Categories
life pictures

Saffron and Elli…ot

Not long after Savannah left this morning for the Utah Classic ballroom competition Mariah called me into their room.

“Dad come look, you’ve got to see this.”

While we purchased two female dwarf hamsters it turns out that Ellie is actually Elliot.

I’m hopeful that first-time-mother Saffron doesn’t get too worried to care for her babies. Two is an awfully small litter so I’m a bit concerned that things might not be alright but I’m hopeful that it will all work out – and then we’ll have to decide how to handle mixed genders.

Categories
life thoughts

My Top Books for a Personal Library

Book corner
Photo by: Islxndis

JP and Bryce did a podcast on building a man’s library (almost 5 months ago – and I just finished listening to it). In the podcast they had top-5 lists from four people plus two more books from a fifth person and they invited listeners to compile their own top-5 lists.

Before I share my top-5 list I’d like to say that I really liked how their focus wasn’t about promoting some definitive list but on talking about how and why to develop a library of books based on your own values and interests. Considering that core message I want to share my thoughts on the lists they shared (as a point of reference) and how I chose my list (especially considering that I had the benefit of listening to the podcast and hearing the lists that were already shared there).

Categories
culture life religion thoughts

Daily Religious Observances

3040858085_1fac0bd99b_z
Photo by Eric Angelo

If there is one thing that sets apart spiritually stable people from spiritually unsteady people it is their participation in daily religious observances. It doesn’t matter what religion they belong to – it matters whether they willingly and consistently engage in personal acts of devotion. I got thinking about this after reading a comment from Peter Rival on this thread:

A parish that doesn’t nurture mid-week Mass attendance is one that will quickly see other practices fall to the wayside as well.

Categories
life

Family Man

Father Holding Daughter's Hand
Photo by Spirit Fire

I have decided to more completely dedicate myself to my family and nothing else and to do so in an orderly fashion. A thought struck me again about how much more I noticed and recorded in my kids’ lives years ago so that my younger kids have almost no record and the older kids have no recent record. I decided that in order to fix that I would need to spend more focused time with each of the kids. That’s tough to do since things are so busy but I need to do it so I have decided that I will carve out half an hour each day Monday through Thursday to spend with one child. That will allow me to have time with each of my children regularly. On Fridays that equivalent time would be folded into date night (date night is longer than 30 minutes of course). Saturday I will carve out some dedicated time to working on some project around the house (there’s always something that has been neglected which that time could be used for) and then Sunday is dedicated to spiritual pursuits.

How to schedule this in is the real trick. I already get up and do any exercise and study before I go to work which I do before anybody else is up for the day. (Sometimes my oldest will be up reading or one of my younger boys will be up asking for a snack as I run out the door.) Once I get home from work I have to make dinner, feed the family, and do the dishes before getting people to bed. Somewhere in that time I need to allow the rest of the family to coast unsupervised while I create a bubble of attention around the child of the day. We can do an activity, work on homework, or talk during that time.

I hope that the dedicated half hour will help me be more perceptive and have things to record about each child more regularly. I created a rotation that would feel somewhat random to the kids but make sure that they each got regular attention within each cycle. I started this last week and have had time with most of the kids by now and I believe this will yield the results I have been hoping for. A few more cycles should make it obvious but already I can see that the kids are anxious to have time with me rather than seeing me as the big bad ogre all the time.

Categories
culture life

JPs list

The Sons of Adam podcast this week covered JP’s list of the traits of manhood. I thought it was a good list which helps me further flesh out my understanding of what defines a man. I’m recording JP’s list here for future reference because I expect to come back and review it and to use it in some upcoming posts.

I don’t intend to offer any commentary on JP’s list here but I am going to publicly encourage JP to get a blog where he can share his thoughts directly anytime he has thoughts that he thinks deserve more than passing consideration. It would be a great complement to the podcast.

