What I did on Summer Vacation

Welp, Summer's gone. Here's a post about stuff we did this Summer (the pictures aren't great, and I don't have time to write a compelling story, but you should get the drift) --

We went camping:


We caught crayfish in the creek:


And then we ate them!
(Jesse ate them whole... head first... CRUNCH!)


We decided to "go green" by figuring out a way to save energy:


We got a bunny:
And we buried her two days later :(


We shoved kids into a dog house:


And, umm...

There's some other stuff too. For example we have a new family member (my sister-in-law, my wife's sister had a baby girl. She's still in the hospital recovering from open heart surgery. We're praying for her). But I can't sit at the computer and put pictures up all day!

(Opens creeky door)

(and blows the cobwebs off my blog)

It's still here, and looks like it still works. Looks like it could use some maintenance though. Let's try this...

It's now Friday, and the week of my birthday is coming to an end. This year I decided that instead of just celebrating my birthday, we were going to celebrate the whole family. So, we had "Family Day," and we exchanged gifts, ate our favorite foods, and just hung out together enjoying each other. It was fun, and I think we'll be adopting it as a new family tradition.

Yesterday we painted our dining room. We painted two of the walls a color called "Burnt Clay" or something like that. It's kinda like a terra cotta ("baked earth"). It looks nice. Please let me know when you're coming over for dinner, so we can put it on the calendar.

Looks like a little bit of a winter storm hit us over night. Nothing too brutal, maybe 3 or 4 inches of snow, but it looks like it's now a mixture of stuff that floats to the ground softly, and stuff that bounces off the street when it hits. Maybe I'll just stay inside today.

Ok, that's all for now... back to Facebook. :)

(closes creeky door)

'Tis Monday

This cold/flu thing is quite pesky and lingering. Some of the kids are now going through another round of it. It seems at some time some one in this home has been sick, for like a month or two. Yuck.

But in case your feeling like you're having a bad day, here's one of those stories that makes you think, "Well, I might have had a rough day, but at least my bride didn't die in my arms on my wedding day."

It'll be my 37th birthday coming up here on the 20th. My Pops gifted me with this baby:

That's a squat cage! I can squat and bench in there without a spotter, do pull-ups on the front bar, and dips on the side dip-handles. I've been experimenting with squatting recently, as it along with the deadlift are one of those total-body stressing exercises that increases testosterone levels, and makes your whole body grow big and strong. But I was doing it in a not so safe manner, thus not piling on as much weight as is necessary to really do the job. Ah, but now... I can't wait to hit those squats! For now, I have to finish my coffee and get to work. ~sigh~

Good day, all!

My schedule today

Here's my work schedule today...

8am to midnight.

I know, it's a little much. But I could use some more scratch to pay the oil bill.

Someone please begin drilling in Alaska. Thanks.

Oh, how time flies...

Life's been very busy. But that's good, now isn't it? When we're about our duties, it leaves little time for us to be involved in nonsense and wickedness. You know the saying about the idle mind and the devil's playground, right?

Blink, and another week went by without updating my blog. I'm worried sometimes that both my readers will get too upset to check back again!

It's time for the lightning round --

1. What has been growing in Jerry's front yard (having already grown in the back yard), which although it will bring more work to take care of, is yet a welcomed addition?

Answer: Lawn.

2. What unnecessary product, that almost everyone uses, has still has not touched Jerry's hair since late March 2007?

Answer: Shampoo.

3. What did Jerry get last night which he plans on wearing on ocassion for a long long time?

Answer: His Shureido black belt (obi), made in and shipped from Okinawa, the birthplace of Karate. It is of much better quality of most belts one wears as one is going through the ranks. This is the kind of belt that will get old and tattered with use, because it lasts so long.

4. What upcoming event is having the Waybrights very excited?

Answer: A visit from a Covenanter minister!

Ok, enough of that. In other news:

My wife may want to hold burglars at gunpoint on a regular basis, if you can make them clean up the house!

Our songs

Some people just know how to write our songs. That's a good songwriter, one that makes you go, "Hey, that's MY song!" Not that everything in the song matches something in our lives, but the whole gist is just so familiar.

