Kids, Gifts and Christmas

This is a story that appeared in the Mormon times from our friend Elia Gourgouris. He is a "nationally known speaker, relationship expert and just recently published a book through Deseret book". Anyways, I really liked what he had to say on this topic.

"I was interviewed last week for an editorial article on the topic of children and gifts during this holiday season -- and it got me thinking. As parents how well do we prepare are kids for the onslaught of advertisements? Our children are bombarded from television ads, online ads and every other form of advertisement with the latest "must-have" toys, electronic gadgets and cool clothes.

I hear parents all the time say that they HAVE to get their kids the latest "stuff" because their kids NEED it! Furthermore, parents are experiencing a lot of anxiety because challenges with the economy mean budgets are typically more limited this year than in the recent past. For most people, born after the Great Depression, this has come as quite a shock! They don't want to let down their kids, who have grown used to getting everything they ask for.

This is a great opportunity for parents to teach their children the difference between wants and needs. When kids say, "I need to have the latest iPod, (even though I have two more, but they're old)," they misunderstand needs vs. wants. Needs are basic necessities of life like food, shelter, clothing, guidance and love. Wants are everything else that the advertisers have very cleverly made SO appealing.
Given the current budgetary restraints of most households, this is a great time to teach children the importance of prioritizing. If a child has 10 things the or she wants for Christmas, perhaps it would help the child (and their parents) to pick the top three! If there's only enough money to buy the top gift, then when birthdays or graduations come around, the parents can get them their second and third items on the list.

It will teach the kids patience and a real understanding, that in life you don't always get what you want, nor do you get it instantly. Delayed gratification is one of the signs of maturity. Or, even better, how about if the children work to do extra chores around the house or the neighborhood and earn the money for Nos. 2 and 3 themselves!

Another problem I've seen is that far too many parents equate lots of gift-giving to giving lots of love. I believe this is called a "parental shortcut."

Good parenting is spending quality time with your children, resolving issues, listening patiently and expressing love, support and tenderness. Honestly, when kids grow up they don't remember the toys. They remember the special times spent together as a family. They remember the traditions, the laughter, the games, the Christmas songs around the fireplace. They remember the activities, like building a snowman, going sledding and having snowball fights.

The truth is that gifts break or get lost, sometimes the very same day that they are opened! On the other hand, happy, joyful memories are NEVER lost! That's what makes our childhood so special -- and that's the best gift of all for us as parents to give to our children!"

A Light Unto All: A Christmas Gift

I am Thankful.....

Chris shared this with me on Thanksgiving and I loved it. It shed a new meaning for me on the mundane things in life.

I am thankful for the mess to clean up after a party because it means I have been surrounded by friends. 
I am thankful for the taxes I have to pay because it means I have a job and I am employed. 
I am thankful for the clothes that fit a little too snug because it means I have had enough to eat. 
I am thankful for the lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning, gutters that need fixing because it means I have a home. 
I am thankful for all the complaining I do about the government because it means we have freedom of speech. 
I am thankful for the parking spot I find at the far end of the lot because it means I am capable of walking. 
I am thankful for my big heating bill because it means I am warm. 

I am thankful for the lady behind me in Church who sings off-key because it means I can hear. 
I am thankful for the piles of laundry and ironing because it means my loved ones are nearby. 
I am thankful for weariness and aching muscles at the end of the day because it means I have been productive. 
And finally, I am thankful for the alarm that goes off early in the morning because it means that I am still alive.-Father Brian Joyce

Bike Ride using GPS

I went on a lunchtime bike ride today. I used a new application on my phone called TrailGuru. It tracks the ride with GPS and you can upload it to the Web when you are done. I was very impressed with the quality of the data and how accurately it recorded everything. If you have Google Earth installed, it's worth using the link to view it in Google Earth.

Sleepy Head

Last night Caitlin went up to her room to do her homework.  I went to check on her about an hour later and this is what I found.  One little girl, fast asleep on her math homework.  I woke her up, moved her to her bed and tucked her in.  When I woke her this morning she had no recollection of this at all.  Not sure what the green hat is all about (maybe it is her thinking cap!).

Time Flies

I can not believe how fast time flies.  This morning I registered Rachel for a PSAT exam.  I still remember taking an SAT prep class at her age.  Is she really as old as I was then?  Strange that I view her as a little kid but thought of myself as such a grown up. 

