The Zoo......Not my life, the one with animals

Before I talk about the zoo I have to tell you a cool story. As most of you know I am taking over my Dad's business. In an effort to pay for things like advertising and stuff like that this winter and not have to take it out of our personal money, I have sold 95% of my ice fishing gear. So, I decided to sell my last(kind of sad I had more then one to begin with) ice fishing fish locator. I put it on a web site called lake-link on Saturday. On Sunday night around 9:30, Jamie asked if I had the AC on in the house because there was cold air coming out of the vents. Not good. Our furnace is 20 years old. I figured this was going to cost at least a couple hundred bucks to fix. There is no doubt that this was God's way of saying "I have you covered". I looked at the furnace and did not have a clue so I figured I would call someone in the morning. I went upstairs and checked my e-mail before bed and there was one from a guy who "really wanted to buy" my locator and here is the best part. His e-mail address........ RZheating.com. What are the chances of the person who wants my locator to own his own heating company! I called him in the morning and he said he would buy it and then I told him what was up with my furnace and he talked me through how to fix it. Can't get much better then that. The other good thing was that he lives in Pewaukee and we were planning on going to the zoo so we would be driving right past him on the way.
So anyways, being that today was so nice out we decided to head to the Milwaukee Co Zoo. I was almost as excited to use my new GPS as I was that we were going to the zoo. We all refer to the voice on the GPS as "she". "She" sounds so annoying is one I here often from everyone. "She" is so loud, can you please mute her is another one. I told Jamie that "she"(the GPS) is always there for me and "She" will never point me in the wrong direction and even when I choose to go my own way and do my own thing "she" respects me and never yells or hurts me. "She" is so valuable because "she" lets me know where the nearest McDonald's is in less then 10 seconds. Anyways, enough about her. We had a great time today. There were quite a few people there, but nothing even close to the last time we were there for the Herma Heart Center picnic. Our time at the zoo was dominated by talk of riding the train around the zoo. Every two to three minutes we heard something about the train. You would think it would not be such a cool thing being that they go past our house three times a day. The train did work to our advantage with Nolan however.(I have decided it takes too much effort and thought to call them by a fake name so I will from now on use their real names) Anyways, as many of you know, Nolan likes to make a big deal about not much of anything. I came out of an exhibit and he said he was hungry. I got a banana out. We had just seen the monkeys, so a banana was a good fit. He likes me to peal his bananas at breakfast so one would assume he wanted me to do it then. WRONG. I pealed the whole thing and you would have thought I pinched the kid as hard as I could. He wanted it "partially" pealed so I wrapped it back up and gave it to him and then the whole thing fell on the ground. I don't even have to describe what happened next. So that is when his train obsession came in handy. "If you want to ride the train, you will stop crying RIGHT NOW". Bingo. Normally that could have gone on anywhere from 1 to three hours depending on how persistent he was feeling. I have taken Growing Kids God's Way Twice, and I know that is definitely not the way to deal with that situation, but I really wanted to diffuse his explosion ASAP in the easiest way possible. And it worked. We had a fun time. Just watching the four of them really sealed my thoughts of running a business. I have a saying that I think will be my company motto. There is no job or amount of money, worth missing a memory in the making. We only get this day once, tomorrow it's gone. Before I know it my kids will not be kids. Heck, Weston will be as tall as Jamie before to long. How did that happen so fast? I have said it many times, having Nevaeh has taught me to treasure every day we have here with one another. Live every day like it is your last. I saw a neat little video where they talked about how the "dash" is what counts in the end. On our tombstone there is a dash between our birth date and death date and that dash is our life. Wow it's late. Imagine how long it took me to write this bad boy looking at the keys!

The Lazy Blogger/Am I Crazy?

The title says it all. The lazy blogger. I don't know how some of these bloggers can do it every day. Where do they find the time? How do they not run out of stuff to talk about? I guess that is what makes them good at blogging. I have come to realize through my short blog life that I am not one of those people. I do enjoy writing, but not on a daily basis. I think the fact that I type looking at the keyboard has much to do with it. If I could type faster I think it would make it more enjoyable for me as well. You would think after doing the CB site updates for the last year would have helped my typing speed...which it might have, but I still feel like I crawl on the keyboard. However I will do my best to write at least once or twice a week.
OK, now for the Am I Crazy part? Am I crazy for going into business and taking out a loan with the economy as it is? Granted I am taking over a business that my dad has been running for the last 17 years so it is already well established, but I still am asking that question. I have prayed about it much and really have not felt like I am not supposed to do it. For obvious health reasons with Nevaeh it is incredibly valuable to have health insurance with no lifetime maximum which we currently have so that is huge to keep. I am really hoping and praying that I can begin to get much work lined up soon. The last thing I want to do is take out a loan and not have hardly any work lined up. So I continue to do two things. Pray and ask that question to myself daily.... hourly. I guess this is the same dilemma that any person going on their own faces, only I am doing it in one of the worst economic times we have faced in quite some time or so it seems. Lucky for me my personality is 70% optimistic so I am alot more excited then I am nervous.....at least for now!

