Today was Hawaiian shirt day. The thing I like about this style of shirts is that are very comfortable (when they fit) and they give a wonderful impression of relaxation. When I preach I usually wear one (a solid color or one with a simple flair, nothing over the top) so they are also a work shirt in a sense.

After going through the few that were in the closet I had to scour the room to find the rest. In fact even after I thought I had them all I continued to find a few more. In total there were thirty six (36) shirts. Again a months supply of just shirts! With the thirty from yesterday and the ones from today, that’s sixty six shirts. We haven’t even gotten to t-shirts, dress shirts, and all the other types of clothing! Wow.

Going through this pile was also much more difficult than the polos from yesterday. There are a few that I have an attachment too, and allowed myself to keep those even though one is a little tight. Most of the shirts just plain didn’t fit. Staining didn’t seem to be an issue, but the fit was awful. That made things easy, but when I got down to the remaining shirts, that was harder.

Most of the shirts I had are very nice. In fact my wife came in today while I was sorting the pile and commented, “You’re getting rid of that! I love that shirt.” Thankfully I could explain that it didn’t fit and it made it a little easier to part with. That brings up an interesting point.

This endeavor to unclutter much of my life is mostly something that I am working through. My wife hasn’t gotten on board just yet (and she’ll freely admit it so I’m not gossiping) so when she makes a commit like the one above, it can be easy to be distracted by the end goal. But I’m determined. I want to have a simpler life and right now our house is preventing that. Doing the laundry shouldn’t be a month long process just to get through the stuff that is already dirty!

So, after all was said and done I got down to ten shirts. Twenty six more off to Savers and another $3 coupon for any future purchases. After yesterday’s post I got to thinking that I forgot to include the biblical principle for this.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” Matthew 5:29

While you may not see having a cluttered life as sinful Jesus is saying that anything that causes you to be separated from God needs to be dealt with, no matter how far you have to go. For me a cluttered house distracts me from God. Time that could be spent in prayer or study or spending time with my family and friends is instead spent being frustrated and angry at the condition of our house.

I’ll encourage you again: what do you have in your life that is keeping you from focusing on Christ? Remove it! Do whatever you have to to “cut off your hand” so that you can focus on Christ and his kingdom.

I’ve been thinking for a while about the disaster that our house is; Hannah even comments that it’s so overwhelming that it makes getting anything done impossible. The thought of the amount of work is paralyzing.

So with all I’ve been reading and thinking and feeling lately I finally decided to do something about it. Little steps though. I can’t just clear out the entire closet as that would take way too long and too much work, but if I take a little bit at a time, say one type of clothing, then it might be manageable.

Today is polo day. After scouring our room I found I had 30 polo shirts. 30. Three-zero. I could go an entire month and never do laundry and have all the shirts I need. I probably only need seven at most plus a couple of long for the winter. My limit was 10.

I set the rules as this: 1) anything that was stained, goes and 2) anything that didn’t fit goes. I can always buy more shirts if I need them, but really…! It took about half an hour and most of them were stained; a few were frayed or had holes, and only 2 or 3 actually didn’t fit. When all was said and done I had 8 shirts and 2 long ones. Thus making my goal of only 7 polos. Tomorrow should be Hawaiian shirts which I think I may only keep 5 of. Got to think about that.

At women’s retreat a couple of weeks ago Hannah got to know Jeanette, who is the wife of an instructor that attends our church. As they talked about the issues we’ve been having with Sam, and the failed attempts at resolving the issues, she suggested that we give Kenpo a try. She related that she had been having the same issues with her son when he was younger, and that she put him in Kenpo for the same reasons.

On Monday night we finally gave it a try. The school just started the Monday class and this was actually the very first time that they were meeting for this new class. He (Sam) seemed a little nervous and unsure when it first started. Part of that may be that he didn’t really understand what he was getting into. I’d talked with him a little about what Kenpo was, that it was a martial art, a sport, etc, but I’m not sure he really understood.

They started off by doing some stretches and Sam, of course, started loosing focus on what he was supposed to be doing. The instructor, Laurence, brought him right back though and did a wonderful job of keeping him on track and redirecting him. He’s firm and no nonsense when it comes to the class, but also has a lot of fun too.

