My Dad.

Yesterday I thought a lot about Father’s day and how much I loved being a dad. That thought immediately went to the source of my love for fatherdom, my dad.

I think my sister and I share the same opinion that we have an amazing father. I would not be the man I am today without him, no way no how. He has been so instrumental in both my sister’s and my success.  I thought I would take the time to get my thoughts about my father on “paper”, so that I could adequately express what he meant to me. Below are the top 10 of his best qualities in no particular order:

1. Patience. Wow, I have yet to meet a more patient man. Whether it is dealing with the crazy women in our life (no offense ) or whether it is problem solving a problem with a car or a sprinkler system, I have learned that keeping a level head and waiting on the correct solution is better than losing my temper or taking shortcuts. Thanks dad.

2. Emotionally open. My dad is unlike most men in that he shares his thoughts, feelings and emotions. He was always quick to tell my sister and I how much he loved us, and that he was proud of us. I have never felt unloved. In turn, I am very open with my emotions. A real man provides for the health of his family, this includes their emotional health.  Thanks dad.

3. Selflessness. My dad has, for as long as I have known him, has been very selfless. He puts everyone ahead of himself. This is a quality that I have been trying to mimic, but alas it is the most difficult. The difficulty level makes my dad extraordinary. Take his job for example. He doesn’t love it, but it has allowed him to take care of his family very well. I know he would rather do something more fulfilling work wise, but the ability to provide in a way that he has has been very fulfilling. My mom can probably count on one hand the years she had to work. Because of his selflessness, my sister and I were able to be raised by a parent, and not a daycare worker.  Thanks dad.

4. Love. My dad has so much love for his family, and others. This shows in so many ways, by the hugs, smiles and everything he does. I grew up watching my dad love his wife, my sister and I, friends, and even strangers. He’ll stop to change a flat, use a clothes hanger to get keys locked in someone’s car, teach Sunday school, run sound for kids church, be a greeter, deacon and the list goes on and on.  I can attribute my love for people from a great example. Thanks dad.

5. Godliness. The aforementioned love comes from the love of  his earthly and heavenly father. Without the love of Christ overflowing from him, there is no way he could have loved me like he does.  His decision to follow Christ, directly influenced our decision to follow Christ.  He was a good man, and always took us to church. He looked out for the spiritual well being of our family.  Thanks dad.

6. Pure. I have never seen my dad look twice at another woman. Nor have I heard him make dirty jokes or degrade women. He always fast forwarded by inappropriate parts in movies and change the channel when Victoria decided to share her secrets on commercials.  He has given me a great example to try and follow. Thanks dad.

7. Hard working. My dad works very hard. Both in his professional and private life. Professionally, I love watching him work, or talk on the phone to colleuges and clients. He turns into some kind of awesome working animal. He has come a long way from a lab tech to a senior manager of quality control for a major company. This did not come from fancy education, but rather honest hard work. Work that others noticed and rewarded him for. At home, he does everything right. Even if that means extra time.  Sometimes he works harder on his honey do list than he does at work, which means little rest on the weekend.  In turn, I have worked very hard to get where I am. An attribute I gained from my father. Thanks dad.

8. Good steward. My dad takes care of his stuff. I know this sounds silly, but in a world where so many people carelessly don’t take care of things, this is a great attribute. God has blessed him financially, and he takes care of what he has. He changes the oil, washes the cars, cleans the AC filters, so on and so forth. Many people don’t maintain things. He does, I do. Thanks dad.

9. Consistent. What I heard today, put it into words. My dad was more concerned about what I would think of him when I am 25, then what I thought of him when I was 15. Then, he was lame and a bump in my road. Now he is a shining example of what I want to become. He raised me the same, from start to finish. Thanks dad.

10. Made time. Growing up, my dad made time for us. Earlier on, he had to work odd hours or take more business trips, however, as time went on it leveled out. The great thing is, even if he had to work a lot or travel, you knew that it pained him greatly to be apart from his family. He came to baseball games, my sisters band concerts, we worked on cars together. He travels and drives to Houston to see my sister and her family just for an hour and a half before driving back home! He made time for us. Time is something you can’t get back, I just wish I made more time for him.  He was present. Thanks dad.

My dad would probably say that I exceeded him in life. I, however, believe that I have enormous shoes to fill. If I turn out to be half the man he is, I am doing something right.  My eyes fill with tears when I think of the kids that I teach. They don’t have the dad that I had, and they will not be parents like I will be because of that fact. I am sad that they are getting ripped off in life, but I am joyous that I am amazingly blessed.

