Archives for January 2008

We had some family photos taken over Christmas. Since my sister and brother in law and their family are headed for Uganda this summer and since it’s so rare for us to get all of us, our 6 boys, and my parents together, we decided to take the chance to get some professional photos done.

Well the pictures came today. The shot above is- due to living hundreds of miles from one another- a very rare pic of the whole family. (Shhhhh. don’t tell anyone. but one of the heads in this picture has been swapped out with the head from another picture. Oh the beauty of the digital age.)

Started working out again. The holidays and last years school schedule put it on a hault.

Trying to live a balanced, healthy life. Sometimes I suck at that. I’m trying to get better. Read more. Play more. Rest more. Excercise more. I’m sure that if I’m going to do all of that more something has to be done less too, not sure what that is yet. But I’m sure something is getting the axe soon.

Anyway, as I sit here working on seminary project #1 for this quarter, I sneezed and it hurts bad. I worked my abs the other day and right now they are pissed at me.

No more sneezing or laughing. Right now, both hurt.

Today I got 3 more books to add to my mounting stack of fatherhood reading in my venture to help my boys transition into young men in the coming years.

I picked up 2 by believers and one recommended secular read:

Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph

Better Dads, Stronger Sons by Rick Johnson

King Me by Steve Farrar

I’m about a third of the way through my first read. Once I get each book done, I post my learnings on each one and then compile a grand poobah conclusion when I’m done. If you’re the praying type, I’d covet your prayers in this journey I’m on.

Last night was Berry Bonding. We decided to do dinner and then take the boys to see the latest Veggie Tales movie.

We went to a monday night showing at 7:05pm and welp, we had the whole place to ourselves. All to ourselves. My kids danced during the songs. We laughed loud. We moved around. If we’d had popcorn, I think I woulda started a food fight. I probably should have made a cell phone call, but I didn’t think of it till now. Who needs a home theatre system when I can rent one bigger than my house for under $50.

As for the movie… I’m not much of a movie critic. I laughed and it was nice to be with my kids, who liked it. It was kinda scary in spots and jake sat on my lap, occasionally pulling my arms around him. There is a random appearance from man eating cheese curls which surely was the snack in the brainstorm room when at 2 am they tried to finish the script and decided to toss them into the mix. Totally random.

I was happy to see that Phil Vischer had lots of influence in it after all the Big Idea corporate takeover funk I heard about in him telling his story at the YS convention. I hope it makes him smile. Though I’m sure my family’s private showing of his movie on opening week probably doesn’t.

Called my seminary and got a $3 fee dropped.

Called U-haul to complain about renting me a car dolly with 8 lbs of pressure in the tires when they required 50 lbs and the dumb thing only has 2 tires and some wires. Seems like they could get that right and I should not have had to work so hard to make something useable I paid to use. 4 days and 4 people later, they finally gave me a 50% refund. $120 worth.

Called ebags to ask for a $10 credit. I asked because the same day my new backpack arrived from them, visa sent me a promotion saying that if I bought a bag from ebags in January, that they’d give me $10 off. Since I paid with Visa already, I figured it was worth a try to get a refund. Well, the lady told me she’d have to research it since I used google checkout to buy the bag. Today I got an e-mail saying I win and they’re giving me $10 back.

Woo hoo. $133 back in grocery bucket.