The littlest one is still battling his bout with hives. They seem to come and go during the day. The doctor said it could take 4 or 5 days for the proteins of whatever it is that’s bothering him to get out of his system. He told us to keep up with the treatment of Benadryl and the anti itch cream over the weekend. We’re spacing out his doses as we want to give him as little as possible. The poor little guy is taking it all in stride, he’s a real trooper. We’re also trying to rack our brains to figure out what he had that was different that he could be allergic to. We’re also limiting certain foods to see if it’s something new. Hope this is all over in the next few days, it seems to be getting a little better as time passes.
Yesterday I headed up to the mountains to the machine gun shoot for breast cancer. There was so much traffic on the road that a 20 minute ride took twice as long. While I was gone Mom took the boys to the new Harry Potter movie, I guess it was really good. The rest of the afternoon was spent putting away laundry while the boys headed down to Uncle T and Aunt B’s. Soon the littlest came home and fell asleep on the couch (Benadryl) while the oldest stayed down the street. He eventually came home around dinner time and we all ate some leftovers and then lounged around until it was time for bed. Overall a pretty uneventful day.
It’s so sad what happened in Norway. It seems the shooter was convinced that muslims were taking over Europe (which they are) and he felt that he had to take action to drive them out. Personally I don’t understand how killing a bunch of teenagers is going to drive muslims out of Europe. This right here should be the first sign that this guy obviously wasn’t thinking straight. He clearly had some sort of delusional thoughts in his head and needed help. We feel so sorry for the victims and their family’s and are praying for them. It seems every day there’s another story of some kind of tragedy. More and more people seem to be “losing it” everywhere you look. Any tragedy here is always amplified (when in the U.S.) as no matter what happens whether a shooting, domestic abuse, food poisoning, a suicide or whatever crime or event, some politician is quick to pounce on the tragedy and exploit it to his or her own agenda or advantage. For example, in the case of any kind of shooting, the guns are quickly singled out as the fault of the problem. They way they talk, you’d think guns can think, and walk and talk and make decisions on their own! Forgot the fact that the person pulling the trigger is usually someone not allowed by law to have a gun, (like the kook in Arizona) or has a previous criminal history or some sort of mental illness, it’s always “take away the guns” and that’ll somehow magically solve the problem. Now this is clearly delusional. The root of the problem is in people’s heads, we need to catch this type of thinking before someone acts. There’s usually always some sort of sign but everyone just ignores it or doesn’t want to get involved. Look at the guy in Norway, we now find out he had a 1500 page on line story for months outlining all his thoughts basically telling everyone what he was thinking and what he was going to do yet no one took notice or any action.
In these times more and more people are losing all hope. Once someone loses hope, not much else is left and it’s easy to see how they can then slip fast into unwanted territory. Those of you a bit older than I might remember the Great Depression of the late 1920’s, here’s a quote that puts today’s situation in perspective. “In 1929 children had hope for the future. Today they are hopeless, helpless and clueless – an entire generation that only knows drugs, gangs, rappers, government handouts, teen pregnancy – and it goes downhill from there.” When someone loses hope, things just seem to spiral out of control. Our system now (government) is so big that the individual really doesn’t stand a chance of getting any help. This is why it’s so important to stay close to your family and your church. (If you don’t go to church, at least stay close to God, without him you’re really lost!) Talk to your family if you have problems, ask for help, you might be surprised how compassionate people really are, most do care. As far as our family goes, if you feel you can’t call anyone or don’t have anywhere to turn, call us, we will always help if we can. By the way, this doesn’t always mean financial help (don’t call us on this one, ha ha) but rather emotional help, like if you just need someone to talk or vent to, or help getting something done like moving furniture or needing a ride to the doctor, this we can and will do. The point is people, especially family, need to stick together and support each other. Think about it, what does the word “family” mean? What does it mean to you? Hopefully it means more than just the biological designation of being related by blood. This to me is almost the least important aspect of the word family. Send us a comment with what family means to you, this’ll be fun as I’m sure the responses will be all over the map.
Here’s another fun quote for the day, it’s particularly relevant to me being a dad, and something I take very seriously, check it out,
“The most important, rewarding, hardest,and heart wrenching things, a Man can do in life are one and the same: To raise a child to be a fruitful member of society. It is an honor and duty and not to be taken lightly.”
Pretty profound and simple yet there’s lots of kids in this world today that have not been afforded this advantage or properly prepared to be a productive member of society. The way I see it is if you decide to have children, certain responsibilities come with it. Too many people have kids and then don’t properly prepare them to be functioning, productive, responsible adults. Not doing so should be considered the greatest failure of anyone who decides to and does have children. Yet our society is set up or conditioned to measure a mans greatness by how much money he has or how big his house is or what kind of car he drives. Instead I submit you can measure ones life by how kind, compassionate and caring his or her children are to their fellow man and what they contribute to the betterment of society as a whole in their lifetime. (In my case, my Mom did a great job, in case you were wondering Mom!) What better legacy than to have children that hold these attributes.
Oh well, enough life musings for today, everyone here is now up, Bunkie’s had his morning shot and Mom says we all need to go walk the dogs. It’s supposed to rain this afternoon and we’re headed up into the mountains to see our saddle maker friend (we’re not buying any Grandma Dixie!) as the misses and his wife are working on designing some leather pillows out of his saddle scraps.
Have a great day and don’t forget your homework, what does family mean to you? Warning, I’ve figured out how to lock you out of the blog if you do not participate!
Take care and God Bless,