kmac
Kelly kmac
Anyone who is a parent, especially if you have younger children, do not miss a minute with them if you can avoid it.
Obviously we all need to make a living, and there will be things that are unavoidable that we will miss. My advise is NEVER miss any time or event willingly that could be spent with your children.
We were only able to have 1 child, a beautiful daughter who is our pride and joy. We have raised her to the best of our ability, a good Christian up bringing, good morals, good education, and most of the amenities of life that we could afford. Fortunately she accepted the counsel, discipline and training we laid out for her and has been nothing but a joy for her mother and I.
I am not bragging, just sharing my joy she has given us. She exceled in school, valedictorian in high school, straight A's from 3rd grade on { they don't give letter grades in K-2nd just unsatisfactory-outstanding, yes she got all O's}, honor roll, 4.3 gpa, and got an award for her work with special ed kids and a mentoring program.
After high school she has chosen to become a full time Bible minister and her desire to work with people with special needs led her to learn ASL {sign language} and work with deaf and hard of hearing people. She now serves her ministry in an ASL congregation teaching the Bible to the deaf. All volunteer with NO financial compensation for her time or work. She works at Starbucks to support herself and her ministry. Did I say I was proud of her?
As stated, I am not bragging, but sharing some lessons learned. I was blessed to have a lot of time off while she was growing up and spent many more hours with her than I see most fathers getting to. I have had some MX injuries, work injuries, slow work, and a good boss that allowed me to take time off for about any good excuse. This did cost me a good amount of money over the years as I averaged only 30 hours or so per week. As a union carpenter I made a decent hourly wage and a good pension package so loosing 10 hours average per week has cost me $10-20,000 per year of income and more in lost pension not to mention the time and half OT that my company always offered. Yet in all of this, the only regrets I have are the few times when I took my career too seriously and did accept the OT and worked those 70 hour weeks and a couple of times I traveled for work for a couple of months.
Do NOT think money will make your children, or your life happy. Time with your family brings much more joy to life than just money. Of course we need to live and money is necessary to accomplish that, but do NOT let that be your first focus. Work is how you PAY for your life, it is NOT your life. My lost wages were spent on field trips with my daughters classes, hikes, camping, laughing, shopping at the mall, playing with dolls, and about anything else that made her happy, which always made me happy.
Well, now that she is 20 yrs old, I ponder all of the great memories and happiness I have had, I was recently asked to give her away. She has been dating a really wonderful young man who is also a volunteer full time minister in an ASL congregation. I agreed to give her away to him and Sunday night, after a little over a year of courting, he proposed to her. As sad as I am at the thought of her not being here daily and her belonging to someone else, to see her so happy makes me smile.
It seems like yesterday that I would rush home from work as early as I could to pick her up from great grandmas house to spend the afternoon with her. Mommy would get home in the evening from her nursing job to find us napping on the couch usually with her asleep on my chest, soothed by my happy heart beat.
Do NOT miss a minute, it flys by faster than you will think and you do NOT want to have regrets. I do not know anyone who says "I regret NOT working that over time", but I have heard people say "I regret not spending more time with my children"....think of the "Cats in the Cradle" song by Harry Chapin. It happens fast, make time !!! We all get 24 hours a day so many of those are with our kids....spend them wisely.
Obviously we all need to make a living, and there will be things that are unavoidable that we will miss. My advise is NEVER miss any time or event willingly that could be spent with your children.
We were only able to have 1 child, a beautiful daughter who is our pride and joy. We have raised her to the best of our ability, a good Christian up bringing, good morals, good education, and most of the amenities of life that we could afford. Fortunately she accepted the counsel, discipline and training we laid out for her and has been nothing but a joy for her mother and I.
I am not bragging, just sharing my joy she has given us. She exceled in school, valedictorian in high school, straight A's from 3rd grade on { they don't give letter grades in K-2nd just unsatisfactory-outstanding, yes she got all O's}, honor roll, 4.3 gpa, and got an award for her work with special ed kids and a mentoring program.
After high school she has chosen to become a full time Bible minister and her desire to work with people with special needs led her to learn ASL {sign language} and work with deaf and hard of hearing people. She now serves her ministry in an ASL congregation teaching the Bible to the deaf. All volunteer with NO financial compensation for her time or work. She works at Starbucks to support herself and her ministry. Did I say I was proud of her?
As stated, I am not bragging, but sharing some lessons learned. I was blessed to have a lot of time off while she was growing up and spent many more hours with her than I see most fathers getting to. I have had some MX injuries, work injuries, slow work, and a good boss that allowed me to take time off for about any good excuse. This did cost me a good amount of money over the years as I averaged only 30 hours or so per week. As a union carpenter I made a decent hourly wage and a good pension package so loosing 10 hours average per week has cost me $10-20,000 per year of income and more in lost pension not to mention the time and half OT that my company always offered. Yet in all of this, the only regrets I have are the few times when I took my career too seriously and did accept the OT and worked those 70 hour weeks and a couple of times I traveled for work for a couple of months.
Do NOT think money will make your children, or your life happy. Time with your family brings much more joy to life than just money. Of course we need to live and money is necessary to accomplish that, but do NOT let that be your first focus. Work is how you PAY for your life, it is NOT your life. My lost wages were spent on field trips with my daughters classes, hikes, camping, laughing, shopping at the mall, playing with dolls, and about anything else that made her happy, which always made me happy.
Well, now that she is 20 yrs old, I ponder all of the great memories and happiness I have had, I was recently asked to give her away. She has been dating a really wonderful young man who is also a volunteer full time minister in an ASL congregation. I agreed to give her away to him and Sunday night, after a little over a year of courting, he proposed to her. As sad as I am at the thought of her not being here daily and her belonging to someone else, to see her so happy makes me smile.
It seems like yesterday that I would rush home from work as early as I could to pick her up from great grandmas house to spend the afternoon with her. Mommy would get home in the evening from her nursing job to find us napping on the couch usually with her asleep on my chest, soothed by my happy heart beat.
Do NOT miss a minute, it flys by faster than you will think and you do NOT want to have regrets. I do not know anyone who says "I regret NOT working that over time", but I have heard people say "I regret not spending more time with my children"....think of the "Cats in the Cradle" song by Harry Chapin. It happens fast, make time !!! We all get 24 hours a day so many of those are with our kids....spend them wisely.
