Category Archives: Family

Family

Carena 2021

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A family’s home is important to them. Maybe not to others in the world but to the people that live in the house, it’s almost everything. A place of memories, of gatherings, of safety; of love; of tears.

Becky and I have been mostly quiet about our new home. Neither of us moved as kids. Our kids are now moving before they leave elementary school (or even enter for the little guy). But this move is so much about them and the availability it gives us to their community – and puts us so much closer to our own friends, our jobs, other people, activities we enjoy. It’s pretty much a slam dunk (though this is the exact opposite of where we thought we’d wind up) And I am so ready for this next phase of our lives to begin.
Thank you God for this. I never thought this was a possibility….so much of these last 10 years have been beyond anything I could have imagined.
I hope to share this home soon once we get a few boxes out of the way.
For us…it’s gonna be everything.
Family

Lazy Sunday…during COVID

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Ever since becoming a Dad, I made a promise. If my kids want to go to church, we will go.

This past Sunday, we were doing our normal weekend morning routine: kids destroying the house and me trying to get the sleep out of my eyes. It had been a busy week and the Titans were playing at noon and I was thinking about just having a chill morning (no church)

All of the sudden, E said “I want to go to church today”.  I hope I didn’t grunt and the first thing I said was “okay”. So we were off to the races.  I hadn’t planned on making them food so quickly or getting them both dressed (Lincoln wanted to come too). I had to figure out if we would allow them back into Gateway Kids for the first time since COVID started. Would one go? Would both go? So many decisions to make.

Of course, we got ready in record time and headed out the door.

I remembered something my Mom did as a kid that was such a small act but it was so consistent that it created a memory that has lasted. We went to church most Sundays growing up. Church was BORING. 1 service and there was no end time – it just ended when it ended. My Mom would always give my sister and me change or money to put in the collection plate. I had no idea what the money was for. I think I wanted the money so I could go buy a new toy or some baseball cards. I don’t think even in all the time I went to that church (even into high school) that I thought about what collections actually were. I knew what tithes were but I didn’t know that a church is kinda a business too (well, they DO have bills to pay).

Anyway, back to church. We are sitting in the old main sanctuary and watching service on a big screen. Just not ready to mingle with the main crowd – plus with both kids there, there was going to be some running around and screen time needed.

At the end of service, I gave them each a few coins to put into the collection plate. It was so busy after service that I didn’t get to explain to them the action and the way. But I will..

And hopefully, it’ll be a memory they will carry with them into their 40’s.

 

 

Family

2020 School Year – A Start like no other

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Covid-19 | New Scientist

What a strange start to a school year! All the “will they, won’t they” of July. Will school start in person? Will it be partial days or online? Will it be online or remote (yep, those two are different options). I’m glad my wife is a teacher and could help make sense of a lot of it but trying to figure out what to do with a wife and 2 kids all in different aspects of the WCS system was a stressor.
If there are words I could use to describe the kids in all of this, it’s these
  • Adaptability
  • Resilience
  • Fearless
My daughter’s school is staffed with amazing people – from the principal to her teacher. Every level of education is affected by this but a first grader teacher dealing with kids who had their kindergarten year cut short and have heard the words “virus” for months now and probably understand A LITTLE about what is going on. And then you add a teacher in a mask all day to it – and them wearing a mask themselves.
My son’s daycare has been equally great. My boy is more than surviving – he’s THRIVING. Big man on campus style. And he’s getting smarter and smarter by the day. I know boys socialize much later than girls but he has hit this amazing stride. I’m not sure he really cared about missing daycare or his friends during the March – May shutdown period.
My wife…she’s a Rockstar. Not much else to say other than that. But I will…she created a whole online curriculum for an extra class – and then did the remote stuff with Zoom for two weeks. And JUST as she was hitting her stride…hey, all your students are coming back on campus and you have to wear a mask all day.
Family

BW – Job History

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It’s time for a job change…while updating my resume, there’s obviously a ton of focus on what I have done at previous companies. I wanted to focus (and catalog) some of the people and things that those jobs gave or taught me.

