I feel like a Dad... and a man

So, I'll have to put the picture up eventually, but I'm pretty excited about what I accomplished on Memorial Day at home. I built Brennan a sandbox. And when I say built, I don't mean I went out and bought one of those gaudy plastic things and filled it with sand. No, I dug out nearly 1/2 of our garden (I did this a few weeks back) - kinda leveled it off, then screwed together 1x6's to plywood (all pressure treated of course), complete with 2x4 corner pieces for stability, dropped it in the hole and then proceeded to frame in a bench/deck around that between the edge of the sandbox and the edge of the garden (built by the previous owners of our house with 4x4's). At this point, I still have a little more of the decking/bench to cut & put in place, but Brennan likes it and a bunch of our neighborhood kids enjoyed playing in it Monday. Eventually we'll stain it too. But after "completing" this project and finally getting Brennan into it (he took awhile to actually go into it, but by Dinner he was pouring sand on his head, so I think he's liking it), I really felt like a Dad. I made something with my own two hands for my son, something that didn't come from Ikea or Babies'R Us and didn't have instructions or pre-drilled holes. Now maybe I can hang those pictures up in the kitchen for Bridgette & finish painting Aidan's room...

Just one tree

We found an interesting thing while in Honduras at one of the little towns where we had a clinic. I think it was the last day, Veracruz. At lunch, we walked over to the beach - I think the town was a shipping village at one point - and found a few boats. I didn't realize it at first, but someone else did. One of the boats was made from a single tree. It was carved out and formed - I can only assume by hand. It was pretty amazing. The boat was once a tree, a whole tree. But it wasn't cut down and stripped up and processed and put back together. It was whole - carved out to remove the excess, but prepared for a purpose - a whole purpose. I wonder about the value of that, the value of being whole, the excess removed, prepared for a purpose. Could we too, not gain from that same preparation, that same formation, instead of simply being processed piecemeal...

"Hmm... I didn't eat my lunch"

It's my first day back in the office after a wonderful vacation - some of it relaxing, some if it rushed (getting in at 10pm after 8 hrs driving yesterday...) - it's nearly 3:15pm and I just realized that I hadn't eaten lunch yet. Something about 120+ e-mails, a lunchtime Starbucks meeting, a missed afternoon meeting and a backlog of conversations will do that to you. Some days you get a lot done, some days you wonder if you got anything done and days like today, you realize that soreness in your belly is because your lunch, lovingly packed by your beautiful wife, including an inspiring note, is still sitting in the fridge! Time to dine and dash..

I'm a Paleontologist!

So, I'm digging in the backyard today, trying to fix the sandbox mess that was left from the previous owners sandbox in the yard. I tried a bit last year, picked up most of it, but I ended up with a shallow volcano, with nearly no grass growing in the middle, and a nice little ridge surrounding it. Anyway, long story short, I'm digging and I find a dinosaur - a Brachiasaurus. Brennan was pretty excited - he couldn't wait for me to clean it up so he could play with it. He took it to his crib when he had a nap too. Too bad he seems to have misplaced it this evening. Yeah, it was a plastic toy Brachiasaurus, but how cool would it have been to find a real one, eh? Even just a bone...

Why is it...

...that when things get busy, this seems to be one of the first things to go? Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only one. But I continually find myself behind in the one area that I should be ahead on - so I think this vacation next week couldn't come at a better time...

Balloons - who would've thought?!

One of the somewhat surprising revelations of life in Honduras - or at least life as we experienced it for the 5 days of clinics we set up - was how much kids enjoyed balloons. Mind you, no one who was blowing them up, and that was me close to 50% of the time, was blowing them into animals or fun shapes. They were simply round balloons. And by the second day, there were only the little tiny ones. But these kids, every time we brought out the balloons, they were asking, no, begging for a "bomba." It was kinda fun for me to practice my colours in Spanish - amarillo, rojo, verde, azul, rosario, and my personal favourite - anaranjaro - or at least that's how I think it's spelled.

Anyway, we often blew up balloons after we told them a bible story. Sometimes it was the carrot so they'd sit there, but more often than not, they were as excited to hear a "piquito historia" as they were for balloons (or that's what I told myself...). But what was obvious about the balloons, and they're love of receiving one, is just how little they had. Yeah, kids here like balloons. Yeah, if you pull them out, they're probably going to want one. But, is it a huge deal? Probably not. Chances are, if they're anything like my son, they've got a bag their mom is carrying around with them filled with snacks, drinks, extra diapers, wipes, clothes and yes, toys. So what's a balloon? Just one more toy. But to these kids, I think it was more. Heck, I saw a baby come in one day with an atrociously stinky diaper, screaming to high heaven, probably from diaper rash. And eventually his mom changed him, but I think she changed him into a makeshift cloth diaper that we provided. So yeah, these kids didn't have much. A balloon, or two or three or four - depending on how many they broke or stuffed into their shirts, was a pretty cool toy. Maybe next time I'm thinking of buying myself a cool new toy, their memory will give me pause to ask in what better ways I could use that "toy" money...

Fut-bol in Honduras

One of the things I spent the most time doing in Honduras was playing soccer, or fut-bol with the kids who came out to our clinics. For 5 days, I was leading our VBS - which didn't go too bad for our first foray. It certainly wouldn't be recognized as VBS here in the States - not flashy enough or with enough sit-down time. But I spent nearly all my time with the kids in some fashion - and soccer was a lot of that. It was interesting too - each community soccer time was different. Some was with wee little kids, some older, some was more organized into games, some was more simply kicking the ball around, some was nice and gentle, some was rough and injury-filled. But all-in all, it was pretty fun. Particularly, I remember this 3 year old boy Nathan, who only smiled when I took his picture and later said "smile" in Spanish. He had this horrible foot fungus that we were able to get medicine for - but he was a talented and determined kid who I remember watching back up a half-dozen paces and kick the snot out of a soccer ball, over and over again. When his mom came and took him away (on more than one occasion) he threw a fit - priceless...