These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6: 6-9 NIV

Throughout my wife’s first pregnancy I always wondered what sharing my faith with my child would look like. Would I ask him the right questions? Or would he ask me? Would I say the right things, and have all the correct answers? I thought about the worst case scenario, what if he rejected our Savior and rebelled? What if my faith drove a stake in our relationship?

These concerns, doubts and fears flooded my mind weekly. I wondered how I could be a spiritual leader, how could I save his soul for eternity. Now, 2 years later I realize I can’t. I can’t worry about his salvation, because I can’t save my son’s soul. However, I can humble myself before the Lord and be used as a tool and lead by example. I can trust Him, because saving my children from hell is so much bigger than me.

As he grows older he’s going to watch, observe and mimic. He’s going to notice other dads and men in and around his life, the good and the bad. Instead of worrying these days about how, when, or where it’s going to happen, I pray and I trust the Lord to bless those special times between a father and a son. Those times where maybe we are camping in a forest, shredding down a mountain side of 12” of fresh powder, or simply watching a football game that I would be able to impress upon him the love of his Savior.

I pray that the Lord would be with me, and that I would be able to step aside and be used by Him to speak the Truth and the Life to my son. I pray for the day when my son ultimately has to make an adult decision that Christ is going to be an intricate part of his life. I pray that he will not stray from the ways of his childhood.  So as I watch my son grow, and patiently await the arrival of our second child, my wife and I continue to prepare our hearts and our home to be a living example of Christ.

Are you writing Christ’s love on the doorframes of your home and heart?

With the invention of children into a family comes the neglect of the spouse.  I think one of our founding fathers said that…or not.  But if we are not careful it is absolutely true.  Then when 30 years passes and the kids are all gone you are left in an empty, quiet home with someone you don’t even know!  Can you look at your spouse right now and say that’s not a big deal?  Nope.  Well at least I hope not.

When Kara-Kae and I got married (and those of you who can remember the beginnings of your marriage) we didn’t struggle at all to spend time with each other.  It’s not hard.  It’s what you do!  Even throughout the pregnancy it wasn’t difficult.  Actually during the pregnancy we tried to hang out with each other even more knowing that the next stage in life would be taxing on our relationship.  Then into our world comes our precious little daughter.  Maybe it’s not hard for you if your kids are not cool, but ours is.  All of a sudden there is someone else in our lives that we are giving all our attention to and whose life ours now revolve around.  Even with the best intentions it is extremely easy to start to let the spouse drift away while you both are focused on something else so important.

But if we don’t do something about it we are going to end up in a relationship that isn’t where we want it to be.  Fighting.  Arguing.  Going to bed mad.  Not spending time together.  Basically an obligatory relationship instead of a loving one.  So through our talking and being honest with each other we realized that we needed to do something about it.  I didn’t even realize until we talked that it was something we weren’t doing!  So Friday nights (days and times many vary) are our weekly non-negotiable date nights.  It’s my day off so I won’t have a day that I don’t see the kid(s).  Last night was our first one.  It was great.  It’s still a little difficult to figure it all out, but just making the added extra effort to spend time together is a good start!

Maybe you need to grab the spouse and have a talk.  Make sure you aren’t missing out on something that you need to be feeding!

Do you have a weekly non-negotiable date night?

As little kids we looked up to our dads. They were/still are super heroes. They could do anything, fix anything, be anything, play anything, create anything, etc. We wanted to hang out with dad and spend all the time we could with him. But the best fathers know that their kids eat it up when they feel needed. Nothing else is important in that moment.

When daddy needs you the entire world stops.

As fathers we know that (yes I am speaking a little ahead of my own life but I have seen it happen) the two-year-old really doesn’t lend any real help, but it builds them up and makes them feel a part and loved. When you are carrying the groceries in and the little one is there to “help” you give them the bag of chips knowing that it isn’t heavy and they taste just as good in smaller pieces as it will be dropped multiple times on the way from the car to the kitchen.

The dropping tripping over smashing help of the little one isn’t about the help, though. The help is more for the benefit of the child than it is for the parent. Dad is completely capable of carrying the groceries or turning off the lights or painting the wall. He doesn’t need the help of his kid and it may actually be causing him more work, but the whole thing is not for him. The child learns and grows and feels loved and accepted through the situation. They start to learn lessons and skills that they would otherwise miss out on by just going inside and playing with their toys.

