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Year-end Reflections

December 18, 2007 on 1:52 pm | In Parenting, HoneyDo, Hot Air, Yosemite |

What a year 2007 has been.  Talk about a whirlwind.

I’ve left Dallas ISD finally.  Been through three months of hell with Oklahoma City Schools, and now am back home in a great job in Dallas, trying to put the pieces back together of being gone during the weeks for three months.

Our kids have grown and learned so much this year.  In the next five days, they’re going to learn a whole lot more about themselves–we’re headed back to Yosemite.  When we went in June, they thought it was something special.  California is all they talk about anymore, including the three-year-old who has the cutest pronunciation that would make even Leno stop making fun of Gov. Arnold S.

Changing from the school business to private enterprise has been good for me.  Now I don’t have to stand in front of TV cameras at all hours of the day and night and explain why something almost unexplainable happened and what we’re going to do to stop it from happening again.  No more elected board officials who run for office to become something instead of having already become someone, and wanting to give back.  Why can’t there be more Jack Lowe’s in this world?

I’m excited for the future of my family this year.  We’ve been through so many rocky passages it’s hard sometimes to see where we’re going.  I guess I have to keep telling myself that if it were going to be easy to have seven kids under one roof, we wouldn’t be the only couple we know doing it.  It’s not easy, but it something we’re getting better at as a family–though at times… well, it’s a struggle.

But I’m finding at age 42 life is a constant struggle.  As a kid I used to long for Christmas, and I have a kid’s heart to this day.  To me, the getting ready for Christmas, the prep, the decorating, the MUSIC, the holiday gatherings of family (something we’re missing this year) are what make the season bright.  It’s not what comes under the tree that matters, it’s the possibilities of what could be that are magic.

In my minds eye I often times reflect on some of the captured images I hold in my heart from Christmas long ago.  Three and four feet of snow on the ground out the windows of K.I. Sawyer A.F.B in the 1970s.  Being in Atwater, CA in the late ’70s and wishing it would snow.  Yeah, right.  And then they ’80s and ’90s in Montgomery, AL where it could have snowed, and some times did, just a smidge.

I’ll never forget seeing my mom cry as she came back to Montgomery from when Dad got shipped back off to K.I.  The tree was real, something mom and dad hadn’t done since I’d had an allergic reaction to a live tree at McConnell A.F.B in Wichita, KA when I was in the first grade.  The tree that year, and years to follow, was a simple red balls, white lights theme (No, not a Bama tree,) but simple, and beautiful–the opposite of what some many try to make Christmas into.

And then there is the old story of Larry Lott of Montgomery who used to dress up as Santa and take a big back of toys around to his friends houses, and how we stopped one Christmas Eve at the house of a black family who lived in an old, old two/three roomed house.  They had one of those old fashioned pot belly stoves for a heater and I promise you, that house was the warmest one I’ve ever been in.  And not just because of the heater, but because of the joy those kids got from Larry showing up in a Santa suit and giving the lady’s kids some toys they would not have otherwise received.

This year, Kari and I are starting something new at our house–being gone for the holidays.  Yes, the kids will still get something to open, but the big expenditure is a trip to the mountains.  We don’t know how much snow we’ll see, how expensive it will be to ski, snow board, or just sled, but we’re going to go exploring.  We’re going to see beyond our Texas warmth and enjoy a place on earth that God prepared millions of years ago for us to enjoy as a family this year.  What more could we ask for?

There is so much for us to get done today.  Kari’s still trying to get a last-minute pair of long johns for one of the boys and a snow suit for one of the girls.   And then there is packing. I have this bad feeling we’re going to be dropping another $100 or so tonight on one or two or three more LARGE suitcases to handle all the snow clothes, boots, jeans, long-sleeved shirts, and all the other stuff you have to take when you have seven kids.

Around the house, we’re getting things back to normal.  This past week I got out in the garage and built an eight-foot high series of shelves for storage, put up peg board for holding tools, etc, and made a work bench.  I’m thinking I need to make one more and then as the months of 2008 pass, slowly acquire some new saws, a drill-press, and get into wood working, too.

I need to do some painting.  Some walking/exercising. And I’m going to begin lessons for Final Cut Express video editing when we get back.     And put up all the Christmas stuff.  Whew, is that ever a job.

Gotta get to work.  Happy holidays all.