13/21 | Post-Mini-Vacation Puke

Here is a link to the messages from chaNges on March 1, 2015  and March 8, 2015 if you want to play along.

chaNges | weeks 1 & 2 

Also, please use the comments to post your own experience with the 21 Day Change-Awareness Exercise (21DCAE).  Please know that I will do my best to pray over post and prayer request as we do this together.  Good luck.It started with a Friday start to an 11 day spring break and then a quick Thursday, overnight, mini-vacation to a Wisconsin water park, and then morphed into a sick spouse and puking 2 year old.  There it is, my entire litany of excuses as to why I haven't been faithful to recording each day of my 21 days to a better dad thing.

Being a dad on vacation, even just an overnight, is a little like eating on the run--not much for nutritional value and it needs to be packaged just right or it will spoil.  We had a blast at the water park, but let's just say my goals for peace in my family and their goals for flashing lights and too many exciting opportunities didn't exactly line up.

While this was our 4th time at this particular water park--so no excused like earlier in this blog--the varying times and irregularity of bedtime was a bit of a nightmare.  I think that we thought we had things figured out by my wife bringing up the 2 year old of bed early and my staying with the bigs at the arcade until it closed was going to be the solution, but the arcade closed a little earlier than expected and we didn't have enough time to get the youngest to fall asleep.  So when the three of us arcaders arrived back in the room--it started a tough hour and 15 minutes of over-tired baby wrestling while settling down 2 others hopped up on bright lights.

Anticipation.  This is where a better communication plan would have been perfect.  Very easily I could have texted and found out that the 2 year old was not asleep and kept the bigs busy until he was, but I assumed that he would sleep.  There is nothing further from anticipation than assumption and, in our case, nothing further from peace than a rough night.

The little effort that it has taken to keep the home front at least ready for peace has been surprisingly effective.  Now if we can just get the 2 year old back to normal and use enough Clorox wipes to keep what he has from spreading any further.  We should all be on the road to recovery.

Lord, thank you for the opportunities to give my boys and my family joy experiences.  Please increase in me Your peace.  Amen.