You’re a ding dong!  No, YOU’re a ding dong!

This is the fun game we are having with Jack lately.  He likes to call everyone ding dongs, and then he cracks up laughing.  It is so cute.  He loves to make his parents and his siblings laugh.  I think he is the first of our children that has been inclined to make everybody laugh.

The one word that best describes my current life – hectic.

Snapshot of the weekend:

Friday night.  President Obama was in Baltimore.  Beltway shut down.  Picking up the kids from school took an extra hour.  Got home at 6.  Turned around to go to PerformFit with Eden and Liz to hold a private tryout for one of the Redshirts at 7.  Friday Night Lights at 8.  Home by 10 for some dinner.

Saturday morning.  5am wakeup call.  My dad picks me up at 6 to drive down to Vienna, VA for a few hours of lacrosse training.  We are back by noon.  It is raining, so luckily Elizabeth’s field hockey practice is canceled.  But Noah’s soccer game plays through some heavy rain.  He has a lot of fun.  We love watching the kids play.  His coaches don’t appear to be teaching them too much from what I can tell, but we love how positive they are with the kids.  This is missing on most youth teams, and so I am grateful for his two coaches.

I have a few hours in the evening without sports.  I have been meaning to file some financial paperwork which is due on Sunday, so I spend a few hours gathering it together.  Then spend several hours into the late night painting the trim throughout our living room/kitchen.

Sunday.  Up early again.  Marcia takes Liz to her early morning field hockey game at McDonogh at 10.  I’ve got the rest of the kids.  I am to coach a game at 1 in Dundalk; Marcia is to coach a game at 2; and we both run the clinic 5:30-7.  I have an hour or two before my game, so I get out the paint, and get back to work.  Just as I am finishing, around 11, I take a spill, put my arm through some glass, and fall hard on my back.  Trip to Patient First for stitches.  Going to miss my game.  Marcia meets me there, but needs to leave to coach her game.  My dad picks me up.  When I get home, Noah and I rearrange all of the furniture back into the living room, and clean up from the painting.  When Marcia gets home, we head out to run the field hockey clinic.  When all is said and done, I am in quite a bit of pain, but spend the last few hours of the night filing financial paperwork.  Late to bed and early up the next morning.

Life is moving pretty fast.  Sometimes we have time to smell the roses.  But some days, we just ride the waves and hang on for the ride.  This weekend, we were just hanging on.

Yesterday I went skiing for the first time in my whole life I was scared even to put on my own shoes.  Well not my shoes Ski Liberty’s shoes but wore them.  We had lessons with a guy named joe and he took us down the bunny hill and it was really fun.

 

 

Retreat planning

This time last year, I took my Redshirts lacrosse club on two retreats, one per team. Leading up to the retreats, I spent several weeks planning the retreat. This involved choosing a theme, planning lessons, planning activities, organizing chaperones, meals, rooming assignments, rides, parental involvement, etc. From concept to the minute details, I sketched it all out. I felt great about it. And I think it went extremely well.

The theme of the retreat was 5 qualities necessary to make good teams great: communication, trust, collective responsibility, caring and pride. I planned lessons for each of these and activities to go along with them. Each of the lessons incorporated something visual, like a movie clip, or something interactive, like a discussion, or something physical, like the breaking of chopsticks. There were several exercises focused on the qualities of trust and communication. And there were several discussions that helped us understand collective responsibility, caring and pride. Parents wrote each of their children a letter. The letters expressed how proud the parents were of their child, but they were not allowed to reference sports achievements. We had activities like running on the beach, going to the pool, and chumash on the beach.

As I am a year later planning two more retreats, I asked Elizabeth this morning what she remembered most about last year’s retreat.

The first thing she said was skit night. Then she said she remembered Anna falling into the ocean during the morning run. And then she remembered the team making a music video. I asked if she remembered any of the activities or the lessons, and she said she remembered the trust fall and the exercise when they were blindfolded and needed to find sticks. I asked her what values that demonstrated, and she said communication and trust. I asked her if she remembered any of the lessons that I taught or any of the movie clips that I had them watch. She said she remembered something about a coach or something but couldn’t really remember. And she remembered doing an activity about a good teammate and a bad teammate.

