Light Side: Family

Family Portraits

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 00:15:26 GMT

Well, I didn't expect the title above to end with an "s", but this afternoon daughter #2, nearly 12, surprised me with a little book she'd made about our family, with drawings and descriptions of each of us and then a drawing of all of us at the end. This goes along with another drawing I've been intending to put here, the one below where we're all in a line.

That long drawing was started a couple of weeks ago in church, but she only got through our fourth son before the sermon was over, so I asked her to finish it, which she thankfully did today. I assure you this drawing is not to scale - some of our kids are still shorter than me! Also, daughter #3 and her next older brother, who have been frequent characters in this blog, were somehow put out of order.

Actually, today's sort of an anniversary for Light Side, as it was two years ago on Father's Day when I finally got going with blogging, starting here with my personal blog. To this was soon added several more (see at right), as well as just recently a LiveJournal blog (aeropreneur) which I've been experimenting with using as a sort of personal journal, a different sort of personal blog from Light Side.

We Love Mommy

Sat, 19 May 2007 15:59:54 GMT

Well, I finally got around to taking a picture of a few of the things daughters #1, 2 and 3 gave Susan last Sunday for Mother's day. I think she had a good day.

Actually, there once was a giant cookie under the MotherCard ... Regarding the other two, daughter #3, our 6.5 year-old who made the bracelet at the bottom, is really into beads, and I think it's rubbed off on her older sister, who made the middle item.

Despite this photo, I can tell you that the vast majority of her gifts involved chocolate!

Echoes of Pachelbel

Sat, 05 May 2007 06:05:31 GMT

Today my oldest daughter got out of class early, and once home she began playing the piano. Usually when she's happy she'll start with the piano and later move to her guitar. When's she's not happy, she goes right to her room and cranks up the amp, and her little sister (see last post) will scurry out, actually none too upset to have a perfect excuse not to take her nap, or go to bed.

I wasn't surprised she was happy, since she's nearly done with her first year of college and is busy planning a trip for the summer. We're not used to having her away too much, but hopefully it will be a good experience for her. She's one of those people who need to have a definite summer break, something that always seemed like too much of a luxury to Susan and me when we were in college, either working or going to summer school.

I always enjoy listening to her play the piano (and guitar has gotten a lot better lately as well), but every time she plays the Pachelbel Canon I can't help thinking how amazing that is. It brings back a lot of memories. Way back when, besides designing her wedding dress (of course), Susan didn't have a whole lot of particulars in mind, but did request that Pachelbel be played at our wedding. While the Canon in D has become quite common at weddings now, in 1984 it wasn't, at least in Texas so far as I could tell.

Of course, whenever I hear that song I inevitably think of Susan and our wedding, and it amazes me now, twenty-two years later, to see our daughter playing it! It's like a living echo of the past, as songs are in general, which is perhaps why music tends to bring back so many memories.

The Canon in D is simple but not particularly easy. Both Susan's mother, who taught piano for years, and Susan, who took piano for years (did she have any choice?), tried to teach our daughter at one point, but it's only been in the last few year's that she's really taken a serious interest in piano, basically teaching herself. While she hits all the notes, this song brings out more than many any deficiencies in timing, dynamics and so on, but even with the imperfections, I still love hearing her play it.

Anyway, I went back to work, attacking (with little result) a stack of papers in the center of my desk (I know I'm having a particularly good day when I can also knock out some of the stuff around the edge). After a while I took a break, read a few blogs, only to find someone listened to Pachelbel to study for her finals! Well, it sure beats Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. That song also brings back strong memories, of a very different sort.

After finishing the posts on Microsoft and Yahoo, I just had a little time but wanted to take a short nap before having to pick up my son at a certain well-known dining establishment. Anyway, there was my daughter playing her guitar, practicing very quietly. I've long told her that the first mark of a good musician is the ability to practice quietly, and I think she knows what I'm talking about now.

This test particularly applies to guitarists and drummers. We had a professional drummer that lived across the street from us when I was a teen, and I was amazed how he could fill his living room with pro musicians, play all day, and never have any problems with our neighbors.

