There are just some things that you never expect. I knew having a son was going to be cool, but I had no idea just how amazing it would really be. Yes. I am biased as any other partner, but even in the bias I am still loving every minute of this. I’d like to share a few things with you that makes being a daddy so good

My boy has the ability to make me laugh like no one else. If I have had a hard day I have to look no further than my favorite mini me. If I need to smile, he’s my guy. From corney jokes to character voices, he loves making me smile and he does it quite often.

He takes care of his mama. This one is an important one to me as I am crazy about my bride. He knows that mama is the queen of the house and he is so good to her. He is courteous and kind. How is thoughtful. He is an amazing helper. He goes out of his way to take care of his mama.

He is truly helpful. We spent this last weekend at my parents house helping them with projects. I had an assignment. Marixa had a list of stuff to do as well. What did he do? He found out what his grandpa needed and he got to work too. He has told us more than once that he likes to work and wants to do a good job. My heart swells with pride.

He is competitive. Whether it is board games or video games or a good game of corn hole, this boy likes to compete. He generally backs up his smack talk as well. We do have to put him in his place every so often, but I love watching him compete.

I could go on and on. Being this boys daddy is one of the greatest joys of my life. I am so thankful for him and I love him so much.

If you have one of your own, take a few minutes to remind them you love them today. They need to hear it.

I absolutely love coming home. Whether it is from a hard day at work, or wherever else I have been it is a wonderful feeling. There is a magic about this place that is so amazing to me. I blame it all on Marixa. She is the mastermind behind the cozy.

When we first got married I quickly learned that she was about to up my game. What do I mean? I quickly began to desire a beautiful and comfortable place. I want to do my part to ensure it stays cozy. She purposefully builds that atmosphere. I absolutely love it.

For example, we have already decorated for Christmas. We have a Christmas tree in our room. Many nights I will sit with the bedroom lights off and just the lights of the tree shining. The atmosphere is amazing and peaceful. It is just as she designed it.

I also realized that home was no longer just a place. Home is wherever she is with me. I get so much comfort and peace from her just being by my side. She can wrap her arms around me and the rest of the world melts away. It is so good.

There is so much to be said for the effect your atmosphere has on you. I didn’t know it years ago, but I can sure see the evidence now. This place soothes me.

I am so thankful for you Marixa! Thank you for making and being the home I have always dreamed of. I appreciate you so much!

I’m out for a walk right now. It’s a little strange to be writing a blog post while I walk, but the topic of the evening is about fitness so it seems to make sense.This activity is not something that has come natural to me over the years. I have struggled on more than one occasion to find a routine that works for me.

Things changed this past May though. I finally had one of those moments where enough was enough. Have you ever had one of those? I’m a little bit embarrassed that it took me as long as it did to get to that point, and that it took several health scares to push me over the edge, but here I am.

I have exercised almost every day since the last week of May this year. This is me trying to catch up and be the healthy person I know I need to be. But what was the catalyst for the change? In a word…agency.

What does this word mean?

Agency – a person or thing through which power is exerted or an end is achieved.

In short, it is having and exerting the ability to change something. For me, and I came to the point where I had to realize that I had the power to make decisions to change myself for the better. No one else was going to do this for me in. The choices that I was making up to that point kept me down a very bad path. Let me explain.

Nearly 2 years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. During the first six months of 2018 my body underwent a tremendous amount of bombardment. I had more chemicals and medicines poured into me than many people do in a lifetime, but ultimately it did me very good. However, it left me in a very weakened state. Four rounds of chemotherapy, surgery to remove tumors, and 21 sessions of radiation should have been enough for one year, but I also had an auto immune flareup and was on several months of prednisone to combat that as well.

Now you start to see a clear picture and I’m way I was in the worst shape I’ve ever been in in my life. I was very overweight and in very poor condition. I had a choice though. I could stay that way, or I could exert agency in my own life.

I realize that I make choices every day. Some choices are for the good and some for the bad. They’re my choices. No one makes them for me. I didn’t necessarily choose for my body to be in the state it was in, but I wasn’t making choices and to combat the bad things that happened. With God’s help, I am changing that permanently.

Part of me wishes that these decisions to be healthy could have come under more favorable circumstances. Part of me knows that more favorable circumstances would have never led me to these decisions. Many times we don’t have a choice in what life throws at us, but we do have the ability to choose our response. We can exercise our agency and make the right choices.

The story is far from over. I have been cancer free now for 17 months. I’m looking forward to the future. I’m looking forward to a body that is healthy. Do I have absolute certainty in all of these things, no. I do however have a certainty in the God that watches over me. I have certainty that I can make good choices and exert the agency He has granted me in my life.

