My assignment from Mama Kat

I might be labeled a big KopyKat, but the truth is the truth; I like creating memories, too. I love pictures and I love telling stories.

I get visitation with my kids every first, third and fifth weekend of each month per the standard divorce decree. Unfortunately, my kids are 500 miles away. Consequently, my travel time is immense; but that works into my favor. My kids are trapped in the car with me for long stretches of time. Our favorite time killers we use during these trips are story telling and music appreciation. Whichever child gets "shotgun", usually commandeers the radio as soon as we enter the vehicle. I have been introduced to so many new bands that I would never normally listen to that I am finding my own taste in music morphing into some new sense of being. Bands like Paramour, Weezer, Fall Out Boys, Panic at the Disco, Jurrasic 5, Black Eyed Peas, and many more are finding their way into my Sansa player and onto my flash drive that I use at work with more and more frequency. As much as I am helping to pass my families memories onto my children, they are helping me make new ones.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of my kids company. I left Thursday evening, drove to Austin and spent the night. Friday I picked them up and we returned to Austin where I had their birthday gifts waiting in the hotel room. They each got the normal cards stuffed with cash; a calender for each with all the family birthdays, anniversaries and addresses, two Cd's (Fall Out Boy and Sheryl Crow for the girl, Offspring and Rolling Stones for the boy). Saturday we went to brunch at Trudy's, hit Toy Joy for some trinkets, went shopping for clothes (Austin fashion style rocks!!!), hopped over to the rugby field for a couple of games and then headed to Llano for a wedding reception. The reception was very nice. My kids got to see people they haven't seen for a few years and viceverse. Sunday morning was for us. We spent a few hours swimming in the Llano River, jumped off the dam a few dozen times, had some lunch and then started the journey home to Houston. All in all , a very nice weekend. Both the kids want to bring friends and visit the river again and that is fine with me. I just hope that when they have kids of their own they will remember that family times are to be cherished, friends with weddings and other milestones are dates to look forward to, and that no matter the distance you visit with the ones you love (and then let everyone else know what they missed). The hardest part of the whole weekend, as usual, was dropping my children off at another man's house. Men, please, love and cherish your wives and families; or end up like me, wishing you had.

Thanks for visiting and check out the Tuesday Caption Contest below for a chance to win music!!

Tuesday Caption Contest

Welcome to another late edition of the Tuesday Caption Contest. Sorry, I have been so busy that I am getting behind on my "to do" list. So first, we will announce the winner of last weeks contest - drum roll please - Wendy of YourScrumhalfConnection was the only entrant (but probably would have won anyway with her quip). If you are looking for something a little more athletic, go check out her blog on rugby, life and the Austin scenes. Wendy gets a new cd and I'll make sure I get it in the mail to her soon (along with all the match pictures from the Austin Valkyries games I have been lucky enough to watch. Melissa at Life with 3 Boys and a Little Lady is still a no show on claiming her cd from the contest a few weeks ago. Melissa, I have a brand new Beck cd waiting for you here. All I need is somewhere to send it. So, having taken care of the house cleaning on that end, I now move on to the new caption. Leave your best zinger in the comments for the picture above (and think of a few wish list notes for some new music in case you win) and I'll judge all entries by next Monday and announce a winner on next Tuesday. Mama Kat is running her weekly writing assignment at Mama's Losing It, so stop by there and have fun with her prompts. I know I will.

Wordful Wednesdays???

I was blogging recently about my incredibly gifted sister. I was trying to describe a gift she gave me last year for Xmas. It was a frame with three photos (see above). My son on top, I in the middle and my daughter on the bottom. She took all three photos in such a similar looking pose and quite sneakily I might add. When put together as they have been, the genetics just jump right off the page at you. It has been my favorite gift in recent memory. It and she and her family mean the world to me. I miss you sis!! Hugs and kisses to you and your men (husband and two sons)!! I am currently doing a similar set up, but with my mother, sister, daughter and an old photo of my mom's mom (the pose is sooooo close to being the same). I'll post it to show how it went later. And sorry about the flash glare, best I could do during lunch and with little time.

Caption Contest

It's Tuesday again!!! Because it is my favorite day, we will run another caption contest. This will be the fourth installment of the Tuesday Caption Contest. I have had very limited success running this so far, mainly because there is limited traffic on my blog to this point. But, by getting out and browsing others' blog sites, I have had a bit more traffic and (say it isn't so) ONE winner for the caption contests so far. Melissa had a delayed entry to the second installment to the contest. As the official winner, she will be receiving her choice of minor prizes, the new Beck cd, Modern Guilt. She won with her entry, "New rules for leap frog." Nice job Melissa, your caption was actually funnier than the picture (and that was hard to do!!).

A quick review of the rules.