Anyway, tonight all this prompted me to start putting into iTunes some CDs Susan bought me a couple of years ago. Actually, it's two down, six to go. This 8-CD set, Guitar & Piano Masterpieces, won't win any awards for the greatest performance (though they are fine), but what I really like about it is the song selection, even if some are repeated on both instruments. A reviewer is right, though, that the guitar CDs have somewhat better sound than the piano discs.

I've been wondering for some time if there's any truth to the claim that baroque music will make you smarter. There's a Schlotzky's nearby that plays it all the time, and when I'm there, I can't help noticing it makes me feel smarter. Well, once the songs (some from that era) are all in my computer it should be much easier to run what might, at least, be a fairly enjoyable experiment. Maybe it will make my Mac smarter, too ...

Strawberry Shortbreak

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 03:47:17 GMT

Tonight was one of those times when, after I dropped the kids off at their various activities, I could definitely feel I was getting a break. Having a big family is nice in a lot of ways, but with a lot of kids there aren't too many times when you're not "on" as a parent, and so you really do appreciate the breaks you get.

For the past seven years or so, a wonderful friend from our church, Pat, would babysit the kids every week for us. When she started, our oldest was just 11 or so, and so it was about the only time Susan and I truly got a break. Now we've got several who can babysit, and none really that small, so we get to go out a lot more. Still, I can tell the difference since she stopped babysitting last fall, as they prepared to move out of state.

Tonight Susan and I took advantage of the short break we had to go out to eat, unquestionably our main indulgence, since neither of us much likes to cook. Our oldest daughter actually got the rare chance to have the house to herself for a while. It's amazing how different it seems when no one else is around, how quiet, how relaxing, how things stay put up when you put them up ...

Anyway, Susan and I went to Chipotle, and then got some shaved ice for dessert. At Chipotle, we always share a burrito, which actually makes it cheaper than most fast-food restaurants. I've read two or three times on somebody's blog about how they ate a whole burrito from Chipotle and couldn't hardly move afterward, so a half really is about enough, especially if dessert follows.

Early in the week I'd told Susan we'd go to her favorite shaved ice place, Juice Box over in Chinatown, and even though it slipped my mind, somehow amazingly she remembered. I must say that shaved ice has come a long way since the 80s, when it was red beans, green beans, or grass jelly for the topping. I kind of got to where I liked the red beans, but never the same as she does (or our daughter, who's much more adventurous about trying out different foods than I am)

Nowadays, there's all kinds of much more agreeable toppings, but we always end up getting strawberries, which is fine with me. Since we shared that, too, our whole bill for dinner and dessert was less than $15 - well worth it since she's happy and I feel a lot better after a pretty stressful week.

Thanksgiving in March

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 03:54:08 GMT

People (especially salesmen) talk about "Christmas in July", but I guess today I'm more in the mood for "Thanksgiving in March", or rather the spirit of it. We actually do have a turkey in the freezer ... I don't know when we'll get around to cooking it, but since it's one of my favorites, we don't just eat one once a year like a lot of folks.

Of course, today is St. Patrick's day, which is kind of cool for folks like me who are part Irish, though unlike in Boston, no one really celebrates it here. Some day I want to read a good history of Ireland and St. Patrick in particular. I've noticed a lot of books on Ireland at B&N; I guess it makes sense that there'd be a lot of books about a culture known for its literature. Today was also a friend of my daughter's birthday; she turned 13, no less. It's nice having a holiday birthday - in our family we've got two on Valentine's Day!

So while the holiday docket is full, I still find myself these past couple of days being very grateful for a lot of the things in my life, especially Susan. We've been married a long time now, but it keeps getting better. I know that's a cliche a lot of times, but I think it's true for folks who put the effort into the relationship.

I guess it's typical for there to be a lot of things, both trivial and important, to work out in the first decade or so of a marriage, but if you can get past that with both partners still actively "engaged" in making the marriage work, investing the large amount of time and energy it takes, then it likely will get better. I'm amazed, though, how often folks seem to think they don't need to make this investment, the idea that they can kind of put their marriage on the "back burner" because they're too busy with kids, career, or whatever.

