Category / Family

by Greg

Cameron’s Hat (and Pockets)

Pweeceman Cam

I’m really not sure when it started. Somewhere in the recent past—perhaps a couple weeks, perhaps a month or more—Cam found, and immediately treasured three specific items. What were previously general possession toys became the sole, well-cared-for property of Cameron James Campbell.

(Officer Campbell to you.)

Upon donning the plastic cowboy hat, Cam assumed the role of “Pweece Offser”, and took very seriously his job of (1) protecting the Campbell home citizenry from “bad guys”, and not any less seriously (2) the task of carrying the tools of his trade with him everywhere he went—every waking moment.

His hat, his keys (an old set from our previous family vehicle) and his glasses (which he saved from his first movie theater experience, in 3D no less!) are usually on his person, or he knows where they are if not. He has a special drawer for his glasses and his keys at sleeping times, and a place for his hat, too, of course.

He just LOVES to have things in his pockets!

All of this is obviously very cute, and quite fun for our family. Brings a smile to my face as I type this! But the funny part is, his hat never fails to draw at least a smile, but usually a comment from nearly everyone who sees him wearing it somewhere in public. 🙂 The photo above was taken by a friend at a birthday party to which Cam wore his new “uniform”.

The uniform has since expanded to include: a tape measure, a plastic hammer, several pieces of “money” (which are anything from Monopoly money to random game cards), and various other tools he might need for his job.

He’s a worker man!

Actually, it may have started there. We had a plumber come over one day to fix various (slightly major) plumbing issues in our home. Cam followed him around for a while (in his gear, so I guess it didn’t start then…) and then he came up to my office with a “briefcase” and proceeded to start his “worker man” work day. (I set him up on our old Performa that still has a home in my office.)

Since then, he’s often referring to himself as either a “pweeceman”, or just a “worker man”.

He’s so fun, funny, cute… great!

It’s so amazing as a parent to see the different personalities in each of our kids. Each one is definitely unique. Cam is definitely the first of the six to keep such careful track of his prized possessions. Everyone else would have either lost interest by now, or lost the treasured items… or both!

Cam, as careful and responsible as he is, still has the mind of a three-year-old. Once before going to the bathroom, instead of setting his keys down gently (or putting them in his pocket), he threw them over into a pile of toys and other things, nearly shooting them down the stairs (right next to this pile). I was stunned he would do that, knowing how very much he cared for these keys. As soon as he was done, he headed straight over to the mess of toys and other things, and proceeded to look for his keys—”where he left them”. Ha!

So, I’m not sure how long this will last, but for now, we are definitely enjoying it. Just enjoying Cam.

by Greg

The Defeat of the Vile Black Sludge Monster!

The battle was fierce, lasting a few days, culminating with a full day of intense action. The Monster would win one battle, and then another. (And then another…) But I was resilient. I persisted, pushing through adversity after adversity.

At one point, after several humiliating defeats in the protracted fray, I began to feel my will to fight slipping away. It was then that I reached out to a fellow soldier who had passed through many such battles before me. He gave me just the tactics and inspiration that I needed for the final push.

In the end, through sheer power of will, I was victorious over the evil, vile, Black Sludge Monster and he was banished to that horrid place from whence he came; disintegrated into eternal oblivion!

Actually…

I had a really bad drain clog in my bathroom sink. I finally decided to have a go at unclogging it. I fished a wire hook down the drain, only to come up empty. So I removed the trap under the sink… gross!! Bad smelling, cloudy water with flaky black stuff in it dumped out into the bucket I had there to catch whatever came out. I cleaned all that out and replaced the trap.

When I ran the water, it was still clogged. And, now, thanks to me moving the trap, the seals no longer held. Very bad leaking!! Ugh. Now I had two things to fix!!

It was too late to get to the store before bed time, so I just left the sink undone and instructed my fellow cohabitants to desist from any sink usage until further notice.

Then this happened.

So, after a brief health emergency break, I finally got to a hardware store for a new trap. I replaced the trap and… voila! Oh wait… It’s STILL LEAKING!!!

Frustrated, I decided that I had to get some office work done, so I left the still-clogged, leaking drain and reminded everyone to use it as little as possible. (At least it was leaking less?)

As I complained to my friend and co-worker over instant messages about my predicament, he suggested I try to focus on the clog first instead of the leak. Perhaps the leak was simply because the clog wasn’t letting the water go where it is supposed to go. Good thoughts.

So, properly inspired, I headed back for a final push.

I had read a blog post by his wife (she’s a famous blogger!) about drain care not more than a few days earlier, so what he was describing was familiar, and I had intended to do that after fixing the leak. As she describes in her post, I boiled a large pot of water, poured it down the drain (it SLOWLY drained down) then I dropped a good amount of baking soda down and poured vinegar in after it.

