Happy Mother's Day

Rachel is a wonderful mom and it is confirmed every time I see our children with her. Just look in their eyes and you will see a peace and happiness because their needs are met in every way by her. They smile and laugh with her. They seek her comfort when they are sad or hurt. She is there for them in every way and she is a wonderful teacher and mentor.

Rachel, I can't thank you enough for having the desire to be at home with our children. Because you have so thoroughly invested in them these pre-school years, I have so much peace that they have been raised properly. I can't imagine any greater gift you have given them (and me) by being in their lives, everyday, all day. Thank you.

Noticed this report by Salary.com that estimated what a stay-at-home mom would make as an annual salary. It is based on a 100-hour work week, consisting of six 15-hour days and one 10-hour day. Job titles, responsibilities, and qualifications were considered and weighed on a scale of importance, frequency, and average time spent on tasks per day. Stay-at-home mom median salary assumes that the mother has at least two children of school age. Though I think the amount is grossly understated, thought it was interesting:

Job Title - Avg Annual Salary
Teacher / Daycare Center - $26,891

Van Driver - $30,762

Housekeeper - $18,750

Cook - $31,099

CEO - $612,623

Nurse - $56,113

General Maintenance Worker - $29,656

Base Pay (40 Hours) - $43, 461

Overtime Pay (60 Hours) - $88,009

Mom's Annual Salary - $131,471

Being a part of every moment and memory of your child's life: PRICELESS

Two Steppin'

This past Saturday Rachel and I had a date night and went country dancing with Stephen and Melissa and our neighbors/friends Aaron and Tracy. We had a great time together. I have come to the conclusion that there are two types of groups that go out to a club / dance hall on a weekend night.

There is your first group that is there from about 9pm til midnight. There are a few sparse individuals who have been lingering around since about 8pm because that was when it was free cover and they want to make sure and make the most of their evening at the bar. However, most of the crowd consists of married couples who are on a date night without their children. The evidence of this is that each of the couples is either sitting or standing with their arms around each other enjoying a moment of interacting with other human beings of adulthood. The other evidence is that the dance floor is relatively empty because they have all forgotten how to dance since the last time they were able to go out 6 months ago. Rachel and I like this because it gives us plenty of space to dance without worrying about banging into others.

The second group of people shows up around 11pm and stays until close of business. This is clearly the single folks looking for that great opportunity of meeting the love of their life (or the next 6 weeks or unfortunately, for only that evening). This group provides great entertainment for the married with kids group for that hour between 11pm and midnight in which both groups collide. This group does not sit or stand around. They are in constant motion around the club in an effort to make sure they have been seen and thoroughly scope out all of their surroundings. The dance floor is packed and all kinds of "talent" are being showcased. While this group is just getting started and wondering how much cash they will spend on the evening, the other group is beginning to yawn and wonder how much to pay the babysitter.

I would classify myself as a people watcher and there is usually at least one thing that happens that leaves me asking "What were they thinking?" On this night it was some guy, obviously single, who decided to get up on one of those tall dance boxes and showoff all the great dance moves he had in his repotoire. I can only assume by the lack of women surrounding him that he was not being successful and needed to reconsider.

We all had a great time out. I had a great time dancing with Rachel and hanging out with our friends. Sure, there once was a time when I was probably classified into that second group of people and a fun time consisted of a late night "closing the place down". What's great now is that "closing a place down" consists of getting home and quietly going in to each one of my children's rooms and kissing them goodnight as they peacefully sleep and knowing that I am with the love of my life and we just had a great night out on the town.

How Did You Do on Your Garage Sale?

Our HOA sponsored a neighborhood garage sale this past Saturday. They took out ads, posted signs and had 35 plus homes sign up. All we had to do was set out our stuff, sit back and watch the car loads of people show up to buy everything off our hands. Here's a summary of how it went.

7:00 am - pull everything out of the garage and setup.
7:05 am - there is always that one car that shows up an hour before a garage sale officially starts. Notify them that we are still setting up. Have them proceed to ask if the items not in our garage sale are for sale (our kids bikes, my lawn tools, power equipment).
7:10 am - back to setting up
8:00 am - all ready. Sit back with a cup of coffee and wait for the rush of people to buy us out
9:00 am - 2 visitors, still waiting for the rush of people
10:00 am - still waiting for the rush of people. Reorganize everything that our kids have proceeded to pick up, play with for the first time in years and then put down in some other random spot.
10:15 am - Rachel leaves to spy on the other garage sales and scope out any bargains we cannot resist. A few visitors stop by.
11:00 am - Rachel returns. Other garage sales having some traffic. Rachel scores a bargain on a ceiling fan that has a baseball theme and a baseball bat coat rack (we are decorating Ethan's room a sports theme) and some various other items.
12:00 pm - traffic has been minimal the entire morning. Hello people, where are you? This was to be the garage sale of the century and your not helping!
1:00 pm - Several random shoppers who end up buying nothing. Obviously they don't recognize a bargain when they see one. Several drive by shoppers. These are the ones who approach in their car slowly and browse your stuff to see if they want to stop and then speed off to the next sale.
1:15 pm - the sign that I was over it. A lady haggles me over a stuffed animal marked for 50 cents. Apparantly she only had a budget to spend 25 cents on such an item. Who am I to break her heart from purchasing said item to enjoy for the next year until she puts it in another garage sale.
2:00 pm - pull everything that didn't sell back into the garage and prepare to donate.
2:30 pm - upon review of the cash, realize we ended up spending more at rival garage sales than we brought in at ours.

