Growing vs. Crazy Growing

CrazyMom and I know that F.G. has really sprouted since she has been in America. It seems that her body in particular was craving a higher level of nutrition. While we have a pretty good understanding of this, even we are taken aback when we look at the following two photos. The first photo was taken almost two years ago at the airport when F.G. got off the plane from Ethiopia. The second photo was taken a few minutes ago. It is important to point out that Ed has also grown over the last two years, so she is not a fixed ruler by which to judge the growth of F.G.. While this physical growth is rather stunning, it in some ways pales in comparison to all of the other ways in which F.G. has grown in just two short years. F.G. has grown by learning a lot of English and adapting to both American culture as well as our family culture. F.G. has also matured in many ways and is developing into a fine young lady. We can't wait to see what the next two years will bring!

The Calm after the Storm

I took the following photos a few evening back when CrazyMom was out for the night with her friends. These photos of the kids reading in their beds convey a peaceful family moment. It is hard to believe that 15 minutes earlier things were so bad that some kids were banished from the family. So it goes in our family -- category 5 winds pass through our house strewing the floor with toys and putting some people -- like me -- on edge. But after the winds die down and the carnage is cleaned up, there is a sense of peace as the kids snuggle in for the night. And that peaceful family moment is sweet enough to temper the hurricane-like memories from moments ago, enabling one to actually look forward to the next day.

The Leaf Stomper

The above freezing bright sunny day that greeted us today led to a full family leaf clean up session in the yard. We have some Bradford Pears that always drop their leaves late. As all of the kids were throwing leaves into the leaf bags, I would come along and lift my foot over the bag and stomp down the leaves.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a great big flat rock to do that, Dad?” Buddy asked.

“Who needs a big rock when I’ve got my big foot,” I replied and moved on to collect some more leaves.


When we were done cleaning up, Buddy got a tree saw from the garage and headed into the yard with a stick. I didn’t think much of it as I headed inside. About ten minutes later, Buddy showed up in my office with his invention – The Leaf Stomper. I was pretty thrilled with the sturdy practical device constructed from a stick and piece of scrap wood.

I had Buddy throw it in the back of my truck so I could use it later that day when I went to a rental to do some more leaf cleaning. The leaf stomper worked great.

I am sure looking forward to next time we do leaves as a family because I won’t have to go around and stomp the leaves down. This job can now be done by a kid with the Leaf Stomper.

Faith in the New Year

As a part of our family’s New Year’s Eve festivities last night we watched WALL-E. The futuristic movie was slow enough that my mind had time to wander and I found myself contemplating the relevancy of the Christian faith in our modern times and into the future. At moments it can seem like the era on the horizon will render the Bible a collection of stories not worth remembering.

So it was during the time of Prince Caspian (I refer to the book, which was better than the movie, of course). Tales of talking beasts – dwarfs, centaurs, and beavers – as well as Aslan himself had become irrelevant stories to be forgotten under the illegitimate reign of Miraz, Prince Caspian’s uncle. Prince Caspian would have never known about such things except that Miraz unwittingly hired a tutor for Caspian who was secretly half dwarf. As the story unfolded, the truth of Aslan was revealed.

Now while my faith is strengthened by Lewis’s Narnian tales, they are by no means the basis for it and I found myself back in God’s Word this morning. I flipped open my Bible to take in some random passage. Given the recent thoughts swimming through my head, it was with renewed freshness that I took in Hebrews 11 and the surrounding verses. The world’s onslaught against the Christian faith can cause me to tire and “shrink back” (Heb 10:39). But then I consider how faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1) and how it has been on vivid display through the ages in Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Sampson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets in the Old Testament (Heb 11) as well as countless others from the New Testament times to today.

This “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1a) testify to God’s faithfulness and relevance in all the ages. When I think of these witnesses, I am inspired to do just what Hebrews calls us to do – to “lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes upon Jesus” (Heb 12:1b-2a).

How brief a moment it takes for me to recall my entangling sin, “for I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me” (Ps 51:3). But one of the beautiful things about a new year is that we take this brief moment to reflect, lay aside encumbrances, gird our loins with truth (Eph 6:14), refocus our eyes on Jesus, and then move on into the new year.

By God’s grace may I be able to lay aside the bad, take up the good, and live for Him this year.

