Gearing Up for the Spring Semester

It's been a busy couple of weeks, with things getting really hectic here in the past several days - just in time for the beginning of the spring semester! Within the last week or so, my bride has been laid up with strep throat, my oldest daughter threw up (blueberries and other assorted fruits) all over me, and someone broke into our apartment storage unit and stole my mountain bike. Of all of that, the vomit incident was by far the worst. I can handle dealing with any other substance that comes out of the human body, but vomit is the one thing in the whole world that really freaks me out ... mostly due to the smell. Before we got married, my bride and I agreed that in our marriage I would handle anything that dealt with blood and she would deal with anything involving vomit ... of course she was working when all of this happened! Fortunately, everyone is feeling much better now and I'm praying that we don't have any more incidents like this for quite a while.

My grades for last semester were pretty good, with my Greek class being the one exception (of course) ... and that would only be considered bad by my standards, so I'm not going to dwell on it. The spring term looks to be a slightly lighter load in work and stress so I'm happy for that! Of course, I have been wrong about such things before - so we'll have to wait and see.

My son continues to do well in school. He does tend to have a problem with his concentration which causes him to miss recess sometimes because he takes too long to finish his work. I'm looking into getting him started in karate with the hopes that he will learn some mental and physical discipline in the process. The problems, of course, are finding the time in our schedule and the money for the lessons.

My (almost) five year old will pick up with her ballet lessons tonight. She is very excited about going. Her birthday is only a few weeks away and she is wanting a "princess" themed birthday party - which my wife (mostly) and I are working on planning. She also knows that at age 5, I will begin reading her the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis and she (as well as my son) is excited to get to hear the stories read. I must say that I look forward to reading them again too ... the great biblical truths that Lewis was able to incorporate in these children's stories are simply a joy to read. It's so easy to get caught up in the emotion of the stories that sometimes the words actually get caught in my throat and I have to pause for a few seconds before I can actually say them. I can still remember when I finished reading The Last Battle with my son and after hearing this remarkable depiction of heaven, I asked my son what he thought and he looked at me with a huge smile and big eyes and said, "Daddy, I want to go there!"

The baby of the family continues to do well. She is growing and growing and growing. She loves to smile, laugh and play (and eat!). She is rolling over and getting stronger each day. With the camcorder we purchased to tape my sermons, we have also been able to get a lot of video of her playing and talking (the older too will probably be jealous of this someday).

My bride is doing great as well, apart from an illness that had her down and out a couple of days last week. She is very patient with me as I'm still learning the ropes on what it takes to be Mr. Mom. Learning Greek looks like child's play compared to stay-at-home parenting! Hopefully I'll be able to bring my grades up in my Applied Fatherhood class this semester!