The Little Things That Mean So Much

Abigail coming downstairs in the mornings and wanting to be picked up and give the biggest hugs. Ethan running out to the car and welcoming me home from work. Caleb asking me to play all sorts of games with him. Laughter. Shoulder rides to bed. Reading and prayer time before bed. Getting something for Ethan and he responded "you are so kind, daddy." Hearing your children be polite to each other using "please" and "thank you". Hearing your kids tell each other they love them. Watching the kids while they are having fun playing together, making up stuff, putting on shows. Ethan cooking with Rachel. Rachel doing Abigail's hair. Rachel playing football with Caleb. Ethan's smile and joy when he found out we were painting his room. Family pictures and video. A car full of singing voices. Learning numbers and letters. Stacks of coloring sheets and pre-school projects the kids have done. Seeing your children pray without being asked. Abigail praying for Gloria, our sponsor child in Africa. Phone calls at work from your family. Saturdays and Sundays. Dinnertime and everyone telling what their favorite part of the day was. Checking on the kids in the middle of the night when they have had a bad dream and being able to calm them back to sleep, then praising God for His blessing of your child. Hearing "I love you."

Little Pranksters

The kids were in their Sunday school class when one of the youth coordinators stopped by their classroom. She noticed that Abigail looked unhappy and went over to ask her what was wrong. Abigail told her that she needed to go to the bathroom. The coordinator asked her why she hadn't just gone in to the restroom. Abigail told her "because my brothers told me there were snakes in the toilet." Oh those little pranksters.

A Moment with Mommy

It is tough for Rachel to have one on one time with the kids as you can imagine. She does a great job focusing on giving them individual time when she can. This weekend, while Abigail and Caleb were busy doing other things, a moment with Ethan just came together. They went outside and just spent some time talking and being together. I even captured a picture that is so great because neither of them knew I was taking it and it just really captured the moment. It's the first one of these I have attached.

Hunger the Size of a Webkinz

The kids are really into Webkinz. It is basically a stuffed animal that you have and register with the online Webkinz site and play games as well as take care of your animal's health, happiness and hunger (measured on a scale of 1 to 100 with 100 being the best). They even have their own 'room' that you can set up and decorate. Caleb loves his Froggie. He makes sure he checks in on him to see how he is doing and play some games with him. Last night we were driving home from church and Caleb tells us that he is hungry. Being the persistent one, he must have let us know this fact a few times when I said "I can't do anything about it Caleb until we get home." At this, he proclaims, "but my hunger level is down to a 9 and I really need it to be at 100 like Froggie." Ahhhh, the greatness of Webkinz.

Ethan's Experiments

Ethan is great at coming up with new ideas and creative things. One of his first things was a booby trap. I wish I had gotten a picture of this contraption but basically he came and asked me one afternoon if he could have a plastic grocery bag, some string, blue painters tape and a piece of cheese. After gathering all his items he set his contraption up in the front yard. He put the plastic bag over two sticks, tied string around the sticks to hold bag in place, put pieces of blue painters tape all over the bag (he said this was to camoflage the bag) and put the cheese inside the bag. Trap set. What did he plan to catch? Anything. About 20 minutes later he runs inside and comes back out with a pretzel. I asked what the pretzel was for? He said to keep the cheese from getting lonely. Duh. Before the trap blew away a couple of days later we had managed to 'capture' a small ant colony and a few other bugs that had over indulged in the trap.

This weekend, Ethan conducted the 'Sink or Swim' experiment. He gathered a big bowl of water and took an assortment of items to drop in to see if it would sink or swim. Here are a few pics of our creative professor.

Dallas Blooms with Mimi and Bill

My mom and stepfather were in town this past weekend for a visit and we went to Dallas Blooms at the Arboretum. The flowers were great and they had an Old West theme that had lots of stuff for the kids to do. Here is a slideshow from the outing.

April Fools

I get a phone call this morning at work from the kids. "Merry Christmas, Dad!" Perplexed, I return "Merry Christmas, Kids??" They laugh and say "April Fools!" Got me. Rachel gets on the phone and tells me how she was telling the kids about April Fools. She even got them by baking some crescent rolls for breakfast that had a fake plastic spider in them. What a prankster that Rachel is :) Abigail and Ethan thought it was hilarious. Caleb, not so much. "Mom, I don't like my rolls that way."