Mom's song:


Dad's song:


The bedtime song:

Before and After

I'm looking through my pictures, and it seems that I failed to capture in a photograph the way the yard looked when we bought the house. That being the case, the "before" picture below, is still sort of an "after" picture, as it is after I chainsawed two rows of Burning Bushes, a few trees, had some people come and take all the stuff they wanted to take, and moved a whole bunch of rocks and cement pavers. Nevertheless, Behold!

Before


After


Now we need to get the front yard done!

Feeling good, feeling anxious

I had a good Lord's Day yesterday. I feel refreshed spiritually, which is just what I needed. I also had some good private worship this morning, reading some Proverbs which I will be trying to recall to mind and think about throughout the day.

I pray that the Lord will help me to be a better dad than I have been so far.

In other news: It's getting down to it. I have a few weeks left to get whipped into enough shape to pass my Shodan (black belt) test. I'm getting older, for sure. I'm sore all over today from the things I did Friday and Saturday. You know what though? I appreciate that I go to a school that requires hard work to earn Shodan, rather than a school that hands it out to just anybody. I get such test anxiety, and I'll be glad when this part of my training is done.

What's been going on...

Ok, friends (and foes who read what I write for bad reasons), here's an update on what's been going on.

We moved. After living in the city for my whole life, I finally made it to the suburbs. Not too shabby for a guy with a wife and seven kids, on one meager salary! The sights and sounds are certainly a pleasant change. No more loud booming pounding music, with lyrics in another language, blasting from the cars on the street straight into my living room. Now I can hear birds. The cardinals and the gold finches that frequent my new back yard (which is about 5 or 6 times the size of my old back yard), are colorful, pleasant, and very much welcome to share my land. The past owners went a tad bit landscaping-crazy, kind of a "gardens gone wild" thing. So, there's a lot of work to be done. Oh, the wonders and amazement of the chainsaw! I'll tell you what though... it's fun and rewarding to work my land. I thank and praise God for giving us the opportunity to better our earthly estate like this.

I've been busy, and I'm very tired lately. And I haven't had much time to be online (not to mention the fact that my internet service provider took their good old time getting me hooked up at the new place), but we're doing well, and things have been good.

In other news: I got word that my grandmother was in the hospital, but by the time I got in to visit here, she was gone. No, not dead. Just transferred to long term nursing care. Poor grandma. Alzheimer's is a terrible thing... it's like losing your loved one before you lose your loved one. Know what I mean?

Might be quiet for a while...

You'll have to forgive me if I'm quite around here, and online in general, over the next few... well, however long it takes. What started out as just looking around at the possibility of getting a new house, has rather rapidly become actually listing our house tonight, because we're going to meet with a seller tomorrow about signing an offer contract! We are very likely going to be buying a house before we sell our old house, which is a little bit stressful. We have alot to do around here, and alot to think about, in order to get this done. So, you may or may not hear from me for a while.

Yes, we actually found a house we can fit in, in our price range, in a great neighborhood, so we need to get this done ASAP.

We thank God for all of this, and ask for your prayers too!

Kids Done Us Proud

There was a locally hosted Karate Tournament this past Saturday, and the kids had some good results in their first taste of a big tournament (there were folks from New York, Delaware, Maryland, and different parts of Pennsylvania). Daniel won first place for sparring (thanks to his sidekick), and third place for demonstrating his basic techniques. Conner and Calle took first and second place respectively in sparring, facing each other in the final match (Calle was the only one of Conner's opponents to score even one point on him, the final score was 3-2). And Cole took fourth place for his Wansu Kata, in one of the biggest divisions in the whole tournament!

Good job, kids!

The Cops at My House

A friend called us last night at about 10:30 pm. We usually don't get calls that late, but it was an old friend with a strange question, so that's how this all started.

While my wife's talking on the phone, little Gideon somehow gets his hands on the other phone, and is pretending to talk on the phone like his mommy. My wife hangs up, and then takes the phone from Gideon, who starts crying and screaming because mommy took the phone away from him.

