mi familia, or "musings with the top down"

Howdy!

It's a beautiful, sunny, 60 degree day today in Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia.  I put the top down on the SAAB (1995, rotted seats, nothing works except the convertible top and the engine - who needs anything else?), and I drove my kids to Sunday School, then Kroger, then to the Old Brick Playhouse.  OK, we all had coats on and the heater blaring, but it is spring weather, and I needed to bond with my heap of junk metal.

While cruising around, I had some time to ponder the last two weeks.  They've been hellish, seriously.  We've been running at full speed and had some amazing stress.  It culminated yesterday at the Elkins wrestling tournament which Phil and I helped to host.  Lee participated in the tournament AND he presented the colors in his Cub Scout uniform.  He did an excellent job - didn't goof around with the flag at all.  Emma participated in the tournament AND sang the National Anthem while Lee presented the colors.  We were so proud of both kids.

The stress yesterday came because Phil had adopted a new computer program for the tournament.  Everything was done online through Track Wrestling.  It is a great program, and he really worked many hours over the last several months setting things up.  All was set to run really smoothly.  Unfortunately, just as we were getting started, we started having trouble with the Internet.  It kept going down, and we all got nervous, so we started the tournament before we were ready.  If we would have given Phil 30 minutes to do the brackets right, it would have been OK, but we were all pretty nervous about the whole thing, so we pushed him.  SO, it was quite a mess for a while and people were really getting upset.  In the end, we actually received a lot of compliments from coaches and parents.  One man actually was very grateful.  He said that his wife was ill at home, and she was able to log onto track wrestling from home and follow her son's progress in real time by watching the brackets.  He said she was so excited - it felt like she was there.   Despite all of the hassles, we managed to wrestle almost 300 kids and get all of them out by 3:00.   Next year, we're going to have two wireless hubs instead of one, and hopefully, this won't be a big issue. 

So, what does this have to do with the title of the post, you ask?  Everything, I answer!

My mom and dad stayed the night Friday night so that Phil and I could set up.  Also, we had to be there at 6:30 AM so that we could get the computers all set up and ready.  Mom and dad were here to let the kids sleep in a little later.  They came to the tournament with the kids, and kept them occupied when we were really having a hard time with the computers.  Mom, ultimately, helped Phil to organize the bout sheets and to field questions that were being fired at him one after another.  Dad made sure that the kids got to their mats and that they had someone cheering them on when it was their turn.  Phil's brother Matt came by to help, too.  He helped us troubleshoot some of the Internet problems and also acted as a runner - posting the brackets so that the parents could read them.   Phil's parents offered to watch the kids when they were done wrestling so that Phil and I could finish working and cleaning up the tournament.  Then, they watched Lee (who was completely exhausted) while Emma did her play that night and I attended.

The tournament takes a lot of people to run, and it turned out we needed even more hands because of the computer issues this year.  If it had not been for our families turning up to help us, we couldn't have done our part of it.  Every time I think about this, I get a little choked up.  Seriously - I'm not even drinking right now.  Phil and I are so insanely lucky in our lives.  We have an amazing family who will do just about anything for us, and we would do the same in return.  Often, we forget to let the wonderful people in our lives know how important they are to us, so we both took time yesterday to call our parents and Matt to let them know how much they were appreciated.  Funny, they were all kind of like, "OK, whatever,"  because they didn't think that they'd done anything out of the ordinary.  I guess they didn't.  It's an ordinary thing to have a great family in this house.



Bottom line, as I was driving with my top down and my 6 year old was waving his arms and singing "Milkshake" in the back seat while something completely different was playing on the radio, and my 10 year old was grinning like a hyena, I gave a little prayer of thanks to the big guy.  This is what life is all about.

Dr. Mindy