Family

This is my daughter Lydia. Lydia is in 7th grade, and has a very slight frame. I’d say she’s scrawny, but since she’s 10 times tougher than I am, that seems like a silly thing to say.

Since my wife Donna is a high school volleyball coach, Lydia gets to (or has to) sit through the older girl’s practice every day after school. Lydia has an incredible desire to play volleyball, but her very small frame works against her. In this photo you see her serving. Every day at practice she takes an empty net, and serves at least 50 balls. At the beginning of the season, the balls rarely made it to the net, much less make it over. It’s been a couple months, and due to her persistence, she now usually gets one or maybe two balls over the net every day.

For you math nuts, that means she only has a 2% success rate, or a 98% failure rate. For you coaches, athletes, parents, teachers, students and adults — it means she’s a girl that refuses to give up. Refuses.

Lydia, you inspire me. If Mom’s volleyball team was half as determined as you are, they’d be unbeatable. If I had a quarter of your motivation, I’d be running marathons by now. And if our political leaders had a tenth of your passion, our country would look a heck of a lot different. Lydia, you inspire me. Thank you for being so awesome.

Every so often, I post a video of Amanda playing her guitar and singing. What can I say, my totally-parentally-biased self thinks she’s pretty good. Anyway, her uncle Chris is home from college, and joined her for this particular song.

NOTE: No actual grenades were harmed in the making of this video.

Today is my dear wife’s birthday. As is accustomed here in the Powers household, we shall fan her with palm branches, feed her grapes off the vine, buy her flowers, take her on a gondola ride in Venice, and paint her toenails with the distilled tears of a thousand unicorns. Or at least the flower thing.

Happy Birthday Choochie, I love you!

You know how after a couple gets married, they go on a honeymoon? Yeah, well Donna and I are doing that this week. Granted we put significant stress on the after part, since we were married almost 16 years ago. Nonetheless, better late than never. 🙂


This is the resort we’ll be going to. It’s the Secrets Resorts Silversands. Click on the pretty picture to take you to their website. We are really excited. If the resort lives up to half the hype, I suspect it will be like heaven on earth.

Our kids are spending the week with their aunt and uncle, and our college kid is staying home to take care of the house and animals. My boss at the school warned me that working remotely during my honeymoon would be considered insubordination. I think I like him. 🙂

We’ve packed swimsuits, books, and not much else. As it turns out, the weather here in northern Michigan will be in the mid 90s while we’re gone, and in Cancun the temperature will only be in the mid 80s. That amuses me immensely. Anyway, if you don’t hear from me here or on Twitter, take that as a good thing. Still, we’ll have wifi and cameras, I suspect we’ll want to share a bit while we’re there. (So me tweeting doesn’t signify marital problems, lol!)

I hope your week is wonderful, but unless you’re going on a fancy vacation, I hope our week is slightly more wonderfuller than yours. No offense. 🙂

I’ll let the girls speak for themselves. If you’d like to donate, the link is below the video. 🙂

For more information on the 30 Hour Famine, visit their website.

This was Phoebe when we adopted her 10 months ago:

Unfortunately, after 10 months of effort, she hasn’t gotten any better at housebreaking. In fact, we’ve remodeled our kitchen to keep the dogs away from the carpet, because regardless of our efforts, Phoebe poops and pees everywhere.

If you’re thinking we’re just silly, naive humans — please understand Donna and me have had dogs our whole lives. We have housebroken countless dogs, some more difficult than others, and always been able to teach them. Even Tux, our silky terrier eventually housebroke, and showed some progress from the first time we started to teach him.

Not so much with Phoebe.

I could explain in length how we’ve tried to help her thus far, but it’s the sort of things you’d expect. Crate training, puppy pads, diapers, constantly going outside, etc, etc, etc. NOTHING makes a difference. She messes in crates, rolls in it, and will often wait until she comes inside to poop. It’s quite frustrating. So instead of giving up, we contacted a specialist.

For 2 weeks, we are going to keep Phoebe on a leash 24 hours a day, and when we’re home, she will be walked indoors and out on a leash. This way, we catch her if (when, sigh) she goes in the house. It also means we notice when she goes outside, and we can give her VERY tasty treats. This ain’t no Milkbone thing, we’re talking prime cuts of hotdog. (Hey, she’s a dog, hot dogs are primo!)

Phoebe also needs to have a full panel of blood tests to check for sicknesses, and she’s going to start on Prozac. (seriously!) The hope is that her nervousness and anxiety will lessen, and she’ll be able to think long enough to understand the rewards for “going” outside.

Wish us luck, please. Ever since we’ve been in the new house, the dogs have been stuck in the kitchen behind the gate I built:

We’d like to let them join the family!

Amanda, my oldest, records herself playing guitar and singing from time to time. She posts them on Facebook, but only her “friends” can see them. I asked her if I could put them up here every once in a while. Enjoy! 🙂