The phone rings again, and I, thinking that it's our old friend again with another strange question, answer the phone with a really silly high pitched "HELLO!" Here's how the following conversation went:

Me: Hello!

911 Distpatch: This is 911 Distpatch. What's the problem?

Me: Huh? Someone called 911? I'm sorry, my baby must have dialed it. He was playing with the phone.

911: I heard screaming in the background. What's the problem?

Me: There is no problem. Like I said, my baby was playing with the phone, and he must have dialed 911 randomly. I'm sorry.

911: What was the screaming all about?

Me: The baby. The baby had the phone. Baby.

911: Well, you're going to have to explain it to the officer. I sent the police to your address.

Me: Thanks! (click). RACHEL, THE POLICE ARE COMING OVER! Fix your hair up, because they're going to think I was beating you.

So I'm standing on my porch, stuffing tobacco in my pipe, and I can see the lights flashing from two blocks away. Two police cars pull up in front of my house as I'm lighting my pipe.

Me: Hi.

Cop: Is everything alright?

Me: Yep, the baby had the phone and must have called 911.

Cop: Can I come inside just to make sure everything is alright?

Now, at this point I'm thinking "No. Come back with a warrant," but then I thought, "Jerry, you're innocent, so act innocent."

Me: "Sure, come on in."

Cop: Hi ma'am. Is everything all right in here?

Rachel: "Yes, the baby was playing with the phone and must have called 911."

Cop: What was all the screaming about?

Rachel: I took the phone from him, and he screamed because I took it from him.

Cop: How many kids do you have?

Now, at this point I'm thinking "I don't have to answer that. We told you what happened now be about your way, please." But then I said to myself, "Jerry, you're innocent, just act like you're innocent."

Me: Seven.

Cop: Seven! God bless you!

Me: Thank you.

Cop: Are they all in bed?

Me: Yes.

Cop: Do you mind if I just check them to make sure everything's ok?

(Jerry, you're innocent, just act like you're innocent)

Me: Yeah, sure.

The silent cop stayed downstairs, I guess to keep the peace or something, while I gave the big officer who did all the talking a tour of the house, and we dropped in on all the kids, who got to say hi to the nice police officer who was just making sure we're all safe.

You know what though... none of us really felt safe. I was innocent, and I acted like I was innocent, but it sure was creepy having two cops looking at me like I did something terrible, and checking out my house like I'm hiding something.

I'm glad he didn't ask to look in my closet.

Family pushups

Last night we did family pushups -- kids, wife, everybody but the cat. It was fun, and here's how you can do them too, in a way that you do not wear yourself out, but still do way more pushups than you think you can.

I've been playing with Pavel's Ladder, a way to accomplish Synaptic Facilitation, also called the "grease the groove" method, credited to Pavel "the evil Russian" Tsatsouline. The goal is to do high volume pushups without approaching failure. Here's how we did Pavel's ladder as a family:

I did one pushup, and stood up. Everyone else dropped and did one pushup to match me. Then I dropped and did two (one, two), again everyone matches my two pushups. I did three (one, two, three), everyone did three. I did four, everyone did four. I did five, everyone did five. When someone says, "I'm done" or "I don't think I can do the next set," we all drop back to one, then two, then three, etc.

We did this as a family three times back to back to back -- completing two ladders of 5, and one ladder of 4, meaning that we all did 40 pushups within a few minutes!

I myself have done almost 800 pushups since Saturday (not including the pushups done in Karate class), by doing Pavel's ladder every other day.

Try Pavel's Ladder, and grease the groove baby!

Tell me about it...

"I don't want my heart to get broken, so I'm taking it somewhere else." -- Elisabeth.

"I love it when we're cruising together"

December 2002: 114 passengers aboard a cruise ship become sick, causing diarrhea, stomach pain and vomiting for 24 to 48 hours.

September 2003: 301 passengers aboard a cruise ship contract something that makes them puke and stuff all over the place.
December 2006: 380 passengers aboard a cruise ship become sick, again causing barf and everything.

