Climbing the Ladder of Success or Just Breaking a Leg? You Decide....

Since when could he..... if his mother knew that I was watching him.... Well, what can I say? Dad was left tending the kids while mom was out shopping/returning items and the kids must have this internal drive that says, "mom is gone! Dad is watching us! Now is our time to test our skills.... Now is the time to raide the treat cupboard!" Why is it that kids make us dads look bad by doing some outlandish thing while their mothers are gone? So when mom comes back and someone has a broken leg, cut forehead or an instrument in some orifice that mom says, "what on earth has been going on?!?!" "Doesn't your worthless father watch you when I leave?!?!" The kids are as much to blame as us dads. I mean there is something natural that clicks in kids when the door clicks as moms walk out the house. This "click" is the click of daredevil or just little-devil. Whatever it is it sure makes us dads look bad.... as if we needed any more help looking bad. We seem to do a decent job of it ourselves.... at least that is what my wife says......

Merry Christmas

We took these pictures after church today. I love Christmas more today than ever. I used to have some uncomfortable feelings around Christmas time due to my own insecurities about the scarcity in which I was raised. Christmas used to feel uncomfortable because we didn't have much and I was focused on myself and what we didn't have. When I went on a mission that all changed. I realized you could create magic at Christmas, even if you didn't have much, as long as you lost yourself trying to help others be happy. Today, I just marvel at my family and how much each one of them means to me. My greatest Christmas is to just sit around with them and be with them. A little eggnog, hot chocolate, tamales, or salsa always helps but even without that I could be in heaven just sitting around with my family. In a way, I wish we had less now so I could spend more time focusing on the essence of Christmas...FAMILY. Merry Christmas to all.

sleep sleep sleep....(sung to the Christmas song: Still, Still, Still)

My favorite Christmas song is Still, Still, Still.... but as a parent, the words Sleep, Sleep, Sleep are fitting.

As a parent, a good night's sleep is a blessed thing. It is a common thing to be awakened by a bad dream, a wet bed, an ear ache, growing pains, vomit, insomnia ("I can't fall asleep"), hunger, "I need to go potty", thirst, too cold, too hot, lightning/thunder, and lastly by being kicked/hit-be it inadvertant/intentional- by a bed partner...... and as if your issues weren't enough, then the kids can wake you up also with their problems! :)

Some kids are good sleepers, some are not. Some go through fazes of good and bad. Just when you think the house is getting settled down and you'll be able to get some ZZZZZ's someone breaks the carma by going through something that invariably costs a parent some sleep. I have learned to appreciate my kids sleep. I think my kids are the best kids on the planet.... when they are asleep. I love my kids more than anything.... when they are asleep. My kids are the cutest kids in town-bar none.... when they are asleep. There is love at home, the stars are aligned and the whole world is in harmony.... when the little ones are sleeping.

In residency with countless weeks over 100 hours working, we adopted a motto of "eat when you can, sleep when you can".... I think this is appropriate for parenting also.

Found in Anger

Has your spouse ever told you that you have some undesirable quality? (definition of undesirable: that which might limit you in your eternal progression- it could damn you in otherwords :) ) Well anger is mine and as human nature you deny it, rationalize it, or whatever. Then your spouse documents that "quality" in video/picture or out of the mouth of many witnesses..... well "any who", my wife documented my "anger problem". I can't deny it any more.

Since residency, I have been missing that self torture-masochistic component of my life and the military has given me a replacement for that "special pain" that residency used to occupy-----RUNNING! Well, I started running at officer's training and I have been running every since- five months now. We started with a few miles in officer's training and well, after the training was over, most normal officer's go back to some kind of regular eratic excercise in the military... me? No way! If running a few miles hurts, why not run a lot more and hurt yourself even more! So 3 miles turned into 5 miles, 5 turned into 8, 8 turned into 12, 12 into 15 and you get the picture.....so I got my base run up to about 6 miles which I'd run 3-4 times a week during lunch at work. Then I decided that that endorphin rush wasn't enough, and since I am a junky extraordinaire, I decided to pursue these long Saturday runs. Well two weeks ago on the 1 of December I embarked on the grandaddy of them all, I was going to try and run 26.2 miles- or something close to it. I start early in the morning as to not ruin my whole Saturday. The problem with this kind of run is that when you do it officially, they have water stations and little snack stations (every couple of miles) which you have to have if you are going to run for four solid hours. The body is kind of funny like that... When you embark on one of these runs all by yourself, you have to use strategery to pass by water sources and you have to pack granola bars and fruit snacks in the pockets of your shorts. When I was on mile 18 or so, I was in need of some water so I called my wife while I was running (I was on call at the hospital so I was running with my cell phone). As she came and found me out on some country road in Texas, she saved me with some water. I wanted her to come check on me in about a half hour so I gave her the route that I was running and she repeatedly did not understand my directions. You have to imagine this that I have just run 18 miles, and I am running again. She is driving right beside me as I start running again and I am trying to breath, run and give my wife directions. Needless to say, when she said for the third time that she didn't understand what I was saying I got a little testy and mad. She happened to have the camera and documented my anger on film. I had been caught! I have since talked to my lawyer and he told me to claim the "labor-anger" clause in that running a marathon is as close to labor for a guy as he's going to get thus all outbursts and angry comments should be pardoned and understood for the anguishing context from which they come........ yeah, I know, my wife hasn't bought it either but I thought it was good legal strategy. My wife says that she never got angry and never said unkind words to me when she went through 5 labors (4 of them without epidurals) and thus the judge threw out my only defense.

For those of you unmarried, you have a natural and spiritual desire and tendancy to want to marry someone better than you, but I have to warn you that this is the consequence. In the presence of their superior spiritual, physical, emotional, social, and mental capacity, all of your pleas for patience and acceptance of your weaknesses kind of lose merit. I'm not officially endorsing marrying "below one's self" but you do have to recognize some of those advantages/disadvantages (make a list sometimes bad is good and good is bad).

Picture Virgin

Now I finally got a post to show up I'm working for a picture of the family..... I do feel bad for getting so upset and swearing though.... my wife just summarized President Hinckley's talk for me on anger and once again I've been found lacking in virtue and self control.... my next question is this: I know that there are some very saintly people in our family but on the average, are we in this family more prone to swearing than other families? I mean, I try not to, but I fail about once a week no matter how hard I try. My wife's family has mastered their tongue. They might go a decade without a slip.... I feel very weak around them. Inspired but weak at the same time....oh, the picture I got to post is of my family in my hometown of Eagar, Arizona at Thanksgiving. My dad and my step mom are in the picture with us as well as our "short bus"- van.

Blog Virgin

I have to admit this blog thing has been fun until I started my own and then I am starting to cuss like Colton because I can't figure out how to post things. If this doesn't work, I'm going to say some really nice four letter words....