One Dad's Life

Rebecca's Big News - "Sarah's Garden"

Hold on to something because I'm about to brag a little. If you don't like it, tough luck, mister!

From time to time, this website has featured artwork from my oldest daughter, Rebecca.  Usually, it was in the context of an "I'm worried about the Kids" post, and many people commented, or emailed that I shouldn't be worried about her artwork.  I assured most that I certainly was NOT worried about her artwork, and in fact there was something cooking in relation to this.

Well, now I am proud, VERY proud to be able to tell you that the first published book featuring illustrations by my daughter has now been released.

The pictures below show the cover (left), and also author Deb Wolf (of "Counting My Blessings" fame) with my daughter Rebecca holding one of the first books printed.

Deb is the wife of one of Pastors, and we have known her since Rebecca was an infant. In fact, she used to hold the infant Rebecca in church if my parents weren't at our service while my wife and I played the music for our contemporary service.  When Rebecca suddenly developed the ability to draw, she drew COUNTLESS pictures for Deb...and thus the relationship was born!

This book, and story, has been a dream of Deb's for some time and my wife and I are very happy that Rebecca has been able to help her realize a portion of this dream.  Plus, we are overflowing with pride! Have I mentioned that, yet?

Here are a couple of the pen and pencil illustrations that were made for this book.

 

 

 

To order your very own copy of the book, you have a couple of options:

1) Click the Amazon link on the right side of this page!

2) Contact the author directly at "Counting My Blessings" thus saving her the Amazon commission...plus you can get an autographed copy!

To learn more about the book, click here.

Congratulations Deb and Rebecca!  I'm very proud of you!

The Joy of Parenting - Reading to your kids

One of the great and time-honored traditions of being a parent is reading to your kids.  All the best experts in education agree that reading regularly to your kids is one of the best things you, as a parent, can do for your kid's education.  This remains true even after they can read on their own. In addition, if you make funny voices and really get into acting out the story, it can even be fun!  It could also be very embarassing if a video recorder should happen to be running at the time and your kids post the video to YouTube and email your boss.  No video.  Word to the wise.

So, when I found myself at home last night with my six year old, Rachel, with 20 minutes until we had to leave to pick up the older kid from her Tuesday dance classes, I thought reading would be the perfect thing to pass the time.  Well, reading or Guitar Hero III on the Wii, but I picked reading because, obviously, I'm an incredible parent.

I let Rachel pick the book and then settled into the couch to read.  Things were going well as the family in the story headed out for a short camping trip at Yellowstone park.  Yellowstone park is awesome. It was then that I read the following section:

"This big flat thing is bison poop. People call these buffalo chips."

"It looks hard," said Michael, "not squishy like poop."

"Fresh bison poop is squishy, " answered Dad, "but it dries out. You can tell how old it is by how hard it is." ***

I am totally not pulling your leg.  They said "bison poop!"  So, my question is, "Isn't Curious George still popular?"  I mean, by comparison, a monkey that lives with a man who always wears a big yellow hat and who goes around swallowing puzzle pieces and trashing the hospital's childrens ward seems somehow less....weird.  On second thought, a guy who always goes around wearing a big yellow hat treating a monkey like a kid still sounds a bit weird to me.

The book we were reading actually gets somewhat educational, as it talks about the poop and the tracks of a bunch of different animals that can be found in Yellowstone.  As a result,  if I run into Grizzly Bear poop in St. Louis, I'm ready!   I just hope that I can remember all that I've learned from the book.  I suppose I could photocopy the handy reference pages in the back that have an outline of the animal, their poop, and their tracks.  However, I'm guessing that would violate copyright laws.

Anyway, next time I'm picking out the book...perhaps a nice Berenstain Bear book. They live in a tree, you know! How cool is that? Plus, they never talk about poop, as far as I remember.

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*** from the book "Who Pooped in the Park?" by Gary D. Robson & illustrated by Elijah Brady Clark.  And yes, we apparently actually own the book. 

Daddy's Little Girl

I have run across a large number of talented writers during my (so far) brief experience in the blogging world.  One of the first was Ron.  Ron is a pastor who moved away from just outside the beautiful St. Louis area to live right next to a giant, frozen, "lake" that stretches to the horizon.  To be fair, it's probably not so icy right now, but still...

Anyway, Ron is an amazing writer.  He does humor, he does serious, he ties it all together with God.  I suppose all that pastor training has paid off.  One of the best things he does is take small, normally insignificant things and make them meaningful.  Stephen King has this same talent, except he takes the small, normally insignificant things and make them scare the tar out of you!  Case in point, Ron once made toothpaste being spit into a sink represent everything that is great about being married to your best friend.

I should have hired Ron for my birthday post for my wife!  Clearly, I struggle with anything approaching sentimental. I can write about blasting the sprinkler through my bedroom window, or car-driving dogs, or a bizarre banjo-playing man, or my daughter's slumber party, or even giant underpants, but it's all goofy...and goofy at a beginner's level.  Sentimental, I can't do.  Ron can.

Well, another actual writer noticed Ron's work (check out the link to Ron's blog at left), and also noticed that Ron had a daughter.  The actual writer, who I'll call Gregory E. Lang, since that's his name, asked Ron to write a story about him and his daughter for possible inclusion in a book.  Ron did.  It made the book!  You can read about this at Ron's daughter's blog (is this even correct grammar?)

