A Slower Pace

Good morning! This Kentucky sunrise literally just happened minutes ago and is still unfolding before my eyes. Today is our God and family day and I can’t wait to soak it all up. It is going to be spectacular. I hope the same for you.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

My oldest daughter came up to me this evening and asked me for something she’s never asked before. No, she didn’t ask for the keys to the car. She didn’t ask if she could date a boy. She didn’t even ask for money.

She asked for a prayer request. This caught me off guard and I am pleased to abide by her request for so many reasons. Because she felt open enough in our parent-teen relationship to communicate such a touching request. Because she feels that my spirituality is something that can add positively to the situation. That she has a faith that is active and a part of her, not just on Sunday mornings. All the way around I was very pleased with my daughter.

And now the request — a classmate of her’s, Dalton, lost his dad today. Thankfully, the family is strong and believes in Christ as their Savior so his dad is finally home. However, that does not ease the pain he or his family is going through right now.

I am getting on my knees. If you can in your part of the world and at your time, please join me in praying for this family.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

Last Tuesday’s post was about a local cyclops buck that we spotted on the way home from Scouts with only one of his antlers. It is the season for the males to drop or “shed” their antlers. And because it is hunting the kids can do, we enjoy going out back and seeing if we can find any. Our shed hunting escapade last year was only successful in the fun category — we actually didn’t find any antlers.

However, this year was different. My son and I had been out for about 45 minutes and were making our way back towards the pond. We were along the property line where there is an old farm barbed wire fence. The deer path there is heavily trafficed and there was evidence of deer — tracks, droppings, beddings and tree scrapes.

As I went up the path to continue scouting, my son nonchalantly says “Here’s one”.

He picked it up and we both excitedly looked it over. We then scanned 20-30 feet up and down the path hoping to find the other one that the deer rubbed off. Unless it is still on him. And maybe that is what we saw last Tuesday.

Maybe we should give it back to him so he has a complete set. Anyway, it was our first deer shed find and very cool.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

My oldest daughter turned 17 years old today. I am so blessed at the beautiful, talented, thoughtful, God serving, young lady she is blooming into.

Happy birthday, R! I love you and am so proud of you!

…..Dad

I have come across a really nice parenting web site that gives great guidance on teens and your relationship with them. Below is a recent quote from one of their periodic emails:

Time and stability are needed commodities as the teen works through their issues. They need the steadying influence of their parents, who can help them sort it all out. It’s no time to lessen the boundaries or back down on the rules. Having those in place will provide the structure the teen needs, though they may seem to want just the opposite.

Go check them out at http://www.parentingtodaysteen.com

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

This morning when I woke up, this was awaiting me at the breakfast table. A homemade card. How cool is that?

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

Today was a beautiful day and K had a great idea for us to have family star night. The sky was clear and the evening was shaping up perfectly. As the sun receded, we grabbed quilts from our custom assorted collection and threw them down on the freshly mown lawn.

The stars slowly came out and we also took to counting airplanes, watching the bat fly above us, and looking for satellites. As normal, I pointed out the big dipper and a few other celestial objects. Although the stars were not brilliant because the sun handed off the radiance to the full moon which popped over the treeline. We marveled at our moonshadows and the night slowly evaporated as we came in and went to bed.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

Our lives are quite hectic this last week and into the foreseeable future. Last weekend we had a super busy weekend with a birthday, a church council meeting, the Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby, evening cake and ice cream, and basement work. This weekend has been no different with my older daughter going to a play last night, some basement furniture shopping and dinner by the rest of us, an all day tae kwon do tournament for my son, and a church confirmation mentor sponsorship by me and my oldest daughter this evening. And on top of that I fly out of here early tomorrow morning to go back to corporate for some systems training and meetings. So blog posting has taken an obvious back seat — and will probably continue to do so.

One post that I did not write was from last week’s Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. Even though I was in scouts from a wee lad to high school, I never participated in one of these events. Not only was this my son’s first PW Derby, it was also mine. I had also heard that some people participating can be quite hard core competition-wise. So we approached the building of his car with casual craftsmanship. In addition, I had taken my scale over to the pre-race setup so we couldn’t even build the car to the specifications of 5 ounzes. We did pay pretty good attention to paint though. My son thought up the paint scheme and I laid out the tape so his painting lines would be perfect. He spent Saturday morning (the PW derby was at 5pm) laying on coats of paint interchanging with my wife’s hair dryer to speed up the whole process. By the time we had to leave for my noon church council meeting we had a pretty cool looking ride.

So fast forward through church administration business and you have us speeding to the scout event. We went down to “the pits” to weigh our creation and make any tweaks. It turns out our weight was WAY off — only 3.25 ounzes. A scout leader took us under his wing (thanks Doug!) and gave us a few pointers to adding weights and positioning them for maximum effect. We added them to the side to make them look like side exhaust pipes — pretty cool if you ask me! From there we took the car up and checked in with a few minutes to spare.