FUN! Do you remember making tiny volcanoes this way when you were younger?? I forgot how much fun this was! 🙂 And it sure did seem like it could eat/clean away anything in its path.

Sadly… our problem was a tad bigger than a one-trick fix.

A second pot of boiling water did not show any progress. (In fact, I think it was slower.) So I tried again. Baking soda/vinegar/boiling water. Still slow. Painfully slow. A third time… a fourth…

NO GO.

Finally, slightly exasperated, but still properly inspired, I filled the sink with regularly hot water and grabbed my plunger. I covered the air flow hole with my left index finger and began to plunge…

Three quick pulls later I heard a marvelous, wondrous sound! A loosing of the terrible drain demon and a pleasant sucking sound…

AND THE WATER DRAINED DOWN!!!!!

Oh, joy! Oh wondrous, fabulous joy!!!

Then I looked in the tub.

!!?

It seems that the Black Sludge Monster can not be defeated quite so easily! This horrible, awful (copious) abundunce of dark, thick, black sludge was sitting in my tub around the drain. Lots of it.

I ran the water in the sink to see if the clog was really gone, and the water disappeared down the drain immediately. That was good; one great victory one. Glancing again at the tub, though, I discovered that the water was being directly routed toward the tub drain. As the water entered the sink drain, it came up the tub drain. (Really! As fast as it went down it came up!)

Oh boy…

So, after sucking up the gross stuff with my wet/dry vac, I went to work with what remained of my baking soda and vinegar supplies on the tub drain. Boiling water (ridiculously slow drain—though the tub drain had been free flowing before I plunged the sink drain), followed by baking soda, vinegar (fun!) … short wait, then more boiling water.

Nothing. VERY slow drain.

OK… I’m done with this, Black Sludge Monster! BACK to where you CAME FROM!!!!, I screamed.

Grabbing my weapon (plunger), I filled the tub with a little more water, plugged the air flow with a wet rag and went to work. Slightly more stubborn than the sink, it took a few more aggressive plunges but…

VICTORY WAS MINE!!!

That lovely sucking sound, followed by watching the stopped water flow quickly down a beautiful swirling spiral, through the newly sparkling clean drains (thanks to the massive amounts of baking soda and vinegar used on them!) and out of my house!

I tested both the tub and sink drains and they both performed marvelously.

The Black Sludge Monster put up a dastardly valiant fight, but… I was victorious!

Thanks to perseverance, good (smart, inspirational) friends, and …

My plunger!

🙂

by Greg

Misdiagnoses

It’s been an interesting few days here in the Campbell home.

(I know… when isn’t it, right?)

You see, it all began with a phone call from Grandma. (Well, sort of.)

Last Wednesday, Julia and Dad (that’s me) went out for an OK Night. Just Julia and Dad out on the town. McDonald’s for french fries, games, and play place. Then we hit a couple more places before the night was through. It was a blast!

And the best was still to come!

The next afternoon, Mom drove Julia, her two sisters, and their baby brother, Cam, over to meet Grandma who would take all four youngest kiddos back home with her for three days! They were so excited!

The first night was just wonderful. They love being at Grandma and Grandpa’s house! They even enjoyed a big buffet for dinner. Nice!

(We four back home were having good fun of our own, too!)

But then came Friday.

Now, whether it was the food she ate at the buffet… or the PlayPlace the day before that… or just something else entirely, we still don’t know. What we do know is that that afternoon Julia began throwing up.

(Yes, I said “began”.)

It was probably only a few times, but it was quite unexpected (and messy, according to Julia) so it just caught everyone off guard. Grandma even called us asking, “What do I do??”

“Keep her hydrated and plenty of rest,” was our best advice, not ones to jump to the medicine route. So sad, but Julia wanted to stick it out, and Grandma did, too.

Well, a day of rest on Friday seemed to do the trick. Fever had subsided, throwing up had ceased (though she was still battling the “other end”…) and she even perked up a bit, becoming her regular chatty self.

Whew! Glad that’s over…

NOPE! 🙂

Saturday morning they went to a park. Julia played. And played. When they got back, she was completely spent, hurting, tired, and “out for the count”. She slept on the ride over, and looked pretty bad when she got out to come inside our house. Still had a fever, too.

She went right to the couch and laid down.

We ate dinner (she ate something else… I think?) and made it through the rest of the evening till bedtime.

At this point, as I’m getting everyone ready for bed, Jen comes and tells me that she thinks it might be something more serious than just a little bug, so she wanted to call the doctor and see what they thought. I figured they’d probably just tell us to call them Monday, but it couldn’t hurt. Well, to my surprise (maybe Jen’s, too?) they suggested we bring her to the nearest emergency room to have her checked out, based on what Jen had described to them over the phone.

