This year, I’ve really learned a lot. It was challenging to say the least. Being in a team leadership role all year for our location. Having a five year old who is reading, climbing, and pushing limits. Learning how to care for daughters (I didn’t grow up with any sisters). Building and finding margin for Stacy and I in the midst of our crazy life. Here are a few of my top thoughts and experiences:

• The parent life is slower with each child that joins our family, and you can fight it, but it’s better to accept it!
  
  I live to get things done! I’m type A, Choleric, all the way. But I’ve learned that family requires patience and the ability to enjoy the process in everything. Otherwise, I do everything with a poor attitude and I pass that attitude on to my kids. My kids should not be slaves to my agenda, rather we should enjoy each others company and accomplish things together!
  
  …and seriously, everything is WAY slower. Colds go through the whole family before we get over them. Every stop that requires getting the kids out of the car is a tremendous effort. Bedtime in a process. And most toys involve quite a bit of fighting before they are old enough to loose their appeal enough to be shareable.
  
• Kids crave learning and adventure. They can be incredibly responsible. We need to give them more opportunities grow those abilities.
  
• Managing and developing people is hard. It doesn’t come naturally to me, and the constant temptation for me is to focus on completing tasks instead of encouraging my team. This year, I’ve built a lot of systems and routines to help me manage better, but it still doesn’t come naturally or easily.
  
• Classic cars have a HUGE fan base of people who’s desire to see something live on past it’s normal life inspires me, but who’s love of display only vehicles depresses me. This fall I found that there were 3-6 car shows in the Tulsa area every weekend, with hundreds of cars, owned by awesome people. There’s a club that cruises every Tuesday in town. I love the social connections I found among car guys, especially Corvette owners (which I joined this year with my 1985 Vette purchase). But I’ll have to apologize, because I’m committed to driving any vehicle I own weekly. Driving is the first and best way to appreciate a vehicle, for me.
  
• Smoked brisket is wonderful…and worth the effort! A huge thanks to Myron for loaning me his electric smoker this year so I could experiment.

My kids: 5, 4 and 22 months old, watch a descent amount of TV.

Every morning, they are promised a 20 minute morning show, after they are all dressed and have had breakfast. We typically pick from Wallykazam, Tumble Leaf, Sid the Science Kid, or Superbook. I found these shows to be somewhat educational and wholesome, so they are the choices I present, whenever possible.

I often let them watch a movie on longer car rides too…which sounds easy enough, until you’re trying to sync a movie onto screens that everyone can watch, with rear and front facing car seats, wires, and the need to retain some control in the front seat. I’m an IT guy and it’s proven quite difficult at times. (At present, I run movies from a USB drive in an old Syvania DVD player with analog video out from the front seat, to screens in the back headrest, and audio through the car stereo system Aux input.)

And some evenings or afternoons, my kids enjoy a movie. Their current favorites are:

• Home
• Milo and Otis
• The Grinch (2018 version)
• The Grinch (1970’s version)
• Ice Age
• Treasure Buddies
• The Bear Whisperer
• Planet Earth

But my kids don’t ever get time with my phone or tablet. And aside from having Alexa play songs at their request, their content selections are always filtered by me and Stacy.

I definitely wonder how each year, and Eli’s ability to read, will continue to create new complexity and challenge the balance we currently have as a family toward these things. I just feel that I spent too much time when I was a kid on the Nintendo and watching movies on TV. I hope that by giving my kids other choices, they will grow up with a greater love of time with people and with books.

So if you are reading this and want to share your thoughts and current parenting practices, I would love to hear!

I didn’t do a huge amount of reading in 2019, but I did find some really amazing books along the way! Here are the top books from my year:

• Before Amen – Max Lucado
• Max on Life – Max Lucado
  Max Lucado answers questions from readers in a pastoral, insightful way.
  
• The 24 Hour Pharmacist – Suzy Cohen
  this is an amazing book with insight into why you might be experiencing sleeplessness, low energy, and other common ailments as well as how to get your body back into health medically and naturally. Suzy’s Migraine book changed my life two years ago, and this is my favorite read from her writings since.
• Thyroid Healthy – Suzy Cohen
  Thyroid issues run in Stacy’s family, so I read this in support of her. I am proud to say that both her and I have benefited from adding an Adrenal and a Thyroid supplement to our nutrition and that I was amazed to learn about lab tests you can have run without seeing a doctor to better understand the condition of your body.
  
• God Distorted – John Bishop
  The subtitle of this book says it all: How your Earthly Father Affects Your Perception of God and Why it Matters

I love creating, revamping, and reconditioning things. Projects are my jam, and I love to strategize the next big concept that needs to come to life.

Unfortunately, my project execution has taught me that to be perfect, every project has to be done twice! There are too many unforseen factors in the way I work through a project for it to come together perfect the first time (or without substantial adjustments before I’m done).

Take my recent projects:

• Repairing my Prius headlight’s involved going in and changing a bad sensor, only to figure out I needed a bracket as well, and requiring me to revisit the project later with the proper parts.
• Changing out the dash lights in the Corvette led to the realization that the lights I’d been recommended on Corvette forums wouldn’t work right, and I ended up ordering the proper bulbs and revisiting the dash again a week later.

Needless to say, I obsess over larger projects a lot more than the small ones, and I’ve blessed by the grace of God to be doing everything I can the first time in marriage and parenting. But the truth remains, the second time is always where I really hit my stride on many things.

So if you are the kind of person who stresses to get it right the first time, take some comfort in the fact it’s not always necessary to get it perfect the first time. As my professor used to say, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly until you can do it well.”

As I step into 2020, I do so with much more than an ambition to add a bunch of to do’s or habits to my schedule. I do it with my growth and that of my families in mind, trusting that the most important factor in our journey is the power of God and our faith in the fact that we are His creations, not the weak bodies He rescued us from.

My biggest goal is to read daily through His Word, using a tool I found many years ago. I wish more Bibles existed in this kind of format: a reading for the day with a challenging insight alongside it. I own it in print and electronically, so there’s no reason that I would ever not be able to complete my reading. If you don’t already have a great Bible reading plan for 2020, I recommend this one or a look through the amazing plans available in the Bible app!

As another goal, and the reason this post is appearing here after a very long slow period, is that I hope to write daily in some form or fashion this year. So expect more updates from my blog, if you choose to follow along!