Holidays

It’s been a long time since I posted. Maybe I’ll write more this year. Maybe. Well, the holidays are over. Now we have 3 or 4 months of cold, wet, mostly sunless weather to look forward until spring comes. That’s life in Michigan! (and Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, etc).

The holidays were interesting this year. This was Daughter’s second college Christmas and it was great to have her home. It’s nice an noisy again. The three children get along better every time they’re together. Such great kids (parental sigh of satisfaction)! She’s been here going on three weeks now. I think she’s ready to go back (not necessarily to school but to freedom!) Son #1 has a very significant other this year. It’s a little weird, either he’s over there or she’s over here. Not used to that yet. Son #2 got the electric guitar that he was hoping for this year. Hearing a lot of strange noises coming from his room now.

Started attending a new church in the Fall. Our family’s first Christmas in a new church in 13 years. A little strange but it’s good. It was time to go. God is good. It’s nice to be able to say (and feel) that again.

Everything’s not great, job’s kind of boring right now, money’s tight. But the things that matter are good:
God, Family, Health. We have some challenges coming this year: Son #1 is graduating high school, Son #2 is driving (both the car and me crazy). Of course, #2 is 15 now, so my general stupidity is on the rise. It’s been going up since last year. I expect it’ll peak late this year, plateau for a while and then begin the slow downfall.

As my wife and I remind each other often, that’s how it works. Hard to deal with at the time, especially the first time. It gets easier though.

Spring Break Visit

Daughter is on spring break and home for the week from college. It’s interesting how the family dynamic changes when one of the kids leaves. Then it changes again when they come back home.

When the kids were growing up it always seemed that any two of them would get along great but when you put all three of them in a room, not so much. In the last couple years all three have gotten along pretty well. Being a girl with two brothers, it’s worked out. She helps ‘em with what does and doesn’t look good as far as clothes, hair, etc. They help her to understand boys a little better.

I don’t want to paint too rosy a picture, believe me over the years they had to work out how to get along. Morning bathroom protocols; who got shotgun when she drove them to school and more importantly who got control of the radio! It’s funny when you have more than one kid, how they work out how to get along with each other. They have their own set of rules based on seniority and each other’s personalities.

Anyway, she rolled in last night with all her dirty clothes and it was noisy again in the house; lot’s of laughing and jokes about “your face”. It was nice.

Hello world!

OK, here we go. My first blog ever. I’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a blog but wasn’t sure what the heck to write about. What do I know…well, I haven’t killed any of my teens yet, that’s not bad…we’ll go with that!

So this blog won’t be full of advice, I’m not sure I’m that worthy of giving advice. Actually, I’m not sure what this blog will be yet. At this point I just hope you’re not bored and enjoy reading what I write. Time will tell.

My daughter’s home from college for the weekend (freshman) and since all three were here on a Saturday night, my wife and I thought it’d be nice to play a game as a family. Some friends of ours just taught us a new card game called Golf. Well, new to us anyway, and the oldest boy said “Oh, I hate that game, I don’t want to play”, and the girl says, with a grimace, “I don’t really like that game”. So what’s a good dad to do? Of course, guilt them into it!

Anyway, long story short, we ended up playing and after a couple of grumpy rounds, we all had a great time, laughing, making fun of each other, eating cookies and generally having fun. What’s the moral of the story? Sometimes kids (especially teens) forget that it’s fun to be together as a family instead of doing their own thing, and sometimes parents (dads) need to push a little for family time and not cave in to a teens generally selfish attitude.

Oops, was that advice? Well, sometimes I even surprise myself and do the right thing!