Out With the Old, In With the New

Happy New Year, everyone! Well ... almost. I can't say that I am really sad to see 2007 go. It has definitely had its challenges. It hasn't been totally without its pleasures, but I can honestly say that I am more than ready for a fresh start with the coming of 2008. This is going to be a really great year!

As is tradition, I have been writing down some potential New Year's Resolutions to build a better, newly improved me in the coming year. Here are just a few ideas I have had:

New Year's Resolutions

Last year I set the resolution to lose 50 lbs so my life would be a little bit easier. I did it in no time! Once I had lost my 50 lb dumbbell set, I could no longer exercise and that was so much easier.

I wanted to set the resolution to make more money but the feds are really cracking down on counterfeiting.

I hereby resolve to be a happier person. When my wife says it is my turn to do the dishes, I will just look at her and laugh.

I resolve to be more forgiving this year. After I get even, I will promptly forgive you for the wrong you have done me.

I resolve to empty the garbage more often if my wife promises to sweep it up off the floor when I am done and put it in the trash can outside.

I will be more friendly to strangers by smiling and waving at every person I hit with a water balloon.

I resolve to stop snacking after midnight. There will now be a fourth meal served at 2 a.m.

I resolve to stop yelling at my kids so much. They will now receive spankings without warning.

I resolve to cut back on desserts. I now consider ice cream a side dish.

I resolve to make a better effort to drive the speed limit. But I should warn you - the upper limit on my speedometer is 120 mph.

I resolve to get better at balancing my checkbook and after that I will progress to juggling it.

I resolve to eat better. I will now chew each bite of pizza instead of wolfing down slice after slice.

I resolve to save more money this year using the presidential method. I will veto every bill that shows up on my desk.


Nothing is set in stone just yet, but I am kind of partial to the money saving resolution there at the end. :-) For a more serious look at resolutions, feel free to read the Celebrate 2008! series I wrote on The Millionaire Marathon blog.

I wish you all the best of success and the greatest of blessings in the coming new year!

I Did It! or The Dumbbell-Throat-Karate-Chop

I once read somewhere that public speaking was the #1 fear in America. (I also heard that Fear of Dying came in at #3. So, most people would rather die than have to speak in public!) I think I finally found something that can top that ... public singing!

My wife and I love to sing in the church choir; especially around Christmas time. I usually stay home and take care of the kids so that she can go to choir practice, but this year I beat her to it. She hadn't gone in many months so around the beginning of October I started to go. Once we got a little closer to Christmas, my wife expressed her desire to sing with the choir, too. But she was kind enough to let me continue to go because I had stayed home for her so many times in the past. Fortunately, a teenage girl from our church volunteered to watch our kids for free so that both of us could go. That was when it started.

My wife started talking to the choir director and expressed "our" willingness to sing a duet sometime if the need ever arose. The following week the choir director announced that both Noelle and I had solo parts in the song "Oh Holy Night!" GULP!!!

I have a very valid reason for being nervous. When I was about 10 years old, I was one of the top singers in my class. Being young, my voice was much higher and only one girl could hit notes higher than I could and stay on-key. Then disaster struck in the form of an ill-timed wrestling match with my sister in the basement. One of my younger sisters and gone into my room and was carrying around one of the dumbbells from my weight set. I yelled at her to put it back but she only dropped it and ran off.

I shoved my older sister away from me to go put it away so that nobody got hurt, but, ironically, somebody did. My older sister, not seeing what had transpired with our younger sister and thinking I was still playing around, tackled me. The force of it threw me to the ground so quickly that I couldn't get my hands up to catch myself. The bar of the dumbbell hit me right in the throat! I couldn't breathe! My sister yelled for my parents as I was thrashing around on the ground trying to get some air. My parents came running but there was nothing they could do for me - especially since nobody understood what really happened.

Luckily, the collapse of my air passage was only temporary and, after about a minute and a half, I started to draw breath again - little gasps at first, gradually making my way up to full, heaving lungfuls. When I had stopped inhaling so heavily, my parents asked me what happened ... and that's when we noticed that we had a problem. When I tried to talk, no sound would come out. The upside of all this was that it got me out of school for a week. The downside was that the New Kids on the Block never called to ask me to be in the group (and, without that choreography training, I still can't dance!).

By the end of the week, my voice progressed from sounding like a soft sigh to the gravelly sound of an eighty year old man with throat cancer. Another two weeks and it gradually developed to the deep, deep voice that I have now. Apparently, puberty decided to strike me down a few years early since my voice was changing anyways.

It had its humorous moments like when I would answer the phone and people would start telling me about the church meeting my dad needed to go to. I would "mm-hmm" and "okay" at all the right times letting them run on. Then, when they were done, I would ask, "Would you like to talk to my dad now?" The sad thing was that I could no longer sing ... at all! I just couldn't hit the notes that I used to hit with ease. I would try to modulate between notes and oftentimes nothing but air would come out. It was so frustrating!