JP’s List

  1. Become an adult i.e. a responsible, productive member of society
  2. Develop a manly attitude: including
    • reverence for motherhood and womanhood
    • defaults to:
      • rejecting passivity
      • accepting responsibility
      • leading courageously
  3. Become a protector i.e. stand in front and take the brunt of uncertainty—providing safety for others, especially your family
  4. Become a provider: men HAVE to work. (Of course the quantity and type of work may be dependent upon physical and/or intellectual limitations for each individual.)
  5. Become a patriarch for your family
    • spiritual leader of your home
    • the one who directs the work of the priesthood in the home
Categories
life technology

Online Event Planning


Image by: Christian Scholz

I learned a lesson over the weekend regarding using Facebook as an event planning platform. I stopped actively using Facebook early this year so I’m only vaguely familiar with the event planning tools that the site offers but from what I’ve heard and seen they’re very functional for most event planning needs. The caveat that became glaringly obvious over the weekend is that when planning an event on Facebook it is easy but unsafe to assume that those you might want to participate in the event are using Facebook at least enough to be aware of the event. That means paying careful attention to whether they are responding to the event invitation or event related postings or else, more effectively, you should reach out with event details in some was that is more targeted than just adding it to your Facebook.

Categories
culture life

O Remember, Remember

Cemetery
Photo by Jason John Paul Haskins

I drove through the cemetery last night at dusk to take flowers to the graves of deceased relatives for the first time in my life for Memorial Day and as I saw the balloons and flowers and the many other families doing the same I understood Memorial Day in my heart for the first time in my life.

Before yesterday I had understood in my head the purpose of Memorial Day – to honor those who have gone before, with a special emphasis on members of the armed forces who have sacrificed to preserve our liberty – but despite all the Memorial Day celebrations I’ve attended over the years it was all abstracted from my reality. I wrote about Memorial Day 6 years ago and my lack of connection to the holiday was painfully obvious when I reviewed that post today.

Categories
life thoughts

Traits of Manhood

A Soldier is Welcomed to Kenya by a Young Child
Photo from UK Ministry of Defence

A discussion about Rites of Manhood on the Sons of Adam podcast concluded with a challenge to come up with a list of defining traits for mature manhood. What I expected to take an hour or two of thinking took much longer.

The Challenge

At first it seemed straightforward to try to make a list of manly traits. As I tried to do that I realized that I had to decide what I was listing. Traits that are consistent with manhood include traits that are simply part of being an adult whether male or female (like taking responsibility) while other traits that are consistent with manhood are traits that are natural to males whether they have achieved manhood or not (such as a proclivity for physical exertion).

Others may choose differently than I did but I chose to approach this from the perspective of what traits I would seek to instill in boys in order for them to achieve manhood. This means that my list more closely aligns with a list of traits that are consistent with being an adult than with a list of masculine tendencies. I did try to define how each of these traits is important as it relates to being genuinely manly.

The order of the traits listed is simply the order in which they coalesced in my thinking.

Categories
culture life

Take Your Time

old_shoes
Photo by scott feldstein

Looking at my shoes this morning I got to thinking about many pairs of shoes I’ve owned over the years. The thought that struck me was how quickly my shoes wore out. More specifically, the fact that how quickly they wore out was proportional to how slowly I put them on. In other words, it was proportional to how carefully I treated them. Any pair of shoes I treated nicely tended to last. As soon as I began to treat the shoes carelessly they would begin to wear out quickly.

I know that sounds elementary but as I thought about it I realized that the same is true of everything. Not just our material possessions but our talents, our relationships, our habits – EVERYTHING.

Look at our world today and how much we value speed. We want to do lots of everything all the time. We are constantly in a hurry. I wonder how much extra work and want we create by rushing through everything. We rush through our jobs, our cars, our relationships, our entertainment. I think that explains why its all so transitory.

Categories
life

We Must Be On The Same Page

I started reading a book today that I randomly picked up at the library a couple of weeks ago. After reading the introduction I flipped to the authors bio. At the end of the bio the author lists a couple books written by his wife. One of the titles sounds very familiar. After a minute I realize that it is a book I’ve never seen but I’d heard of it because it was so highly regarded in the home of one of Laura’s high school friends that it became a running joke with Laura and I. I made a note to mention to Laura that my book was written by the husband of that author.

While reading on my way home I thought it would be interesting to read the two books in parallel since their topics were basically parallel.

When I got home I intended to tell Laura but she derailed my thoughts by asking about the package I had brought in from the mail. I didn’t know what it was and she said she couldn’t even remember what she had done ten minutes ago. That jogged my memory and I remembered to ask her if she remembered the Michaud Family Bible (our jesting name for the familiar title). She exclaimed, “of course, I’d forgotten I ordered that. I take it you opened it already.”

With that statement I was only partly surprised when I opened the package and pulled out the book that has been on my mind all day even though I’d never seen it before.

Obviously Laura and I are on the same page. Just like I randomly picked up the husband’s book in the library, she randomly came across the wife’s book again and decided to buy it after all these years.