Interesting. But, they were just thinking it might be some sort of infection thing that could need antibiotics. They just wanted to be sure.

Sure would have been a welcome thing in the hours that followed.

(Yes, hours.)

I’m sure that you, the reader, are aware that late at night on weekends, hospital emergency rooms can have long wait times. Well, as Jen tells it, they actually got in pretty quickly. But, once they did a quick once-over of Julia, they decided (thanks to her not having been “immunized”) that they needed to run every possible blood test. Fun!

No. Not fun.

Jen and Julia left our house at around nine o’clock pm. The hospital is 10-15 minutes drive from our home. They got in rather quickly… but then waited HOURS for the follow up tests.

(Meanwhile, back at home… I have put the other five to bed, enjoyed some quiet reading time, and at this point, started to wonder why I hadn’t heard from the hospital-bound duo. It was 11:45pm and I still hadn’t heard anything! I decided to call and get an update… voicemail! By about 12:10, still having heard nothing, I tried the phone again… and again, voicemail! Worried something had gone wrong, I remembered that I can “Find My Phone” thanks to Apple’s clever technology! I just hoped they weren’t in a ditch somewhere, or worse!! I was relieved to see the phone located in the parking lot of the hospital. 🙂 Jen had left the phone in the van … so a quick call to the hospital and the nurse filled me in.)

BUT THEN…

(I know… how does it always go like this? Can’t it ever just be simple, and go exactly according to plan??? Guess not…)

Around 2:00am, they are still waiting for blood tests, filling Julia with an IV, and now there is some concern that perhaps what she has is appendicitis! In fact, it was such a concern that they ordered a CAT scan for her. That meant, in her very tired, very sick condition, she had to down a large cup of bad-tasting liquid, then wait two hours… and then they would scan her to see if the appendix was inflamed/infected, or whatever it might be.

Two HOURS!? That’s 4am, folks. For my poor, sweet, sick, tired six-year-old Julia!!

At this point, I finally grabbed a few fitful naps… only half-sleeping in case I received a call from Jen, updating me on their progress. I awoke every thirty minutes or so, praying each time I did that Julia could rest, and that God would help the doctors find whatever might be causing this.

At seven o’clock, I awoke again, and found no van, no call.

Time to check in, I thought. So I called our cell phone and talked with Jen, who informed me that they were pretty sure it is appendicitis, and they have scheduled an operation for about an hour from now when the surgeon was to arrive.

!!?

SO, we went from a stomach bug, to a possible minor infection requiring anti-biotics to… emergency surgery???!

It seemed that was the consensus, so I jumped to action.

I definitely wanted to be there—before the surgery—but our van was already at the hospital. And, well, I had the other five kids here! They were all sleeping still, of course, but I couldn’t just leave them, even if I did have a ride!

The wheels were quickly turning in my head. I called Grandma & Grandpa to let them know how the adventure that had begun at their place had escalated. Then I talked with our neighbor about getting a ride to the hospital. Then, deciding to leave the kids in the care of our oldest, Ian, I woke up Alex so that he could stay with Mom while I came back to get everyone else (once Julia was in surgery).

All was going mostly according to plan. We were getting pretty close to eight o’clock. I was hoping that they were running later rather than early.

Alex and I got out and thanked our neighbor for her kindness, bringing us to the hospital so early on a Sunday morning. We rushed inside and asked where to find Julia and her Mom. They said she wasn’t on their list, so that probably meant she was already in the operating room. (No!!) But, they weren’t certain of that, and pointed us in the direction we needed to go.

A brief elevator ride later, we were at the Operating Room area. But… where was everyone? The OR was dark, and there was literally no one in sight?

Weird…

We went down a hall that we knew was not the correct direction or location, but we finally found someone who could perhaps get us to where we needed to go. She tried. She really did. But we kept coming up empty. No Julia anywhere!!

I was really sad that I didn’t get to see Julia before they operated on her! But I just wanted to find Jen at this point, and find out what was going on.

Finally we were sent back downstairs to the ER, where another nurse recognized Julia’s name and took us to the room she had been in that night.

To our surprise—good, happy surprise—there sat Mom, with Julia beside her on a hospital bed. (Looking really, really tired, weak, and sick!)

“Well, hi!” said I. “What is the meaning of all this!?”

I didn’t really say that. But it sounded more fun that way, didn’t it?

Jen explained that the surgeon took a look at the CAT scan results, did his own examination, and he said he was pretty sure it wasn’t appendicitis!

While quite confused, I was certainly relieved. No one wants their six year old daughter to go “under the knife” … do they?

As Jen was explaining, the surgeon returned and explained a bit more that, from everything he observed, and after consulting with another pediatrician that morning, he was fairly certain it was not appendicitis, and that Julia would be able to go home, take a little Tylenol for her fever, and just stay hydrated. “She should be fine.”