I think Susan and I had an advantage over a lot of folks, in that we were always grateful for our relationship and treated it like it was something very special. Besides that, as Christians we knew it was going to be a fight to have a good relationship, that there were all kinds of forces, seen and unseen, threatening it. The folks who are all infatuated thinking they're the first to ever fall in love are sitting ducks, sadly.

Before we started college, some were saying it would never last. We didn't agree with that assessment, but we weren't complacent. It was miserable being apart, and eventually I made a lot of changes so we could be together. Later, she made a lot of changes to accommodate me and my goals. Sadly, students are taught career planning as being all about "me, myself and I", when in the real world it's all about work-life balance and building a team.

After many years of reflection on this, I realized that a lot of work-life balance really boils down to being willing to slow down. In the aerospace business you just don't rush through stuff, it's too important, and French food isn't served in a minute like McDonald's. In the same way, we have to be willing to slow down at times in order to get the important things right in our life, even though all the signposts in our frenzied society are telling us just the opposite.

There was a girl I knew just slightly in college, who I was told by a friend went on to the top medical research school in their combined MD/PhD program. I'm sure just one of those would have been pretty tough, med school itself is a sleepless marathon, so both seemed to really be pushing it. Eventually, I heard that she backed down to "just" one, it was too much. Even she had to learn to slow down, which I'm sure was good for her, though I wonder if she felt like a "failure"!

You have to slow down a lot when you have kids, and after a while watching the same folks pass you by over and over again, you realize you're not doing so bad after all (and wonder if they know what they're doing at all). Consistency is really the name of the game, and consistency can help you to see what's really valuable. A while back Susan mentioned to me how she thought it was neat that we had such a long history together.

That was nice because I had started thinking the same thing. It's one thing to be able to complete each other's sentences, but it's really cool when you discover your partner has made the same realization you had. There have even been a few times where Susan has voiced some unusual observation that I had myself concluded, but didn't know how I'd ever convey it to her. It's as if even in our thoughts we are companions on some long, out of the way journey, which is pretty special.

Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday, not mainly because of the food, but because I can see how important it is, especially us Americans, to give thanks for God's blessings, and because I love William Bradford's account of the pilgrims (Of Plymouth Plantation). Nevertheless, after our daughter Audrey died at birth, the day after Thanksgiving, I actually wondered if maybe it would ruin the holiday for me, that I'd need to celebrate it another time. Next year is a leap year, so it will still be a few more years before Thanksgiving lands on her birthday.

"Counting our blessings" may seem like some quaint practice, but it's actually good defense, both spiritually and mentally. I've read a number of successful business people discuss how they viewed gratefulness as a key that opened up a lot of blessing. Even Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, made learning the value of a dollar one of the first chapters in his autobiography (Made in America). I guess the idea was that if someone would waste a dollar, then they'd just as easily waste a whole bunch of dollars. If you're not grateful for what you already have, then no amount will really make you satisfied.

I thank God for Susan, I thank God for our family. It's been a long haul, an awful lot of work, a lot of stress at times, but my view has always been that you only go through life once, so you might as well go for it. We have, and we are, and the "we" makes it a lot more fun.

More Escapades ...

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 03:02:39 GMT

I suppose I could come up with a more creative title for the continuing saga of life in a big family ... Actually, I did have an idea ... my grandmother was a big Louis L'Amour fan, and managed to get my younger brother hooked on his westerns as well. He's got nearly a bookcase full of them now, so maybe I could just borrow from all those titles! Or maybe from Star Trek ... "The Trouble with Tribbles" comes to mind ...

Anyway, we actually have a pretty sophisticated operation going on around here, though it probably is lost on the average visitor, who is, in any case, likely about the same age as son #5, soon to turn 10. This morning I overheard just his half of the following exchange, with his younger brother (see earlier post):

"Why are you crying?!!" ... "It's nearly 12 o'clock, you should know better than to expect hot water this late after everyone else has taken their bath!" ... "Well, one minute of hot water is better than thirty minutes of cold water - you should have gotten out a long time ago!" ... "Why are you staying in there so long if it's just cold water?!"

