Video Gaming? Really?

So, I walked into my home the other day and found my oldest son Tyler playing his Nintendo DS. I was irritated. Admittedly, I like to play a good video game as much as the next guy, but nothing irritates me more than seeing my sons and daughter playing video games at 3PM on a Saturday when it is 75 degrees outside. I mean, we have about approximately 72 hours left until it's too hot to go outside, so I don't like to see my children wasting their time playing video games.

I often am suggesting to Tyler to do more productive things. Of course, he has to finish his homework everyday, he needs to practice the piano, he needs to clean his room and a couple of times per week, I ask him if he has worked on his Cub Scout requirements. He is in the Webelos group, and is working on several activity badges and his Webelos badge. He is usually good about dropping the video games and working on his Scouts and passing off requirements that help him to be a well-rounded boy and eventually, a productive member of society.

So, imagine my consternation the other day as I walked in as Tyler was playing a Pokemon video game (I could write an entire blog about Pokemon and how I just don't understand that phenomenon) and I asked him, "Tyler, when was the last time you worked on your Cub Scouts". His reply: "Daddy, I am working on my Cub Scouts. I am doing the video game activity pin and belt loop." Ha ha, Tyler, you are veeeery funny. "No, Daddy, I am serious." (By the way, these are the words that Tyler customarily says when he is lying to me.)

"Daddy, I am serious - Cub Scouts just introduced a new video gaming activity pin and belt loop. It's brand new and I am going to get it. I need a couple of extra activity pins." I honestly thought that Tyler was lying to me and so I jumped on the computer and found out, to my utter shock and dismay, there really IS a video gaming activity pin and belt loop.

When I think of Boy Scouts, the first thing that I think of is being outdoors and building fires and camping and hiking and surviving in the outdoors. I think of canoeing and kayaking and rock climbing and orienteering and shooting guns and getting dirty and other outdoor activities. One thing I absolutely DO NOT think about is Pokemon and Super Mario Brothers.

I read the requirements of this new activity pin and all of them are pretty silly if you ask me, but my absolute favorite requirement is this one: play an appropriate video game with a friend for one hour. Really? Do we really need to encourage our Cub Scouts to play MORE video games? I think this is a really bad precedent to set and the wrong message to send to our Cub Scouts.

My Favorite D-Back

For those of you that know me, you know how much I love baseball and the D-Backs. Opening Day was Monday for the D-Backs and it was a glorious day - a 6-3 D-Back victory marked by a Dan Haren gem, a Mark Reynolds bomb and a Stephen Drew inside-the-park homerun. It is fun to have baseball again. Michelle and I love it. (Hee hee)


I have many favorite Diamondbacks - Craig Counsell, Luis Gonzalez, Curt Schilling and currently, Justin Upton. However, my all-time favorite D-Back is my 10 year-old son, Tyler. Tyler currently is playing minor league baseball in the McCormick Ranch Little League and shares my passion for baseball. He absolutely loves it. He is pictured below here on his Opening Day from a couple of weeks ago. I love the Under Armor wristbands; not shown here are his blue Ray-Ban blades that he wears out in the field. He looks like a little pro.

Quick story. Tyler loves to hit. On Opening Day this year, in Tyler's 2nd at bat of the season, he was hit by a pitch in his backside and he went down like he had been shot. As he writhed around on the ground in pain, I had to giggle. I admit, I am a terrible father, but it was quite funny. Anyway, Tyler managed to pick himself up and limp down to first. He eventually scored and shook off the painful episode, but ever since, he has been a little gunshy at the plate.

In the last couple of weeks, I have been waiting for Tyler to break out of his batting slump. I have watched as he has struck out more often than normal and just hasn't been as aggressive as he normally is at the plate. We had a conversation in the car last week about being more aggressive at the plate and swinging hard. The conversation helped him be more aggressive but unfortunately, he was swinging at anything and everything including balls in the dirt and balls that were so high that they had snow on them.

Finally, this weekend in Pinetop, Tyler and I began to retool his swing and get his confidence back. We spent several hours with the whiffle balls and getting him to wait back and drive through the ball. I could start to see him gaining his confidence back and I was anxious to have him play in his game last night. I went home early from work, took Tyler to the park across the street and spent about 30 minutes fine tuning his swing. He looked great and seemed ready for the game.