Stomach bug… infection… appendicitis/emergency surgery… she’ll be fine.

Hmm. 🙂

And so, we went home. Julia (and Mom!) slept nearly all of the day. As the day went on, she perked up more and more. We finished the day with a movie, and all went to bed feeling very, VERY relieved.

This morning, Julia went back to the doctor to make sure things were progressing as the surgeon had hoped. After her Sunday night experience, Julia was very apprehensive. She really didn’t want to go through all that again!! We assured her (as far as we could tell) it wouldn’t be like that again, and thankfully… it wasn’t. The current diagnosis is some sort of bacterial thing in her intestines.

What will it be tomorrow?!

For now, our little girl had a much better day, was smiling and playing through much of it, and is now peacefully sleeping.

Which is where I plan to be soon…

What a wild, crazy series of events! And all thanks to a handful of well-intentioned misdiagnoses.

by Greg

Birthdays

08:06 - August 6thBirthdays are a pretty big deal here in the Campbell home. We really enjoy celebrating each other’s special days, usually for more than just that one day. But that one day is a circled day on the calendar and a number that carries more meaning than others.

We love the months of February, March, July, October, November and December. (We’re nicely spread out!) We love the numbers 5, 11, 13, 25, 28 and 30. (There are two 28s and two 30s! Even more fun!)

And we don’t have to wait till that special day once every 365.25 days…

I remember a long time ago, maybe even before we were married, Jen pointed to the dashboard clock in the car we were in and said, “Look, it’s my birthday.” I was confused at first, but then noticed that the clock said 10:28… October 28th! She told me that she often gets to celebrate her birthday two times a day whenever she can look at a clock at the right time. I smiled then, and I’m smiling now. I sure do love her! 🙂

So that has become a fun thing that we do here (at least Jen and I). We have plenty of chances to catch a birthday on the clocks! We’re coming up on Ian’s birthday as I type this (12:25)

It’s fun to have quirky family traditions!

Perhaps now you’ll notice a birthday next time you glance at your clock?

If so, happy birthday to you!

by Greg

Mortimer The Frog

Several years ago, I thought I’d try my hand at writing a few children’s tales. I had some ideas and just went for it. Some were your typical light and fluffy kid fare, others were more moral-of-the-story kind of tales, and also a bit lengthy.

Then there was Mortimer The Frog.

I just remembered these stories this week, and then read it to our two youngest tonight before bed. They actually really enjoyed it (though they wished there were pictures to go along with it). It kept their attention, and I loved hearing their thoughts after it was over 🙂

So, making its public debut here at GregsHead.net … Mortimer The Frog:

Mortimer The Frog

On a day like this, the bog is the best place to be. Everything is so quiet and still, all that you hear are the tiny bugs flying lazily from place to place before they land right in a hungry frog’s belly. Yes, the life of a frog is really quite good.

But sometimes, even the best frogs make mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes hurt! That’s what happened to Mortimer. We’ll call him Mort, for short.

Mortimer was the oldest of three little froglets. He had a younger Brother Frog and a younger Sister Frog. They all lived in the bog together, enjoying the quiet and eating as many bugs as they could catch with their nice long tongues.

But Mort felt like he wanted to do more. He liked his life with his Mom Frog and his Dad Frog, and his Brother and Sister Frogs, but sometimes he wished his Mom Frog or his Dad Frog wouldn’t always tell him what not to do. They always had something to say to him like, “Mort, don’t jump on those flowers!” or, “Mort, don’t go too far from the bog!” or, “Watch out, Mort! That is a slippery log!”

Mort got tired of always listening to his Mom Frog and his Dad Frog. He was tired of being a good example for his baby Brother and Sister Frogs. So one day, he decided to see what would happen if he didn’t listen to what his Mom Frog had said.

“Don’t go past that log over there, Mort. You need to stay on this side of the log in the bog.”

All Mort could think about after his Mom Frog said that was what might be on the other side of that log? What could it be that worried his Mom Frog so? It couldn’t be that bad, now could it?

When Mom Frog was tending to the other froglets, Mort took a chance and hopped as quietly as he could over to the log.

Flop-Plop. Flop-Plop.

It was a big log. It was covered with slippery moss. It was even hollow to explore on the end. It looked like a lot of fun to Mort! What could be so dangerous?

So Mort poked his head in the log and found some delicious looking bugs crawling around. With a few swift shots of his tongue, he found himself a nice afternoon snack! This was the life! Out on his own, doing what he wanted, eating bugs no one else knew about… what more could a young frog want?

After he had explored every nook and cranny of that hollowed out log, he hopped outside again and thought, “I wonder what is on the other side of this log? It couldn’t be the bad now, could it?”