There is a connection here with ministry work. As Driscoll put it, “Ministry is putting on a little hard hat and going to work with Dad.” Dad doesn’t need your help. He is an all-powerful God! But when we make ourselves available to be put to work our heavenly Daddy gives us a job to do. Yes He is fully capable of doing it without our help, but the benefit to us is huge. The lessons we can learn from being a part of what Daddy is doing. It helps us grow. It helps us mature. It makes us a part of what He is doing.

So go out there and put on your little hard hat and go to work with your Daddy. He is doing something far beyond your capacity, but He wants to involve you in it!

There is just something about Santa.  When you are little you are terrified of the really large guy with a weird red suit and way too much white hair.  So you are mad at your parents for making you sit on the weird guy’s lap.  Then you get older and you find out he supplies you will presents once a year.  Now you love him.  Then you grow up a little more and find out everyone has been lying to you all your life and now you are mad at your parents again!  It seems like parents would get much farther if they started all the Santa conversations with “once upon a time” and then tell the kids that just like that Santa thing, you are either on the Naughty List or the Nice List and anything we give you as a celebration of Jesus’ birth will be from real people.  But no.  Let’s go with the elaborate scheme that automatically chalks one up against us.

I don’t understand.  Why do we put our kids through this obvious torture?  Tradition?  If it was tradition for me to punch your kid in the face and your kid didn’t like it would you keep putting your kid through that just because the pictures were funny?  Doubtful.  (Some of you are thinking deep down inside that it might just be worth it for those pictures.)  And really who wants to let the random dude that got cut from ZZ Top, missed out on Halloween and has to wait a couple more months to weird his costume?  Hey kids!  Let’s all get dressed up and go take pictures with the fat guy in red that rules an entire race of elves (that look an awful lot like you) and forces them to work year ’round for him in the North Pole Sweat Shop!  It’ll be great!

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Look at the faces of theses kids!  They aren’t hoping to be on the Nice List.  They are hoping to not be on the Dead List!  This year let’s give the kids a break!  Let them see the “beloved” Santa from a distance this year!

For those of you that still haven’t had enough of the faces, check out Sketchysantas.

Don’t you just love it when someone gives birth on a movie and the baby is obviously like 6 months to a year old?  Me too.  Anyway, it is official.  The Alvarez family is now 5 kids strong.  There was a new baby born at 3:27 AM yesterday (yes I was awake then too)!  So yesterday afternoon we made a fun trip to the hospital to go check out the new kid.  She is (not fat, Asian, or male like the baby above) 7 lbs. and an ounce with a little bit of hair and no name.  I believe they want to continue with the M names.  Got any ideas?  I thought Maude was good but they didn’t like it.  Who knows.  So we are now through night #2 with the girls.  We had 3 of them last night and believe it or not the girls didn’t get up once!  The youngest cried for a little bit about 1 AM, but that was it.  Of course we did wake up extremely early (thank you KK for taking care of that) and had Saturday morning movie time in bed.  We watched Enchanted!  Woo hoo.  Well the girls like it…I think.  We spent more time chasing Jack around the bed and playing than watching the movie.  Good times.  Ok.  Off to watch another fun girly kid movie.  Maybe I will sleep.

Well, if you read the post first you might think we are pregnant.  We are not…that I know of.  Maybe…  Anyway, Kara-Kae and I are watching 4 kids for a friend of ours that is having her 5th kid.  Wow.  Wear me out.  Well, the kids are sweet but still there are 4 of them.  We actually only had 3 of them last night.  One is 11 so doesn’t take much.  We played MASH to find out who I would marry, where we would honeymoon, where we would live, etc.  Good stuff.  The other two are 4 and 2(ish).  KK put them both to bed last night as I was selling our washer and dryer off Craigslist.  (Wendy we may be coming to hang out a little more now…)  So when I got back over, I put KK to bed and worked on our MobileMe account.  But before I could get that done, the 4 year old had already gotten up twice!  Good grief.  So throughout the course of the night she ended up getting up and out of bed and coming down to us 6 times!  Ah!  It was ok.  I think KK and I solved all of the world’s problems with her (drinks, spilled drinks in her bed, peeing, wet clothes, new clothes, bug bites, hurt knees, hurt eyes, hurt necks, not liking our bed, Mary Poppins…twice, Belle once, her sister, her other sister, the dog, our dog, and the list goes on and on).  So needless to say I’m a little sleepy this morning, but we will fight on!  You can’t say no to a little 2 year old with a pigtail in her hair!