all is well. God is good. I am blessed. I am grateful.

i have been having troube getting my D&D character profile picture to show up in my character sheets. Life is rough sometimes :-)

The Calm One

so in the past few months i have had a third son. it's amazing to me how each and every child has a different personality right from the very beginning. #3 is very calm. i'm sure his calm has a lot to do with my being more calm about the process of being a parent. let's face it, we've done this twice before. it is easier now than it was the first time. we know what to expect and we feel more confident than we did. and i am so in love with my wife. i remember how when #1 was born i had this sort of surge of love for her and again when #2 was born. i had almost forgotten it. it's pretty simple i guess. she's amazing. she makes babies. like a superhero or a wizard. and then she feeds them and cleans them and cares for them and loves them. it's just amazing. so then i'm all re-in-love with my wife and it's pretty amazing too. and this little boy, #3, he is the cutest, funniest, calmest baby i've ever been around. no worries. he will sit and relax and just watch the world go by. and he LOVES his brothers. either of them just talks to him and you get this beautiful belly laugh that just makes everything else wait for a second. it's perfect. everything is perfect. i'm very lucky.

There's My life

There is my life
I see it happening like watching a movie or a play
The people I know; actors saying their lines
The characters change so slowly that I hardly notice
I’d better appreciate my kids as children because they'll grow
I'll be old having not appreciated being able to jump and run
I should exercise while I can still be strong
I should appreciate life more because it is passing by

I shouldn’t be surprised
I have been a child
I have been an adolescent
I have become an adult
I do not feel “adult”
I still want to build things
I still want to decide what to be when I grow up

There is my life
I’m watching it too passively
I sometimes don’t even feel it
The time passing
I can sit for hours and not pay attention
How much longer can I possibly live
I’ll never know how effective I was

I’m not sure still what my job is
I’m not sure still what it is that I came to do
I used to be sure that I would know
I’m less sorry for the mistakes I made
I’m more sorry for the time I wasted
There is my life
It’s happening right now

The YSF Video 2209

Well Hello there! Okay so I've been real busy and I haven't had time for blogging.
But I did have time to put together a video for the Youth Service Fund (YSF) that I'm pretty proud of so check it out.

Christmas comes to Kroger

I had a wonderful time over the Holidays and now that it's finally Christmas I'm looking forward to a little bit of calm. Sunny and I drove from Hot Springs to Tulsa, from Tulsa to Harrison, and from Harrison to Hot Springs, then from Hot Springs to Clarksville and from Clarksville back to Hot Springs all in a week. I like to drive but enough is enough.
I do need to confess though that a few days before Christmas I had an euphoric moment of Christmas cheer. Believe it or not I was at Kroger (a giant grocery store) and when I arrived I prepared myself for the normal pushing and shoving and grabbing and greed that is so pervasive in any retailer at Christmas time. As I walked through the parking lot on my way toward the store I looked up and a woman was coming out the door. She made eye contact with me and smiled brightly and said, "merry Christmas". To which I replied, "merry Christmas to you". The music inside the store was not Janet Jackson Strips To Your Holiday Favorites, it was an actual choir of Christmas carolers singing Christmas music. More than that, everyone I passed looked me in the face and smiled and wished me a merry Christmas without grabbing products from my cart or reaching over me to snatch away the last tin of spam spread. I started to look around for the candid camera host, but as it turns out it was an honest to goodness moment or Christmas spirit. A Festivus miracle.

My Kind of Christmas