My fun job for the day

Where has the time gone? I am going to have a fun time trying to write on here when work starts up full tilt in a few weeks. Today was spent cutting out a chunk of my basement floor and insulating the walls downstairs. There was a steel post that was right in the way as you would walk to the left at the bottom of our stairs. It was in a really bad spot but it helps hold the house up, so I put a new post about three feet away from that one and cut the old one out. I then wrapped the new one very nicely with wood so I could nail drywall on it, which was somewhat of a pain. I called our local inspector to get my electrical inspected. He said all the electrical looked great and then looked at the new FHA post I put in and said " you put in a footing under that post right? My answer...ah...no I didn't. What that meant was I had to tear all my nicely placed lumber off the post, knock the post over
three feet the other way, cut a 2ft by 2ft square and bust it out, Dig the section out so it is 12" thick instead of 3", run to Menard's and get 9 60lb bags of concrete mix, bring them downstairs, dump them in the hole and mix it up, make it look nice, move the post back, and re wrap the post. Being in the trades I should have known better when I first moved the thing, but I thought that there was no way he would actually make me cut the floor out. Oh well, It gave me something to do. I would much rather be doing that then walleye fishing on the wisconsin river anyways. We are now ready for the drywall, but have decided to wait until this fall to do that part. I would love to get it done, but with the water issues we have had in the past we think it would be best to make sure all the water leaking issues are resolved. I guess this is more of a what are the Wallace's doing this week update then anything. I have been shuffling between trying to help around here during the day to doing all that needs to be done to take over my Dads business. It is shaping up to be an adventurous spring to say the least! Our two youngest have been dealing with pink eye this week as well so there is never a dull moment. Untill next time.......

With the money I received for my birthday this year I decided to purchase a GPS for my car. I have had many GPS units that I have used for fishing so I am pretty familiar with them but have never actually had a unit that gives voice commands. I did much research and settled on the Garmin Nuvi265WT. I think I paid about 230.00 for it. With the prospect of having to find residential houses when I am bidding jobs, I really felt that this made much more sense then going on Map quest every time I had to bid a job and boy was I right. If you are familiar with these things you will already know most of this. It is as simple as I punch in any address and a map on the 4.3" screen shows my car(an icon) on the road and every time I need to turn on a certain street the voice command from the GPS(Which my wife says is so annoying) tells me in advance and when I get to the turn which way to go. When you get to the house you are going to she tells you the address you are arriving at and if it is on your left or right side. This unit also has built in blue-tooth to when my cell phone rings it actually rings on the GPS screen and to answer it I touch the screen and talk through the GPS hands free. It will be awesome on trips as It has pretty much every restaurant, Gas station, store, you name it built into it. So if we are about to run out of gas in the middle of nowhere it will tell us where the nearest gas station is. One feature I really liked especially having a child with health issues is you can hit a button and it will tell you where the closest hospital is. It also has a lifetime subscription to give traffic updates in 95 major US cities and will reroute you if it knows of a traffic snarl.
I had this thought recently. With this technology available, why wouldn't pretty much everyone want one of these. You can get a nice basic unit for under 100 easy. You will never get lost. It tells you right where to go. Downtown Chicago...no problem with this thing. And then this thought occurred to me. We as humans have an even greater guide available to us and yet so many choose not to use that guide and it's free! Even many of us who have accepted choose not to use our "heavenly guide" on a daily basis. We have all heard the bible described as "Gods road map for us to navigate through life". I know for me to go find a job without a map or directions or an address would be extremely difficult if not a bit ignorant, so maybe just maybe I should look at my time with God reading and praying in the same way but for all areas of my life. That sure seems more important. I am sure my wife and kids would agree. This was a good picture for me because right now I am not busy, but for some reason I so often choose to not spent quality time praying and reading which greatly effects how I navigate through life and handle different things and situations. So easy and yet often times so difficult. I also thought to myself how nice it would be if God spoke like "the GPS Woman" did. I don't mean that I want God to sound like an annoying computer generated woman's voice, but that in times in life when we really need direction and guidance that his voice would be heard as loud and clear as GPS woman. Maybe I just need to be a better listener. OK, I definitely need to be a better listener. I am pretty sure he has been giving directions all along, I just have occasionally turned down the volume.