Ok. So this is helpful for me to have this feedback. The majority of the planning was based on the lessons and creating all of the activities. While the lessons *may* be long-lasting and have been understood, they are not the most memorable moments of the retreat. So, should I put the same level of expertise and planning into them this year? I think it is important.

Even if they weren’t memorable, I think they framed the retreat. They gave it context. It allowed the girls to think about each other and how they interact, and the effect they have on each other. And the letters should give them pride. They should help shape the girls’ self-confidence. They should reinforce how important the girls are to their parents, and how important they are to themselves.

I am glad that Elizabeth remembered so much about the retreat. It has been a year, and I think her recollection is pretty darn good. I think it must have had some impact on her. I am excited to do it again. And I am planning the theme this year, although it is not quite in focus yet – I am thinking it should be about success and leadership, and based on the ramblings of one of the greats, John Wooden.

So, it is a snow day. Wake up, school is closed, work is closed, it is starting to snow pretty heavily. Sitting down a bit after breakfast beginning to enjoy my coffee. Marcia calls from the basement that there is a huge puddle on the floor and a drainage pipe is leaking pretty steadily. Bummer. I inspect with Marcia and decide that this is something I should try to tackle.

It is about 1PM at this point. I do about an hour of internet research and planning. I assemble a crack team (Maggie, 5, Noah, 7). We get dressed in our snow gear, and go out in a few inches of snow to go to the hardware store. With our shopping list in hand, we get the necessary tools and plumbing materials. We luckily meet someone in the store who is very experienced in this sort of thing. I ask a lot of questions of him and the people that work there. The kids are very helpful in the store, fitting together different plumbing pieces. By the time we get out of the store, at least another inch has fallen on the car.


We drive home with 10 foot pipes hanging out of the open window and the kids enjoying the snow driving through the open windows. We’re laughing the whole way as they roll the windows up and down and enjoy the cross-winds. We bring in all of our supplies and get to work. They recruit some of their siblings to help with various tasks. I set them all to work. We measure and cut pipes. We file pipes so they are smooth and flat. We cut new holes in the floor, because we are rerouting the drain.

Standing in our way is a galvanized pipe as old as the house. I try cutting it out to no avail. Eventually, I just start banging it with a hammer, and it just gives way. It was so rusted that I am able to pull it apart with my hands. Looking through the old PVC pipe, it is filled with gunk, ewww. We need to snake it before we start assembling the new drain.

Now, we’ve go all of our pieces. We hook them all together to see if everything has been measured correctly. We cut an additional 1/2 inch off of the old PVC where we will be connecting. We run this from the basment, up into the kitchen sink area, and connect to the disposal. We even create a vent that was never there before. Amazingly, everything fits and the pipes are at appropriate angles so that they will drain properly. So, we get to work cementing everything together. Liz and Eden are in on the act at this point as well. The last step is securing the pipes to the ceiling in the basement. It is 7:30, and we stop to watch a movie and let everything set.

When the movie is over, we set kids to all the different points that the pipes could leak, and we run the water for several minutes. No leaks! I am amazed. This has been the most involved plumbing project I have undertaken. And it may be the first time there has been no initial leak, not even in the connections to the garbage disposal.

Upon reflection later in the evening, I am very proud of the day and how we spent it. I took one trip to the hardware store. $53 total in parts, including a new boring drill bit. No return trips. I did not lose my temper throughout the day, and I did not cuss. The kids helped me, and I thoroughly enjoyed their involvement. They were also very helpful.

I am proud of the job we did, and I look forward to our next task!

On our snow day, Marcia went out in the morning to buy boots for Liz. She also bought some inflatable sleds for the family. When she got home, there was a plumbing fiasco, so we spent the rest of the day on plumbing. However, we had a pleasant surprise that we would have an additional snow day the next day!

Jack was sick, so I took 5 of the kids to CCBC. We had 4 sleds, and we tackled the big hill first. It was fun, but Luke got too much snow in his face on the downhill. So, after a half hour or more, we went to the smaller hills in the back. It got pretty darn cold, and I had to take a break in the mini-van with Luke.