Football

Josh has been playing amazing the last few games.  He has been playing both offense and defense.  He got an interception last week.  And this week he got a touchdown and later caught the ball for the 2 point conversion. He has been on fire.

He "poned" that kid as Josh likes to say.

He caught the ball and ran it 30 yards for a touchdown.

Look at the face.  He is so determined.

He got the touchdown!

And received a pass for 2 points later in the game

What you may notice in these pictures is that Josh's fingers are taped.   In the first quarter, he tackled a kid and when he landed, his pinky and ring finger did the splits.  Although it hurt pretty bad he asked his coach to tape it up and refused to sit out.  He played through the pain  and played out the rest of the game.

We took him to the urgent care immediately after his game and discovered that he actually broke his finger.  He will be seeing an orthopedist tomorrow for a cast!

Chris

I have been thinking about Chris all day today.  No, it is not his birthday nor is it our anniversary.  But for some reason I keep thinking about how lucky I am to have him. Here are a few reasons why I love him so much!

1.  He is the best husband a girl can have.  

2.He makes me laugh.

3. He loves me.

4.  He makes me want to be a better person.

5.  He provides for his family.

6.  He helps around the house.

7.  He is always trying to improve himself.

8. He loves to be with the kids.

9. He is a fabulous dad.

10.  He let's me be me (as crazy as that is!)

11.  He is my best friend!

12.  He is not going to get mad at me for posting this.  (Right Chris?)

Men vs. Women

Why is it that men can lose weight faster than women?  Take Chris and I for example.  A few months back we decided to seriously watch what we ate and work out a lot more.   We both go to the gym every day.  And we both are very conscious of what we eat.   He has lost over 20 pounds and a few pant sizes and and I am stuck at 10 pounds and can still wear all my old clothes!  So today I did a little research and it is true.  Men have the ability to lose weight faster and easier than women.  So basically we  get wrinkles,  stretch marks and saggy boobs (just to name a few) and on top of all this,  fat sticks to us like glue.  It sucks!

FREAK

So Chris is out of town and for the last few nights I can not seem to fall asleep.  It is not like this is the first time he is out of town for he actually travels quite a bit.  I am not sure what is going on but I think I am about to head to the store and find sleeping pills.  Anyways, last night I kept thinking and thinking and thinking and finally at about 3am I got up and wrote down my thoughts.  Here they are....

1.  When did I reschedule that orthodontist appp for?

2.  What am I going to make for dinner?

3.  Is football at 6:30 or 6:45?

4.  I hope the YW activity goes well.

5.  I wonder if I will get the new counselor whose name I submitted.

6.  Does BYU really not take weighted GPA's?

7.  I really am blessed.

8.  I love living in Colorado.

9.  I need to make a Dr's appt.

10.I need to reschedule piano so that we can go to the movie in the park on Friday.

11. What was that violin music I was supposed to buy for Caitlin?

12. Why is my dryer taking so long to dry clothes lately?

13. I need to call Brian (our painter) to come over and give me a bid.

14. Did I put the dog outside?

15. Is the house locked?

16.Is $150 to trim my tree out back a rip off?

17. I better get planning on Caitlin's birthday party.

18. Why do we have a cat? She is so annoying meowing and biting my feet.

19. When did Caitlin and Zach get in my bed?

20.I need to make appt. to get my wisdom teeth out. 

21. Should we go to San Diego over Christmas break?

22. Why haven't I heard if the quilt I ordered for Rachel is in?

23. Is it too early to decorate the porch for Fall?

24.Who did I loan Twilight to?

25. What time is the Best of EFY on Sat?

26. Why did I say that I would be in charge of School Spirit this year?

27. Who do I know in Utah that I can hook Woo Woo up with?

28. I wonder if Chris is awake in Detroit.  It is 2 hours later...maybe I ll call him.

Am I a freak or what! 

Freedom Principles

Army Specialist Joe Cook, an Iraq war veteran, wounded by an IED in Iraq May 2007, lost his left foot and leg six inches below the knee

National Debt

Thomas Jefferson wisely stated "I consider the fortunes of our republic as depending in an eminent degree on the extinguishment of the public debt before we engage in any war; because that done, we shall have revenue enough to improve our country in peace and defend it in war without recurring either to new taxes or loans. But if the debt should once more be swelled to a formidable size, its entire discharge will be despaired of, and we shall be committed to the English career of debt, corruption and rottenness, closing with revolution. The discharge of public debt, therefore, is vital to the destinies of our government." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1809. FE 9:264

In my opinion, this is the number 1 issue that should be addressed by both Presidential candidates. I don't hear either Obama or McCain talking about how to reduce our debt. Living debt free is common sense and should be our nations priority right now. We should do it exactly as a household should do it. Cut up your credit cards (for our nation that means stop getting loans from China), cut all of your expenses (cancel all government waste), and pay as much money towards your creditors as you can until all your debt is gone.