Once again, he decided that his Mom Frog must be thinking about something else. This all seems so good and so fun! He knew she loved him, so she would want him to have fun. “She just didn’t know that the log was perfectly fine!” Mort thought, “There’s no danger here! I’ll hop around the other side and tell her all about it when I get back! She’ll be so happy for all the fun that I have had!”

So on he hopped. Past the corner of the hollowed out log. Past the confines of their quaint little bog. No one there, just Mortimer Frog.

Just then he heard a strange voice say, “Hellooo there! What a surprise to see such a nice young frog on this side of the log outside of the bog!”

When Mort turned around, he saw a big friendly snake, wearing a grin.

“My Mom Frog told me I shouldn’t go out here, but it seemed to me to be not only safe, but great fun as well! And I know my Mom Frog wants me to have fun…” Mort said it almost as though he was convincing himself that he was right.

“Oh yessss,” came the happy snake’s reply. “Mom Frogs sometimes just don’t know what’s on the other side of the log outside the bog. If they knew, they would definitely want their young frogs to be out here having fun! That’s what we do on this side of the log!”

“I can see! I have had so many delicious bugs, and explored places I never knew were there! What a great day!”

“And all because you decided for yourself, and went your own way, instead of listening to your Mom Frog, and what she had to say,” offered the sly snake.

“Why don’t you come over here and let me show you some more fun things on this side of the log?” invited the still grinning snake.

“Sure!” said Mort. He was so excited about his adventures on his own, he wasn’t even thinking at all about what his Mom Frog had warned about going past the log outside the bog.

The snake went down the hill a bit, past another log, “It’s not far now,” he said, and stopped at the edge of a big rock.

“Come over here, there’s something I want to show you.” said the snake, with his wide, scaly grin.

Mort happily hopped to the edge of the rock. He was so free! His choices were his own! His Mom Frog and Dad Frog would be so proud when he got home!

But as Mort reached the edge of that rock past the log that was outside the bog, he learned the reason his Mom Frog had said, “Don’t go past that log over there, Mort. You need to stay on this side of the log in the bog.”

Mort did not know what his Mom Frog had known. Outside the bog, on the other side of the log, are the snakes. Snakes who eat frogs.

The snake still wore his grin, as he slithered away. He had a belly full of Frog that day. That sly snake was mighty happy the day that Mortimer Frog decided to do things his way!

by Greg

On Chick-fil-A… and diversity in general

Chick-fil-A Eat Mor ChikinFirst, I am not really a big fan of Chick-fil-A’s food. (But my wife really is, so it’s a special treat when we are in Chick-fil-A territory!) Thus, this post is not really about their food, or their fun kid’s meal toys, or the fact that they play Christian music in their restaurants, nor that they are closed on Sundays.

But you probably already knew that.

If you haven’t heard—and, well, it’s possible that you haven’t?—the Christian-owned, alternative-to-cows restaurant has been in the news for the past month thanks to remarks that company president and COO, Dan Cathy. Here’s what he said:

Re: the “crisis of fatherlessness”

As an employer, first off, just from that perspective, I see it as a real crisis, in the sense that there is a certain amount of emotional DNA—there’s physical DNA obviously that comes from the dad and also from the mom, but beyond that—there’s some essential emotional DNA that God intended for us to give, from a mother and a dad that, we observe over our life as children—in infancy, and then growing up—that we can only get from our dad, and we can only get from a mother. And we’re to get it in a home, dynamic environment where they’re interrelating together, to build the stability and the self-esteem that God wants us to have to get through our teenage years.

Now when we don’t have one side or the other, you know, I just have to tell you, I think we’re just emotionally handicapped. Doesn’t mean we can’t survive and have a happy life, but it means that we’re gonna have some odds stacked against us. Hopefully there can be somebody that intervenes to help make that up for us. But, uh, to have so many people today that are growing up in homes where they don’t have a mom and dad—I’ll tell you, as an employer, it makes it that much more difficult for us, because we sometimes actually have to have a parenting role.

As it relates to society in general, I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. And, I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we would have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is all about.

Wait. Is that all?

Yep.

Where is the controversy? WHERE is the “anti-gay” that peppers every headline on from every “news” organization?

No really. Where is it?

See, so much of what we hear (and react to) is hype. And it’s predetermined. “What? Someone promoted a traditional, Mom-and-Dad-in-the-same-home family?? THEY HATE GAYS! Boycott!! Tell everyone you know!!!” And then the reaction, “What? They’re attacking my favorite Christian restaurant for speaking the truth against legalizing gay marriage??! Get out and support them! Buy ‘mor chikin’! Tell all your friends!!”

Ugh.