One of the things they learned was kicking. They started by working on the form and practiced by touching the wall with their foot. After he was sure that everyone understood and had the basic form down, they got out the pads and actually started kicking. Sam lost a little technique in the transition but Laurence put him back on the right track and he was doing the kicks great by the end of class. When it was all over and we were leaving I asked Sam what his favorite part was and he said, “Kicking the bag!” Big surprise

We’re going to keep at it, and they are giving us a discount since we are church members (I’d love to go and learn too and they have a good discount for a family plan but I think I’ll wait until I’m done with school and have a little more time), which really helps. We’ll see how things continue and hopefully it helps Sam learn to control himself.

Sarah was chosen to represent her class, along with one other girl, in the spelling bee portion of the day. Now one thing you have to understand is that Sarah, in her 3 years of school, has never missed a spelling word. She has a photographic memory! But when she had to get up on the stage and say things in front of a large group of people, she couldn’t (or maybe wouldn’t?) spell a word. She did good for the first couple of rounds, but after that she was done.

Here are some of the pictures from the schools website that she was captured in:

In case you haven’t heard Windows 7 is coming out soon, but until that time you are able to download and install the RC for free. The actual download of the ISO file has been removed but there are still ways to get it, and you can still get keys from the win7 page.

I’m still in the process of getting all my files installed, and my drivers updated, but I can give a little review of my experience so far.

First, because I was upgrading from XP I had to do what they call a “custom” upgrade. What this really means is that you have to wipe your hard drive and install win7 from scratch. There are some files that I was surprised were actually still around after the upgrade given what the installer said would happen. The actual install was very quick and it took me longer to back up my files to my external hard drive than it took to install the update.

The first thing that you see when restarting the computer for the first time after the upgrade is that the loading screen is totally different. No longer do we have to stare at a moving bar graphic. The new graphic is very visually appealing and actually enjoyable to watch. Speaking of booting up, the startup time for win7 is amazingly faster. Really, it’s a huge improvement there!

Next is the desktop. The new taskbar is a big switch and something that takes a little getting used to. In past versions of Windows you could set up quick launch icons on your taskbar, but when the program was launched another version of the icon was created to let you know that the program was running. Not so in 7; now what happens is that a little graphic is added around the icon to let you know that it is running. This is nice because it takes up less screen real-estate and also is less intense on the your graphics card. Another nice aspect of the new taskbar is that items are grouped automatically. Now this has been done in past versions but the new way in which this works is a huge improvement. If you mouse over the program stack a little menu will open showing the individual windows. From there you can select the one you want to visually display, or you can even close them from this menu.

There are some programs that I have yet to be able to run, such as Logos (which is a huge must for me!) but there are still some settings I have to play with in an attempt to get it to run. There is a mode which I’m going to try which will emulate previous versions of windows and run the program as if the OS was that previous version.

Overall I think this is a huge improvement and look forward to exploring it more and finding all the new features.

Basically she’s gotten to the point that she is pretty typical, but her dopamine levels just will not come down into an acceptable range. So that leaves us with some interesting choices. We can go with a medication that will help regulate her levels, which is something that Hannah and I have been somewhat leery of in the past. The other option is to give her the nicotine patch.

Yeah, that’s right, the patch. Our almost seven year old might see some benefit from the latest thing to help smokers quit. The thing is that the medication and the patch act in almost the same way, but there are of course other things to consider. The patch will show immediate result, which is a solid plus, however may not be the best for her situation because the main issue is she gets a little “crazy.” And when I say crazy, I mean random; things like random words that don’t literally mean anything and just laughing and being silly. The big thing is the crazy speech though. So we can try the patch, and it may help with that issue some.

The other option is to use an anti-psychotic medication on a very, very, minimal dosage. The benefit with that is that it will probably help more in the long run and help to actually bring the levels into a manageable range. But it will take a couple of weeks before it even starts to show any benefit. So the question is which will be better?

We’re still thinking about it and discussing what we feel would be best for Sarah and of course we are praying for God’s wisdom in all of this.

When I got up she mentioned this to me and so we set out to get it fixed. Now we have been needing a new one for a while as the old one was really sticky and you had to turn it just the right way in order to get the door open. We got used to of course but this really forced our hand into making the necessary change.

We headed out to Lowe’s and got some lunch along the way. Man there are a lot of options for door knobs. Different colors, shapes, sizes, etc. And then there are the keys! We actually needed a couple extra keys anyway so we bought a couple of cute ones for ourselves (Mickey and Minnie of course!).

When we got home getting the old one out was no problem, but getting the new on in…that was work. I was literally dripping sweat by the end of it! The hardest part was getting the screws to go in for some reason, but it finally was done.

So now we have a nice new door knob that actually works and you don’t have to be tricky about opening the door.