Thursday, October 30, 2008

The memory is a selective thing


As a kid my parents divorced when I was 10 years old. I didn't quite understand how such a thing could happen. But, my positive outlook helped me to make the best out of a bad situation. After a year or two both of my parents had remarried and then began to settle in, at least for my 12 year old mind. (I may be off on ages by a year or so, but you get the picture, I was a pre-teen). Anyway one of the best parts of the whole situation was that my brother and I had a 3rd set of grandparents; we did not know exactly what to call them so we took our dads lead and called them Mr and Mrs B. They were wonderful! I can remember only good times with them, probably because we only saw them every 2 or 3 weeks. Most of the time we saw them was on Friday nights for seafood. Mr B was an old time catholic who still didn't eat meat on Friday's. Even though the church stopped teaching that we had to abstain from meat on Friday. So, we'd go over to Dads for the weekend and it always started with Shrimp stew and boiled crabs or crawfish at Mr and Mrs B's house. My memory of these nights is how Mr B would always spend the whole night at his end of the table enjoying a cold beer and the seafood with his wife, daughter, son in law and his grand-children. Even after the meal he would stay at the table and watch TV from there.

I remember after a couple of years Mrs B started getting sick and the times where we would go eat over on Friday's seemed to get less frequent. Mrs B finally succumbed to Cancer. That was the first funeral I remember going to. I remember seeing Mr B and wondering how he was holding it all together. Then I remembered that he was the first person who truly evangelized me. He gave me a couple of books that got me thinking how important Jesus was in my life. He gave me a book written by an Irish priest about his conversion from a playboy to a priest and then he gave me a couple of books by Og Mandino that showed me examples of how Christ can work in our lives. These made an impression on me a few years later.

Yesterday October 29, 2008 at about 5:30am Mr B passed away in Tulsa Oklahoma. He will be brought back to New Orleans this weekend for his burial. I take great comfort in knowing that he is reunited with Mrs B in heaven. I also take comfort in that I now have another advocate in heaven right before all saints/all souls days.
Rest In Peace Mr B.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Today was a good day (spiritually)!

I don't have any pictures to post. But take it from me, today was a good day(to paraphrase Ice Cube). Even though Mary was out of town, I had a full yet relaxing day. It started with the girls being ready to get ready for church all on their own(wow!). Then it was off to tell their cousin from Houston goodbye, then to Mass where Elizabeth and Emma sang in the youth choir, with angelic voices I must say(gushing dad syndrome). The was our parishes church fair for a couple of hours. It was like living the McDonald's slogan; "food, folks and fun". After that I helped chaperon the youth group on our trip to the Diocesan World Youth Day in Donaldsonville LA. The priest at the church is the same priest that married me and Mary. There were an estimated 1700 people there today. They said it was the largest crowd ever for our diocese. The Mass was standing room only, I was one of the couple of hundred that stood. after mass we walked as a community to two different venues for youth activities. then had a terrific spaghetti and meatball supper prepared by the citizens of D,ville. Then a final blessing in the church and the ride back home.

It was a good and busy day. I didn't even complain that I had to miss the Saints game today(which they won, Praise God).

Friday, October 24, 2008

Do I need an "employee review"?



This is a picture of our new dog, Jenny. She is a Golden Retriever that was abandoned near a friends house. The gilrs love her, my wife loves her, and I, the new caretaker of the dog, love her too.

On the home schooling front, it seems as if we are marching in mud, barely making progress. The last few days have been spent focusing more on 4H, new dog, swim team and any other extracurricular activity we can find. We will have to go the show back on the road. And by saying "we", I mean "me"... I guess that being used to giving and receiving employee evaluations for so long has me longing for the days of a good, honest employee review. While in the workforce getting a review from my boss always meant that I would find out if I've done a good job over the past year or not.

Being the teacher at home school is not that clear cut. If my wife gives me a review I will get defensive because we are partners not subordinates. If the kids review my work, that is just INSANE!!!

So, what I try to do is review or grade myself. That's kind of what I used to do at work. That way I'd have an idea of what my boss was about to tell me during my review. Currently I grade myself at a "C". I never get done all of the things I hope to get done in a week. I don't have "down time", so I know that I am doing stuff.

Anyway, me and the girls have a busy weekend ahead of us. It includes Soccer, LSU football(on TV of course), Church Fair and World Youth Day. I will miss the Saints game on Sunday from London because I am chaperoning the World Youth Day with our youth group.

Friday, October 17, 2008

is that right?

Normally my blog is about me or my family, but this morning I am compelled to talk about other things, Gas prices and right versus wrong.

Now I can tell you that the price of filling up our minivan and 4 cylinder SUV has gotten to be about $140.00 a week. This is not good when you have 4 kids who all want stuff and now there isn't really extra funds to spend on frivolous items. While this is going on in society I have been teaching Emma about energy in her Science curriculum. We have discussed oil, coal, solar, wind and other forms of energy. WE have also been discussing alternative energies or fuels. She wants to invent a solar powered car or water fueled car, good luck Emma!
In our discussions about the earth and the ways we human beings make fuel we have also discussed the fact that God has created everything we use, and gave the Human race dominion over it all(Genesis 1:26, I think).