First of all, if you have the time, please listen to this clip—the one that started this recent fury… I mean, flurry of activity on the blogs, social media, and news sites. The whole Dan Cathy interview starts around 21:28, and the part quoted above starts at 29:43. Cathy was a guest on the Ken Coleman Show (never heard of it…) on Father’s Day weekend, talking about his Dad, and his own marriage of 40-plus years to his one wife, and the benefits of a Mom-and-Dad, stable family. Listen:

People. Please. PLEASE. Stop the knee-jerk reactions. Your favorite commentarians (that’s not a word) are NOT ALWAYS RIGHT. Probably not usually right. Take a breath… use Google (or other resources… talking to actual people is good, too!) 🙂 and try to find what is actually being said. If the headline says “Anti”-anything, plan on doing some major filtering. Find quotes, but find LONG quotes. Look for the sources of those quotes (like the show above).

I just can’t believe the agenda that nearly everyone has, one way or another. Truth does not appear to be as important as being first to post, or furthering one’s own worldview—whether or not the item being discussed actually supports or even has anything to do with said agenda.

I will keep pounding this drum till the cows come home. Listen to each other. Go to the source. Believe in each other.

We have to stop using the word “anti” unless it’s really true. Pro-traditional family is not anti-anything! (Except anti-non-traditional-family? But it’s still not anti if it’s FOR something.) Aren’t people who want women to have the choice to end a pregnancy nearly always referred to as “Pro-Choice”? But the opposite side of that argument—those who are actually against abortion—are called anti-abortion-ers. (Though, that side prefers Pro-Life, I believe.) That seems to be a case where words are used correctly.

But what Dan Cathy said, and those who think traditional, one man, one woman, married for life family is a better option (or, the best option), can not be labeled “anti-gay”—or anti-anything—when they are promoting, not protesting.

He is welcome to believe and even promote what he believe (unless it actually injures someone else, or keeps them from doing the same), and everyone else can listen (or not) and then respond (or not) as they see fit. But, as I said above, the response should follow really listening. Not just a knee-jerk (“pre-programmed”) response to a second-to-forty-fourth-hand report about what “someone said”.

There are many more articles to read. Please browse at your leisure.

And be nice.

by Greg

When Life Gives You Lemons…

Ian Campbell and his Lemonade StandOr, even when it doesn’t. Lemonade still tastes great. Who doesn’t love a nice, cold glass of lemonade on a hot summer’s day?

For a while now our kids have been excited to set up a lemonade stand in front of our house and sell to anyone who might happen by on a warm day and be willing to pay them a small fee for a cold cup of the lemon drink. They are nearly always greeted with warm smiles and over generous customers and have a great time while they’re at it. Not just because they are making money, but during the whole process: figuring out how much the ingredients will cost, what materials to use (card table, check… large piece of plywood covered with paper for a sign, check… signs at the nearest intersections, check) and then even adding items for sale, as our daughter is wont to do. (She often has a companion yard sale on the lemonade stand days.)

But this time, it was serious.

With a little help from Dad, Ian set to work on a design, and figuring out what the materials would cost for a real lemonade stand. I helped him think through how to anticipate what he would need, design-wise, and then we went shopping at Lowe’s for the lumber, paint, and other supplies.

I actually thought he would be excited to do it on his own, but the supplies sat for a few days on our porch. Curious, I asked if he was waiting for me to help him, and when that was the case, I was glad to join in on the project. It was definitely a fun thing to do together!

But Ian certainly did the majority of the work on this project. From start to finish.

From the measuring and cutting, to the assembling and painting (and even the lettering—see below) Ian had a vision, and the determination, and he stuck to it. (Thanks to some extra freedom in his daily schedule from Mom, too!)

The big event that helped push along the completion of this project is a really large annual gathering in our tiny home town. Every July, tens (if not hundreds?) of thousands of people from all over the world descend on Palmyra, NY for the Hill Cumorah Pageant only a few miles from our house. Knowing that was coming, bringing with it a ridiculous increase in potential customers, was a great motivating factor for getting the stand ready for use.

Some friends of ours had set up a lemonade stand of their own last year in a prime location for all of this visiting traffic, and in speaking with them last week, we both thought it would be fun to set up a schedule of “shifts” at the lemonade stand and have the whole week of the event covered. Great plan! They offered some of their resources, and Ian offered his stand (they even gave him a donation toward his building costs!) and we set to work on finalizing the last few details. (Like, getting permission from the business who owns that property, and determining when to have people at the stand, how much food and drink to have ready, etc.)

It’s quite an operation!

The first day went really well. Each family took a four-hour shift, and exhausted their entire supply of baked goods, as well as the lemonade… twice! Our friends had the good idea of selling bottled water, too. That went pretty well. (Ian is thinking next time he’ll write to a bottled water company and get a big cardboard sign to advertise that water is being sold, too!) All in all, both sets of entrepreneurial kids did quite well on their first busy Saturday of selling.