One Tough Cookie

My wife enjoys watching the show House on the computer. A couple nights ago she was watching it holding Little miracle and a short 15 second commercial came on for
the Simpson's. LM was loving it . We have never watched that show so it was the first time she had ever seen it. She was laughing and pointing and smiling. It was hilarious. I tried to get video of it but couldn't. Anyways, after the commercial was over she had this strange look on her face. Within about ten seconds of House starting up again she went berserk. She started screaming at the top of her lungs and pointing at the screen. She was so ticked. We ended up pulling up some video clips of The Simpson's to see if it really was that she liked it. We would play it and she would be all happy and when we would shut it off she would totally loose it. The child is barely over one year old and she has a major attitude. I have said it for months on the CB site that she is very spunky. I can't wait to get some video of her doing this. It is unbelievable and hysterical at the same time. When Little Man takes something from her it is not unusual to see her actually go after him as if to tell him that she is not one bit intimidated by him. I know we always said while she was in the hospital that she is "A Little Fighter" which I'M sure every child who is sick and trying to survive gets labeled and rightly so. But I have always wondered physiologically(wow biiiiig word for bigdaddy)how going through what she did effects her personality, her mind from a standpoint of how it perceives different things and just her development in general. I guess in a nutshell does it have an effect on her being spunky and tough. I know all kids have different personalities that show different things at different ages so to ever figure it out would probably be next to impossible. I think as her dad knowing what lies ahead for her I am hoping that she has been given a supernatural or God given toughness that will continue to help her be a little champion, survivor, or as the nurses in the PICU called her " A Little Rock Star". We have seen this little attitude in many other things as well. Taking her out of the bath usually will get some attitude. Making her immobile by putting her in her exersaucer will generally get a scream or arched back. Food is a big one. Give it to the child or put in your ear plugs. I know I have said that we want to treat her just like our other kids but in this case I'm not sure I want to. It's not that she is going to be able to be rude and scream and throw things. Those were all things we dealt with while the other three were LM's age and up. But part of me likes to see it in her. She really does have to be a fighter. I talked to a lady who had two open heart surgeries and she said the pain was worse then child birth. LM needs to be a fighter and by the looks of it she is..... and I'm glad.

Temper,Temper

The older I get the more I am beginning to see that I have some work to do in the area of my temper. Maybe I should not put it that way. I think when most people here the name Bigdaddymatty (or Matt Wallace) they think of a pretty friendly happy guy... which I am. However, as my wife can attest to, I have been wrestling much more in the last few years with my temper then ever before. I was actually going to talk about things that bug me but maybe I will go a different way first. As my family growing up can attest, I have always had quite the mouth on me. Big Surprise eh. When I was four or five years old my Grandma had my brother and I in the grocery store and I wanted a candy bar. She said no and would not give in. I started yelling every bad word I knew at her. She left me. Can you blame her!? I had times where I would let loose on teachers. I know my parents have heard it more then a couple times while I was growing up... and maybe a few times since I have been a "grown up". I definitely am not proud of things I have said over the years. In high school I was never really "angry". I think I was more lost, hurt, and maybe a bit screwed up. For the most part I did most of my fighting with my mouth and not my fists. However there were a few exceptions where my mouth ended up getting me into situations where I would have to use my fists. Before I accepted Christ my talk consisted of an f every ten words or so with a few other letters mixed in. I remember the morning after I asked Jesus to come into my heart and forgive me for everything, I woke up and right away new something was very different. I could just tell. My best friend at the time who I did most of my drugs with made a comment that day I will never forget. " Dude, there is something so different about you since I saw you two days ago". "It's like you were so dark and now your not". That was a very accurate description coming from him. He also noticed how my swearing was non existent.....over night. It was only by the grace of God. Believe me, I was far from deserving the forgiveness he offered me. So the next ten to twelve years went by. Got married, had kids, went to work, same old same old. My biggest problem was trying to quit smoking. That is a different story for a different day. FYI it has almost been 7 years since I have had a cigarette. Anyways I would get mad or upset once in a while at work or at home, nothing to crazy though and my mouth was in my book pretty clean. I even remember commenting on "someone else's temper" and how I was glad I did not have to struggle with that. Wrong thing for me to say. Big time. I would say about four years ago I really started to notice that I was getting angry more and that it could be an issue. This past year is one I would like to erase when it comes to my temper. I could come up with all the excuses in the world for my actions but when it is all said and done it is still MY actions. There are so many references to being able to control our anger and our tongues in the Bible and they are certainly there for a good reason! If I was to die today one of my biggest regrets would be Getting angry in front of my kids. I am called to be the leader of our home. Getting upset in front of them is not a good leadership characteristic. Just the fact that I am writing about it shows me that God is really dealing with me and wants me to take care of it. I want to use this blog to be transparent and real. Writing helps me deal with things better then talking alot of times so you will get the "real me" on here no doubt about it. I guess I could look at it as I am now "accountable" to whoever reads this. That is a bit scary!
Now for the original thing I was going to write about. Things that kind of bug me. This is just for fun, I really am not that bothered by them. These are in no specific order.

