ears, I would not have believed it.  But at 9pm last night, I was standing in the kitchen and I heard what sounded like water dripping in the kitchen. I walked over to the window, looked at the vent that leads to the boys bedroom, nothing. But I knew that I heard something.

A few minutes later, I sat down and started eating and I heard water dripping again, this time, I heard the boys over by the vent. I knew that there weren’t any cups of water in their bedroom, so that meant one thing, PEE! That’s right, the boys thought that it would be funny to pee in the air vent and let me correct that, as I quickly figured out, it was only one of the boys, Baby A. As I went upstairs, I had to quickly gather my thoughts and make sure that when I talked with them, that I was stern, yet fair and more importantly, try my best not to laugh.

Boys will be boys and let’s be honest, we’ve all done some stupid things in our life. My mother reminded me this morning that when my dad was in OCS in Mississippi, I guess that I was about 4, that one night that I was sleep walking and thought that it would be a good idea to pee in the closet. I asked my mom how she handled it and she laughed and said, “well at that point, what was I going to do?” Point well taken mom. And that is was partially how I felt last night, he had already gone, my job now was to get the point across that he wasn’t supposed to do that and that there would be a consequence for that, i.e. no TV shows after school.

I realize that parenting is a day by day thing, meaning that you just really never know what they will do or say.  But never did I think that I would ever have to tell my son that we don’t pee down the air vent. That was a first.

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The decision has been made, we are cancelling cable!  Let me put this in a different way, we are going to be saving over $125 a month by cancelling cable and thus, that is $100 a month extra that can be put toward getting us out of debt faster. In other words, cutting out cable will be a wonderful thing.

Sure, I’m going to miss out on NFL games and college basketball next year, but next year might be a different place in our lives? Maybe we need a basic cable package or maybe, we just keep living without cable and we go out to eat on game nights? Who knows? But today, right now, I am so happy to be cutting the cable dependencies. It will be a change, but it will be a good and welcomed change.

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Apparently it is wrong to laugh at your kids when they are burping. Rules, they sometimes aren’t fun but sometimes it is ok to let boys be just little boys. My wife doesn’t get it. She is an only child and when she isn’t able to identify that boys, well sometimes burping really loud is just funny.

This morning as I was trying to get the boys out the door and off to school, the boys and I were having a burping contest, needless to say, my wife was not happy.  Boys are boys. We are crude sometimes and the reality is that it isn’t going to change, only get worse.

Burping can be very funny, it is just a fact. I still remember being taught how to burp the alphabet and was able to get through it a few times.

Parenting is not always being strict with your kids, more times than not it is setting the example, but also showing them that they can have fun and more importantly, laugh.

So tonight, when the boys start burping, I might have to jump in and teach them a thing or two.

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Memories come and go, it is just a part of life. We forget things today and yet we might remember things that we did years ago. It is funny how the human mind works.

Last night while rocking the boys, they asked if I liked ice cream and I laughed, because who doesn’t like ice cream? But I remembered something, a memory that I had from a long time ago, when I was their age. Every Thursday night for several years, my grandfather drove 45 minutes to take me get ice cream. This was a time before cell phones, but I would stand at the window waiting and when I would see him pull up in the white VW Bug, I would run outside and off we would go.

The funny thing is that I have not thought about this grandfather taking me for ice cream for years. I remember the ice cream shop, the checkered floor, the way that they had all the ice cream in a paper container inside of a glass case. I remember the way that my grandfather would lift me on his shoulder so that I could not only make my selection, but also so that I could tell the person waiting on us my order. And every time, every time, I would get Strawberry ice cream.  I don’t know why these memories came into my head at that very moment, but I’m glad that they did.

This particular grandfather, my mom’s mom, died when I was in 1st grade and I don’t have a lot of memories of him. I remember the ice cream, I remember his barbershop and I remember the train set that he bought for  me and that we played with when I was my son’s age. I was and would still be, my grandfather’s only grandson. There are multiple great grandsons, but I would have been the only grandson among 3 granddaughters.  I could do no wrong in my grandfather’s eyes, I just wish that he would have lived longer, long enough to see my sons.

I’ll never forget where I was when I was told about my grandfather’s death, standing in the hallway outside of my class, talking with the principal of the school. But years later, while I was at work, I was talking to a gentleman by the name of Dave and while talking I said something and he froze. He literally stopped in his tracks, turned around and sat down in a chair.  Dave asked if Clifton was my grandfather and if Chris was my mom. And when I said yes, he broken into tears. He started sharing memories of them both and stories that I had never heard before. I felt better about my grandfather that day and felt a peace with his death, since he never told me goodbye, before he took his own life.

I am fortunate though, I do have one grandfather left, my dad’s father and he and I are really close. We usually talk once or twice every other week. We talk about any and everything under the sun. Work, his dad, my dad as a kid, my sons, politics, and the list goes on. My grandfather grew up during the great depression and served in WWII, though it has take years of my asking some basic questions about those two events for him to open up. My grandfather is a very proud man and will never talk bad about anyone, even those that do him wrong. I have learned so much about him and from him in the last several years, that these are things that I’ll treasure.

But this past week on our weekly call, I realized that the memories are starting to fade for him.  He was getting dates confused, people confused and was getting really tired, but at 90 years old, what do you expect.  But it is also sad too, because there is more that I want to know about him, his past, his life as a farmer, his 60 year marriage to my grandmother, but all of the memories are starting to fade. But I love when my grandfather shares stories with me, that my dad has never heard, like when he and my grandmother were married by the Justice of the Peace for $3.00, because that was all that he had ,but in hindsight, he should have given him $2.00 because he needed gas money later week.As I get older and I talk with my parents and more importantly my grandparents, I am reminded about memories, because memories can be both good and bad. They can provide both a sense of comfort and security as well as hopelessness. My hope is that as my boys grow up and if they too should be become fathers, that they share their memories of my time with them. The sacrifices that my wife and I made, so that they could have a better life. But I hope that they share the good memories, the trips together, the playing, the laughing and more importantly, how much we love them.