Elizabeth, our 8th grader has been interested in our lessons and usually listens in but doesn't say much. Well, yesterday we were driving in our gas guzzling van and listening to a nationally broadcast Christian radio station that presented their news as good news. The news they reported was about a gas station that thought it was selling gas for 3.49 a gallon and had a line of cars going into the street. They told how the stores owner and employees all thought they were doing some good business. Well, the jist of the story was that the employee that fixed the price on the pumps had made a mistake and misplaced his decimal and the gas station was actually selling gas for .349 a gallon. Thirty-Four Cents!!! So, on a 25 gallon tank you would spend $8.72 to fill your tank. Elizabeth, listening to the story said to me that this would be cool. At first I agreed. Then after thinking about it for a few seconds I told her that this was not a positive story. That I didn't think the Christian music station had the right perspective. Even though oil companies have been raking in billions of dollars a year on gasoline, I am fairly certain that the local gas stations don't rake in that same money. In fact, they struggle to break even I am sure. Just look at how many gas stations go out of business, do you think if they were real money makers they would go out of business so regularly?
Anyway, I told Liz that I thought that a true Christian, even though they didn't like the price of gas being $3.49/gallon, would let the station attendant know that there is a problem at the pump. I know this would be difficult to do. It would be easier to go along with the rest of the crowd and in effect "steal" some gas without the station being able to legally do anything about it. But as a true Christian we are taught that honesty and integrity are some very important ideals, and the action of taking advantage of the gas station to save money is not honest and in my opinion kind of "sneaky"!
I am mostly disappointed in the radio station for reporting this as a positive story rather than using it as a chance to teach some Christian morality and honesty. I'll still listen to the station, after all they are the best option when it comes to music around here, I'd rather the kids sing along with Christian songs that with the local hip-hop station. I just pray that they will actually take heed to what they profess to do, spread the gospel message with their broadcast. Unfortunately, they didn't this time.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Battle of the "bulge"


For those of you who have known me for more than a couple of years you know that I have struggled with my weight since Kindergarten. A couple of years ago, after my illness, which I am sure had something to do with being overweight, I actually went on the Atkins diet and went from 270 lbs to 200 lbs. This was an achievement I was very proud of. I thought I will never get back above 210 again. well, it has been a couple of years since then and I have crept back in the 240 range. This is quite depressing. I did not want to go back on Atkins because there are so many people that have told me that while Atkins will help drop weight in a hurry that the long term effects of a high fat, protein laden diet will have serious long term effects, I am willing to "risk it". I want to be able to fit in my "skinny" jeans, yes ladies, men do have "skinny" clothes. But we will never admit that fact face to face. Anyway, my new goal is to drop 60 pounds and be at 180 pounds by Mardi Gras.
I will then be able to avoid pictures like the one I have posted, where I think I look a little bit like Jabba the Hut!

Monday, October 6, 2008

It's been a long time...

It's been over a week since I have blogged about our home schooling or anything else. The title of this blog is in reference to the Led Zeppelin song "rock and roll". Hopefully you know the lyrics, and if you don't you can look them up.

Anyway, many things have happened over the last 10 days. We have had swim meets, soccer matches, Vice-presidential debates(yes I had the kids watch the debate), it was our current events lesson for the week. We visited the home school group's "park day" on Friday, it was alot of fun, just wish I had been warned about the amount of sand I'd be bringing home.

My main thought today is, the weekends and how they lead into the week. Our weekends like many other families weekends are super busy. All of the children are involved in some sort of activity that usually culminates in a weekend activity. This is fine, and I enjoy the motion and energy required to do things such as swim meets, soccer games, youth group, etc. I don't like the fact that I don't get enough rest on the weekends, which leads into an unenergetic Monday morning. In fact, I am hoping that this posting is making sense. So far, this morning the kids are doing better than me, which is a good thing. This is keeping me going.

I also teach 9th grade Catechism on Sunday mornings. This has been a great ministry for me. I enjoy teaching our Catholic faith to kids who I judge don't get catechized at home. I wish they did and our Sunday morning lessons were more of a review, but that is not the case. It is difficult to get 9th grade students to focus at 9 am on Sunday mornings, But now that I have students at home all week and go through the same thing with my own kids on a daily basis, it is a little easier to deal with it on Sunday mornings.

This weeks lesson was on The Trinity. Most of the kids had a fairly good understanding of the Trinity. By that I mean they knew the three persons of the Trinity. I guided them to understand that what separates the Christian religions from other monotheistic religions such as Judaism and Islam is the belief in one God, but as three separate person. And that we recall this belief every time we pray or enter Church for mass by doing the Sign of the Cross. When we are praying or recalling our baptism by dipping our hands in the holy water at church upon entering the church and signing ourselves in the name of the father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit", we acknowledge the presence and importance of all 3 of these person in our one God. I am certain that the kids understood this, and if they take one thing away from class yesterday it was that they have 3 people in one God who have their back when times are good and when times get tough.

The home school has a busy week ahead of it. So, I pray that we can actually be steadfast in our work, and that everything we do can glorify our awesome creator(God), redeemer(Jesus), and sanctifier(Holy Spirit),

Amen