Now lest you think we haven't done anything about this earth-shattering dilemma, let me assure you that just last year we went and replaced our aging (and ~~dripping~~ leaking) water heater with a nice, new bigger one, about as big as they come. But nothing is quite that simple around here, where folks have been trained not to do laundry or run the dishwasher until about 11 am. By 11:30, though, you're on your own, and the kitchen and washing machine are much closer to that water heater.

There's a lot of things like that, where a hidden but careful coordination goes on behind the scenes. The fact is, we would have hit most capacity constraints years ago without that. When we do invest in a bigger capacity, we try to go for as big as we can get without getting out of bounds. Sometimes this is a judgment call, such as when we bought our Express van a couple of years ago.

For years I had debated 12 vs. 15 passenger, but we finally went with 12, and I'm glad we did, every time I back our van out. Lately I've noticed that almost every 15-passenger has a dent in the driver-side rear door, so I guess 15 is just a little out-of-bounds, and would never fit in our garage, though we managed to (barely) squeeze our 12-passenger into our garage when Hurricane Rita was threatening.

Lately I've been wondering what we're going to do about parking capacity, as more of our teens start driving. Somehow some folks seem to think they "own" the street in front of their house, but I hope we can all get along. The pastor across the street has adult daughters, and a 15-passenger van, which take up most of the space, but we get along great with them.

Plan ... Re-Plan ... Repeat

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 02:25:24 GMT

It seems like lately that our lives are just a constant exercise in planning and re-planning. I got a whiff of this about 5 or 6 years ago, when our oldest daughter got involved with one of the teen activities in our homeschool group. They had a big project to work on, which required a lot of meetings, but the schedules were constantly changing.

This apparently was de rigeur for teens (many of whom were old enough to drive themselves, I guess), but it was way too much for us. It was a lot just to fit extra stuff into our schedules, and then to have the times constantly changing was just impossible, so she had to quit that group.

Fast-forward half a decade, and now we've got 5 teens, plus the younger ones, with multiple activities, work schedules, home school for 8, college schedule for our oldest, etc., etc., etc.!!! I won't say I didn't know this was coming, but I'm still fairly surprised by how constantly our well-honed plans must be amended.

I guess there's something about teen's activities that requires a different kind of schedule flexibility than that needed with small children. I haven't figured out what the difference is yet, exactly. Maybe when I do I'll find a way to handle this better, but for now, it seems that Susan and I must re-plan our schedule at least 4 or 5 times a day.

Perhaps part of the difference is the wide variety of things with teens that can prompt a change. With a baby or small child, there are the several usual suspects. These can pop up at rather inconvenient times, but there's a fairly predictable set of things - diaper, fussiness, boredom (not to be underestimated), colds, bumps & scrapes, etc. - that after a while a parent kind of gets adroit at tackling with some degree of finesse.

Teens, on the other hand, have their own plans, which you often don't remember, though they insist they told you about. Plus there's one little extra detail to contend with: they're connected to the outside world, and there always seems to be at least one end of that connection that's hopelessly bored (see above warning). So plans seem to change almost in real-time: you pick them up from activity A, expecting to take them to do B (followed by C, D, E and F), but there's a fast and furious phone conversation going on, so you end up diverting to G (followed by H, I, J and K).

And somehow Susan and I are supposed to keep all these plans in our heads for all 11 of us! While, amazingly, we've never accidentally left any of our kids behind somewhere, I've resigned myself to the reality that I'm just going to forget some of their (or really my) "appointments". Even remembering/reviewing it the night before, it's just too much to always keep track of when I'm busy trying to get something done the next day. I guess it takes a kind of mental adroitness that I'm still developing.

In a way it makes you appreciate the simplicity of having younger children. They've got their plans, too, but they're usually longer term - "When I grow up, I want to be ___________" It's too bad so many kids seem to forget these plans somewhere in their teenage years.

