Category Archives: Tim

Events, Joshua, Tim

14 Things I Love About My Boy

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  1. He loves Jesus. My son is serious about being a fully-devoted disciple of Jesus and he orders his life in obedience to the scripture. He studies his Bible and goes with me to prayer meetings from time to time.
  2. Joshua is kind. He sword-fights with David, reads books to Sarah, plays with Rachel and Daniel and helps them with their schoolwork.
  3. He likes to laugh. Even the dumbest jokes that I tell, often get at least a chuckle. He has a hearty, un-self-conscious laugh that delights the listener’s soul. One of my favorite things to do is to watch him read one of my funny blogs.
  4. Joshua loves to read. Whether it is whipping through Ivanhoe or savoring Losing Joe’s Place, he has a keen appetite for good books.

    5. how do I choose what to read today?
    So many books, so little time.

  5. He is a faithful servant. Just try keeping him away from church, when tables or chairs need to be set up or taken down. And don’t get between him and the car when groceries need to be unloaded!
  6. Joshua loves games, the more complicated, the better. Whenever I want a good game of Puerto Rico, Citadels or Settlers of Catan, my son is all over it. Sometimes he lets me win, too.
  7. He is an excellent baker and cook, delighting the family with delicious meals and confections. Always one who likes to know where his next meal is coming from, his can be counted on for simple but hearty fare.
  8. Joshua is creative and inventive — his stories and drawings are sure to delight and amuse audiences young and old alike.
  9. He is an excellent actor, with a superb stage-presence and flair for the dramatic. I still get a chuckle whenever I think of his portrayal of Mr. Wunderman in Comic Book Artist a couple of years ago.

    10. The head honcho himself
    Joshua played an “old” man rather convincingly.

  10. Joshua has nearly perfect memory, and can be relied upon to have the correct details about almost any event (for which he was present). Coupled with good story-telling skills, he can always be relied upon as our resident historian.
  11. He is scrupulously honest, to the point that I am more likely to doubt myself than I am to doubt him.
  12. Joshua has a passion for history, particularly the Civil War, and can name all the U.S. Presidents, in order (something I never learned to do). He is probably the only person you know (if you know him) who can give you a detailed assessment of Millard Fillmore’s Presidency.
  13. He is gentle and careful with his strength, a quality I am coming to appreciate more, now that he is taller than me.
  14. Joshua listens carefully to what I say and seems genuinely interested in learning from me. He even pretends to like my Army stories.

joshua's tavern sign
Rachel and Tim designed this sign for Joshua’s room. Rachel did the painting.

I’m sure Joshua has his faults — he is, after all, descended from sinners whose only claim to fame is that they were loved and chosen by Jesus. But we’ll save the discussion of his shortcomings for his Anti-Birthday, to be held on the 18th of April.

Tim
Project 365 – Day 291

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I Am a Winner!

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As a result of poor timing on the part of my parents, I missed the brief era in American education when it was fashionable to emphasize self esteem at the expense of excellence. My public-school teachers, in callous disregard of my tender little heart, stubbornly insisted that my grades correlate with my performance, so that I graduated from high school with more B’s than A’s. In college, this worrying trend persisted, and I was forced into a much closer acquaintance with my deficiencies than I would have wished. Sadly, being a grown-up isn’t all it is cracked up to be, and opportunities to rise above the mundane are infrequent.

Every once in a while, however, life offers an opportunity to reverse the negative flow; last week I found just such a chance.

I'm a real Winner!
Wouldn’t you award this man a prize?

I don’t read many blogs, but I do sporadically follow the adventures of Scott, a clever and quirky Dad, husband and pastor in the wilds of Indiana. One day I happened across a post in which Scott apologized for a recent blogging hiatus. (His blog is pretty new, and I’m sure his wife encouraged him to post more regularly, if he wanted to attract a readership.) Scott said he had a bunch of prizes from his desk drawer and asked for people to comment with regard to how they used the time they saved from not reading his blog. I was compelled to speak from the heart, hoping to encourage him to keep blogging. Little did I know that he was serious about sending the ‘valuable’ prizes.

Today I received in the mail a mysterious package, with not one, but five valuable prizes:

  • 2 packets of hot cocoa mix
  • A DVD of Holy Moses!, a children’s musical from Scott’s church
  • a mostly-eaten package of tic-tacs
  • a sheaf of play money
  • and the Pièce de résistance, a ‘B’ scrabble letter (worth 3 points)

Enclosed was a short note, which I provide for your edification:

Tim,
Congratulations on winning this wonderful set of prizes in the contest you entered on my blog.

