And here we go…
My first blog post. On our new blog site. I typically spend my days assisting in maintaining the network at St. Catherine’s and helping faculty and staff recoup from various issues such as taking sledgehammers to printers, wrapping fax machine’s phone lines around the units to prevent them from ever receiving another “reduce your mortgage now!” fax again, running after my kids while our soon-to-be-four-year-old Kaleb runs down the hall screaming “check the laundry, check the laundry!!!” and more and more. Or allowing high-school students to shave “STU” in to the back of my head when Stuart Hall School’s JV volleyball team made it to the conference tournament, of which I helped assist as an assistant coach. One of those moments in my life that offered me great pride for those girls who played their hearts out.
Sha and I have lived apart from our older children for several years. Long story, of course, but we missed out on a lot of events: Mackenzie and Lee’s graduation from their kindergartens, their first rides on their buses, their first sporting events, Matt catching his first fish, etc. We have quite a bit of catching up to do. Fortunately, we’re extremely thankful for the times we have spent with the kids when we were so far away. Special times such as this pic of Matt, Lee and Mackenzie at Nauticus in Norfolk back in June 2005. I remember that day being the day we met a very good friend of ours, Keith, for lunch at Waterside right next to the shipyard that overlooks Portsmouth. That was a good day. And I hope for many, many more.
Families are something special, aren’t they? Parenting is something special. There are many times I need to remind myself of that when I’m yelling at the kids to keep it down because I’m trying to do something I think is important. Question is, who’s it important to? Me? Wouldn’t I be happier playing with the kids? Should I remind myself that our children only have one childhood and that, yes, we are to protect them and discipline them, we’re also to help them be happy and strong and loving and caring, etc. Sometimes something as simple as throwing a football back and forth is something all that they…and me, for that matter…need. Perhaps it’s an idea to take input from our own parents both constructive and not. They did the best they could with us. Some of that is rubbing off on the way we’re raising our own kids…and some of it isn’t. But that’s life; learning how to do the best you can for your kids and hoping they’ll eventually realize exactly that.
Shouldn’t that be enough? For me, I think so. I just need to remember that.
Hopefully that’s not such a bad first blog post. I’m planning on making many more. I hope that our kids will grow up, read these words and look back and realize just how much their mom and dad love them. We’ll see! 
Filed under: Parenting & Kids, Thoughts, Well Being & Fitness by kory
It’s kind funny that on a blog you can read about someone else’s inner thoughts. What you said about your children and whats important is very true, it’s just hard sometimes to put priorities in the proper order at least for me. I raised 5 children also, it is a task in itself. They are all grown and have families of there own (thank you GOD) but I never stop worrying about them. Just tonight I was compelled to call my 40 year old daughter to see if she was ok, because she calls everyday and I hadn’t heard from her. As I was reading your blog and thinking of my own she called. Thanks for the use of your blog, hope I wasn’t intruding. Our priorities aren’t there’s and all we can do is hope we find some middle ground in raising them.
Thanks Frank
Thanks much for visiting and for your post, Frank!
I thought for quite a bit before coming up with this blog site. I grew inspired many other blogs on the ‘Net, particularly those around the Richmond area. Would posting our inner thoughts be a bit nerve racking? Just how much information do we want to share about our family with the world?
I realized that, as parents, we do what we can to protect our children certainly from danger. We help them walk through life and realize that there are many times where we have to watch them fall and brush them off as they get themselves up. But it would probably behoove them if we didn’t allow that because how else would they learn?
As I mentioned in this post, we lost a few years but we’re hoping to catch up. We realize we can’t replace those years; only hope for the best for the future. I think we can do that.
I hope I’ll be able to call my children when they’re grown every so often just to see how they’re doing. My parents do that with me from time to time. I need to be better about returning the gesture for sure.
It’s ironic that your daughter called you when you were reading our blog. Perhaps she felt that you were thinking of her and wanted to see how YOU are doing!
Thanks again for visiting. You definitely were not intruding. To share our experiences is what I created it for and what we hope to keep it about. And, yes, as humans we all have different priorities. We can definitely hope to find middle ground.
Thanks again, Frank!
Kory