A Great Sports Saturday

Well, we got thru Saturday with opening day for softball and baseball, and we actually got to play all the games.  A lot of the morning games were cancelled because of all the rain on Friday, but since Ethan and Madison’s games were late we were able to play.

Madison had a full day with soccer in the morning and then her softball game at 2:00.  She did a great job in both games and gave her best effort in both.  Her soccer team got the lead and never let it go.  The softball team got off to a slow start in the first couple innings but came back from a large deficit to win in the last inning.

Ethan also had a great game and I think he had a lot of fun as his team took a commanding lead early and held on for the win.

Aunt Sue came out for the games and I think she had a lot of fun watching them play.

Happy Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to all the dad’s out there.  I pray that as dad’s you have the courage to always do the right thing, even when no one else is looking.  I pray that you love your wife and your children as Christ loves his people.  I pray that you are always a positive example to all those around you, especially your kids.

Have a great day!

Life is Busy… Deal with it!

I’m the type of person that loves to just be at home.  I generally don’t like to go out and be busy doing things all the time.  I can easily keep myself busy at home, but I would rather not be in the car driving all over town constantly.

But having kids has a tendency to change your ideals.  Yesterday I came home from work, scarfed down some leftover pizza, then headed to the soccer field for practice.  Tonight I’m leaving work and heading straight to the baseball fields where I’ll meet my wife for my son’s practice, then she’ll leave for a meeting at church which means I’ll have to leave my son’s practice to pick up my daughter from dancing and bring her back to the ballfields.  Then after that, we need to stop by the church for a while to do some things.  By the time that’s all over, it’s time to get the kids in bed and then another day is over.

Time can get away from you quickly with the whirlwind of activities that comes from the combination of children and springtime.  I have to constantly be aware of how I manage my time.  My family is very important, so I try to make them a priority, although sometimes I let church activities get in the way of that. 

I just have to learn to deal with a busy life and do the best I can with the time I’ve been given!

Spring Break

Ahh, spring break is here.  For the first time, I’ve taken off work during the same week as the kids.  It’s a beautiful day here in central Ohio: 73 degrees and partly cloudy right now.  I put the screens in all the windows, the bushes are starting to bud and the grass has turned noticeably green over the last week.  My son is outside playing basketball on his new hoop and my daughter is upstairs cleaning/playing in her room.  I decided to go ahead and get some of the patio furniture out so I can enjoy it while it’s nice.

We went to the Air Force Museum in Dayton yesterday.  Wow is it big.  I was really impressed with how nice it is.  And it’s FREE admission!  They have planes from the Wright brothers all the way up to today.  It includes the massive B52 bomber and the impressive B2 Stealth bomber.  It’s a great history lesson.  They also have an IMAX theatre (for a fee) that includes about 3 different movie options each lasting about an hour.  Even our kids seemed to enjoy it at their young ages.

Family Meeting Update

Well, after one week the ticket system seems to be successful.  Both kids ended the week with one hour to spare.  I was a little worried on Monday when our son used 2 1/2 hours the first day, but he quickly realized that he would run out of time soon so he held back the rest of the week.  It’s definitely making them think about their use of time.

Our son Ethan lost a tooth in the middle of the night Friday.  He woke up at 2:45 and tells mom his tooth just fell out.  We told him that it was too late for the tooth fairy to get there that night and that he’d have to wait a day.  Even the tooth fairy has a cut-off time for orders!

Family Meeting

My wife and I have 2 kids, ages 7 and 5.  Our son, who is the older, has had some serious issues with all electronic forms of media.  He loves to sit and play his Gamecube (or GameBoy, or online, etc.) for hours on end if possible.  Then when we finally peel him away, his attitude resembles Bowser in Mario Party 7.  Actually, it’s much worse than that.

So we decided to institute a ‘ticket’ system that would allow them a limited amount of time watching TV or playing games.  They each received an envelope containing several ‘tickets’.  There are 7 one hour tickets and 6 half hour tickets, totaling 10 hours.  These tickets are good from Monday morning thru Sunday night.  If one of the kids want to watch TV or play a video game, they ask us if they can do it, and then they ‘pay’ us for the time. 

If they run out of tickets before the end of the week, then they’re out of luck.  If they don’t use all their tickets in a week, then we will keep track of unused hours and will consider some sort of award down the road.  Hopefully this will help improve their attitudes by keeping them from staring at a screen for hours on end.  Also, I hope this will help teach them to manage their time better.

I think this will be a fun experiment and I hope it works.  I’ll try and update as I see results from this.