My dad teased me mercilessly, too. I would be singing along to the radio and he would burst into my room looking all panicked and ask, "Is everything okay in here?" I assured him it was and asked, "Why do you ask?" He would respond saying, "I just heard all this moaning and wailing coming from your room and I thought you had gotten hurt!" This did wonders for my self-esteem as you can imagine. So I just stopped singing around people. My version of singing a solo was to sing so low you couldn't hear me.

I turned the corner when I was nineteen and serving a mission in Denmark. I started singing more and more and developing more control. I sang in choirs while I was there and even helped out the bass section of a quartet that was singing for a funeral. I found that I was really good at amplifying a bass section, but I still didn't have the confidence to sing a solo. And now I was being asked to sing a one in front of approximately 400 people!

My wife sang with an award-winning choir in high school and many church choirs since, but she had never sung a solo before either. So she was nervous, too. (She would have much rather preferred the duet). The downside for her (or maybe it was an upside) was that a week and a half before we were to perform she started losing her voice. It never fully came back in time for here to sing her part so she really never got to see how it would turn out.

I, on the other hand, remained healthy as a horse. I kissed and made out with my wife often but I could never seem to catch what she had. (Curse this iron-hard immune system!) I realized the day before the performance that I hadn't memorized my solo and that it would be difficult to sing well while trying to read off the sheet music. So, being the on-the-ball person that I am, I procrastinated that until two hours before the performance.

Now if you give me a topic, a microphone and an audience of 400+ people and I don't have a problem giving a talk for 20-30 minutes. How hard is that, really? I've talked most of my life. I am fairly decent about putting one sentence together with another. I don't worry about people laughing at me if I screw up because I intentionally screw up and talk funny on purpose to make people laugh all the time. I'm used to it. Singing is a whole different ballgame. You have specific notes you have to hit and specific words you have to sing and if you screw up - everybody knows it!

I found that I had to give myself permission to succeed. I often catch myself listening to the other men in the bass choir and following their lead. If they go off-key, I go off-key. If they miss a word, I'm suddenly lost and scrambling to figure out where we are at. It is a highly reactive way of singing that just doesn't work for a solo. I had to get aggressive.

And aggressive I was! I sang with gusto and confidence. I believe I did well (a number of people said so afterwards), but I noticed my hands were shaking like leaves in a strong wind when I was done. It is a really good thing that I memorized my part that morning because I doubt I would have been able to read sheet music if they shook while I was singing my solo.

So the moral of all this is:

Don't get karate-chopped in the throat by a dumbbell because it really hurts.

- or -

You don't know what you can accomplish until you try. Be daring and give yourself permission to succeed in all areas. "Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain." ~Mark Twain

Look up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! ...

Isn't it funny how kids automatically pick a role model to emulate? You don't have to tell them to do it. They just automatically pick something and start acting like it at every opportune moment. As parents, we try to provide them with good role models to choose from. I mean, can you imagine how disturbing it would be if your kids started pretending to be Hitler, the Unabomber or Bill Clinton?


My role model growing up was Superman. He was the coolest! He is super-strong, can see through objects and can fly! (On top of all that, he was a nice guy, too!) I loved pretending to be Superman!


One day my parents bought me a pair of Superman Underoos. I was tearing through the plastic package like a kid at Christmas because I couldn't wait to wear them. I put on the shirt and the shorts and threw on the cape my mom had made for me last Halloween and "flew" out of the house faster than a speeding bullet. I spent all day jumping off of fences and porches and "flying" all around the neighborhood. It was great!


My parents thought it was all very cute. But, as I went to bed that night, they gently explained that the "shorts" were really underwear and are meant to be worn under clothing. And while Superman may wear his underwear over his tights, mine were never seen by the public again.


I still love Superman, and my boys have all acquired that same interest. My middle son, Joe, is a Superman fanatic and insists on many occasions that I call him "Superman" instead of by his name. He has Superman pajamas that he wore for his Halloween costume this year. He loves to watch the movies and cartoons, look at the comic books, and play with the action figures. He even has Superman underwear and on occasion will announce to a visitor to our home, "I am wearing Superman underwear! See?" He then quickly pulls his pants down before his mother can stop him so that the visitor can verify the truth of his statement.


Kids - you gotta love 'em ... because they are just super!

What We Give Our Kids

I want to share a quote with you that I came across today. It made me laugh at first, but then it got me thinking.

I am heavily in debt. Right now my goal in life is to be just broke. I wanna get back to zero. Someday, I'm gonna have nothing. I'll leave it to my kids. "See this? None of this is all yours."

~ Tom Ryan

I guess it really caught my attention because my wife and I have been talking about debt and finances off and on all day now. Things are tight right now and I think it would be great to be back at zero, but I could never be content with that. I am running The Millionaire Marathon and I will have over $1,000,000 in my bank account when I am done. The great thing is that it is all being created out of absolutely nothing!

