It’s 6am and that’s the wind chill outside right now. The actual temperature is about 5 below but it feels much colder. They cancelled school today so the boys are sleeping in. It’s a good thing as they both still have the sniffles and could use a day of rest.
We had a nice, but short time at Grandma’s last night for her birthday. We we’re running late with Uncle J and Zio Lolo here as the day just got away from us with all the work we had to do. Both leave today, Lolo this morning and J in the afternoon. It’s good to have a house full, (even though more work), when it’s these two which are just like family. Uncle J has been on his own version of a makeover for many months. He took up running, I believe during the summer, and has totally transformed himself into the best shape I’ve ever seen him. We were talking last night about raising kids and the challenges and downside of living in the city or burbs verses the country. While the country too has it’s own challenges, like being a much more physical life with less access to the malls, (if you call that a challenge) it has a lot of upside as well. Up where my family has property, the kids go to school 4 days a week. There the school day runs 2 hours longer each day than our school day here in the city. This is so the kids can help out around the ranch 3 days a week. I’m sure there are problems associated with a rural lifestyle as well but it just seems healthier as a whole, as well as a bit more isolated from the many of the things wrong that kids are confronted with in today’s world. I mentioned a few weeks ago of our brief exposure to this environment when we had the pleasure of visiting a friends ranch in Wyoming for an extended weekend. The kids still talk about how it was the best time they ever had and they didn’t even notice they had no TV, video games or music for 4 days! They were also up and outside by 7am going strong until dinner and slept soundly. It was a brief glimpse into life in another world. Now I’m not naive enough to believe that this kind of lifestyle would be all peaches and cream, in fact I know it would pretty much be the opposite. That doesn’t mean though that it wouldn’t be a better place for kids to grow up. I bring this up again as Uncle J last night, out of the blue, shared his wishes to someday move to the country where there’s a more physical, less society influenced lifestyle. I would have never thought I would hear this from him! Maybe we can move the Company headquarters to the mountains. All we really need is access to an airport and internet, which seems to be available everywhere. Oh well, who knows, maybe one day. I have to make time to sit down with my Mom and have her tell us more about life when she was a kid, that sure is interesting.
Zio Lolo just came down and told us his flight to NY was cancelled, looks like he’s here for another day. There might be a 6pm flight. Time to grab another cup of coffee and hit the phones as I have a call with Florida in 15 minutes.
Stay safe, stay calm and enjoy the day.
God Bless,