Of course, sometimes a little modification of plans may be necessary, though I'm really reluctant to shoot down their dreams. My youngest son, shortly before he turned 8, told me one day that he'd gotten his life all figured out:

"Dad, I know what I'm going to do. After I retire from being a professional baseball player, I'm going to go to school to be a brain and eye doctor."

Yeah, who could argue with a plan like that? I mean, when it comes to paying for med school, a Scott Boras baseball contract might be a pretty good financial aid package! Of course, it's kind of like that Sidney Harris cartoon where in the middle of the blackboard the equations part and it says "then, a miracle occurs", but otherwise it sounds like a great plan!

Recent Escapades ...

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 01:15:40 GMT

My 9-year old son and his older sister are in a heated argument, so I go to break it up. They calm down, and then their younger brother walks in from the garage with a plastic baseball bat. His brother tells him, "Put that back. We won't need it after all."

...

The cat wasn't behaving and Susan was mad at her, so I said something about how I wondered if the cat was scared of Susan. This same son remarks, "I don't think the cat's scared of you any more. She just doesn't like you."

...

We were in church a few months back and taking communion. Now in the church I grew up in, we got served these little flat squares of hard bread, but our present church uses a nice home-made loaf of leavened bread. After our pastor breaks the bread in half, we file forward in two lines. Since we sit in the back (where would you sit with a bunch of kids?), our kids are often near the end of the line.

A lot of times the bread is quite nice, but occasionally there are "technical difficulties" and this one Sunday the loaf was unusually small, maybe it was frozen and not baked fully, or "cooked in the squat" as Zig Ziglar might say, which meant it was also rather hard and difficult to tear a piece off of.

Well, anyway we all managed to tear a little piece off until my two youngest sons (see above) came up, last in line. I had already sat down by then, and watched as the youngest tried to tear off a piece, and then decided to just take the whole diminished half loaf, which wasn't much bigger than the pieces he normally took! He walked back to the pew quite proud of himself. But then I had a momentary parental anxiety attack as I thought his brother, last in line, was going to just take the other half.

Thankfully, he didn't, and I didn't have to send him back to the front so our pastor and elder could get a piece, too!

...

Actually, this happened early this year, after our second son got a new eMac with OS 10.4, and he could run the newer iTunes that worked with the iTunes store. He comes to me and asks if he could use my credit card. "I thought you had an iTunes (gift) card - how much is it?" It turns out he was short about 8 cents. He hadn't factored in sales tax, and he was missing not just one, but two whole songs because of the $1.08 sales tax or whatever it was! I told him I wasn't sure if I even could charge 8 cents on my credit card (this is a problem - micropayments - that should have been fixed for the internet a long time ago, but I digress).

Anyway, he was pretty upset about it, but I told him to just forget about it, or else wait and use the balance with the next card. Well, I asked the other day and he's spent about $100 more on iTunes since, so I guess he's gotten over it. I wonder, though, if I should have just charged the 8 cents!

Jr. Political Hack

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:19:39 GMT

Though I've known some guys who could talk politics all day, it's one of the surest ways to put Susan to sleep. Usually she'll fall asleep, wake up a few minutes later, ask me what I was talking about, and then say, "I HATE politics." Sometimes I wonder if such a view makes her eminently qualified to run for office, along with the fact that everyone always thinks she agrees with them, even when she doesn't.

On the other hand, as the youngest of nine, it shouldn't be very surprising that our nearly 6 year old daughter is developing some political aptitude. I do get surprised, though, by some of the things she says. Here's a recent sampling:

The other day something on the radio got us talking about Senators. I told her every state had two Senators, and then asked her how many Texas had, California, Mexico, Louisiana, France, etc. After a while she caught on (sort of). So then I asked her, "Do you know what Senators do?" Her immediate reply: "Umm, do they sin?"

Later she was wearing pink pants and, in one more confirmation that the information in my head is filed alphabetically, we soon began discussing the Pink Panther, and then cat burglars. Seeking an example, I told her about a crook who had tried breaking into a school from a high window but broke his leg. She asked what happened. I told her he went to jail. She objects, "I thought a school and a jail are the same thing."