 

 

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We normally think about New Beginnings with the ringing in of New Years Eve, but yesterday seemed to have that same feeling for my wife and I. A few weeks ago, I mentioned a post about titled “I Promise“. That day lead to conversations about church, life and everything that we needed for a new life, conversations that my wife and I had been having for a year, but they were just that, conversations.

Yesterday, March 8th, at 11:30 a.m. we as a family, started on our journey of new beginnings. Together, we put one font in front of another and within a few minutes, the weight of the world seemed to slowly life. Pain was being replaced by joy. Tears were happy tears and not filled with pain and sorrow. In a few minutes, our family had a different outlook, a different perspective, a new beginning.  After a lot of discussion, we decided to attend a church that was close to the house. Neither my wife nor myself had any idea what was going to happen when we walked through the doors, but what happened was nothing short of a miracle. Heck, the entire day was nothing short of a miracle.

As we walked through the doors of the church, we were immediately greeted and shown where to go to drop the boys off for children’s church. As we walked up, Baby A wanted nothing to do with going in, but Baby B was ready to go. He immediately introduced himself, his brother, my wife and myself and off he went to play. Within just a few minutes, they were both playing and having fun. As my wife and I made our way into the sanctuary, there was a feeling of calm and peace that I think that both my wife and I have been searching for, but had not found.  As we got situated in our seats, I looked over during the first song and my wife had tears in her eyes and for the first time in a long time, she had tears of joy and not sorrow. This was our first step on our journey of our families new beginnings.

After we picked up the boys from children’s church, they were so excited to have met new friends and played, that we took the boys for donuts, but who doesn’t love donuts?  We talked and we laughed over sprinkle donuts, as my wife and I held hands and laughed and enjoyed our coffee. Healing was beginning to take place over donuts. We were out and having fun together and we had just had a great experience at church and those new beginnings, started their at church.

We ran a few quick errands and then went home and opened the doors and started clearing out the kitchen and before we new it, we had completely thrown out all of the old stuff that we weren’t using. De-cluttering of the kitchen felt amazing!  My wife and I both felt that this was the start to our downsize and preparation for a future move. (It is easier to downsize when you don’t’ have to get out of a house quickly, than it is to be stressed and only have a few weeks.)  But we even got the boys to help get some of their toys in order too. As we worked through the kitchen, we planned our next weekend project and we are going to go room by room or section by section to really get things paired down in the house. We have a lot of stuff, things that we rarely even use.

As the day went on and we worked and we played, Baby A asked if we could go out and grill something, he is definitely my kid. So, off we went, just the two of us as his brother played inside with my wife. My son and I talked about life, listened to bluegrass and Texas Red Dirt music and we laughed. We really laughed a lot. I think that we laughed to the point that I cried, cried tears of joy though. And after we were finished and it was time for bed, it was just my wife and I. We sat on the sofa and talked about the new beginnings that we had experienced and how it was almost a perfect day. I asked what effected her the most about church and she did not want to talk about it, other than she was so happy that I had suggested that we go.

I don’t know what today will bring, let alone tomorrow, but today, right now, we celebrated the new beginnings and are looking forward to the future.

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In the last 24 hours, the following events have occurred:

1) my wife fell down the last two steps in our house and sprain her ankle.
2) my oldest got sick at 3 a.m.
3) my youngest got diarrhea
4) my youngest on one of his bathroom trips decided to take an entire roll of toilet paper in the toilet and mind you, we only have one toilet in our house.
5) it took over 2 1/2 hours to unstop the toilet.
6) it is snowing and that is on top of ice that is already on the ground.
7) now the oldest has diarrhea.
8) and I really need a nap.

The last 24 hours have been beyond stressful. My wife getting hurt, of course happened when I was an hour out of town and on my way to a out of state meeting. So we had to get help from wife’s father’s girlfriend who just so happened to be in town. But I learned a few things about life and about myself over the course of the last 24 hours.

1) A dishwasher tablet can dissolve the toilet paper enough to flush it, but it took me over 2 hours to get this dissolve.  This article was a life saver at 4 a.m.

2) I got really frustrated about the toilet and I remembered the time when I wrecked my jeep and had to call my dad. I was scared to death at how angry he was going to be. And when my father got to me, he put his arm around me and very quietly said, “This too can be fixed.”

3) Life is hard, but there are always people that have it just a little bit harder and this was a reminder of that.

So in summary, the last 24 hours have not been fun, but in comparison to many, the last 24 hours have not been that bad.

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Usually when you think of soon to be 4 year old boys and you use the phrase, that smell, you think of something completely different and usually you hear giggles after hearing it too.  But last night was not the case, because when I walked into the boys room, that smell that hit me, I knew immediately, someone got sick.

I think that our house got hit with a small stomach bug, because one of the boys got sick on Saturday night, my other son got sick on Sunday night and my wife got sick this morning. But what is odd, is that smell of the boys getting sick, did not bother me. And I always remember my mom telling me, that when it is your own kid, the smell, the grossness, etc. just doesn’t matter, you work past it.  And maybe my mom was right?

But that smell did hit me as I was cleaning sheets and clothes at 1 a.m. this morning and though it wasn’t a great smell, I was able to get my son out of bed, cleaned and redressed without him really waking up.

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