Sunday was a day off, and the Monday was definitely slower, but that was expected. Supplies have been bought for the whole week, and great profits are anticipated by all. 🙂

The coolest thing about all of this is how much it has been initiated by our kids (Ian especially, but don’t discount 8-year-old Kirstie. She loves it, too!) and how much work they are putting into making it a success. If you could have seen them waving in the cars today…

They are learning the value of hard work. They are learning the rewards of labor. (And have already enjoyed spending some of their rewards on things they love.) Ian is working toward paying for some of the sports he wants to play this fall, and has been learning how investing a little money (buying supplies, materials, etc) along with a good bit of sweat, work, and time, can (when done correctly) reap very profitable results. Definitely gaining some good business sense in all of these endeavors.

If your kids get the itch to launch their own lemonade stand (or something similar) I highly recommend encouraging their urges. Don’t do it for them! Be a resource, a cheerleader, even a helper if that is needed. It’s fun to watch them invest themselves in these projects and see the rewards of doing so.

Watch out world. Ian Campbell Enterprises is just getting started! 🙂

by Greg

Lessons From Our Garden

At this point, I’d have to say we are successful gardeners.

It’s kinda funny, because the last time we gave this a serious run, we were really pretty unsuccessful. We had many tomato plants that produced seven tomatoes. Total. All summer. And they were very tiny. (It really was sad.)

Then most everything else turned out even worse.

We discovered the likely cause of our pathetic “crop” was the presence (read: abundance) of walnut trees in our yard. The walnut tree roots make the soil too acidic for many plants? Something like that. Anyway, it definitely put a damper on our green thumbs.

But, several years later (I guess it was eight) we were determined to see a different outcome!

A potted tomato plant experiment (using the same soil from our yard, just removed from the walnut tree roots) produced a much healthier crop of cherry tomatoes. Delicious! (And beefsteak tomatoes as well, I believe.) So that was a good clue that the soil wasn’t really the issue.

Add to that decent soil our years of composting, and we had a pretty good place for some edible plants to grow.

And boy have they!

We’ve got tons of tomatoes, we have peppers, we have lettuce, we have carrots, we even have watermelon! AND, that squash you see is the first harvest of the season! The squash plants look great.

My favorite part are the four or five bonus tomato plants. We did not plant them, but they are growing very strong and look like they’re going to produce many tomatoes of their own. Fun!

As we’ve been watching the literal fruits of our labor growing, I’ve been noticing again that there are tons of great spiritual lessons one can glean from a garden. The one that has most often come to mind is what I wrote in this post from 2004. It’s really, really weird to me how the weeds mimic the good plants that they grow near. It’s happening again with this garden. Crazy.

Successes are fun. These successes are tasty. It really was a good amount of work getting to this point, but it’s also just astounding how much of it is not us. We just make sure it has a good place to grow and the programming takes over. God made it to grow in to a big health plant that yields much fruit, and it’s doing it! A lot! We’ve got lots of examples of his amazing design in our little 24 x 6 tilled plot of land in our back yard.

Definitely a fun thing to watch. We’re already looking forward to next year’s garden!

by Greg

Rick Boyer on Government Schools

Take Back The Land - Rick BoyerI am currently reading a book along with my son, Ian, called Take Back The Land, by Rick Boyer. Mr. Boyer is a home schooling superstar. If you home school, chances are you are already familiar with him. (If you’re not familiar with the book, I highly recommend it—and I’m only a few chapters in!)

The Boyers have 14 kids, they were home schooling when it was definitely only questionably “legal”, and they have spent 30 years not only educating their own family, but helping thousands of other families do the same.

(By the way… can you believe there was a time in the United States of America when it was potentially illegal to choose to educate your own kids rather than put them into the government education system?)

The book is aimed at young people (primarily home schooled young people 12-ish to 20-ish) and is a longer version of a speech he gave to a “graduating class” at a home school conference not long ago. His basic premise/challenge to the young reader: Grow up! Our culture has been steadily expecting less and less from young people, and so they play video games and don’t really do much of anything until much later in life than they could. He’s spot on so far in nearly everything he’s saying (and Ian thinks so, too).

I look forward to finishing the book (hopefully today) and probably discussing it more here, but for today, there was a section about Government Schools I wanted to highlight. I’ve offered my thoughts on this site a time or two. Mr. Boyer also described these institutions well:

One reason I believe home education is the key to revival in our culture is that it is a rejection of the system that I blame in large part for our present apostasy, the “public” school system. That’s a misnomer, of course. The schools are government schools. They’re not public at all, except in the sense that the public pays the taxes that support them and suffers the consequence of their existence. The government controls what is taught in those schools, and the parents who are rearing the students and paying the taxes for the schools have almost no input. Their values are not respected and in fact are often undermined.