Last night on 60 Minutes, Andy Rooney was talking about all the different White House assistants. He mentioned a position, paying $30,000, called "Gift Analyst" or something like that, and went on discussing a number of other positions and their pay. I asked my daughter, "How about that job where you get to open all the presents?" She says, "I think I'd rather have that job that pays $149,000."

Yeah, she's got some political smarts!

A Very Good Year Over All

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 16:51:59 GMT

It seems like one of the "privileges" of adulthood is that time flies by like a subway train, and so a year is gone before you know it. 2005 is no exception, yet it's a good idea to stop and take stock of the year's successes and disappointments (which is, by the way, the idea behind a book I just started reading, Your Best Year Yet, which I may write more about as I see how it works out).

For me workwise, 2005 has been something of a turning point. A lot of things have had to be put on the back burner for years as we went through nearly two decades of having a family of small children and all the extra work and interruptions that comes with it (basically a million little things that must be done; thankfully we haven't had many crises along the way).

Paul and Sarah Edwards, the work at home experts, say it's tough to have a home office with children under 6 around. After experience with a lot of kids, I'd have to agree that 6 is indeed pretty much the dividing line, even when they are at home and not away at school (which is the case for us all the time). While we might still have one more, for the past year we've been down to just one, a now five year old, below that line, and I can tell the difference. I'm getting to a lot more stuff than in years past.

One of the biggest frustrations I've had with work is that there were basically four main areas (administration, research, product development, and marketing) that I've had to cover with my work, and there never seemed to be enough time to get to all of them. I ran across a questionnaire for business owners one time that asked how much time I spent on marketing, and actually had a choice, "No time for marketing". Whoever wrote that knew something about what it was like to be a small business owner.

Administration (accounting, taxes, fulfillment, etc.) got done because it had to. Research got done because that's what I'm really good at, which means I can get a lot done in just a modest number of hours a week (like writing, I'm not sure anyone could do it well 40+ hours/week anyway). Product development and marketing, however, were poor stepchilds towards which I could only rarely devote much time, until this year. Now I'm busy doing lots of stuff on the web, with more planned for next year (maybe I'll cover next year's goals in a later post).

2005 has also been a key year for Susan and our homeschooling. On the one hand, it has been the "crunch" year, the only one where she will be teaching all nine at the same time for the whole year. Next year our oldest will start college, and we'll have 3 in college 3 years from now (a whole different sort of challenge). Our two oldest are both well into physics and calculus now, so we've pretty nearly got our entire K-12 curriculum worked out, which makes the job of teaching a lot simpler.

I mentioned previously that while we haven't tried to accelerate our kids' school, that it was happening somewhat with the younger ones where the curriculum was well established, and this has in fact become increasingly evident over the course of this year, which is reassuring and gives us some padding if Susan had to take a break for some reason.

Another source of reassurance over the past year, especially for Susan, has come from their test scores. Several times we considered doing standardized testing, but were always so busy and looking for something to toss that we finally passed on the idea. Now that the oldest are nearing college, we've begun getting their PSAT and SAT scores, which have been quite good and a big reassurance to Susan. Seeing most of them read constantly and doing many activities, I was never concerned about their school, but it's harder for Susan to have such confidence and so it's a huge help, at those times where she's really having to put out to teach, to know she's doing a good job.

Of course, 2005 has been a big year for our kids as well, because they continue to grow up so fast. I keep telling them how things are going to be a lot different in just a few years. They're still all at home, unattached, and having home school, but college is just around the corner (though we expect most will still live at home, to save money and for other reasons). I suppose boyfriends and girlfriends are also looming in the not too distant future, though so far they don't seem too interested in that!

As for disappointments, I'd have to say the biggest is that it remains hard to keep up with home repairs and storage. We are constantly working to make more room with storage enhancements, and our house isn't all that small, but with two offices and desks for nine kids and a school area (and kids who all want to have room for their own activities), it's easy to get behind. When we start getting behind on storage, the stress level goes up rapidly. Everything gets so much harder when you can't readily access your tools and supplies, whether it's in a kitchen or a home office. With so many people at home, there's also a lot of wear and tear and so there's constant pressure to devote more time to keeping everything repaired.