Thanks dad. I love you.

-Matt

$7, 3.5 hours, and a little imagination.

So we got a used play house from my parents, who bought it from a church. The idea was to just throw it in the back yard for Jacey to play with, but I was not keen on the idea of just having fisher-price strewn about.  So I was sitting in church, and it came to me. So I took my family to the in-laws for lunch and naps, and I headed home to complete their surprise. I think it turned out good.  I had everything but a few bags of mulch and top soil, so it was pretty cheap. Luckily we just happened to have 5 Japanese Boxwoods laying around… Actually I transplanted them from another area where we didn’t like them.  Just in case you were wondering about the 9016.5… our address is 9016. Think about it.

Much needed update…

Alas, we have again fallen into the despair of blogging…infrequent updates. Just in case you don’t talk to us much, and for whatever reason check our blog, here are a few updates as to what is going on in the winnhouse.

Me: I am about to start summer school here at McLean. I decided to teacher summer school math for whatever reason. I am regretting the decision, but 16 half days later I will have a nice chunk of change.  I start at Southwest Christian School in August! I am scared to death, and excited all at the same time. I am essentially a first year teacher again since I am moving from History to Science.  I love science, so it will be good in the long run. I am also coaching middle school football, basketball and baseball. With Taylor on the way, it will make for a very busy but exciting next year.

This year brings an exciting new challenge of preparing some excellent and advanced lesson plans.  I love the art of teaching, and I am eager to have students who will really benefit from that. Not that my kids this year did not do well, but this will be a whole other environment.

Jen:  She started at her new job this week. She is an elementary coordinator at our church, McKinney Memorial Bible Church. She is so excited about the position! Since she is only working 10 hours a week, it presents her with the best possible combination or being a stay at home mom, while still contributing to the much needed financial health of our family. She is also taking the opportunity to help us become more socially connected to families our age at church. I am looking forward to building some new life long friendships. Of course, these will not replace the ones we have, but will rather enrich our lives with couples that LIVE CLOSE TO US! (PNG, Houston, Hillsboro, Nashville etc.) Haha.

Jacey: She is out of control awesome! We are now having conversations, which is awesome. Her ability to communicate is amazing. It has gone from her just saying what is on her mind, to answering questions about her day and things like that. Unless you have reached that point, this probably doesn’t make sense. Simply saying words, and relating to people are a totally different thing. She is obsessed with swimming and I can’t blame her. Being outside is a nice change to being stuck inside all day.

She has also started the potty training. Which, despite a very few accidents, has been extremely easy. She basically potty trained herself, starting before we were ready for her to do so. We wanted to wait until Jen was done with work, but Jacey was insisting on beginning a week early. We let her when she wanted to, but otherwise didn’t force it. It apparently worked out great. She is a pottying  machine.

Taylor: My little boy is growing and developing right along. I can’t wait to have a son. His room is painted, and we are slowly but surely getting things ready for him.  Although his arrival will come at a crazy time for me (middle of football season), I am eager to meet and hold him none the less.

I’m a Big Girl Now…

So yesterday marked the beginning of the “big girl” phase of Jacey’s life. She moved into her big bed and out of the crib. We bought her some awesome pottery barn furniture. It was really expensive… but worth every penny. Check it out.

Just kidding. I actually bought some old cargo dorm furniture and re-finished it. Sweet huh? With new mattress, furniture and supplies… I spent about 5oo bucks. Not to bad for solid wood furniture that looks great and will last a lifetime. Since DBU was getting rid or desks when I left, I have a matching desk and tall dresser to re-finish that perfectly matches the set when she needs it.

Now to get to work on Taylor’s room. Oh wait you didn’t know? Yup we are expecting a new little bundle in October. Taylor is the name, boy or girl. It is after my great grandparents, the Taylors. Jen is ecstatic. She now has the perfect excuse to stay home from work next year. She is looking forward to a year home with our kids. Fun stuff.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Our new baby-sitter…

So Jacey has a new toy. She plays with it for hours… It is insane! She loves her new doll house.

Fabreeze, Pedialite, and Chunks…

Today was sick day at the Winn household. The night before I had my annual poker night with my high school friends. I got home rather late, and went to bed expecting to sleep in… Jen had the same expectation for me. Despite her efforts, I was awake the entire time she was, but she didn’t know it. I faked being asleep so that she would “let me sleep in”. Well I must have dosed back off, because I awoke to Jen yelling for me. I put my glasses on, walked down the hall, and made a sharp right into the battlefield.

