This little man

Colt turns 1 on October 15..... OH MY!  He is trying so hard to pull up on things, and he's crawling all over the place.  His clothes can't even keep up!  BIG blue eyes, squishy squishy cheeks, and fuzzy soft hair.  I could eat him up.  I am missing this sweet baby so so so so so much during the school day.  UGH!

He Snores!

There is an incessant rumbling next to me. It kinda sounds like a kid blowing bubbles in his drink or slurping that last little bit of something up through his straw. But then the sound echoes off the walls, cuddling in right next to my armpit.  That's when I have to face the reality that the gurgling is my romantically passed-the-heck-out husband. The most fascinating part of all of this is that I absolutely can't sleep at all when he's not here.  Tonight's jut another one of those insomnia nights. Ill put fifty bucks on the table that if I wanted to go to sleep I could.  However...
Every now and then I somewhat enjoy the stillness of the night and being conscious enough to hear the strange things happening all around the house and in the yard. Very weird things come on TV at this hour as well... But let's just not even go there.
I would go on but as it is I am typing one-handed. The other is stuck under a beard. I shall be very careful, lest it start drooling on me too.

T-Ball and Gray Days

Kane started t-ball last Saturday.  It was cold, rainy, and gray.  But our kid, who by all accounts hates being wet and has not shown any amount of sustained attention towards throwing or especially catching a ball.... LOVED t-ball.  He loved it and he was good at it.  After 3 years of pushing soccer (and I do mean pushing), it was like he was meant to be on a field with a glove.  SHOCKER.Parker had a great time despite falling into wet dirt over and over and over... and over again.... and Colt fell asleep in the baby backpack for the  most part.  It's amazing how even a gray day becomes fun when your kids are being more than 60% enjoyable.

So here we are again on another gray day... one of those days that no one likes to do.  Gray days make you late for things.  They are such nasty dirty things.  But then again, there's something about them that makes you want one every now and then anyway.  Right now, for example, Josh and I are watching The Hobbit (still in bed), Colt is watching me type and kicking my arm.  The boys are playing quietly in their room.  The dogs are belly up on the couch and outside... all that and it's only 8:00am.  We haven't even had breakfast yet! 

 Nice.
 

Know who favored gun control? Hitler!

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing so." Adolph Hitler dinner talk on April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations, Second Edition (1973), Pg. 425-426

Here are two provisions of the 1938 German weapons act;

Jews (§5 of the First Regulations of the German Citizenship Law of 14 November 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt I, p. 1333) are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons.  Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority.

Firearms and ammunition found in a Jew's possession will be forfeited to the government without compensation.

My beautiful Kane

Tonight before going to bed my son Kane said something that stopped me cold. He looked and me and said "Dad if someone tried to shoot me I'd get down on my knees and put my hands together like this (pushing his hands flat together as if to pray) and I would pray to God."

Even as I write this I'm still upset and find it hard not to think about my son in that situation or the fact that he is thinking about it without crying my eyes out. Kane is four years old, and no matter what your view is as the cause of recent events its hard to know evil abounds and my little man just shouldn't have to think through these things.

There is the part of me that is so proud of my firstborn. At four he knows who will save him either in the here and now or for eternity. He spoke without fear as someone convicted in his belief and it's a knowing I didn't have at that age. I have to thank God for that, for the influences He placed in Kane's life and his zeal for the Word. Kane doesn't know it but he should serve as a beacon for what we all really need right now, God.

So as hard as it is to swallow as I hold back the flood I take some comfort in knowing that even though evil exist, so does love and the faith you too can have in Jesus Christ and God. I love you boys.

It breaks my heart.

Today as a nation we experienced another mass shooting but this one was an event unlike any other we've experienced. Today one of the places we as Americans hold most sacred, most vulnerable and most pure was the scene of a horrific attack. As most of you know Shannon is a second grade teacher, as her and I talked she told me of how her peers and her believed it would never happen at an elementary school. Unfortunately today they and we were proved wrong.

I found out earlier in the day just before noon and was floored, not much but "Why" fills your mind. Hopefully, not many us will ever be able to understand the thinking of someone who's soul is so dark they could shoot innocent children. Never the less you can't help but ask why. I cannot imagine the feelings those parents had as they arrived at Sandy Hook and learned their child was killed. I have no shame admitting I wept thinking of those young lives that wouldn't see the Christmas Day they had been counting down. There are presents under the tree with the names of children that will never see them. Today the parents of twenty children will have empty beds in their house with no one to tuck them in to them. I truly pray I never experience the emptiness that is fresh in the hearts of so many tonight.

I hate that tonight the media and web site commentators have used this to bring up the issue of gun control. These events are not pedestals for gun control debates on either side but as you're aware I am for gun ownership and second amendment rights. You're put in a bad position because the conversation initiated from the media is never for gun ownership after these attacks. This forces you to make a decision about how to respond. Do you keep quiet and let people with their own anti-gun agenda use fear mongering to twist the public into believing it was guns and their owners that own the burden of these attacks? Perhaps you choose to speak out instead, to point out that the 2010 preliminary results list firearms as being responsible for 11,015 homicides in the US. In contrast pneumonia took the lives of 49,510 people and heart disease was responsible for a staggering 595,444 over 5400x that of homicides by firearms. Yet in the face of those statistics, fear is used to move the country, not facts. Our President called for "immediate action" to prevent such shootings but isn't that generality the issue in this debate. Over and over again we hear that a discussion needs to be had around gun control but we never hear about what or to what end that discussion is for. Where is the call to immediate action for legislation to lower the 83,308 deaths caused by Alzheimer disease? The fact is the number of homicides from firearms actually decreased by 12.8% from 2007 to 2010 according to CDC reports.

To give more context to how helpful "gun control" laws would be,  the average loss of life from mass shootings over the past few decades is approximately 100 people annually. That is a whooping .004% of all deaths, but homicides by firearms are  111x more at .47% of all deaths. It's understandable why we should make it such a priority with numbers so large. Most journalist and experts will admit the issue of mental health is typically more pertinent to decreasing murders by firearm but that's just much harder to address.

Before we actually have a conversation around gun control let's prioritize what we're discussing and what we're trying to accomplish. Let's not make statements that say if the attackers didn't have a gun then the victims would still be alive. Statistics show over 31% of homicides weren't by a gun at all. Perhaps the discussion should be why select media groups and political parties continue to push an agenda that seemly has such a small impact on the number of overall deaths in the US. Is there another reason to limit the type or number of weapons that law abiding citizens have access to? We all know by common sense that new laws won't stop criminals at all from acquiring weapons of any type. Perhaps we really believe there was no alcohol drank during the Prohibition. Let's have a discussion around gun control but let's make it about responsible gun ownership, it keeps in line with the goal of protecting the innocent while also not infringing on the right to bear arms.

You KNOW you're tired when...

You hold the sponge under the kitchen faucet and start to get frustrated when it isn't getting wet... then you realize you never turned the water on.

Colt is an epic mess. Re-thinking the whole 5 thing...  :o)

You get Nationally Board Certified and don't even know it until 2 weeks later.

You forget that the milk goes in the fridge... not the cabinet.