Tag: Family

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Gavin the Actor

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Last night was Gavin’s first school play. He was selected to do a speaking part as a pig. Of course I am biased, but I think he did the best on his part. It was just two lines, but he spoke loud enough where everyone could hear him in the microphone and clearly. One boy played a Chicken, his jobs was to walk around the stage until it came to his part. He was hilarious!He had the crowd laughing. I attempted to get everything on video, but my memory card messed up, so I’ve posted some pictures instead. The top picture shows Gavin being the Kindergartener that he is…He’s the one acting as if he is being choked (Click on the image a couple times to enlarge it). Yeah, he got his teacher’s attention with that one.

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Family Adventures at 4 a.m.

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Usually you wake up from a nightmare. Last night, I woke up and walked right into one.

I heard some scuffling in the hallway at 4 a.m. and that usually means that Tristan is awake and trying to covertly sneak into our bedroom to get into our bed. Last night, I think God woke me up, because He’s cool like that. Most of the time, Tristan wakes up because his covers have fallen off and he is cold. I can simply take him back to his room (usually from our bed), cover him up and he is fine until his covers fall off again. Last night was a different story.

I walked into the hallway and saw Tristan standing there with a puppy dog look on his face as if something was wrong. The hallway light was off, but the bathroom light was on, giving me just enough glimpse of his face. I said, “Hey buddy, what’s wrong?” Immediately, as I walked towards him I was hit with the worst poop smell I had ever smelled, so I knew he was awake because he pooped in his diaper. So, I asked the question I already knew the answer to, “Did you poopy your diaper?” As he replied with a ‘yes‘ nod, I stepped in something wet. I quickly turned on the light to see a trail of liquid poop all over the hallway floor, and I had stepped all in it!

Nicki is probably tougher than I am. She would have probably let me sleep and taken on the poop monster and his mess alone, but I could see that God was using this moment in our lives to help us build team work. It didn’t take me long to jump into the tub to wash off my feet and get Tristan situated on a towel before I called my teammate in life to give me a hand. I would have hated for us to miss out on this team building exercise straight from God himself! We quickly discovered Tristan’s adventure for us started in his bed with what appeared to be a nuclear explosion, leaked all across his carpet, and then downloaded into the hallway floor and trailed behind him as he made his way towards our room. I quickly became thankful that God #1 woke me up before Tristan made it to our room and climbed into our bed and #2 that we have hardwood floors in our hallway. Nicki and I were able to crawl back into bed around 4:45 a.m. this morning after a bath for Tristan, laundry for the sheets, covers, and towels; and a lovely adventure of cleaning up poop laden carpet and flooring. Why do these things happen when its about an hour to an hour and a half before its time to wake up? Why not midnight? When we have several more hours to sleep? I guess I’ll never understand the timing of the early morning family adventures!

Join the Conversation: What’s one of your favorite early morning family adventures?

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The Hunt for the City’s Best Pizza

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I was supposed to be updating my blog frequently with our family’s “Hunt for the City’s Best Pizza.” However, I have found myself extremely busy and we forgot the camera on several of our visits, so here goes 4 reviews in one post, with hopes I’ll do better in the future! For those who do not know what I am talking about, every Monday night, our family hunts for the city’s best pizza. Nicki and I wanted to do something fun with the kids to help make some lasting memories, so we are trying every pizza available to us in the city, whether its at a restaurant or in the freezer section of the grocery store (we are not trying all of the freezer pizzas or we’d be eating pizza til the day we die). Gavin’s been learning charts at school, so he made a chart and each Monday the pizza that we eat, gets a rating of up to 5 stars by the whole family, one star being the worst and five stars being the best. So far, its been a lot of fun!

Mellow Mushroom: Mellow Mushroom was our first visit several weeks back. We tried two different kinds of pizza, the Carnavor (all meat) and a Veggie Pizza. We gave Mellow Mushroom 5 Stars, and it has currently been tough to beat, as it remains our favorite so far.

Stevi B’s: It was rough going from Mellow Mushroom to Stevi B’s, but we drew it as our second trip. Needless to say, Stevi B’s got a rating of 2 Stars and is currently in last place. Apparently our Stevi B’s is under new management, which means not as good service and not as good pizza.

Pizza Joint: Pizza Joint is a local owned, well, pizza joint. Their rating got pushed down by Gavin and Tristan. We allow Tristan to rate, and being two, he just randomly throws out a number…our main objective is to have fun with the kids and make some memories, not to worry about their ratings. Nicki and I gave Pizza Joint 4 stars, but the final rating ended up 3 Stars. The great thing about Pizza Joint is they do individual slices, so we all got to try our favorite toppings…and they are cheap!

Hungry Howie’s: We’ve never tried Hungry Howie’s until this past Monday night. It was surprisingly good. You have a choice of various flavored crusts and they had decent deals with their cupons. We once again tried a couple of different pizzas, and Hungry Howies received a 3 Star rating.

I’ll be out of town next week, so we will not get to do our family night, but I’ll post our next review in the coming weeks!

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Happy Birthday Gavin!!!

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My little “oldest” son Gavin turns 6 years old today! I must say that I am extremely thankful to God for giving Gavin 6 healthy years of life, for protecting him in ways we’ve known (through a horrible car accident 3 years ago) and in ways that we will never know. I am thankful that the Lord has given Gavin abilities that some children do not have as well as gifts and passions such as art, soccer, and doing anything creative that comes to his mind.

I love my boy. I love how he thinks he is strong enough to beat me up, how he helps his younger brother Tristan, how he hugs me in the morning, before he goes to school, before he goes to bed, and just because. I love that his way of showing me love sometimes is a drawing or doing something out of his passions and gifts. I love to watch him get excited about something and watch his words get scrambled trying to explain what he’s excited about. I love his faith and purity in believing that Iron Man would answer his invite to his birthday party. I love to hear him pray at meals and before bed, especially when he prays for the “sick, the hungry, and the poor” – I think you could understand that I could go on and on all day about all the ways I love Gavin, so I’ll stop here, however…

I have to admit that as I think about Gavin turning 6, it is a little saddening to me as well. I use to hate hearing adults say, “It seems like it was yesterday…” But, the fact is, that is reality, especially once you become a parent. Time flies by, years literally seem like days, and as I reflect back on 6 years with Gavin, I realize that the next 6 years will be here in what seems like a few days. If I had my way, I would not let him grow up anymore. Even though children are challenging to raise, I don’t want to lose what I have with my son where he is now. I will no longer have a 5 year old Gavin, and reality stinks sometimes!

So while I am joyful for the life my child has been blessed with and who he is as a person…I am a little disappointed that I no longer have him at 5. Happy Birthday Gavin!!!

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Transitions

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2009 is going to bring some exciting things! I can see some major transitions that will be taking place in the coming months and then I know there are transitions that will surprise me that I do not see coming. Some of the changes and new directions are HUGE and many details still have to be worked out before I can even talk about them with clarity. So today, I’m wondering, when you’ve had a specific upcomign transition, how did you approach it, or how do you approach it? Or, what is something valuable you have learned through a major transition in your life? Maybe it was a change of career, or a major move, a bigger step in leadership, an addition to your family, etc…Join the Conversation, today I want to learn from you…I’m all ears!