All over the living room were little white piles. These piles had a rather foul odor and a suspicious consistency. It seems as though Jacey had gotten sick. Apparently, Jen and Jacey were sitting down to a nice episode of “My friends Tigger and Pooh”, when the exorcist commenced. First Jacey covered Jen and the couch. Jen quickly, but not quickly enough, removed Jacey from our suede couch (important detail coming…). In the effort to save the couch, Jacey spewed again into Jen’s hands. Faced with a decision, Jen made the wrong one…

Rather than taking Jacey into the kitchen, bathroom, outside, garage, or any other of the numerous other locations, she decided to leave Jacey and go wash her hands in the kitchen. Apparently Jacey decided to run around the living room, leaving the aforementioned piles… It was on the couch, in the couch, on the coffee table, on the rug, on the carpet and on Wendy. Nice. BTW, we forgot about Wendy and just realized that she needs a bath…

So I came in and started to clean while Jen took care of Jacey. I noticed that this was not going to be an easy task. First of the many issues was the chunks. I couldn’t just wipe it up without making a new mess just inches from the first spot. A stroke of genius hit me like the puke hit Jen and I rushed out to the garage. I got my awesome shop-vac (thank you Chamberlains) and proceeded to suck up the vomit. It worked perfect. So I cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned, and our house stinks so bad. Back to the suede couches, you can’t clean them!!!! I can only use water, and you can imagine how effective that was. So after a lot of fabreeze, we are left with a couch that no one will be sitting on for a while. Grose!

So Jen and Jacey had a lazy day. Jacey pretty much sat still the whole day. If you know anything about Jacey, you would know how weird that was. Here is a pic of the day. This picture actually pretty much sums up hours of the day.

So anyway, I hope you are fully disgusted… as that was my intention.

Haha…

I was feeling guilty about not posting to this thing. However, it seems that I am not alone. Aside from my sister, who couldn’t not post (great use of the double negative, I know!) to save her life. For the record, yes she could, she just chooses not to. I started looking around at other people’s blogs, and realized that we are not alone! Life is too busy to blog. When I have to decide between sleep and typing, I choose sleep. When I have to choose between Jacey and blogging, I choose Jacey. Too busy, but that is the way I like it. I can’t stand not to be busy. It drives me crazy. I get more tired from being bored than from actually doing things! It is this boredom that has me thinking about a second masters in January… pray about that one for me…

Life is good for us. We are just teaching away and enjoying our beautiful daughter. She is talking and becoming crazier everyday. We are so blessed to have her. We tried to count all the words she is saying, and we lost count around 90 or so. It is nuts when you start writing them down…. the list gets bigger everyday, so we gave up for the time being.

Anyhow… hope all is well with our non-blogging friends. Here is a pic of our crazy one on her fav chair…

What a cute doggie…I mean baby

Jacey is continuing to act like a dog. Yesterday morning we were in the backyard just hanging out yelling at bugs and Jacey took off across the yard. I had been throwing Wendy’s toy and usually Jacey likes to have her turn at attempting to throw the dog’s toy. So I didn’t bother getting up as she ran full speed to the green dog bone, because I thought her intent was to pick it up with her hands and throw it to the dog. Oh, no she had another plan. As I looked back at her she was bent over at the waist picking up the bone with her teeth. She then stood up and began shaking her head back and forth. I did my best to not laugh at the risk of further encouraging this lovely new behavior.

Jacey = Fun Times

Within the last week or so Jacey has started to mimic the dog (that or she really is a bit crazy). She crawls around on her hands and knees and picks stuff up with her teeth then shakes her head back and forth. This is all well and cute, but it is annoying that she is biting everything. In the last week has bit me a couple of times, but because I’m her mom and I believe the best of her in all situations I don’t think she was being spiteful when biting me. I believe she was just trying to bite my shirt. Regardless, of her intentions she has been told No and gotten into trouble for biting me. Well, today i was holding her and when I looked at her she had her mouth open going for my shoulder/shirt and before I could say anything she stopped, pointed at my shoulder and said very loudly “NO!” and then she just died laughing. We have had some fun times this summer.

Summer Fun

Some recent pictures…

Probably calling 911…

If the shoes are there, she has to wear them…

Jacey and dad sporting plaid!

She also likes to wear gloves!

Again with dad’s hats.

Fun times with mom.

She now loves hats and sunglasses.