A Slower Pace

This morning I woke up early so I could make breakfast for my wife. I have the next few days off work to enjoy our company, my wife’s birthday, and Father’s Day. I stayed up late last night to make a vacation picture collage as a present (along with the stuff the kids and I bought her). We have a wall with picture collages of all of our family vacations. We still hadn’t done one for our 2004 vacation which so far has been our favorite. I wish I could have done it with the kids but with me working I never have time alone with them without my wife being around. So a late night creative arrangement was the answer — without kids unfortunately.

My son had his second T-ball practice last night. He did much better than his first practice but I will need to get out in the yard to practice with him. I am just waiting for my back to get better before I get into full speed mode again.

With my folks here, I spent some time with my dad last night showing him how to use the zero turn riding mower. It really is fun once you pick up the hang of it. And after a few minutes of him learning not to correct his overcorrections, he began to get the gist of it. It was cool to see the engineer side of him slowly pick up the operations of how it maneuvered and operated.

A Cincinnati trip for birthday lunch at the Cheesecake Factory is on order today. It is my wife’s favorite restaurant and grandma and grandpa will be babysitting. An then this evening, the electrician is showing up to finalize the electrical for the pool pump and motor. Then all I have to do is the chemicals and we are ready to swim. The kids are chomping at the bit since it was installed early last week. Patience, young Jedi warrior. Patience.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

The Michael Jackson news just flabbergasted me. OJ, Robert Blake, Michael Jackson. Kill your ex, kill your wife, molest little boys. What does a celebrity have to do to get put away? Oh, excuse me…..Pam Anderson is safer because Tommy Lee spent a few months in the slammer. Guess he didn’t have enough money to evade jail. Anyway, if this world wasn’t going to hell in a handbasket before, I am officially putting us on notice that we are now.

On the bright side, since I am no longer a California resident, I didn’t have to pay for that trial. Woohoo!!!!!

Nothing else I put in this post can make up for the hopelessness of the above statement so I am stopping now.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

I have been taking it easy this weekend to give my back a chance to heal up and feel better. It was a perfect excuse to play some Xbox with my son and sit back to enjoy the NASCAR race at Pocono. To enjoy the race, I made some of my homemade salsa — actually, it’s more like pico de gallo. And I was able to use some of our own home grown cilantro. It’s my goal to make my homemade salsa with everything from our garden, but most of it isn’t ready yet. However, the cilantro has been growing great so I cut some. It is very exciting for me to grow some of our own food and I look forward to much more of it this year and in the coming years when our garden and mini-orchards mature.

Since my wife has returned from her trip to CA, we have been easing into the homeschooling routine. Since learning is an on-going process (for all of us) we have decided to homeschool year round. It will be a little less formal during the summer. But we want to keep the momentum and discipline throughout the year, not just the calendar school year. So my wife and I got a kick last night when we got the kids on a learning kick last night for about 3 hours. Here we were on a Saturday night and my girls were studying spelling words while my wife read and worked on numbers with my pre-school son. It was even more gratifying when, in church this morning, the pastor used one of my daughter’s spelling words in the sermon and she picked up on it and smiled at my wife. #1 – that means she is learning and #2 that means she is listening to the sermon. My wife and I were both very proud of this new venture in learning for us. It will continue to be an adventure with some peaks and some valleys. But all in all we believe it is worth it.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net