1. When you are on the computer and they make you type those screwed up letters in the little box but you can't get the word right because the letters are to screwed up to even read.

2.When my kids have to sit on the heat vent because they are cold but they are not wearing a shirt.

3. When the cat leaves her "cling on's" if you know what I mean, laying on the floor and I step on them with my bare feet in the middle of the night.

4. When Bob Lindmeyer used to interrupt the Monday Night Packer games to tell us about a thunder storm

5. When I back my boat into the launch and get out to unhook it and lock my keys in the car with the boat half in the water and car running.....and the temp is 38 degrees.....and it's night..and my cell phone is locked in as well

6. When I had a list in my head of a ton of things that kind of bugged me and I can't think of any of them

7. When the rug in front of our front door gets jammed under the door because the new flooring is to high and I have to go psycho to pull it out. If you have ever been to my house you know exactly what I mean.

8. When I spend two hours writing a Caringbridge entry and I accidentally hit the wrong button and lose it all. I am more then thankful that this blog site automatically saves this every minute or so.

9. When one of my kids drops something in the toilet and the toilet is in need of being flushed...........and I have to clean it out before it can be flushed!

I did have a bunch of them but never wrote them down and cannot remember them now. If you have any, feel free to write them.

Sunday Morning

When you look up the word adventure in the dictionary I believe the words "Sunday Morning" should be in the definition somewhere. For some odd reason we can get up two hours before we need to leave for church or a half hour before we need to leave and we usually end up leaving about fifteen minutes after our planned departure time. Today was an exception. We were able to stop twice on the way and were still on time. That in itself is a miracle for us! It seems that the hardest part for us is getting our kids off of the heat ducts on Sunday morning. We turn the heat down to 62 at night and then in the morning turn it up to 70 or so. The minute they get up it is right to the hot air vents because they are cold. Little big man is the main culprit on a daily basis. The funny thing is that he complains about being cold but does not ever have a shirt on!? IN THE WINTER. Couple that along with the Nintendo DS he got for Christmas and it makes it quite hard to get the boy motivated. It's like trying to get me out of the boat when the walleyes are going nuts. If we can make it out the door without Little Man going berserk over mom spraying water on his curls or one of his siblings looking at him wrong(including Little Miracle)it is a victory. The other victory would also be for all the kids to have coats and the right shoes for their outfit. I have an example. I as most of you know would be in the fashion industry if I did not do concrete. So....... I put Little mans what I thought was nice pair of brown shoes on. I actually was quite impressed that the kid even had shoes on. Anyways my wife saw the shoes as he was walking in to church and could not figure out why I did not put on his black shoes? Like I said at least I remembered the shoes. I must have let my fashion guard down for just a split second and forgot how to match properly. Actually if you see what I normally wear you fashionable people might think that is a normal occurrence. So we managed to actually get out the door on time and then it was off to church.
I wanted to take some pics today and write a little about where we attend church. The name is Mad City Church. We have attended there for almost eight years. The name Mad is short for Madison for those of you not from the area. What makes it unique is that we hold service at a local high school which means everything has to be set up every Sunday. The process goes something close to this. Three or four Men(my dad included) go to a warehouse around 5:30 or 6:00 Am whether it is 60 above or 40 below. Rain or shine. They load the semi with carts that have to be taken off during the week. Then they unload all the carts which are not very light into all the different areas. I would guess there to be 15 to 20 carts. There are tables, chairs, sound system, and tons of other stuff that have to be unloaded, set up, taken down, and reloaded every Sunday. I have heard numerous times over the years "when is Mad City going to get a building"? That is a question that I don't think anyone can answer. A building would be nice, but I also think there are a lot of people who have come simply because it is at a school and not a "church Building". I had a homeless guy tell me once that he likes to come because of "all the free food". Can you blame him? It is awesome the way the churches of Madison are really trying to unite for the same cause. The way God meant it to be. One big house with many different rooms.