The above are some little critters that my wife and youngest daughter made this morning. I can only imagine how much fun that was. K3 is three and miiighty cute.

So this past weekend Leigh was working and I was alone with the kids. I was apparently pretty grumpy about it too. I told the kids to go off and play on their own and so they did. They would periodically check in and I would thunder at them to go in their rooms or outside, anywhere just so I could vegetate.

Seeing the above picture reminds me that when I do stuff like retreat into my grumpy old man mode, I miss so much. Now, making aliens or play-dough snow men probably isn't on the same level as attending soccer games/school plays/weddings. I don't think that because of that one Saturday my kids will require years of intensive therapy. Still, my kids won't be this little forever. In fact I'm pretty sure that if I squinted I could actually see them grow in real time.

Thus, while I'm not big on resolutions I will say that one thing I'd like to be in this coming new year is less of a GOM and more of a play-dough alien builder.

I'd like to do something really profound here, this being my five hundredth and all, but I don't feel quite up to it. I thought about linking to some of my most commented on posts, but there was no easy way I could find to do that.

As it was the five hundredth was almost an Archangel podcast and that would have been fitting since it has become the biggest raison d'etre for this here site. I couldn't get the audio edited last night though so that didn't happen. Yeah, yeah I should have built a buffer. My apologies to those of you who are waiting on Episode 11, it should pop up tonight.

As it is I need to engage in a little writing as therapy. I know I should be writing interesting posts about spiritual stuff, since that's supposedly what this site is about, but frankly I started blogging as a way to spew my emotions and along the way picked up some readers. Thanks for reading. For some reason it's comforting to know that even crap like this isn't going into the ether unignored. I have folks that read this that I consider friends, some I consider brothers. For you and you know who you are, thanks in advance for the prayers and kind thoughts. If you know me at all you know I'm prone to bouts like this.

So why am I blue? Well, I suppose the primary reason is I'm freakin' tired. I was up at 4:30 this morning sending my wife to the mountains for three days. I'll miss her (reason two), especially when it comes to the more mundane things like putting a meal on the table (which she does so well) or helping brush the Rochelings' teethses, so there's that too. Where she's going is to a home schooling training session. She'll be tutoring our homeschool groups' kids in grammar starting in the fall. This will pay actual money, though not a lot, and I don't mind telling you that she's a bit nervous, in spite of the fact that she is hands down one of the best teachers I know. Still, nervous is not a bad thing.

There are a host of other reasons, including a sense of being overwhelmed both by things I want to do and things I don't want to do. The less details there the better so forgive me my crypticality (yeah I made that word up, go poetic license go!)

Still I've got good things going on. We're moving (eventually, living amongst boxes is reason three) to a much larger house in the same great neighborhood. Folks are listening to my podcast. I'm having a blast in an online RPG. My spiritual life is about the same as ever, but I am being challenged at church when it comes to thinking about how I can be involved in the community when it comes to matters of social justice. So while it is not "all good", I really should be counting it all joy.

So I end this entry, actually one in spirit with the reason I started blogging, a little better off than I was before I started it. Seems appropriate enough to me.