Maggie can sled this hill all by herself and she owns it. Noah alternated throughout the day between the blow up sleds and the thin one that you can slide down on your stomach. The kids were all great with Luke, taking turns with him, sending him alone, and helping him back up the hills. His favorite word to describe the experience, “Awesome”. The kids got along so well that they figured out a way for 5 kids to go down the hill at one time on 4 sleds. Pretty neat.

To continue our amazing day together as a family, we surprised the kids once more. When we got home, mom and Jack piled in the car with us, and we went to the fish store in Glen Burnie. We walked out with 6 more fish for the tank! A ropefish, 3 more gouramis, a pleco (sucker) and a catfish. Eden finished the decorations on the back of the tank, and the fish all provided several more hours of entertainment for the family.

Yesterday, I spent the day cleaning the George Peabody Library. This library was the brainchild of George Peabody and his goal was to create a publically accessible collection that contained the best and latest literature in all branches of knowledge except law and medicine. This library was created in 1860, and was acquired by Johns Hopkins University in the 1980s. The library is an absolutely gorgeous interior, and is most known these days as a wedding and reception venue.

Today, the collection that Peabody amassed remains mostly intact with a rare book and special collections that includes such works as first editions of Huckleberry Finn, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, and the largest collection of Don Quixote amassed anywhere in the world. While I was there, I got a tour of the special collections room, and was shown some very interesting books and manuscripts dating back to the 15th century. Also got to flip through some signature books preserved from the 18th century. Amazing how neat the penmanship was in those days, and done with quill pens. The rare book room is as spectacular as the overall architecture of the library, and as spectacular as the general collection once was.

The library gets cleaned top to bottom once a year, whether it needs it or not 😉 . I was on dusting duty, and started on the 6th floor, dusting every ceiling, railing, grill, and bookshelf on my way down to the first floor. There were books of all shapes and sizes. Some of the folios were 2 or 3 feet in height, and were too large for shelves, so were laying in the hallways betweens the shelves. As I spent the day going through the stacks, I was wonderig how much of this will ever actually be used in the future. 150 years ago, this collection was amassed and was incredibly useful. Tombs of data and knowledge from that time still span these shelves. But will anyone ever read it? Someone had to spend their time writing it, printing it, binding the books – a more expensive process back then. It was much harder in those days to pen a book and distribute it.

How interesting though are the books to today’s audience. Or more importantly to tomorrow’s. I bet the only time most of these books are touched is when we are dusting them. And only then one of us may occasionally pull one off of the shelf for perusal, rather than for scholarly purposes. I work in a library, have done so since 1998. THe mission of libraries is to provide and preserve access to knowledge.

I find it somewhat sad that there is so much knowledge in this building that is being preserved, but will likely never be accessed. Is it worth even keeping it? I am not sure. And I wonder if my calling is really to work in a library. I was not excited to preserve this much knowledge. I did not have a deep sense of wonder when going through the stacks. I was happy just to stay to my work, dusting. However, one book did catch my eye. It was about 2 feet high and had a cover with the Presidential seal on it. It was titled Presidents of the United States. It had pictures and blurbs of all of the presidents of the United States until 1907. I believe this was a government produced document. It was very brittle and the leather deteriorated on my hands and the pages crumbled somewhat as I leafed through them. If only for a few minutes, I found something in my perusal that fascinated me.

Well, I spent the day cleaning the library. And so, I share below some ‘after’ pics of the library in all of its clean splendor!

Levering Scholarship Essay – Eden Kennedy

Eden applied for a scholarship to St. Paul’s. There is only one such scholarship offered across the school, so competition is pretty stiff. I have no idea if she will make it, but I was very impressed with her essay.

Marcia and I have been through a lot. Many stresses on us. Most of all, stresses in the form of bullying and financial challenges. There are a lot of mean people in the world. Unfortunately, Marcia and I have seen our fair share lately. I’m not complaining, it is part of life. But, it really does test you.

We need some big changes in our lives. But they are also scary. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I love my life. I love my wife.

I am happy to put 2013 in the past. So many wonderful things happened in 2013, but also so much heartache. I am hopeful that we will be able to find more peace in the new year.