Once I have made my millions, I don't know that I want to leave it to my children when I leave this mortal plane. Money can really ruin people if you are not careful (just look at what it has done to Paris Hilton and many other celebrities). I think you should give your kids love, laughter and faith-building experiences, but, for their sakes, never give them money! Give them nothing and see what they do with it!

It always amazes me what my kids come up with in terms of ideas and imagination. But imagination and ingenuity are not highly valued skills in the scholastic system. Problem-solving is taught more as memorizing rules and steps to come to a pre-determined answer. if you get the same answer as the teacher, you get a good grade. If not, they flunk you.

Real life, unfortunately, is not so simple. A solution for one person may not be the solution for another. Life is full of variety and people who excel in life are those who use their imagination, creativity and ingenuity to do so. It is no wonder why Walt Disney's theme parks are such a big hit - it is based on imagination and engineering! Not bad for a guy who was fired from a newspaper job for lack of creativity and accused of having no original ideas.

So, parents, look for every opportunity to give your children nothing and challenge them to do something with it! You never know - they could become a Disney-like success some day!!!

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Creativity and imagination isn't just for kids, though. I am a firm believer in creative parenting solutions. I heard of a women who had more than enough of her kids running around and whooping it up inside the house. So she marched all of them outside and then threw 49 pennies out into the grass telling them that they were not to come back inside until they had found all 50!

The Millionaire Marathon - Crossing the Starting Line

I have another blog dedicated to teaching people about a program I formed called The Millionaire Marathon. I just finished the last entry for the introductory series today. Come check it out by starting with In the beginning... and let me know what you think about the information presented. I appreciate in advance any and all comments and feedback you care to leave. Please invite your friends and family to come check it out, too, because I plan to have a lot of fun with this with as many people as possible

A LONG Day followed by A Short Night

I love my boys, but there are days when they find that last nerve and play "Lord of the Dance" on it.

In church yesterday, it was a holy battle. There is a definite reason why we sit in the back of the chapel - for a quick escape when necessary! I had to make a couple of them yesterday with my two year old when he flopped, cried or otherwise made a nuisance of himself. My wife wrestled our four-year-old while he whined about nearly everything and found a variety a ways to pester his younger brother. And my oldest son did not help matters as he could not sit still and snitched books, coloring books and snacks from his younger brothers when he thought we were not looking. Do you think the other church-goers would think poorly of us if we brought them bound and gagged with duct tape next week?

My wife and I had a brief respite when we sent them off to their Primary and Nursery classes, but they picked up right where they left off after church with my two-year-old splashing in the hallway water fountain, my four-year-old getting outside without a coat and running away and my nine-year-old yelling at him from inside the church hallway. When we finally did get them all loaded up in the car and back home, they spent the rest of the afternoon pestering each other, whining, crying and complaining, and making a general mess of the house. The highlight of the day was when we loaded them all into bed at 7:30 p.m. at which point my wife retreated into a good book. I attempted to do the same, but my eyes kept glazing over until I fell asleep on the couch sometime around 8 p.m.

I woke up, still on the couch, at 2:30 a.m. and contemplated joining my wife in bed. My wife, apparently, had other plans as there was a large pile of unfolded laundry stacked on my side of the bed. Not wishing to disturb her (she says she rarely gets a restful night of sleep due to an involuntary leg twitch she says I have ... I have no idea what she is talking about), I elected to just make a quick trip to the bathroom and finish the night out on the couch.

As I flipped on the light in the bathroom, it became readily apparent that there would be no quick trip here. One of my sons had been in there with a bout of explosive diarrhea. I know that for a fact because the toilet had not been flushed and there was evidence of the crime all over the inside of the toilet, on the rim of the toilet, on the top and bottom of the toilet seat, on the floor and (don't ask me how) smeared on the top-side of the toilet lid. All I can say is that the person who invented the disinfectant wipe definitely deserves an increase in pay.

After I took care of "the nasty," I went back to couch with the intention of getting more sleep. Remembering, dimly, that my wife had asked me the night before to assemble the Christmas tree (yes - ours is plastic) before heading off for work that morning, I made a quick detour to the garage to grab it and then vainly attempted to fall back asleep. As I lay there staring at the ceiling, I contemplated just setting up the tree right then. But I quickly discounted that idea because I knew that it would only make me more awake than I already was. I finally fell asleep sometime around 3:30 a.m. ... only to wake up again at 5:20 a.m. At this point I put together the tree, cleaned up after another bathroom visit by my diarrhetic son, threw on my gym clothes and shoes and headed out for a morning game of basketball with some friends before work.

What is the point of all this? Nothing, other than to say, "I'm tired, and I can't think of anything else to write about."