For years, we were a family with a bunch of small children. In a span of just a few years we are now rapidly turning into a family of teenagers. Just fifteen more years and they'll all be adults! (I guess I've gotten old enough to where 15 years doesn't seem so far away, anymore) Well, time does fly, but I'm glad we've had a good year in 2005, and am really looking forward to 2006.

T + 21 Years ... and Counting!

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 17:33:31 GMT

Yesterday, Susan and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary. As I noted before, she really isn't very good at remembering dates, etc. so I actually end up having to remind her what day it is. She knows it's coming up, but she's generally pretty low-key about it.

While in some ways having a pre-Christmas wedding is OK, i.e. mainly in that it's easier to get some relatives to come since they can make it a holiday visit, in a lot of ways it's problematic, at least for celebrating anniversaries. On our honeymoon we went to the Grand Canyon (our first white Christmas, not repeated until last year) and California, which worked pretty well, but with generally cold weather and one of the shortest days of the year, a short trip is not very practical, even if you could find someone to babysit.

We have a wonderful friend from our church who has come regularly to babysit the kids for a number of years, but she's generally out of town over the holidays. Nevertheless, in recent years the older children were old enough to babysit, so it's been easier to go out for a little while to celebrate.

What we've found is that it's still hard to find a nice place to go. Here in Houston everyone likes to eat out a lot even at regular times, and close to Christmas it seems like the whole population is out shopping and no one wants to cook. The last two years we've tried to pick a nice, romantic restaurant, nicer than we'd usually go to, but both times there have been big lines and it was very noisy and crowded.

This time we decided to change our plans and go somewhere else. We found a nice place farther from the mall which was not so busy, so it worked out OK, and we'll save the more expensive place for another time. I guess the best plan if your anniversary is like ours is to make it simple, since everything is already so busy this time of the year.

Two Years Later

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 04:18:49 GMT

Two years ago today, our daughter Audrey died shortly before birth. Apparently her cord got pinched for too long towards the end. Amazingly she looked great, except she wouldn't move, at all. Whenever our other 3 daughters ask who is the prettiest (which thankfully isn't too often), I tell them - truthfully - it was probably Audrey. Oh, well.

I can tell you that even if you have a large family, it's still a bummer to have a baby die. Of course, our other children were a huge comfort to Susan and me, so I know it must be really tough for those parents who lose their first child. The younger children weren't with us when she died, so I was really concerned and praying about how I would tell them. Thankfully God helped me think of how to explain what happened in a way they could understand, and they seemed to take it pretty well, though it was clearly harder on the girls.

In any case, it supposedly takes two years for someone to get over a major upset or change, and that seems about right. Susan told me a couple of weeks ago that she thought she was going to be OK about Audrey's birthday coming up. Last year, I was pretty apprehensive that she'd be upset, but it wasn't too bad. I failed to consider that Susan's pretty bad about remembering birthdates and stuff like that anyway, which some folks have a hard time understanding. It doesn't really bother me, because she is perhaps the best gift-giver I know, which more than makes up for it.

Actually, it was the thought that we'd be having a birthday party for Audrey tonight that was most disturbing. One year old is a big deal for first-time parents, but for the child it's really the second birthday that they begin to enjoy it. So we always tried to have a lot of fun for the second birthday, especially the girls, buying them a lot of little presents like "beauty" sets, etc. (but pulling out anything small enough to choke on). It's so fun at that age because anything makes them happy.

One of the things that happens with something like this is you suddenly discover how many other people have been through a similar experience. I guess some people don't like to talk about things, but I'm one of those people for whom talking helps me figure out things (maybe why I like blogging). Anyway, I was pretty surprised when I realized that the day she died, we had four women visiting who had themselves lost their first child. I'm sure those were painful memories rekindled for them, but I tend to think it's better to acknowledge things like that than try to forget them.

Okay, this really isn't such a light topic for "Light Side", but then I'm certainly one of those Pollyanna-like people who always look for something good to come out of a bad situation. I know a lot of people are really annoyed by an attitude like that, and a simplistic hopefulness probably is naive. But despite the loss, there is something we can do. We can ask God to bring a blessing out of something sad that has happened. It won't erase what happened, but it can help a loved one's life, however short, to be truly meaningful in some way.