Bunk Bed Jumping

One of my standard to-do items over Christmas break is to tidy up the digital photos from the year. Well, it did not get done the last two years so I have been fighting through a lot of photos purging, purging, purging, and then purging some more. This is always an activity that should be done with CrazyMom held at bay. If there are twenty shots of the exact same scene she will deem them all worthy of archival since each infinitesimally different expression on a child’s face makes every photo have infinite value.

In going through the photos, I discovered the following photos from May of 2007 which I did not take.





When I asked CrazyMom about them, she laughed and said, "Well, there was adult supervision," conveniently omitting exactly who that adult was.

These photos really were a great find. Now whenever CrazyMom says, "I don’t think what you are doing right now with the kids is an appropriate indoor activity" I can say, "Yeah, kind of like bunk bed jumping."

I’m Not White!

For over a year our family has been listening to the Chronicles of Narnia on audio CDs. We normally listen when we are all in the car, but the other day when we pulled into the garage from church we were at a particularly good part of The Silver Chair. I agreed that we could listen a little more once inside.

As we started reconvening around the stereo inside, K.D. was anxious to get started.

"Come on, Dad! Start playing it!"

"We can’t start yet. Not everybody is here," I replied.

K.D. looked around. "There are two brown kids and two white kids. That’s fair. Start playing it, please!"

"Hey, who are you calling white?!?" Little Foot objected. "I’m not white, I’m tan!"

Family Christmas

For all of you who read the last post and felt a twinge of "Oh, we ought to sleep under the Christmas tree, too" I have just two words for you - forget it.

OK, I’m back now. Just as I wrote the words "forget it," Anna called out and CrazyMom and I dashed upstairs to find Anna about ready to vomit . . . again. CrazyMom is super fast and would have made it to the bathroom earning a perfect score of 10.0 for vomit control except that she ran Anna and herself full bore into a closed bathroom door. It sure is a bummer that the night light in the hall is not brighter. CrazyMom still scored an impressive 8.7 on the maneuver because she did not drop Anna and was somehow able to prevent any unwanted liquids from hitting the carpet. Unfortunately, most of it was inside of her sleeves. By the time I arrived on the scene (my dashing is clearly slower than CrazyMom’s dashing) Anna was standing in the bathroom as CrazyMom was whipping everything into shape.

"How are you doing, Anna?" I asked tenderly, knowing this is a difficult situation for anybody.

"I’m good," she said perkily unfazed by it all.

Anyway, as I was saying, forget it. Sure these are the things family memories are made of but the memories are things like your back hurting from trying to sleep on the couch, not sleeping because Anna is coughing the whole night through, not sleeping because Anna is throwing up, and not sleeping because when Anna throws up every kid wakes up. On the bright side, you get a much earlier start on opening presents.

Anna started out marginally OK this morning, but was fading fast. We called the doctor and they wanted us to come in ASAP because they were hoping to go home. That did not work for us since we were having our Christmas so we delayed, finished our gift exchanging, and then CrazyMom took Anna to urgent care.

Now I am certainly not glad that Anna was sick, but we had one fantastic time while mom was gone. We purchased four very sweet laser tag guns (my idea, obviously) and spent hours running all through the house playing laser tag. The great thing was that since CrazyMom had to leave right after the presents were opened there was no time for me to discuss with her what the house rules should be. This meant that I got to pick the house laser tag rules on my own. We started with some lame rules about keeping it to one floor and the like, but they soon were all thrown out and we were just left with "You can’t swing your gun and hit somebody" which the kids would never do, but it makes it sound like I had some rules. The only problem with the afternoon was that CrazyMom kept calling me on my cell phone to give me updates on Anna. I felt obligated to take the calls but in doing so I would give away my position in the house. Such is life, I suppose.

Shhh . . . Not a Creature is Stirring

CrazyMom and all of the kids are asleep now "under the tree." Traditionally our family sleeps in the family room alongside the Christmas tree on the eve before we open presents. Because of how our schedule is working out this year, tonight is our Christmas Eve.

"Dad, do we have to move all of the presents?" Anna asked me earlier today.

"Uh, no. We don’t need to move the presents," I replied, unsure as to why she would think that we needed to.

"But we need to," Anna insisted.

"Where do we need to move them to?" I asked.

Anna shrugged. She did not know where they needed to go. After a pause she said, "But how are we going to sleep under the tree?"

