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My wife nor I have never spoiled our child with toys.  (grandparents on the other hand, are an almost uncontrollable  force of nature when it comes to spoiling)

We will buy our daughter nice things, but I would never say it was spoiling her. We are very careful to have only a certain number of stuffed animals. A certain number of baskets for toy storage that she can have out. We allow her to have “x” number of dolls.

When it is Christmas time, we have settled on 1 big gift and 3-4 small ones. Birthdays? Usually something similar… 1 big and 1 or 2 small.

When we first adopted Selah we both talked about the excess of toys that we had and that children have today. We decided we wanted to help limit Selah so she would understand self-control, happiness with what she has, and try to help her develop a more creative imagination not based on ‘toys’.

We may have done too good of a job.

Yesterday I got home from a very long and very grueling day at work. As I lay down in the bed just to adjust my mind (read: take a 5 minute nap), in comes Selah with the box that my wife’s new walking shoes came in.

“dad, do you wanna see what came in the mail for me today?” Since my answer of yes or no was sort of beside the point, she began to open the box and pull out everything from small mirrors to strips of paper to hair clips. She carried the box around and it became a treasure chest, a magic box, and a place to ’store fish’.

This morning she brought the box in, grabbed a long piece of wrapping paper out of it and began to do my wife’s hair with the ‘new scarf’.

Why am I not this excited about the simple things and when did I lose my creativity… my imagination?

Ok… ‘lose’ maybe too strong a word. But there is an enjoyment in her that I have not had in awhile. A joy in just ‘playing’.

I think tonight I will come home early, and instead of working on my sermon or one of amilion other things I should be or could be doing… I am going to see if she will teach me how to play. =)

My wife truly does not understand me.  At least when it comes to my …erm… ‘draw’ and ‘enjoyment’ of video games (read: obsession). She thinks it borders on silly and juvenile. I think it is just plain wonderful.

I feel like Charlie opening up that one magic chocolate bar that has just the hint of the golden ticket inside every time I put myself in front of a video game. Ok… maybe that was a bit far. But how about this: i really enjoy video games.

Some people enjoy a good game of golf. Others enjoy woodworking or gardening. Me, I love to indulge and immerse myself in another medium where I can play someone else’s life in some other world while problem solving and strategizing.  It is something like chess but on a much larger scale. (and for those that play chess, yes! anytime, anywhere! lets go!).

During the time when everyone was playing some rinky dink game system called Atari, my parents got me an off market system called “Intellivision “. Quite honestly it had better controls, it had better games, it had better graphics. I STILL can’t figure out what all the hubbub was about Atari, but intellivision ruled my world starting in 1981 until the onset of Nintendo (SNES), then Nintendo 64, and on and on.

But I did not only play video games on a system at home. No, my father would go by the local arcade and purchase $5 worth of coins for me on Sundays to play during the week. You see, every day of the week they gave you 4 coins for a buck… But on Sunday’s they gave you FIVE coins for a dollar! (my dad was always very frugal and generous at the same time). With those coins, he would take me by the arcade and do his best to play video games with me a couple of times a week. I guess those were my formative years (junior high and starting high school) and he wanted to do something with me.

You know, i have often cited for many people how my father worked his hind end off for the church at the expense of quality time with the family. He was incredibly successful at building Pearland UMC, but his family often missed him or I resented him for not always being around. But if I am going to be fair about it, which I always try to do, he may not have been home every night to play Parcheesi, but he sure did try to make time to be with me in ways that really counted.  He coached basketball teams and soccer teams for me… And goodness gracious, What other parent, who had no bloody clue about what a ‘video game’ is, would spend hard earned money AND their own time to go and watch their son play?

I learned a long time ago when I started my family that I would never give up precious family moments for my job if I could help it. But I hope that I ALSO learned from my father to be very creative with the precious time that i do have. I fail at that at times…. and others I succeed.

My daughter showed a love of video games at age 3, to my wife’s chagrin. But me,  I think it is something we can enjoy together, spending some creative quality time with one another. Tonight I did something I have not done in 20 years: I ordered a Wii gaming system by Nintendo. I believe its something she will like. I know I will, too.

We all pass on things to our children, now, don’t we? I hope one day she looks back and sees that I passed on the good things like creative quaility time. Oh, and a love of gaming, too. =)

I am a fairly good cook. (I would have to be to keep my girlish figure up!)

I can make entrees, appetizers, sauces and soups with the best of them; I can cook anything from Indian to Mexican. But one thing I am not very good at is baking.

Try as I might, my baking endeavors always seem to end up… well… lets say “less than perfect”. My cakes are too dry and too moist all at the same time. Cookies are always at that level of crisp that most people consider too hard even for the NHL.

But bread… Now bread, I have had some moderate success at.

When I was growing up my mother would bake bread on Saturday mornings. The smell would waft through the whole house and fill up not only your senses but your very soul.  Bread has always been my comfort food; slathered with butter and hot out of the oven. Maybe that is why I keep trying to make it.

About five years ago my mother came over and taught me how to bake bread as she did when I was growing up. As always when she baked, the loaves came out perfectly rounded with a crispy crust and a soft center. Just like homemade bread should be. Since that time my mother has passed away, but her recipe I still have. Its written down in a little cookbook that some church at some time put together called ‘Amazing Graces’. Beside it are scribbles in her handwriting making corrections to some of the instructions that I suppose an editor made.

Since her passing, I have tried almost monthly to recreate her recipe.  I break out her old mixer, gather up the flour, honey, yeast, and oil, warm up the oven and ‘go to town’.  I mix up a double batch usually… just in case it comes out alright, that way there is plenty to eat.

What is crazy is how even the smallest thing can affect the outcome of my bread. If the temperature of my kitchen is not just right, it fails. If it is too humid or not enough humidity, it fails. If the yeast is too cold, it fails. If the water I mix in is too warm or not warm enough, it fails.  Sigh! For such a simple recipe, I find it amazingly hard to get it just right.

I view Christianity in much the same way as my bread making: I find it amazingly hard to get it just right. 

Once we become converted, that is, once we give our lives (and therefore our sinful nature) up to Christ, we begin the daily attempts to be more Christ-like. And at the root and the core of it all are some very simple concepts… similar to the simple ingredients in my mother’s bread recipe:  Flour, water, honey, vegetable oil, and yeast make for a delicious, soft bread. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control make for a  strong Christian life. Very simple concepts that we, as sinners, seem to constantly get wrong. Oh sure, we get it right a lot as well, but I think it is more like the bread I sometimes make… it’s too crusty or too doughy, falls to pieces when it is cut, or is just too dry to really eat.

So daily we must try again and again to live out our Christ-like life. We must make our mistakes and try to learn from them. We must be introspective enough to know where we falter so we can fix it. My friends, do as I do… Keep trying! Keep baking!