Space Vehicle

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 18:50:49 GMT

Well, this week we finally went for it and took advantage of GM's employee discount promotion. We got an Express 12-passenger van, which actually is about the ideal size for us. Although the promotion lasts 3 more weeks, I suspect GM is running out of 2005 inventory. As far as I could tell from their BuyPower website, we got the last big Chevy passenger van within a 200 mile radius.

I'll probably write more about how things go with it later; at least the buying experience was very pleasant. That used to be the worst part of getting a new car!

For years our "big" vehicle has been an Astro, which is sort of a slightly larger minivan. It was good for hauling a lot of small children around, but surprisingly poor at hauling stuff, in my opinion. Anyway, as our kids grew we just outgrew the Astro. Minivans are great for hauling kids (and some of them for hauling stuff) but they don't do such a good job with teens and adults. If you've ever seen a Caravan full of adults, sagging under the load, you know what I mean.

In our case, we've got more kids than will fit in any minivan, but it wasn't usually a problem, since we could fit most of them with one parent or just take two cars (we don't take very many big vacations). A couple of years ago, though, that started getting harder, and this year it seemed like the Astro was suddenly way too small. We could hardly fit half of them in there, comfortably. It wasn't my imagination - Susan's been taking them for checkups and it turns out at least 3 of our boys grew 4 inches this past year!

Last Weekend/Father's Day

Sat, 25 Jun 2005 13:26:57 GMT

I started this blog last Sunday, on Father's Day, but due to technical difficulties didn't get to put in the entries I intended to. Actually, Father's Day was great for me this year. Susan always seems to come up with a special gift for me, not some "formula gift" (e.g. no ties; in fact, I thought Radio Shack's ad was great this year: "Skip the cologne and go straight to Radio Shack, where we have what Dad really wants").

While it's hard to buy me something like a tie because I'm so picky, Susan got the kids to each contribute something (I don't know how much) and she took me to lunch Sunday at the Black Eyed Pea. It was quite good. While we left the kids at home, it seemed like no one else did. There were even kids banging on their plates with their spoons! I guess they had a good Father's Day, too.

She was originally planning to do both lunch and a movie Sunday afternoon, but I didn't want to leave the kids cooped up all afternoon so we shifted the movie to Saturday night. So finally last Saturday we got around to seeing the last (?) Star Wars episode, over 28 years after the first one came out. We both thought it was one of the better ones; Susan especially seemed to like it, although I thought the river-Styx-styled lava-flying/falling-everywhere scene was a bit much.

Susan is unusual in that she is very pro-space but not very focused on the technology, etc., that most people gravitate toward. So I didn't really realize how much she was looking forward to seeing Star Wars this time. A few years ago, there was a pretty good exhibit here of SW stuff, and she complained that we didn't spend enough time on it- unusual for a museum trip, because I like to read all the signs, but I think I was more focused on the models and she was on the costumes. She actually went back, with the kids, a second time.

So it's funny because while Susan isn't really into technology herself, she appreciates a lot of it and so often gets me nice tech gifts (though she usually tells me to go pick out the specific one). Some years back she read an article, in a women's magazine, about some woman who had bought her husband a Palm and how he had really liked it. So she decided to get me one for Christmas. I had been thinking about getting one for a long time, but needed a push. Now I use it constantly.

A couple of weeks ago, she announced she had decided what she was going to get me for Father's Day (I really wasn't expecting anything, but these announcements do get my attention nowadays). I generally have no idea what she's going to come up with, but I know it won't be soap on a rope. Anyway, this time she told me she knew I had been wanting to get Wolfram's big book (A New Kind of Science) but had been putting it off (it's not a light read, and I do have a lot of other books to read). So she was going to get it for me, and one night we marched down to B&N and bought it, which was very nice. It was a truly cool present (Okay, cool for her buying it, nerdy for me wanting it - certainly not your typical "formula gift").