Since I started walking in May, my endurance is coming back. Since I started lifting weights at the beginning of September, my strength has started coming back. This is only the beginning. We go forward from here one choice at a time.

For many years I didn’t consider myself a handy person. Using a screw driver was about as extreme as I got and that might be a stretch. Then, I went and married into an extremely handy family. They did all kinds of stuff DIY. I had no choice but to learn.

My first memories of considering myself a DIY kind of guy was when Marixa and I bought our first house. I did a sales job on her to get her to buy that house in the first place. It was very rough and ripe for some improvements. For some reason I thought we could do it. Never mind the part about not being handy at all.

I remember that several fans and light fixtures needed to be put up in the house after we moved in. I had zero idea of how to do it, so Marixa asked her dad to show me how. As he put the first one up I remember thinking to myself, “Is that it?!” It wasn’t long after and I was installing everything myself. So thankful for a patient father in law who showed me the way!

Fast forward a few years and we are in a different house and we wanted a bench for a breakfast nook. I had come far enough by this point that I took measurements and built it from scratch. I was really proud of that one. It was built into the wall and gave us a lot of extra seating, but the coolest thing was it was a permanent addition that I had made to the house…and it looked really good.

A few years ago we went with Marixa’s family to get wood from the old family farm. There was a cool old barn that had to be taken down and we went to harvest the wood off of it. One of the things we found out there was a panel from an old wagon. We don’t know how old, but from looking at it it had to be very old. We didn’t know what we would do with it, but thought it would be a good piece to keep for later.

Last year, after a few years of it sitting around we finally figured it out…a potting bench. So, we went to Lowe’s and got the needed wood for the body of the table. I designed and measured it out and we used the wagon board as the table top. In the end it was a very sturdy, and heavy, table that Marixa will be able to use from years to come to create beauty in our back yard. It is also extra special because it is part of her family legacy that we were able to turn into something new.

Being handy for me come fairly natural now, but that is only because I decided to start with something small and work my way into it. If you had told me all those years ago that I would have built several pieces of furniture and fixed many things around the house I probably wouldn’t have believed you. Now, I feel confident I can take care of most anything I face.

I am certain that the approach I took with this applies to so many other parts of life. We aren’t naturally good at much. It takes loads of practice and failing to get better at things. It takes trying and trying and trying to get further along the path.

Is there something you want to learn to do? Go start doing it. Those little steps you take will turn into bigger steps tomorrow and pretty soon…you will be able to build things that look good even though you used to have concerns about properly using a screw driver.

This week we took a couple of days off and traveled back from Texas to Oklahoma to see my parents. It is an old familiar drive that we have made several times. Used to, it felt like coming home when we crossed the state line heading north. Now, it feels like a very foreign place. That may be because of all the casinos and weed signs in Oklahoma now, but I digress.

This trip up made me think of my first car and the first time that I ever drove from Oklahoma down to DFW when I was a teenager. To this day I don’t know why my mother let me do this at 16, but me a three friends hopped in my 1984 Pontiac Bonneville and headed south to go to Six Flags.

I loved that car. Yes, it was as big as a boat, but it would sure run. I remember once I freaked out one of my buddies when I got the old car up past 100 on one of the old county roads. It was great. It was also great for road tripping to the big city. Lots of room for friends and snacks.

Back to the trip. I have always been a confident kind of guy. Boy did I have my confidence tested that day. One, this was way before GPS so we had to use a map to get down there. Two, I had zero idea of what to expect when it came to traffic. I swore more on that day than I probably ever had in my life to that point. Not proud of it, but it is a fact. Third, I was 16 and driving a couple of hours away at that age is enough to shake you a little bit.

I don’t remember much about being at the park that day. I have been to Six Flags several times, so that part all seems to merge together. Getting down there in my old car, that is burned in my memory forever.

Now that I think about it, I really did drive that car everywhere. Me and a buddy took it to Norman, Oklahoma once for a DC Talk concert. We bought a six pack of Jolt Cola on the way and had quite the sugar/caffeine buzz during that one.

I drove it to Edmond, Oklahoma once to go see a college friend my Freshman year. The muffler fell off of it halfway there and I had to get it cut off completely. The old car sounded like a hot rod when that happened.

I kissed a few too many girls in that car as well. It would be ungentlemanly of me to say any more on that one.

Looking back now, I miss that old car. I sold it in 1997. It is 22 years years since then and it is probably sitting in a junk yard somewhere, but it was awesome while I had it. I had no idea at the time how good it was.