  • Codigent (later UCR Solutions, later FCG)
    • First job out of college
    • People of note: Rich Watkins, Danny Grigsby, Nate Deason, Paul Aebischer, Rob Dreussi, Matt Berggren (future groomsman), Will Golden, Michael Golden, Keith McLarty
    • 2+ years of almost full-time travel (NY, PA, CO, WA, NM)

 

  • Devgenics
    • An opportunity arose with some former co-workers from Codigent; career growth
    • People of note: Matt Berggren, the Palakies, Keith McLarty, Van deer Laan and Stocker

 

  • Gordian Health (later Onlife)
    • First job as a full time .NET developer
    • People of note: Herby DeWees, Jeffrey Johnson, Mark Swickard, Todd Lyles, Jim Crawford

 

  • Vision Consulting (later Parallon Technology Solutions)
    • Opportunity to create my own platform from scratch – libraries, configurations, portals, etc.
    • Third party consulting
    • People of note: Matt Berggren, the Palakies, Keith McLarty, Anthony Cannon, Doreen Degroff

 

  • PharmMD (later AdhereHealth)
    • Opportunity to come in and try to help an environment with very little automation, standardization, etc.
    • People of note: Victor Mattingly, Stacey Parker, Chris Wyman, Susie Gilmer, Joe Murphree, Joel Denowski, Celika Peters, Jake Woods, Mike Rezvani, Kempton Presley, Cynthia Sandahl
Family

“Look”

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My son says this with such ferocity that you HAVE to look. And he will keep saying it until you look. I will miss this when he gets older…just a little.

Mom, I apologize for my entire childhood and me and Keshia constantly competing for your attention <3

Family, LCW

The Boy

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Do you ever pick up something that your kid does that you maybe should have noticed but never did? Nothing big but just a small thing that makes a lot of other things make sense?

We had Krispy Kreme this week to “celebrate” (or mourn) the end of summer. My son had to get a fork to eat his donut. He’s eaten it by hands before. I’m sure of it. But today, he HAD to have a fork. Like he wouldn’t eat it without it.

I don’t consider him a neat freak. If you saw his room, you’d know the opposite is 100% true. He plays in the sand and in the yard all the time. He eats pizza and chicken nuggets by hand (like a good ole American boy). But with his food, he does not like to be STICKY. He ate one in the car yesterday on the way home but that may have been just from sheer hunger and boredom. And he whined about his hands being dirty the whole drive home when he was done. But at home, where he KNEW he had stuff to prevent stickiness…yep.


So I’ll be keeping some wipes on hand in my car from now on.

EHW, Family

Once upon a Time…

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One thing I have very little doubt about is my parenting. I am the right Dad for these kids and they are the right children for me to raise. (some days and moments are obviously harder than others – make no mistake about that).


There is one day in particular that has stuck in my head for years. It’s come up a few times since as we have been the recipient of other people’s decisions. It is in super focus now as we are about to begin a school year (hopefully) with a pandemic going on.

I have forgotten a few of the finer details but it all boils down to – one day when E was about 3 years old, she had a fever. I forget if it was a small one the night before or just popped up the morning of but it went between a 99 and 101. (100 is the “stay away” temp for daycare attendance). Becky and I sent her to school in the morning and hoped she would make it through the day.

She did NOT. I think we got a call to get her before lunch and we had to pick her up and take her home for the day.

So in the grand scheme of things, not a big deal, right? Irresponsible of us…yes. I’ll admit it. What’s funny is that whatever work we thought was SO important and needed to get done that day…didn’t get done when we got the call that we had to pick her up. We could have gotten a teacher or another student sick with what she had and possibly effected their family. And we know our kid…she has never been a “get a quick fever and recover girl”. She is of the multi-day type.  Bad call on our part. And if I remember correctly – it wasn’t like I had a big deadline that day or Becky was in show dress rehearsals or something. And we both had enough PTO in our bank to blow a day. 

All that to say…man, what parenting shows you about the importance of work and everything else. I promise not to send my kid to school this upcoming school year with anything resembling a cold or even a behavior out of the ordinary. This year…one rash decision could be devastating.