February 2007: The Waybright household feels like a cruise ship.

What a day so far...

Deep freeze, exploding transformers, fire engines, power flickering, and puke.

I stayed home from work. Not because I can't drive in the snow - I actually like driving in the snow. But because Jesse was up barfing all night, and is still going strong today. More than one transformer blew up on nearby power lines -- I could see the explosions from my window. The power flickered and there was a very strange noise, along with the crackle-BOOM. They'll likely be killing the power around here to fix it. So, I didn't want to leave my wife with sick chillins, potentially in the dark, alone. So, out to shovel snow, which is HEAVY because of the freezing rain that it's been soaking up. I helped push our local Snoop Dog's car out of his parking spot. I feel a bit worn out right now. Maybe I should have went to work to relax. Cole spotted a bright red cardinal in the hard. It was sitting in our crab apple tree, looking like a painting or something (what with all the snow around). It looked like something Amanda would take a picture of and win a contest with. Speaking of Amanda... how does a slob like me get invited to view her blog now that it's gone VIP only?

Tournament Update, etc.

Ok, quick recap of this weekend's Karate Tournament --

Daniel sparring (he's on the right with the red headgear):



Daniel (far left) won a gold and a bronze medal:


Conner (on the right) sparring:


Two golds and a silver for Conner:


Calle (on the right) sparring:


Calle took home 3, that's THREE gold medals, sweeping every event she was in:


And Cole took home two silver and a bronze:



In other news:
Gideon fell asleep on Jesse's Thomas the Tank Engine futon:


And today was the first significant snowfall of 2007 in these parts (the latest ever recorded, I understand):


(Yes, those are my bare feet. Yes, there's something wrong with me. No, I don't know what exactly it is that is wrong with me).

Tournament Day

Today the four karate kids are competing in a friendly inter-school tournament. The three C's are competing in three events each, and little Daniel is competing in two. All four will be sparring. Unlike the last tournament we did, no division has more than one Waybright in it, so kids with other last names have a shot, and none of my kids will be forced to beat their sibling. I plan on posting some pics after the tournament (I'm predicting that between the four of them... we'll be bringing home about 8 medals. But we'll see).

Had some fun tonight...

Making whiskey sours, eating some steak, and running barefoot in the snow.

In other news:

DON'T watch this video if guys getting punched make you faint or anything. I train in Karate because I HATE violence, and so I'm not posting this in order to glory in violence. I post this as a lesson for those of us who are conscious about keeping ourselves safe from violence.

The video below shows two thugs standing in a path in some sort of park. An apparent third thug is supposed to capture the thuggery on video for the amusement of idiots and creeps. What he instead captures is an impressive display of skill, and some amazing restraint near the end. One of the thugs swings his arm and smacks a woman right in the face. Her male partner responds by quickly dispatching both of the punks quicker than you can say, "Wow, that guy really knows how to throw down when he needs to!"

I notice three things from this video:

1. The man who defends himself and his neighbor acts so quickly, and so decisively, that he surely was aware of his surroundings, and was prepared to act should trouble arise. So, our first lesson, is to be aware of your surroundings -- especially when guys are just lingering around with seemingly nothing to do.

2. The man defending himself and his neighbor is clearly trained in what I would guess to be boxing. He fights like he's done this 1000 times before. Our second lesson then, is be prepared to defend yourself. You may have to use it someday.

3. At the very end, the man shows great restraint once it appears the threat is over. He does not "ground and pound" anyone, no kicks to a downed opponent, nothing like that. He just stops them, drops them, and walks away. It seems to me that the vigor in which he goes to town on them can be explained by the fact that he is out numbered, and must overwhelm two opponents in order to be safe -- fending off one guy is hard enough without having to keep your head on a swivel so that other guy doesn't get you from behind. Our third lesson is, in a self defense situation, do enough to stop the immediate threat and no more. "If your temper rises, withdraw your hand. If your hand rises, withdraw your temper."

With this long preface, I offer this for those who choose to watch it:

Brothers and friends

Gideon and Jesse, coloring.