- For a couple of those years, I wasn't employed by a company with a 401k program
- For a couple other of those years, I wasn't even employed
- For a couple other years, I was employed by a company with a solid 401k program, but I wasn't smart enough to invest in it
- Knowing me and Andrea, any extra money would not have gone into 401k anyway, but instead would be blown on vacations, electronics and fun or funky stuff made out of iron shaped like wagon wheels or stars that Andrea likes to hang on our walls.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Fun with numbers
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
A Rough Time of Year
The truth is my fantasy football season is over.
Go ahead and start laughing about how pathetic that is, but it’s the honest truth. With the exception of the 1990 and 1991 football seasons when I was on my mission, I’ve been in a fantasy football league every year since 1988. It’s become a part of the rhythm of my life.
Each year towards the end of August, two things happen.
1) We completely decimate our checking and savings buying back to school clothes and supplies and taking care of 3 birthdays in the last week of the month
2) We have our fantasy football draft
Draft day is one of my favorite days of the year. A fantasy football draft is nothing that anyone on the outside looking in can understand - you have to experience it to comprehend it’s awesomeness. After 16 years of marriage, Andrea is still perplexed by it. I’ll spare you the details, but what it comes down to is about 3 hours of a bunch of guys doing everything they can to make every other guy in the room feel as stupid as possible. Amidst all the insults and taunts, the goal is to choose a group of real football players that will determine your overall happiness for the next 12 months. That’s not an understatement. If you suck at the draft, your life will suck for the next 16 weeks for sure and will likely continue with a post-season nasty aftertaste that you will not be able to wash out of your mouth.
Any wife of a fantasy football player understands how much their husband’s mood depends on something so completely out his control. After draft day, the mood of a dedicated fantasy football player is dictated entirely by how well you did on draft day. If your players suck, then your team sucks. And if your team sucks, you are going to be completely ridiculed by everyone else. Our fantasy football league has a website where we can post pictures and articles to either proclaim how great we are or let everyone else know how lousy they are. I won’t share any of the things that have been written on the site because my mom and dad may read this and I value my church membership, but here are a few of the pictures that have shown up on there through the years:
One of the more flattering pictures of my cousins
For the next 8 months, I’ll be wandering aimlessly through the sports fan wilderness trying to be interested in baseball or basketball and counting the days until the happy day when my checking account is empty and I’m making fun of how small my friends man parts are. August can’t get here fast enough.
Friday, January 8, 2010
"Bless me not to say 'poop'."
All my kids are smart. I’m not trying to brag or anything, they just lucked out genetically and have turned out to be pretty clever. In the last few months, Max has discovered how funny he is as well. The dinner table has become his stage to put on a nightly performance for the family and unfortunately there is little that we can do to get him to stop. The problem is, no matter what he does, someone will laugh. This only encourages him to do it more. This has caused me to start yelling the types of things that I swore I would never yell at my kids. “Stop smiling!” and “You better not laugh!” are phrases I never thought I’d hear myself say. Yet on a nightly basis, one of the other kids is likely going to get in trouble for giggling at something Max does or says, while Andrea and I are doing everything we can ourselves to not laugh as well.
When you have older siblings, you also pick up a more varied vocabulary than Yo Gabba Gabba and Dora teach. So shortly after he started talking, Max started dropping words like “stupid”, “butt” and “poop” quite regularly. Seeing our reaction to those words was like hitting a jackpot on a slot machine for him – instant gratification followed with a growing addiction to hearing the ringing bells and flashing lights again and again. We decided to take him head on and break him down. Everytime he said one of those words, he’d be busted. We were making some progress with him – in fact he actually was developing the advanced skill of snitching. Now the only time he was saying “poop” or “stupid” was when he was ratting out his brother or sisters for saying it. At the time, I wasn’t sure if that was progress or not. Very quickly I realized it wasn’t progress at all as it became apparent that saying those words was the only goal for him. He wasn’t trying to get his brother or sisters in trouble – he just wanted an excuse to still say the words himself without getting in trouble. (I told you my kids are clever, right?) He’s barely 3 years old and he’s already discovered the art of the loophole. We’re in trouble.
In fact, before the tattling, he had already experimented with the loophole concept. He had figured out that by not saying the last syllable of a forbidden word, he wasn’t actually saying it, and therefore he shouldn’t get in trouble. For a couple of weeks he experimented with this loophole as much as he possibly could to find out what he could get away with.
“Mom, you’re stup……………” while he looked at her, just daring her to react.
“Dad, look at my buuuuuuu……..” as he studied my face to see how close he could come to making the “tt” sound.
So now, in the Nelson house, “stup”, “buuuuu” and “pooooooo” are bad words too.
And we thought we had finally won.
Then, the other night in family prayer, the 3 year old scored another point.
If you’ve never heard a little kid pray, it’s awesome. Our kids have blessed Han Solo, stuffed animals, video games, barbies, spiders, the moon and Indiana Jones. (We’re apparently big Harrison Ford fans.) As we’ve tried to teach our kids to pray, we just let them riff for a while in any direction they want, offering little bits of info to guide them along. (Letting your kids figure stuff out as they go is good parenting – you can look it up. I’m sure some psychologist that never had any kids would agree with me.) Eventually, we finally have to prod them to end it because the food is getting cold or the commercial break is almost over and I need to get back to my show.
About a week ago, Max found his next loophole in prayer.
“Bless mom. Bless dad. Bless Keeya (kayla). Bless me not to say ‘poop’.”
When we opened our surprised eyes to look at him, he was expecting us. He had the smug smile that a 12 year old would give you while they question why it’s okay for you to watch “The Matrix” even though it’s rated “R”. Then you could see the gears turning in his head. Mom and dad didn’t freak out.
“Bless me not to say ‘butt’.”
It was on. Now his smug smile was even more determined. It was like a cowboy duel on mainstreet at high noon. Sweat appeared on our creased foreheads, the safety was off and our fingers were twitching right next to the trigger. Who would dare blink first.
“Bless me not to say…….,” and he stared right at us, “stupid.”
Then a quiet giggle came from across the table. One of those stupid other kids could kiss my butt becaue they had just cracked. Under my breath I even said that other word for “poop.” Now everyone was laughing and we were screwed. Before the reinfocing laughter had even started, I was already wondering how I could tell Max that asking God to help him not say bad words was not okay, considering God is quite used to hearing me ask Him to help me not say bad words all the time.
Not only did Max have the perfect loophole, he had a loophole that made everyone laugh.
Stupid, clever kids.
Blast From The Past
This is Calvin when he was 4 at Disneyland. We bought him some thick soled Sketchers, put 3 pairs of socks on him (including one pair that Kenzie had to take off her feet) and made him just tall enough to ride the Star Tours ride. Look at those eyes - he was so happy!
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Blast From the Past
Since we've already established that I've virtually lost the last 16 years of memories to my fading memory, I thought at the end of each post I would drop a picture from the past for fun...
This is probably 6 years old from one of our great trips to the ocean. The house was in the sand so there was space underneath it for the girls (left-to-right: Lexie, Kenzie, Kayla) to play underneath it. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but this is just one of those pictures that completely captured the moment. I really love my girls.