The heats and races became an all evening event and my son’s car would come down the track incline in 1st or 2nd but the lead would taper off as the other cars’ momentum put him in average 3rd and 4th places. It was cool to see all the other cars — the creativity in looks and themes and the creativity in competitiveness for speed.

The scouts did a good job of having lots of trophies for all the different categories and dens. And for those who didn’t get a trophy, they received a ribbon. I thought that was pretty decent and in the spirit of the scouts. However, my son was a little upset as we left and go in the car. He was crying that he didn’t get a trophy. I consoled him but also wanted this to be a good learning lesson for him. You see, he (we) didn’t put much effort into the car — surely not enough to compete on the level that others were there for. It was a fun event but I explained that not everyone could get a trophy. The reasons trophies are cool is because they stand for something special. If they gave everyone a trophy, they wouldn’t be as special. I told him that if he wanted a trophy that bad, that he had to work harder to earn it — either by being more creative and making an extra special cool car or by researching ways to make a car faster down the track. Those options on the road to trophy-dom require effort, commitment, discipline and hard work. It really depended on how bad he wanted a trophy.

This little speech did little to sooth his hurt feelings but, again, this is a really good lesson to learn early in life. Trophies and everything else in life that is special just aren’t handed to you. You have to work hard and earn them. So I used last week’s lesson as a motivator for his tae kwon do tournament.

Right now my son is more passionate about tae kwon do than scouting (which makes sense because he’s been doing it a year longer). While I think he could have spent more time this week practicing, he did spend time going through his practice breaks, speaking the descriptive part to the judges, and working on his moves. During the tournament, he disregarded our suggestions prior to his breaks (bow before the judges, speak loudly and clearly). While I think he did pretty good, he could have done better with more practice and open ears. He did not place for the break competition. So when the sparring competition came up, I reminded him of his lack of listening to our suggestions. This time I told him that when he sparred he needed to concentrate on blocking and attacking (and NOT to run away or back up as he has done in class). He apparently listened to this because he won his first match. His second match was with a larger kid who had a kick move…..but that was it. My son got to where he could block it and did get a point or two but never took control of the match once he neutralized the other opponent’s threat. He finally got tired and missed a few blocks on the opponent’s kick and they landed scoring points. He lost the match but I was proud of him for his effort. He ended up getting second place for his kids division and received a medal for his efforts. I congratulated and hugged him letting him know how proud I was of him. However, I also took the opportunity later on in the afternoon to equate the results with the efforts he put forth in comparison with the Pinewood Derby. I also told him that he probably could have won the second match if he had practiced more as I had suggested during the week. All in all he was happy with his silver medal. And I am glad that we can learn the lesson of losing and winning from different perspectives. It is an important life lesson.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

This is a pretty funny story — but you’re gonna have to do some linking to get the full effect.

First, go here — http://llamabutchers.mu.nu/archives/164253.php

UPDATE: seems that link might not work — try this…..

It’s a pretty funny utilization of Flash animation — the theme song to “The Llama Butchers” blog.

Anyway, I played it for the kids…..for about a half hour. It’s an addictive tune that sticks in your head like one of those annoying songs that once it gets in there replays through your mind the rest of the day. The liked the high pitched voice, the random lyrics and pictures and the funny duck. Again, go to the link, watch the animation and listen to the tune — this’ll all make more sense.

So I’m at work today and I get a cell phone call from the wife. She took the kids, her sis-in-law and niece to the Louisville Zoo. It seems that they have llamas there so the kids all started singing the song. Then they noticed the pond in the pen…..AND IT HAD DUCKS IN IT! They were so excited and were yelling “LLAMA, LLAMA, DUCK!!!!!”.

It made for a nice break to my conference call. I laughed.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot com

Last night I had a date — not with the wife, but with my youngest little girl. In homeschooling, one of the motivational tools my wife uses is “10 marbles”. Each kid has a jar with their name on it. They earn marbles by “getting caught being good” — sharing with one another, helping around the house, getting all their homeschooling done without reminding or complaining, etc. They can also get marbles taken away by fighting, not listening, whining, etc. It is behavioral driven and when they get 10 marbles they can trade them in for stuff. My daughter’s trade in today was a pizza dinner alone with dad. That’s pretty cool! Another time she traded them in it was an afternoon fishing with dad.

So tonight after I returned home from work, she and I headed out to Pizza Hut and sat down at the checkerboard table where we could play “chess” with the salt and pepper while we waited for our meal. It was some nice time spent with her and she even enjoyed (or endured) the Autozone/WalMart side trips after. I think she just enjoys special time with dad which I appreciate.

By the way, Autozone has an oil change special — 5 quarts of any regular Pennzoil product with a Fram oil filter for $10.99. For those of you that do your own oil changes, it’s a great bargain. I picked up enough for my Suburban as well as my wife’s.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net