Finding Nemo

Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we
do? We swim, swim.

We took Isabelle to Nemo on Ice and it was spectacular.  GO GO GO if you ever
have the chance!  We had so much fun.  This is Isabelle eating cotton candy for
the first time. ($10 cotton candy tastes no different than $1 cotton candy
by-the-way!)It was worth it though b/c she did get the super cool Nemo hat!
Until next time,just keep swimming.

Long Time No See

I am sorry I have abandoned you blogger. It's been so long since I first set eyes on you. I remember the day we met. You were so brawny and inviting. I took advantage of you and we started a relationship right away. As time went on I got so busy with life that I only visited you when I could. Now I feel as if I have left you completely. I don't know when the fun turned into a chore. Days passed with no word from me and yet, here you are, welcoming me back with open pages. Thank you blogger. I vow never to leave you again.

There was a crooked man
Who walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence
Against a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat
Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together
In a crooked little house.

I once knew a woman you could compare with a warm towel straight from the dryer on a cold day. A warm towel makes all the cold disappear. You don't want to go to work because the towel is such a safe and comfortable object of simplicity. She was a mother of four and in my early married days I considered every aspect of her life to be absolute. If there was tear she'd turn it to laughter. A question of faith and she'd find the answer. I wouldn't call her perfect. Though I wanted very much to be like her. I modeled my marriage after hers. I found myself yearning for children just so I could be even a shaving of the mother she was. I always thought that a mother was a child's connection to the future. A mother, by nurture, not nature, teaches a child all the fundamentals of how to become an able functioning adult. Around my second year of marriage things began to change. Just little things at first. We would often go over to her house on Sundays for dinner after church. And by dinner I mean a hot home cooked meal with homemade iced tea and dessert. That was the first act of love to go. There were no more Sunday dinners. I saw less and less of her as the months went by. I was busy with my own life trying hard to discover the wife and mother in me that I didn't notice when we didn't talk at all.
TO BE CONTINUED...

Motivation

We started potty training Isabelle about 6 months ago. She did great here and there for about 2 of those months and then she flat out refused to use the big girl potty. This week, she's pottied like it's 1999! Can you imagine if every time we used the restroom we came out shouting and screaming "Yeah! I used the potty!" "That's awesome!" (high five and a big kiss) If everyone was motivated like that in all we did, life would be grand.

Example: Joe works in a factory puting screws in kitchen sinks on an assembly line. One day Joe gets done 2x as many sinks as his neighbor. His boss walk by with his "numbers" for the day jumping up and down causing quite the commotion. "Joe," he says, "You are such a big boy! I can't believe your numbers today! Tonight you can stay up as late as you want! (high five and a hug follows)

Now some might think this a bit extreme or slightly disturbing. But just think how nice and easy our days would be with a little extra motivation to take home with the paycheck.