If the book sounds interesting, you can look it up at Amazon.com, or click the handy link to the right.  The book title is "Daddy's Little Girl."   Apparently, Ron's story is on page 51.

Full disclosure: If you buy the book from the link on the right, I will make several pennies, or some amount of money...if it ever adds up to $100.00 and amazon.com sends me a check!  Feel free to buy it anywhere you want, though.  This is not a "for profit" website!   I won't hunt you down or anything.  Of course, since I had half-a-zillion hits the other day, according to Ron, if everyone bought a book, I'd retire and practice my writing skills.  I could finally open that porcupine petting zoo I've dreamed about!  See?  Everyone would win.

War and Peace

So, I started reading War and Peace a couple of days ago.  (Yeah, I know, it's been on my list for a while!)

In any case, famous books often have famous first lines, or paragraphs.  For those that don't know, War and Peace was originally written in Russian by Tolstoy.  The reason it was written in Russian is because Tolstoy is Russian.  This makes sense, even to me.   I'm reading a new English translation.  It's the edition listed to the right.   I assumed the famous first lines would therefor be in English, or at worst, Russian.

I was wrong.

The first paragraph is in FRENCH!   So, in case you are keeping score, I am reading a Russian book, translated to English, that has a large amount of FRENCH in it.  A large amount.  Like, a lot of the dialog.

I don't know French.  Fortunately, there are translations at the bottom of the pages.  In fact, some percentage of the French makes sense because I know bits and pieces of Spanish and there is some similarity.  This is not good enough, though, so today I purchased a French-English dictionary.

You know, in case the translation doesn't do it justice.  That's just the way I am.

The book, however, is incredible.  I've read just 15 pages, and I'm hooked.  Tolstoy was a genius.  I can already tell this book is worth its place at the top of the literary heap.

A New Start

I've always enjoyed exercise...just for the sake of exercising.  I like how you feel both physically and mentally after a workout, but I've never really been too serious about any sports.  I don't even watch sports on TV.  In fact, about my only real exposure to sports is through my X-box (Links Golf), Nintendo Gamecube (Madden, Mario Baseball, Mario Golf, etc.), or through my youngest daughter's Nintendo Wii (Wii Sports is actually a lot of fun!)

My wife and I had spent a couple of years working out at the local YMCA, which was very nice, until my job moved quite a bit farther from home, I got promoted, kids had more activities, etc.  We gradually stopped going, (it took us several years more to stop paying the monthly fee!) and while I know I should work out, it just seemed there was never time between job demands and other activities. Like most modern families, we tend to be a bit over-committed.

As time passed, I felt more and more guilty about missing the exercise, and in worse and worse shape.  Then, at work, they started a fall walking program this week.  I thought, why not?  This could be an easy way to get back into some exercise.  The goal of the walking program was to walk 100 extra miles in 12 weeks.  Do the math, and that is 1.2 miles a day. Yikes.  While 1.2 miles is not a long distance, the thought of fitting that in every single day seem impossible.  However, I was determined to try.

My company has a large, parklike campus with rolling green hills which also includes a 1.5 mile walking trail.  I thought this seemed a bit more appealing than a treadmill, so this past Monday I gave it a try.  By the end of the 1.5 miles, I was out of breath, my legs were sore, and I was sweating like crazy.  But I felt good!  On Tuesday, I realized that I wasn't likely to get the walking done EVERY day, between weekends and bad weather and such, so I was determined to try two laps, bringing the daily total to 3 miles.  I also thought that this would take a while, so I could get a bit of reading in at the same time!

Despite initial fears of having my nose in a book and wandering off the trail into the woods, never to be seen or heard from again, reading the book worked out pretty well!  The trail, after work, was quiet and totally deserted.  The weather has been nice and with the book reading, the walk seemed to take no time at all.  I even felt a little uplifted, reading "The Happiness Makeover."  This whole walking thing was turning out to be a great idea!

Day three was today.  Despite having some kind of muscle spasm in my left shoulder from holding the book the day before, and some soreness in my legs, I was ready to have another go at the 3 miles.  Once again the weather was great, I took my book, and today my walk was rewarded with a multitude of wildlife.  There were countless varieties of birds - big and small - including some hawks, rabbits everywhere, a bunch of turkeys, and even several deer! 

It felt as though I was the only one in the whole world.  Nothing could break the serene peacefulness of this environment. Nothing, that is, except for the soft plinking of what sounded like banjo music.  Thinking this must be coming from one of the neighborhoods adjoining the campus, I kept walking towards the end of my second lap on the trail.

The banjo music was getting louder.

"Interesting", I thought.  Someone has a banjo album playing at a pretty good volume. While bluegrass music is exciting and upbeat in its own right, you rarely hear solo banjo recordings.

It was about this time that I saw him.  A lone, banjo-playing man, sitting at the top of one of those rolling green hills.  Odd.  Very...odd.   It was then that the realization struck me:

Wasn't there banjo music in "Deliverance?"  Banjo music in "the wild" is not a good thing.  Banjo music in "the wild" is scary!

Despite Steve Martin's theory that there isn't such thing as a sad banjo song, there wasn't enough happiness in the world (see the book title above) to get over the freakishness of a lone banjo-playing man, sitting on a chair at the top of that rolling green hill! 

Maybe taking those long walks on the treadmill while watching CNN isn't such a bad thing after all!