1. Entries must be posted by Saturday morning, 12:01am.

2. Entries must be no longer than one sentence if it is a regular caption contest. If it is a mutated caption contest, then I am looking for no more than a thousand words, and poems of any form will get extra consideration.

3. I am the sole judge of who wins each week, but may give special recognition/prizes to unusual entries.

4. One entry per contest per person.

So without any further delay, the new photo is up top. Have fun and good luck. And Melissa, I still need an address to send you the cd. If you have a Hastings or Barnes and Nobles, I could send a gift card. Your choice.

Ten Things I think are worth saving

The Writing of Ten Things Worth Saving

I've been by Mama Kat's again.
I like the prompts, so to the den.
I've chosen one and done my thinking.
Keys are clicking, cursor blinking.

Type it in and proof read,
another pass it will need,
not quite right, darn, take two.
That sounds odd, it just won't do.

Shuffle lines, replace that word
Another pass? That's the third!!
So, with no further ado,
I, humbly, submit to you,


the top ten list of those things I think
are worth saving. (Lord, I need a drink)

10. Your personal work. Face it, we all have our own calling. We do what we felt driven to do. After pouring yourself into your work for a lifetime, do you really want to see it disappear with you?

9. Love letters. Love thy neighbor as thy self. A good rule to live by, but if we are lucky, even for a while, we find love. True love. The kind of love that makes you googly eyed and dizzy. The kind of love that keeps you up at night, not only while you are under it's spell, but even when it is gone, burned out and moved on. The kind of love that has you writing silly poems and leaving them where she is sure to find them. The kind of love that keeps you walking that line, huh Johnny Cash?? The kind of love that makes you keep trying to be a better person, so maybe, someday, they might come home.


8. Your family history. This, despite the previous item on the list, is the one about which I want to write. All of the items on this list are significant and most are tied together, but this one sticks out for more reasons than I care to name, so I will hit a couple of the more significant ones. First, I like family photos. I collect them, I take them, I distribute them, I collage them, I power point them, I doctor them, I have even scrap booked them (don't tell the guys on the rugby team, I'll never live that one down). Second, I like genealogy. I like to hear stories of what our family has done, places we have been, people we have known. History is learning, and how do you know where you are going, if you don't know where you have been? Case in point, I submit to you the above photo. That is my mother at age two. Absolutely beautiful, eh?? It was taken somewhere around 1936, while she and her family still lived in Wisconsin. As she was the first of six sisters, I am not sure if any of her sisters had seen the light of day or not by then. But, I digress. If I had known of or seen that particular photo, I would have had one of my daughter made in a very similar pose. I now encourage all of my brothers to do the same with their children. My only sister beat me to the punch though. She gave me for Christmas, last year, a picture frame with three photos. I was in the middle, my daughter was on top and my son was beneath me. She had taken pictures of each of us in the same location, same pose, same light; and cropped everything but the face (and I mean she cropped it close). The likeness between the three of us was up-lifting. It really helps you realize that you are a part of them and they of you. I am trying to take it even further, though. I have found a picture of My mom's mom that matches one I have of my mother. I scanned the photo of my grandmother at the highest resolution I could get and went to work on it and my mothers photo. I have to get my only sister and my daughter to sit and I will have FOUR generations of the women from my family in the same picture theme. Should be awesome. I will post the results of my project and a close up of my sister's work in the near future. Much the same way as Becky was playing with her photos on her blog, I recommend this to all. You will be impressed with the outcome. Third, as you can see, I like to write. I try to record as many of the stories as I can from our family history. All kinds of stories, the good and the bad, touching or sad. I record them (secretly if I have to) and save them in my journals and writings, both blogged and hidden away. I even have all of my father's written stuff. Someday I will get his book published. Finally, I think family history is important for sentiment. And I find it hard to believe that some just don't get it. When my ex-wife left with the kids and all the boxes packed with stuff from our house, she did a pretty torough job. I'll keep it short, because I don't want to start sounding bitchy . As she was on her way out with the new tvs and the silverware and all the nice trappings that we had acquired over the span of our marriage, she failed to realize what she was leaving behind. She left her family bibles, childhood yearbooks, years of family portraits and timeless photos of many of her parents relatives. As I find these things in my house now, after living away for the last eight years, I am left wondering what to do with them as well as how she could possibly forget these things. I mean, when your house is on fire and you have time to run inside and grab a few things, what are you grabbing?? Are you grabbing the material items worth a few hundred or thousand dollars or are you grabbing those priceless memories that no pile of money can buy. At this time, I will keep them. I will even make sure they stay in her family in the future (she has one sister), but I am not sure if she will ever see them again in her life time. They say time heals all wounds, but I still have some time left apparently. And this is where I struggle with my love for self vs. love for her vs. love for her family.