It scares me that China, a communist country, is the US's largest creditor. I have heard that we owe them 1.5 Trillion dollars. The US spends 100's of billions each year on interest payments for our loans. So all of this talk about tax increases or tax relief could be a non issue if we eliminated our debt.

Solution for Oil shortage

I keep reading and hearing all kinds of solutions for the rising gas prices and our shortage of oil. I had an epiphany last week on the best solution yet.

It's important to know some background before I provide the solution. Robyn left me last week with all the kids to take care of. Apparently she had enough confidence in me to do this. I still am not sure why, but she must think highly of me. She went off to Education Week to learn how to be a better parent and left me to the actual work of parenting. The end result was that she in fact did return a better parent and my parenting skills rapidly degenerated.

Between soccer practice, football practice, violin lessons, soccer games, football games, mutual night, and school, I think I drove more last week than I have in the last 6 months. Of course all of these activities are back to back, so some days I would be driving back and forth for hours.

For some reason I never really thought about Robyn doing all of this before. I knew she seemed to be in the car a lot, but I never connected the dots. Men are sometimes slow on the pick up. Perhaps it never really dawned on me because I thought that somebody would definitely go insane doing all this driving, so there is no way that it was going on without Robyn going insane.

So how much gas does a Chevrolet Suburban use driving all around town all week long? Great question. Multiple that by all the Soccer Mom's across the country and I would imagine that our use of Gasoline quickly becomes one of the top uses.

In addition to the volume of driving required for all these activities, the amount of coordination and information sharing required is absurd. My email inbox is filled with reminders of practices, game schedules, pictures from the last game blasted out to everyone.

And then there is the time involved. No longer are the days where you can just drop your kid off and pick them up. There are actual responsibilities required of you. In fact, some of our programs make it mandatory for the parents in order for the kids to play. Half time snacks, setting up chairs and tents, working the concession stands, bring popsicles for after practice, mandatory photographers, etc. Heaven forbid that you don't volunteer on eneough things. The social pressure from the other parents is overwhelming.

My suggested solution is to drop all organized sports for the kids. Let's go back to the days when kids would go knock on their friends door with soccer ball in hand and gather all their friends together for a neighborhood soccer game at the local park. Or somehow know when to show up at the baseball field with your glove and bat for a pick up game of baseball. We didn't use to need organized sporting activities that our parents drove us to. We didn't need our parents emailing each other to coordinate things. We coordinated. Somehow we could get all of our friends together (without texting them) to play. I don't think the organized sports make our kids any better. I don't see better athletes now than when I was a kid. In fact, I could make an argument that they are worse. Kids don't know how to knock on their friends doors and ask the parent who answers, "Can Billy come out and play?". Just think of the gas that will be saved once you get all the Suburbans and Mini-vans off the road. Cancel all organized youth sports programs and our gas consumption will dramatically decrease, families will have more time with each other, kids will learn how to communicate without their parents doing it for them, and I think we will all be more happy in the end.

Is it just me or are you in a similar situation?

Switch to Google Apps

Recently I switched my entire family over to Google Apps. This gives us a couple things that I am hopeful will increase our effectiveness. Time will tell if it works or not, but I am hopeful. Worst case scenario is that nothing improves. A very compelling reason to switch was also that it is completely free. Google charges nothing for this service and provides a lot of benefits.

• Gmail use while using our @yorkfamily.info email addresses. For myself I have no problem accessing my mail while out of the house, but Robyn and kids didn't have a solution for this. Now they do. They can continue to use their email client on the computer if they want, or they can always access their email in the browser.
  
• Shared Calendars. We all have a Google calendar and can view each others calendar items. You can mix/match overlaying various calendars and see any events you choose. This should be great for coordinating all the various activities our kids are doing all the time.
  