In the top of the 1st inning, Tyler was batting sixth and I was more nervous than normal. As he stepped into the batter's box, he seemed much more relaxed. He went through his normal routine: he dug his back foot in, tapped the plate three times with his bat and got into his stance with most of his weight on his back foot. He looked fantastic. First pitch, he was so excited that he swung and was about 4 feet in front of it and missed. He looked back at me and smiled. I told him what I always tell him: "Relax, keep your weight back, pick out your pitch and drive it!"

2nd pitch was over his head. 1 ball, 1 strike. Next pitch was a foot outside and he took it for ball 2. Then, the next pitch was at his head; he ducked out of the way and fell back onto his back. He looked back at me and he had the same look in his eye as he has had the last couple of weeks and I was worried that he would lose his aggressiveness. I clapped and yelled, "Get back in there, wait back and drive it!" He dug back in, a little tentatively and I thought he might go back into his old habit of being passive. Next pitch was a perfect pitch and he took a beautiful swing and fouled it straight back. It was a picture perfect swing, he just missed it. I thought he had seen his only good pitch in the at-bat and missed it. (In Minors, you are lucky to see 1 decent pitch per AB) Needless to say, I was very nervous for him.

Two outs in the inning and Tyler had a full count on him. He stepped out, as is normal for him, and took two perfect practice swings and then dug back in, tapped the plate and sat back waiting for that perfect pitch that I feared wouldn't come again. I clapped and yelled,"You can do it buddy. Wait back and drive it!" The pitcher looked in and went into his windup and delivered the pitch. Tyler waited and waited in his beautiful stance and it was a perfect pitch right down the middle and Tyler put the most beautiful swing on that ball that I have ever seen and absolutely hammered it.

A rocket line drive into the left-center field gap and Tyler was off to the races. I jumped up out of the bleachers and kind of choked on my Diet Mountain Dew and Ranch sunflower seeds. I was so excited as Tyler took off as fast as he could and I watched as the ball rolled all the way to the wall. Tyler was cursed with his Dad's speed (to put it kindly, he has less than blinding speed) so I was worried about him getting around the bases, but I was going crazy. As he rounded third, the third-base coach was giving him the windmill sign and sending him home and I could hear in my mind the theme from Chariots of Fire playing. It was a beautiful and proud moment as he crossed home plate for only his 2nd homerun ever. He smiled at me as he went back into the dugout and gave me the fist pump.

I was in heaven for about 30 minutes until his next at-bat. First pitch, he popped out to 2nd base. I love baseball.

Funny Things

It seems like lately, a lot of funny things have happened. I need to write them down somewhere and hopefully, somebody will laugh with me.

A couple of weeks ago, we had our carpets cleaned. The technician (I use that term very loosely) explained to me why it was so important that we have our carpets deep-cleaned. He mentioned the dead skin that gets in our carpet, the dust mites that feed on our dead skin and then relieve themselves in our carpet. So, I have been reminding our children about the dust mite poop in our carpet and the necessity of wearing socks in the house. I know, disgusting. Anyway, the other day, Kate was laying on her back on her blanket and rolled over onto her stomach off of her blanket and was licking the carpet. Yum. So, I was standing there watching this all unfold with Justin. I said to Justin: "Oh, no! Dust mite poop!!" Justin heard: "Oh, no! Dat's my poop!!" His response: "Daddy, gross! We don't poop on the floor!! We poop in the potty!" I had to laugh.


I occasionally have very weird dreams. My favorite all-time weird dream was when Michelle was laying on the ground and I was popping her back by sitting on her back. In my dream, she grew feathers on her back, turned into an owl and turned her head completely around and had creepy owl eyes. I hate owls - they are creepy. This has been my all-time weirdest dream for several years - until now. There is a baby picture of me when I was about 1 year old that is pretty cute. I am enormously fat, but quite cute. Anyway, I had a dream the other night that Michelle got a face transplant (apparently her face wasn't attractive to her in my dream). Instead of getting a normal woman face, the doctors were able to transplant the baby face from my baby picture onto my wife. When I awoke, I didn't know whether to die laughing or die crying. I will never look at that picture the same way.