If this is the wrong Tim, I apologize, but you may still enjoy these random prizes scrounged from the back of my pencil drawer. Or throw them out. I’m not particularly an advocate for accepting used containers of breath fresheners from complete strangers.

And to be absolutely clear, the money enclosed is FAKE. The “Milton Bradley” imprint should be a dead give-away. If you try to spend it anywhere, about 60% of retailers have specific training for employees for how to spot counterfeits, so don’t be surprised if you end up in the slammer. I think it’s actually from a game of “Operation” so you might be able to use it at your child’s next doctor visit.

Happy Birthday and best wishes,

Scott

I learned a number of things about Scott from this letter, some positive, some worrying. He is apparently a very generous man, and a man who loves to celebrate, sending me five prizes where only one had been promised. The note was signed in pencil, which suggests a lack of commitment to our relationship. (In fairness, since we’ve never met, it might be best if we start out as ‘Pencil Pals’, in the finest traditions of Charlie Brown.) On the other hand, it tells me that he is a man of his word (in that he really does have a pencil drawer). Frankly, the precision of his estimate with regard to retailers who train against counterfeiters, made me wonder if he’d already tried (and failed) to spend the Milton Bradley money. Noting his apparent need to emphasize that the money was fake, I discovered that Scott doesn’t see me as the sharpest knife in the drawer. I suppose this is to be expected, since he comments on (and presumably reads) my blog entries from time to time.

I was delighted (to state the obvious) to receive this valuable package, especially so close to my birthday. The hot cocoa will probably be slurped up by my children, but I can hardly wait to view the DVD musical, in all its glory. The mints (all five of them) will come in very handy, and I need hardly mention the utility of an extra ‘B’ tile for our Scrabble game (9 points if I can finesse a triple-letter-score square). We’re in the market for a new fridge; it may be that Scott’s failure with the Milton Bradley money was due to a lack of confidence on his part — it might be amusing to succeed where he failed so woefully.

prizes galore
Hard to believe Scott sent this package without insuring it!

It is at times like this when you are on top of the world, and you want to go out on your driveway and shout to the world, “I Am a Winner!” And so I did.

The neighbors already think I’m weird, what did I have to lose?

Tim
Project 365, Day 285

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Have Some Whipped Cream

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This being Tim’s birthday week (he can’t have the entire month because Joshua’s birthday is also in October – they have to share), we invited Grandma and Grandpa to join us for lunch after church. In a rare fit of planning and organization, I put ingredients for a hearty stew in the crock-pot before leaving for church. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.

stew anyone?

A lovely lunch in honor of Tim!

Because no birthday of Tim’s would be complete without some serious chocolate, we had an ice cream pie for dessert. I think ice cream pies could happily replace traditional birthday cakes in our family. Upon reflection, however, I should note Grandma makes an amazing Black Forest Cake that often graces Tim’s birthday celebrations.

Of course, who needs cake or pie when you can go straight to the toppings.

load me up!laughing with a full mouth is dangerousI'll take just a little bit

We didn’t have any candles but there was plenty of whipped cream to go around.

Happy Birthday (Week), Tim. We love you!!

Kathy
Project 365 – Day 280

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Selling Out for Chips

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I’ve long felt that a man ought to have certain minimal standards for a Saturday of leisure. One should not enter lightly into a day of rest and relaxation. Here are a few basic principles:

  1. Sleeping in is a must
  2. No booting up the work laptop
  3. Sugared cereals – preferably several bowls, devoured absentmindedly while perusing some easy-reading fiction (I prefer Terry Pratchett novels)
  4. Hours and hours of uninterrupted computer game playing
  5. Children off visiting friends or playing outside contentedly (no fights, injuries, or difficult questions allowed)
  6. Ice cream for a snack or dessert (or both, if your wife isn’t watching closely)
  7. Pancakes for dinner – no skimping on the butter orsyrup.
  8. Absolutely NO HOUSEWORK, period.

If your blood isn’t fizzing from all the sugar, and if you can still focus your eyes after a hard day of gaming, it wasn’t a proper Saturday, I always say.

Sadly, into every man’s life a little hardship doth occasionally fall. In this case, Saturday dawned bright and clear (okay grey and cloudy) with only a single 30 minute computer game playing chip left in my possession. Thirty minutes has never flown by so quickly, and I found myself chipless before noon on a Saturday. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and so I assembled my horde of children and entrusted to them a sacred mission:

“I’m sure I have some more chips somewhere in one of my desk drawers. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to locate the missing chips.”