Then I got it. I explained to her that we were going to sleep in the same room as the tree, but that the whole family was not really going to sleep under the tree.

As I look at the kids sleeping now, it is remarkable how peaceful it is compared to the vivaciousness of our day. This peacefulness stands in stark contrast to several hours ago when we had our first ever family pillow fight. We started with a full family melee, but soon realized that it was better to do groupings by age, as you can see in the videos.





The kids had such a great time that when I suggested that we should do this every year at Christmas they objected. It was clear that they thought pillow fighting should be on the agenda far more frequently.

I should give credit where credit is due, however. The family pillow fight idea came from an email from Family Man Ministries where Todd talked about his family pillow fight. It sounded like a wonderful idea and so I told CrazyMom to pick up some extra pillow cases the next time she was at the thrift store. Tonight when we let the kids open a present early they were pretty excited . . .until they found the gift was a used pillowcase.

After the pillow fight we settled in for some reading before bed. When we finally turned out the lights, there was still quite a bit of squirming, coughing, and last minute runs for forgotten stuffed animals. But like the tide which is slowly but inevitably retreating, the commotion faded and kids drifted off to sleep one by one.

Ties that Bind

During a pre-church laptop session this morning I was trying to put the finishing touches on a Sunday school lesson when I noticed Buddy standing by my side. How long he had been there I could not say given how absorbed I was in my work. Buddy made no demands, seemingly content on watching me fly around on my laptop copying, pasting, reformatting, and printing.

Eventually Buddy said, "Dad, can you tie my tie?"

These words snapped me out of my work and I noticed for the first time the red plaid Christmas tie draped around his neck.

Why these words grab my attention stems from the fact that as a teacher, I occasionally have a privilege that is not mine - teaching a fine young man how to tie a tie. It almost always occurs when a student athlete faces their first game and the team is wearing a tie during the school day in anticipation of the game. Coming to my room with a tie in hand is usually an athlete whose father was not there in the morning to help them put it on, often because the father is no longer in the home.

I immediately rise taking off my tie trying to make it seem natural for me to help him. Standing side-by-side in the gray-walled computer science lab we do a half Windsor knot. I am pleased that I could be there for the moment. It is also a time where I recommit to myself to be there for my boys so that I can be the one who shares this distinctive father-son rite of passage.

Since Buddy is not old enough to tie a tie himself and I can’t do it facing him, I stood behind Buddy reaching around him to do the job. He was all smiles as I wrapped up and I also smiled for I could feel the positive vibes in the air that come from a moment of connectedness - an intimate moment as far as fathers and sons go. I smiled too because I was there to experience the ties that bind a father and a son.

Oh, Whoever You Are!

(Note: Enough of you have complained to my children about me not posting for awhile that you have won. They have diligently passed along your calls for a post pushing it to the top of my list. I have to admit that I am unsure about the power that you have over my family!)

It is common knowledge that parents, in the middle of trying to get a particular child’s attention, have a hard time coming up with the right name. I often find myself calling in rapid pseudo birth order many of our children’s names when trying to address a child.

If that was the worst that it was, I would not feel too bad. But . . .

I sometimes will say, "Buddy! Little Foot! K.D.! Oh, whoever you are! Pick up those toys right now!" I am desperately trying to curb the "Whoever you are!" because it is borderline derogatory. But in the heat of the moment after I have gone through three, four, or even five names and have not hit the right one yet, it just slips out.

If that was the worst that it was . . .

Tonight I hit a new low. I had the youngest two boys "helping" me fix the gas fireplace. I had to go settle a date-on-the-milk-jug issue (clearly a story for another post) and upon my prompt return, one of the boys had already disappeared.

"K.D.!," I yelled, a little agitated that he had run off.

"Yes," said K.D. who was standing a few feet in front of me probably wondering why I was calling so loud.

It did not register. In my mind the kid in front of me did not have the name I was calling.

"K.D.!" I yelled even louder, now a little more than agitated because I knew he could not have gotten that far yet and was probably ignoring me.

"I’m right here, Dad." K.D. said again. This time it registered. I was yelling the wrong name.

"Oops." I said.

"Little Foot!" I yelled next.

"Here I am!" Little Foot said. He was hiding three feet from me and pretty tickled because he could see what was going on the whole time.