My final funny item is more ridiculous than funny. I watched yesterday as President Obama signed Obamascare into law. What an absolute freakshow. My first ridiculous moment was when Joe Biden, who I could write an entire blog of funny things about, gave his stupid speech about how historic this moment was and then whispered (sort of) to the President: "This is a big f-ing deal, Mr. President". Really? The Vice President of the United States before the signing of the biggest bill in decades uses an f-bomb to describe the moment??? Unbelievable.

The 2nd most ridiculous moment was the signing itself. President Obama, as is tradition, used 22 pens to sign his name. 22!!! 22 Cross commemorative pens to sign his name that at most, has only 18 letters. BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA - count em, 18 letters. 22 pens. Am I missing something? I know this is a tradition so that the commemorative pens can be given to congressional leaders who helped get the bill passed, but even so, what a stupid tradition. Cross Presidential pens (per my crack research) cost $271 per pen. That's almost $6000 on pens. Even Marcelas Owens, the young African American boy whose mother died because her insurance company dropped her and was standing next to President Obama while he signed, looked puzzled as to what the President was doing. He must have been asking himself, "Does President Obama really think that all these pens might run out of ink?" I mean, with $6000, they could have paid for Marcelas's health insurance for several months, but I guess it made more sense to have really nice pens to hand out to members of Congress. Unbelievable.

I wonder how much it cost to make Nancy Pelosi's giant gavel.

Coupon$ense and Cinnamon Toast Crunch

If you haven't heard about CouponSense, you need to. I love it. It is this company that charges a monthly fee to match up all the store ads with current coupons that you accumulate by way of an online database. Michelle and I have been CouponSense customers for about 3 years now. We save a lot of money (usually about 70 to 80% when we are really working it). In fact, I am to the point now that if we actually are not being compensated in some way for going grocery shopping, it just wasn't a good enough trip for me. But it is a lot of work - for both of us. Mostly Michelle, but sometimes me. I hate the fact that there are free deals out there that I might be missing out on. So, grocery shopping has become like work.

Basically, the idea is that when something is on sale at a particular store, you match it up with a coupon and the item becomes very inexpensive. For example, this week, there is a great deal on cereal at Safeway. I don't know all the particulars, however, I do know that Michelle came home with about 60 boxes of cereal and didn't pay more than about $15 TOTAL.

Here is my dilemma: when is enough enough? My boys both love Cinnamon Toast Crunch. They would eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner if we let them. And sometimes we do. Well, I came home from work tonight and went to our pantry (actually it's an entryway closet that doubles as a place to put all of our CouponSense spoils) and it was entirely stocked with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I saw a few shelves of noodles, some cake mix and fruit snacks (which are free this week as well). But for the most part, it was all Cinnamon Toast Crunch all the time. Of the boxes that I could see, I counted 17 boxes. My guess is there are many more.

Will my children ever be able to finish that many boxes of CTC? And do I want them to? Intuitively, I know the answer to both questions should be a resounding NO! However, my fear is that not only will they finish all 17 or more boxes, but I will be the one behind them as they stuff their faces cheering them on.

Because the truth is I love free stuff. And as long as there is still free Cinnamon Toast Crunch out there, I want it. I need it. I must get it. So, my children will continue to eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch three times a day until there is room again in my pantry - you never know what will be free next week.

ObamaScare

This morning, I read an email that shocked me and made me smile all at the same time. It was written by Mortimer Zuckerman, editor in chief of US News and World Report. He was an avid Obama-supporter during the election in 2008. He has done a complete 180 on Mr. Obama. My favorite lines of the article: "A man can fail in the eyes of his countrymen and still be dearly loved by those closest to him. But in Obama's case, his wife and his two daughters will be there to suffer every agonizing step of his fall along with him. And for the rest of his life, each time he looks into their eyes, and into the eyes of black people everywhere, he will see the crushing disappointment that his ill-fated attempt at national transformation has caused them. He will be the country's unhappiest man, living the rest of his life knowing that his daughters know that whole world sees him as a failure. He is simply the wrong man, in the wrong job, in the wrong country, at the wrong time in history."

I went back in my blog and in my family's blog to see what I have said about Mr. Obama in the past. I hate to say it, but my predictions about the man couldn't have been more accurate. I predicted that one year into his presidency, the economy would be no better than it was when he took office (which it really isn't) and that he would be losing the confidence of the American people (which he clearly has already lost).