7. Memories. When we think of our loved ones, whether they are gone on a trip or gone from this earth, they can never be taken from us.


6. Your family ties and friendships. Families are meant to be strong, as strong as we can make them. Blood runs thicker than mud, right? And then we all have friends who are so close they seem like family. Those are the kinds of relationships that make life memorable; solid and long.


5. Your marriage. After God and self, what could possibly matter more?.


4. The children. To me, love is willingly making sacrifices for somebody else's personal well being or benefit. "How cruelly these tiny fingers grip my heart." HGWIII


3. The environment. The Lord made this wonderful place, who are we to destroy it?


2. Your honor/dignity. A lot can happen to us in this crazy world, losing pride is one thing, but honor is the gift you give yourself.


1. Your soul. God gives each of us free will, so the task is up to each of us ultimately.

Mutated Caption Contest

That's right kids; Tuesday IS my favorite day. That means Caption Contest time (and the crowd goes wild). This week I am going to try something different. The photo for the contest is from my personal collection. I took this during a road trip in the northern extremity of Texas. My son and I took my mother to the north. We were going to see my sister, but she and my favorite brother-in-law had high-tailed it to Mexico for the week. We found her teenagers hanging out at the house SOLO!! No big dealio though, they are smart good kids who seem to keep their noses clean. The Son had a blast with the cousins, I got some writing done and some photos taken, while Mom got to relax and spend time with the grandkids. Those two cousins were a good influence on The Son, he learned the inner workings of a potato cannon and a hover craft. He is now in full blown engineer mode, downloading stuff to build exciting new toys.

Instead of a caption, per se, I want all entries to be your own written thoughts on this particular photo. I will post mine next Monday and I will award a prize to the author I deem to have the best submission. They say a picture is worth a lot of words, so let's see what some of those words are. Good Luck and enjoy your time composing.

A Letter to Heaven

So, as well as doing a bit of blogging myself, I like to browse others blogsites to see what is going on out there in the world. One of the local blogs which I like to read pointed me to a second blog that was featuring a writing exercise. The young lady at http://mamakatslosinit.blogspot.com/ has posted a poem from her teen years (written to her dad) on the anniversary of his death. A really good poem written from the heart to a most worthy recipient. All a wrtiter needs (an audience, a message and a motivation) is apparent there. This type of exercise falls right (write??) into the theme of my blog, so here it goes.
Dear Dad,
it has been six years since you have passed. Sure miss you alot. I have moved back home to the house I left and am spending a lot of time with mom. She has now been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease too and I can already see the trembling in her hands more than I care to. I sure have a lot of questions for you. I could use some of that fatherly advice that I didn't have the smarts to heed while you were around. I know that we never really saw eye to eye when I was a much younger man, but I am coming around to see a lot of why you felt the way you did.
The kids are fine and we get to do a lot of camping when I have them on the weekends. Miles has really taken an interest in hunting. We haven't got him to bag any big game yet and to be honest, I don't care if he ever gets anything large. It is the love of nature and the wonders of this beatiful garden that I hop he comes to love. We have done some dove hunting and he can breast a bird as well as anyone. He doesn't shy away from any of the hunting chore work at all. We have a trip to the scout ranch planned for later this holiday season. It will be his first time to see where his uncles and I spent many of our summers and my first time back in twenty years. I never could get him to get involved in scouting. That is a real shame, because I think it gives a young man alot of positive life experiences. Of all my regrets, I would finish my eagle scout if I could go back and do it all over. I know that this disappointed you and although you have forgiven me, the guilt of it just won't go away.
Savannah (as well as MIles) is on the swim team this year. She also is in her third year of Spanish. We try to converse as much as we can in spanish just to help her out (Miles was shocked that I know quite a bit of French also). Last year she got to do a film school in Austin. She loved it and in one week, she and her four group partners made a twenty minute film complete with panning film shots and all. It was really good, especially because of the message (positive self-esteem).
Both kids really enjoy Austin. We spend a lot of our weekends together there. We like to take your old photos and writings and visit the places you liked to frequent during college. I don't think that your love of education missed them. They are both in honors classes and are doing quite well.
Next year we are taking the train to Missouri to visit where your dad and his family grew up. We are going for a whole two weeks and I already have a bunch of the gravesites and homesteads located for visitation. I had no idea that the old family hunting lodge was still there and in operation. We will be staying there for a few days. Mom wants to go and I want her along, but her health makes it hard for her to travel.
You missed your two latest grand children. Kurt and Lisa had Emma first, then Ian a few years later. He looks just like Kurt when he was young, and Emma is such a spoiled princess. You would love them as much as any, they are wonderful.
Tell all we love them up there, and we will be coming home in due time.
Love your son,
Stu