The quote continues, but I just wanted to stop there and point out that this is really true… it’s not like a public library, or a public park where you can go and use it at any time you’d like, in any way that suits you. In many (most? all?) ways you’re either all in, or not in at all. And regarding taxes … do you remember this post?

Let’s keep going with the quote. This is the good part:

There was a time, early on in our history, when everybody would have laughed at the idea of compulsory school attendance. In the first place, it wasn’t needed. There was homeschooling, tutoring, and lots of affordable private schools. Literacy was much higher at the time of the American Revolution than it is now (see John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down). [editor’s note: Gatto’s books on education are on my to-read list…] Schooling wasn’t worshipped as the answer to all problems because people had been educating themselves for generations with little time spent in school.

Sorry for the long quote. I felt it was a necessary context for this:

More importantly, the compulsory nature of today’s schooling would have seemed both weird and offensive. In the early days, when Americans could remember the struggle to become a free country, the idea of a law confining innocent people to government institutions for most of each day, five days a week, nine months of the year would not have been tolerated. It would have been seen for what it is: imprisonment of the innocent. Promoters of compulsory attendance pointed to the very small percentage of American children who were not being educated and used them as an argument for their agenda. Once again, the needs of a very few were used as leverage to infringe on the freedom of all.

Emphasis mine. Almost done. (This one is not fully quoted… just a few key phrases):

Once compulsory attendance had become the law of the land (around the early 1900s), the public school system gave the government and those who had influence in government the opportunity to effectively brainwash a large percentage of the population. That’s partly why public attitudes toward moral, economic, and political issues changed so radically over the last hundred years.

…I blame government education for a lot of the problems we have today, especially the erosion of our freedom. Our public schools provide just the kind of young people one would expect a government to want: passive, uncritical thinkers who are unlikely to start any revolutions; conditioned by long practice to do what they’re told, moving in groups, with weak family loyalties and strong peer dependency.

There are many reasons we home school. He listed some of them. We can’t really imagine not home schooling our children. Again, for all of the reasons he mentions here. We want our kids to be fully who they are. To learn about the world in whole, not the world with God—who planned, and made, and holds it all together—wholly removed from the picture.

There really is a lot more, but… you might want to just buy the book. 🙂

Now, time to stop writing, and get back to reading!

by Greg

Pure, (Truly) Awesome Creativity

We use the word “awesome” far too often in our culture. That sounds like something you’ve heard your grandpa say, or your great-grandpa. (Or his grandpa…) We assign it to anything and everything: sporting events or just a moment in said event, a movie, a meal, and pretty much anything that may happen in the course of a normal day.

But today, as I was reading Genesis chapter one, the first word that came to mind was “awesome”.

Jen and I are going to try to read through the Bible together in 90 days (using YouVersion.com‘s Bible in 90 Days plan). We just wanted to ingest Scripture again, not in small chunks, but in its entirety. Might be aggressive with all the other reading we enjoy doing (have you seen my “currently reading” list in the right sidebar of this website??), as well as the daily to-dos with work and family…

But it seems it will worth the extra effort. And there already has been a “wow” (“awesome”) moment.

(Not that there will be those every time, nor that such moments are the reason for such an undertaking. But… it was kinda neat, so I am sharing.)

Two things struck me about Genesis 1. First, in the New Living Translation, the phrase they used for “and it was so” was, “And that is what happened.” It made me chuckle out loud the third time I read it. So matter-of-fact: And that is what happened. Period. I love that the reality is, God spoke it, and that is what happened. Certainly something I’ve seen, noticed, considered before… but somehow I was struck this time with the simplicity of it.

Which led me to the second point: the account is incredibly simple, but the actual result is so complex what we have learned about the processes behind the operation of the universe in the subsequent millennia completely blows us away.

And I thought, God merely spoke a simple command, like, “Let there be lights in the sky” and “that is what happened.” The enormous complexity down to the quantum level and the vastness of the “lights in the sky”… all from a couple sentences.

The sheer power of this Creative Being created that vastness, that complexity, by only speaking a few words.

We would take years and years of planning and testing and building (and failing) until we had something pretty close to good. God spoke our entire universe—reality itself—into its intricately complex and ridiculously vast existence in six days.

We can argue about what a “day” is, or if God used “evolution” to create everything… or if he made things and let the process work itself to what we know in modern/recorded history. Certainly he placed adaptive capabilities into all that we know as life (and even other processes) on our planet and beyond.

But evident to me today was the unfathomable power of creativity that couldn’t help but produce greatness… seemingly without any effort whatsoever.

Awesome.

Amazing. Beyond words.

And that is what happened.