For the first time in my life, I am actually very afraid for the future of the United States of America. The wildly reckless spending with no thought of the future of our country is taking us on the road to bankruptcy. Bankruptcy? Yes, bankruptcy. It's appalling.

I believe that the 2010 elections later this year are the most important elections EVER in the history of our country. Prediction: the Republicans will win back both the House and the Senate and Mr. Obama, thankfully, will be a lame duck President for his final two years in office. Another prediction: Mr. Obama will be a one-term President and most likely, will not win his party's nomination in 2012. Call me crazy, but I truly believe that he will not even be on the ballot in 2012.

I have tried to give the man a chance, I have prayed for him everyday for almost 18 months now. I have now decided that I must change my prayers - from now on, instead of praying for him to be inspired and led by God, I pray that God will protect him long enough for him to lose the House and the Senate, realize he is a lame duck President and resign in shame.

I also wrote a little over a year ago that I felt badly for Mr. Obama because "nobody could possibly live up to the Savior-like expectations that were placed on his shoulders - he is absolutely destined to fail" - those were my exact words. Mr. Zuckerman wrote almost the same thing this week when he said, "His policies have been so extreme and so far outside the mainstream that he was destined to achieve the most spectacular fall from grace of any American President in history."

I hate to say I told you so, but, well, I told you so.

Genetics is a Funny Thing

I don't understand genetics. I have very dark hair and grey/green eyes. Michelle has dark hair as well with green eyes. So, when we found out we were pregnant with a daughter over 7 years ago, we were sure we would have a dark haired, dark eyed baby girl. We couldn't be more wrong. Blonde hair, blue eyes. And we are not sure where they came from - most likely from Michelle's mom. Below is a picture of Julia at 4 months. We couldn't have been more grateful.Then, we learned that we were having a second daughter. We were positive that we would have a Cherrington baby - long, thick dark hair with dark brown or green eyes. Once again, we were wrong. I am fairly sure we got another Candace. Below is Kate from the other day - almost 5 months old. She still has slightly dark hair on top, but all the new hair growing in on the sides is completely blonde with some reddish highlights. And her eyes are bluer than blue. Does she look familiar?

They don't look anything like Michelle or me (in my personal opinion), but I couldn't be more proud. If you can't tell, Julia is absolutely in love with her little sister.

Genetics is a very funny thing.

I am Back

Recently, I received an email from a friend of mine that told me that my blog had been deleted because I haven't posted in so long. It made me feel bad. I went back and read old posts that I have written and enjoyed it thoroughly, especially people's comments. So, I have decided once and for all, I am back. I will catch you up on the happenings in my life.

Our daughter Kate is now 4 months old - I am absolutely in awe of her every day. She had a very rough patch for awhile with cholic and some teething, but she seems to be done with that and is an absolute joy to have in our home. She is Julia's twin at this age, big beautiful blue eyes and an infectious smile.

I attended my mother's wedding over the weekend. I am not going to lie, it is a weird feeling seeing your parents married to other people. My Dad was remarried to Denise almost a year ago and my Mom was married to Kent this weekend. I had mixed emotions at both weddings - but, the overriding feeling that I have was one of gratitude that each of them found somebody that they love and can spend their lives and beyond with. It was a fun weekend to meet some of Kent's family and to see my Ted and Barbara, Uncle Greg and Aunt Jane, Uncle Larry and Aunt Jynene, Shannon, Angela and all of the family that came to see the blessed event.

I just concluded high school basketball season - for those of you that don't know, I officiate high school basketball. It is a passion of mine - I know that sounds weird, but I love to ref basketball. My dream job would be to ref college basketball. It keeps me close to a game that I absolutely love. I also took a job once a week reffing city league games at the club where Michelle has taught for several years - now, we are both employed by the same company. That's kind of fun.

Spring Training is upon us! I love Major League Baseball more than anything. I think the D-Backs could have a great year and I look forward to watching about 160 games over the next 5 months. (Love you Michelle :) )

For those of you that don't know, I am an avid Jim Rome fan - I am a clone. My emails are regularly read. Recently, I had an email that I wrote about Tiger Woods and his recent problems with so-called 'sex-addiction' win the Huge Email of the Day. Proud, proud moment in my life. :)

Until my next post . . .