• Google Apps. The ability to create documents , work on them on any computer and anywhere, then simply save them, all right in the browser is a powerful concept that I am hoping takes off. Google has replacement apps for the traditional Microsoft Office suite that is plenty powerful enough for my family. Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Slide Shows are all there. It also makes it extremely easy to collaborate on documents simultaneously. Picture this scenario. Rachel is working on a school report and I am traveling out of town on business. She calls me up on the phone and asks for some assistance with a section of her paper. I log into Google Apps and bring up her document at the same time she is looking at it at home. As I type something in the document, she sees my updates in real time on her screen and she can also type additional information simultaneously. Collaboration at its best.
  
• I don't have to backup any files. All email, Calendars, and Documents created in Google Apps are backed up by Google. I still perform backups to capture things like photos and home videos stored on the computer, but I don't have to worry about all other documents.

This is also a deliberate step for me to transition my computer life to Software as a Service applications. I can see the writing on the wall that this is the future of software, so I might as well transition now to get a leg up. I already replaced Microsoft Money with mint.com (completely free) to track personal finances, I use a online version of Quickbooks for my accounting software.

Text Messaging

Anybody who has had to deal with teenagers can relate to this one. A trend that seems to be increasingly getting worse. Obviously bad enough for the Church to publish a Mormonad about. I used to be a fan of text messaging. However recently I am starting to change my mind.

Black Hills

We just returned from a York/Ellis family vacation taken in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We had an incredible time. We were all amazed at the plentiful wildlife and the gorgeous scenery. Celebrating Independence day at Mt. Rushmore was definitely a highlight and one I will never forget.

Here are some of the photos taken during our trip.

Black Hills South Dakota

LDS Geek

The Geek in me loves seeing the Ensign cover for July.

Hawaii Vacation

We just returned from a great family vacation. We were in Hawaii for 10 days. We had a fabulous time. We spent every day on a beach snorkeling and playing, swimming in the pool, and roaming the island looking for fun things. We weren't too pleased with the crowds of Oahu, but once you got off the beaten path, it was a lot of fun.

Some of the spots we visited were Pearl Harbor, Waikiki, Dole Pineapple plantation, the infamous North Shore beaches, Hanauma bay, BYU Hawaii, plus many others.

Just when Robyn and I were wondering why we brought our kids with us to Hawaii, we stopped by the Temple and saw a great film in the visitors center on Families. We realized that even though they drive us crazy sometimes, life is much better with them here.

We thought we would spare you from the 700 pictures we took. Here is a sample of some of them.

Hawaii 2008

Spring is here!!

I love Spring. It has to be my favorite time of the year. I love to see things change. This tree literally had nothing on it on Monday and now here it is with a bunch of blossoms just 4 days later.

Josh turns 12

Joshua turned 12 this past week. A big day for him. Ike and Dallin flew up from Prescott to attend his Ordination. We really enjoyed having the Ellis' here. We figured they didn't get too much snow down in Arizona so we took them up to the mountains to experience playing in the snow. Aside from Dallin throwing up all over the car, it was a really fun day. On Sunday we had my Parents come up to attend the ordination and then went back to the house for a back-yard barbecue. To get my dad and Ike away from watching golf on TV, we then walked over to the park to enjoy the nice weather. Here are the pictures for the couple days:

Ellis Visit

Easter

Here are a few photos of the kids after Church. Every year we pick a color and all wear it. This year our color was pink. As you know we do have 4 kids but Josh was MIA. He came home from Church and had a total meltdown. He is not very good at waking up early and of course we are up at the crack of dawn searching for eggs and what-not. Sadly, this is the second time that we have taken photos on Easter that Josh is not in. Maybe it is a sign that we should celebrate that part of Easter on Saturday. On a happier note... he took about a 3 hour nap and woke up a much more pleasant child.

For Clint

OK, so Clint says we haven't posted anything in a long time and that soon he is going to make posts for us and put them on.  That didn't sound like a good idea (you never know what he will say) so here is a picture of us today on a walk.  What you will notice is that Josh is almost as big as me.  What is even worse is that Rachel is taller than Josh and cannot wait until she looks down at me.  

Hooter

We had an owl in the backyard the other day.  It was fun to see such a cool looking bird so close.

Trip to the mountains

New Years Eve 2007

We went up to the mountains for a few days. Rachel was excited because we let her have 2 friends come up and spend New Year's eve with us. It was her first sleepover in almost 3 years. We had a blast snowshoeing, playing games and just hanging out. But the most fun thing was when Chris decided to fly down the mountain and drove our car off the road. It took hours to dig out only to have him drive it off the road again on the next turn! We had to call a tow truck to get us out. The kids thought that was such an adventure. Apparently even after living here 3 years we are not the best drivers in the snow.