A Never-ending List of Firsts

As I get older, and as I watch my kids get older. I begin to think about all the firsts that my kids are going through and all the firsts I went through. My daughter's first tooth. My nephew-in-law's first snow storm. My son's first interest in a superhero, although he seems to really be attached to Spiderman despite all my efforts to get him interested in Superman (But, let's be honest, the Spiderman movie was just a lot cooler then Superman Returns.)

I think of all the firsts I've gone through. First kiss, first and only wife, first really bad haircut, first public humiliation. It gives me chills to think about all the things that my kids still get to go out and do. It's times like this that suddenly the old-man's adage about how youth is wasted on the young suddenly rings true. I guess I could just take that I am now old and uncool, all I need now is for one of my kids to roll their eyes at me for something. Then it will be official.

Nevertheless, in my old age I still find myself in a situation where there are still firsts out there. The latest one is that my best friend had his first kid. "How in the world does that relate to being a first for you, you selfish pig?" You ask? Well, as I was sitting with my friend in sacrament meeting I saw him struggling to try and calm his son down. He looked nervous, self-conscious and insecure. I wanted to say something to him to make him feel that it's normal. I am a two-time father so I know that every parent out there just smiles and understands when they hear a child going meltdown in the middle of sacrament meeting. Nevertheless, how do you communicate that to a new parent? Let's be honest, before we had kids we all thought about how rude those parents are that can't keep control of their children, but once we have kids we suddenly realize that keeping children quiet is like juggling chainsaws. I told him that it's all part of being a father, and I felt like a goon spouting off platitudes. I really want to be a good friend, but I really don't know how to go about it. Then again, sometimes all you can do is be there and be yourself. Although I really don't like the second answer because I do a lot of that. It really is times like these when you really need to keep the line of communication between you and the Lord open. That way if he can send a some inspiration he can.

Doing the right thing.

There never seems to be a clear way to right thing. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating. I haven't been on my most spiritual best behavior lately. Which would probably explain the reason why I am not quite so sure about how to make the right decision. I suppose that God had his reasons when he said hold fast to the rod. If you're not holding fast, then things get a little fuzzy.

Anyway, I find myself on the fuzzy end of spiritual guidance. Unfortunately, I can't postpone all my decisions until I get my spiritual feet back on the ground, so here is to being taught by goodly parents.

One of the problems that comes with being married is in-laws, and the problem with having foreign in-laws is that you are the hotel when they come into the country. Picking up on what I'm about to reveal? You'd be right, I've got some of my wife's family living with us. Oh, sure, I could have told them to stay with some other family here in the US, on the other side of the country. The situation would have been better for me, I like my space, but I couldn't ignore my wife. She didn't really push the idea. Okay, maybe she did, but she sure made it feel like she didn't. Nevertheless, she has always wanted family to live a little closer and her family that is currently living with us aren't freeloaders. In fact my house has never been so clean, and since they've moved in they've already applied for several jobs and a mountain of other stuff that my wife knows about. I've been taking Pres. Hinckley's approach to dealing with the affairs of women, ie. stand back and marvel.

With more people at the house it is of course adding a bit more of a financial drain on out current strapped budget. I decided, or at least my wife let me think I decided, that we should help these people out and do the best we could. I usually don't take risks like this but sometimes you just have to do the right thing. Although I still am not sure how right it was.

What I did during my summer vacation

Okay, it's been a while since I've written. For the most part all of my posts over the summer were pre-written and just scheduled to post themselves during the summer months. So in my own way I took the summer off to pursue other endeavors. And, although my pre-scheduled posts stopped over a month ago I've been facing a kind of writer's block. Okay, it's not been so much that I haven't had anything to say but more that I didn't feel confident enough to say it. Now, I have enough confidence or at the very least have suspended my feelings of insecurity long enough to sit down and write.

Geocaching.

A new hobby that I copied from my brother. Well, it's a new hobby to me. Pretty much it's treasure hunting but without all the trial and error and most of it being error. With Geocaching you are pretty much given the spot and have to do a little searching around. I have no idea why I really enjoy this, I do it almost every day with my keys. Although with geocaching you get to see places you never knew existed and you are also able to show others your favorite places. Our kids love it because it's a little adventure and for the most part they will always walk away with a toy of some kind. Look into it if you are an outdoorish kind of person or just want a reasonably cheap hobby. I love the idea of buying one piece of equipment then not having to buy anything after that. Although the website does want you to pay $30 a year for a subscription so you can get extra search features, but compared to the crap you have to buy for cycling, it's chump change.

Alone Time

The big thing that happened this summer was that my family went to Perú, without me. As I have stated previously it was mainly about the money and secondly about the time. My wife wanted to spend a month down there and I couldn't get the time off. So, I thought I would be a supportive husband and tough out the month alone.

Bad idea, oh, I'm sure every husband dreams of having so much time to himself. I can't think of anything worse. Well, at least now. The first couple of days were kinda fun, but, as soon as the novelty of it wears off then it's like living my own private hell. Suddenly, I realized that the only reason why I was getting up in the morning was to go to work. Not a good realization. My wife didn't communicate with me as often as I would have liked, after all she was now surrounded by family that she hadn't seen in years, therefore was easily distracted. To be perfectly honest, my wife is easily distracted by anything that has the hint of being shiny. So that added to my already weakened emotional state.

Suffice it to say, it was not fun.

Ay Chihuahua!

Last year we had a wonderful dog named Shelby. We had him for about four months and he was the best dog a family could ever ask for. Since I am not a dog person that says a lot. Ever since poor Shelby got ran over my family has been wanting to get a new dog. There is something that a pet brings into a home that you can't really describe. Before my wife and kids ran off to Peru for a month a neighbor of ours had a litter that she needed to get rid of. She has like 15 dogs, 8 of which are chihuahuas. She usually breeds the chihuahuas but a terrier got with one of the females and she didn't really want to sell those so she offered one to us when they got old enough to leave the mother. After my family got back my wife went over to our neighbor's house to see about the puppy, and as my wife is always surprising me, she came back with two.

My wife told me that our neighbor wasn't planning on giving us both of them, in fact my wife didn't even know about the second one. When my wife went over to check on the puppy that we were going to get the neighbor couldn't bear separating the brother and sister pair. So she offered my wife both. So my wife brought both of them over to me and asked me if we could keep both. I think only a statue could have said no. There is my beautiful wife holding two cute, baby chihuahuas. I had to say okay, I really didn't have a choice.

So here I am, trying to recover from my summer and get back in the swing of things. I have so much more to say. But I think the fact that I lost the habit has really been dragging on getting it written down. So I think I will post this as-is in an attempt to get back into the rhythm.