We turned the first drawer inside-out but nary a chip was unearthed. Other drawers were searched, but to no avail. After less than a half-hour’s search, we were forced to admit that I was truly (I shudder, even to write it) out of chips.

Ever since the chip-famine of April ’07, we’ve had a special codicil that allows the chip-impoverished to earn emergency chip rations by doing chores around the house. Daniel regularly invokes that rule, and Kathy gets a lot of extra help out of him, happily exploiting his weakness for computer games. Although I’m almost positive I was somehow shorted on the chip payment this week (how could I have spent 3 1/2 hours already!), I couldn’t convince Kathy (keeper of the chips) to extend me any grace. Nor were the children susceptible to bribery or threats. Sadly, I realized that the only way I was going to earn myself a fresh cache of computer chips was to work, or more specifically clean. Some things are almost too painful to write.

Kathy chortled gleefully all morning, cackling even, as the minutes ticked away and my last chip was played.

“Boy, this pantry is REALLY messy. I sure hope someone will have time to clean it today.”

pantry - before

Um, it’s not really that messy, Dear.

It’s never pretty seeing a grown woman act in such an immature manner. She almost seemed to enjoy my suffering and torment.

After putting the desk drawer back together and making a half-hearted attempt to shake one of the children down for a spare chip, I decided to accept the inevitable.

Most of the afternoon was spent emptying, cleaning and organizing the pantry. No doubt Kathy will thank me for my work in de-cluttering and re-categorizing the items in the closet. I found several things that I’m sure she doesn’t need at all and was diligent to get rid of them right away. I moved everything around on the shelves, arranging them in order by UPC code and sell-by-date. It was a delight to see her face when I showed her the New System I devised for the pantry.

pantry - after

Look, there’s a floor in here. I didn’t think you really needed the crock-pot or all those pesky cookie sheets. You don’t mind going out to the garage for baking supplies, do you Beloved?

It’s not often that Kathy is at a loss for words. It just shows how overwhelmed with joy she was.

I completed the job with my usual glacial speed. When I had nearly finished putting everything away, and had collected 3 hours’ worth of computer game playing chips, I was called away on an errand. When Kathy discovered I was graciously allowing her to put the last touches on the pantry and clear off a small amount of mess on the kitchen table, she was beside herself with joy.

table o' mess

Heh, heh, there’s just a little more to do, Sweetie.

But she wasn’t quite so speechless this time. “If you think I’m paying good chips so I can tidy up your half-baked job of ‘cleaning’ the pantry, you’ve been sniffing the 409!” she seethed. She’s really quite a hoot, as those who know her well often comment.

As Saturday comes to a close, I grip my hard-earned chips tightly in sweaty palms, agonizing whether to spend them now in a mad rush, or to hoard them in case I get some time to play, Sunday afternoon.

timer and chips

All ready and set to go.

I’d better be careful, though … Kathy’s been dropping not-so-subtle hints about the garage.

Tim
Project 365 – Day 258

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Early Father’s Day

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So much to do this week. Any time? Enough time?

family

Tim and kiddos in a random picture. Look closely to see Father’s Day photos and frames from David and Daniel on the window sill.

Joshua came home safely from an outing with his Middle School small group. He said it was like part birthday party and part working party. They put in around 5 hours or raking, digging and grounds maintenance for a camp out in the country. They spent the night and had a church service out on the amphitheater (in the rain). One of the boys is from Texas. Poor kid! Joshua said he doesn’t think he’s really meant for this western WA weather. Ha!

I can’t believe I forgot to grab my camera. I would have loved to have snapped a few pictures of the (tired and rather soggy looking) boys as they exited the church van. Although it might have been the leaders who looked the most exhausted. :)

Rachel and I did some shopping. Got all sorts of great deals. It’s always fun to be out with Rachel.

Cleaned and worked on the house (only don’t come by right now as it’s messy again).

Tim and Joshua went to the Concert of Prayer at church this evening. Since I had been out all afternoon running errands and picking up Joshua (who was late) and because I have a HUGE to do list, I decided to stay home. I did get some work accomplished but not as much as I hoped.

After the men/young men folk returned, we celebrated an early Father’s Day.

cd's

Yes, we did go with a “theme” this year for our Father’s Day presents. :) I’ll post a review later.

Kathy
Project 365 – Day 161

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