Veterans day

This  has been a sad and strange week in college football.  First off the Penn State scandal happened and caused major controversy around the nation.  What does this say about our scholastic programs?  Have we become so addicted to winning that we have forgotten our morals?  I understand the passion for college athletics.  I was a player once and understand how important it is to have a fan base that loves its players and coaches, but wow how things have changed.  The Penn State issue speaks for itself.  I'm not even going to mention much of it because the tragedies speak for themselves.  The only thing I will say is that all of them should be fired and Sandusky should go to jail then rot in hell. 

Texas Tech played today and got BEAT DOWN!  I was very optimistic about this season.  I understood they were young and would be inconsistent so losing a few games wouldn't surprise me, but I figured they would continue to get better throughout the season.  It seems as if they have gotten worse.  Does this bother me?  Sort of...See I'm not invested like many people are.  I didn't graduate from TT and have only been a fan since we moved here.  My Southern Illinois Salukis are not in the conversation during football season so I root for the home town team.  Even though I am not an alum, I am passionate about TTU football.  The Red and Black has gotten in my blood so when they lose I hurt like other fans.  Today was different though.  I was screaming at the Television, getting fired up until I saw the video of the wounded warriors....My heart stopped racing and I was reminded that it was just a game....

Wounded Warrior...I have served....I have seen the sunrise in a dozen countries.  I have felt the Afghanistan winter....I have felt the Saudi Arabian Summer....With wounded warriors on the sideline in Lubbock today, It made me wonder what was going through their minds....I can speak from experience that these guys have never given up when they were in the trenches...Unlike college football their game is life or death....their game doesn't end after 60 minutes....they don't miss tackles or they may die....Tech lost today....Our country wins because we have men and women who show up every day....If they don't the enemy comes to our house and they don't beat us by 60 points....they take away our liberties...they take away our freedom....

Remember this today.....College football is a game....War is not....Players live to play another day....Soldiers, Airman and Marines may not....I just wish we had the same passions for our country that we have towards our athletes....

Card board box

I hate the fact that I get frustrated when doing projects.  It can be anything from fixing a leaky sink to working on a car to making breakfast for the family, when I'm in a time crunch I get really frustrated.  The lesson that I learned this week was even with the frustration, it is worth every dime to see the smile on a kids face.....

Cayden had one of those school projects that is pawned off on the parents to complete.  He  has been learning about motion and energy and his assignment was to build a car out of cardboard for a car show at the school.  Now I'm not sure if teachers realize that it takes a very special 5 year old to build a box car out of cardboard...Needless to say, I spent about 5 hours working on a fire truck so that Cayden could have a quality automobile during the car show.....

It started out simple...Buy some boxers...buy some spray paint...buy some letters to put on the side...easy!  Well I get home and realize that the boxes don't fit together the way I expected them...the spray paint will not cover the letters on the box....the paper plates melted when I sprayed them with paint....The box wouldn't hold together when I stapled them together....ect.. ect....The frustration set it...

I decided to use wall paint to paint the boxes...it worked well.   The pieces started to come together when it was time to go get the kids...By this time I had a lot of it completed but the details needed to be finished.  I picked up the kids and brought them home.  Well I learned something else...It is difficult to build a cardboard box fire truck while making sure 4 kids aren't playing in the street, chasing cats, riding bikes, throwing footballs and getting into everything I was using to build this contraption....It didn't help when I asked the kids to help me with the project...My wife can tell anyone that when I feel someone is in my way, I take my frustration to another level...

After 5 tedious hours, the master piece was complete!!

So after hours of frustration and trial and error we loaded the truck into the car and took it to the school the next morning.  As we walked in there was another fire truck that made Cayden realize that I put in a lot of effort...You could tell on his face that he knew his fire truck was a lot better than the other one...All of Cayden's friends ran up to him and told him how awesome his truck was...I wish I had a picture of his face...It was brighter than anytime I have seen since they have been here...He was proud, he was excited, he was thankful that his car was so awesome.....

My frustration was gone...my frustration was worth every penny spent, every paint drop under my nails, every staple I had to take out in order to add 3 more...My frustration was worth seeing the amount of pride that a child can exhibit...My frustration was gone and the lesson I learned was even though it was time consuming, even though I didn't want to put in the effort, even though I know I could have made him a cheap crappy car, the time was worth seeing the smile on his face...

Well the car show was today...here is a video of the event..