Dave Roller, Daddy Extraordinaire!

Pardon my intrusion, but this is Amy, Dave's wife popping in for a moment. Dave's been busy lately being a dad and husband. He is teaching three different grade levels here at home, shuttling Lucy to ballet while exercising on the track with the older two, teaching two classes at our home school co-op, brushing a certain person's extremely long and curly hair, making a mean meat loaf, going to men's bible study, sweeping up countless (and he's GOOD at math!) crumbs, and treating us all with love and good humor. Didn't you all know, February 18th is national Dave Roller appreciation day?

You haven't seen ... ?!!!!?

Time again for Things this Thursday.

Thing # 1. Films seen and unseen

I watched the movie Hello Dolly last night. I had never seen it before. The movie is based on a musical which is based on Thornton Wilder's play the matchmaker. I think I saw the play in high school. I know I read it (Yes I used to read plays for fun!).

The Movie Wall-E was inspire by Hello Dolly and actually includes footage from the film. This made me even more interested to watch it. I enjoyed Hello Dolly. It is funny, and poignant. It made me wonder how I missed it all these years.

This got me to thinking about movies that seemingly everyone has seen except you. These conversations used to happen at work. I would be sitting with my coworkers and some movie reference would come up and everyone would talk about how great a movie that was and one person would have never seen it. I remember one guy had never heard of Rain Man, it was strange.

One movie I never saw was Platoon. When it came out all my friends said I should see it but no one would see it with me. They had already seen it once, and said it was too powerful to watch again.

If there are any movies that you have always wanted to see, that seemingly everyone except you has watched, leave a comment or post about it and link here.

Thing # 2 Dance Class Fever

Lucy is loving her ballet class. She loves to spin around and play all the dancing games with the other girls. It is definitely the highlight of her week. Her first recital is in May and she is so excited.

Thing # 3 CTRL

This past week I have discovered a quirky web based t.v. show called Ctrl. It stars Tony Hale who recently played the ultra nasty Emmet Milbarge on Chuck. The first 10 episode which originally ran last summer are about 5 minutes each in length and are available in their entirety at Hulu.

The basic premise of the show is that Iced Tea and computer keyboards don't mix. I have seen 8 of the 10 episodes so far and encourage you guys to check it out.

Thing # 4 Sickness Disease Update

I appreciate all the encouraging feedback I received about my posy regarding Amy's recent unexplained medical issues. It seems we have hit upon an explanation. The chest pain and arm pain seem connected to GERD which is like acid reflux. Amy is going to review this with her doctor next week, and hopefully that will be that.

So, those are the things this Thursday. I encourage you to come join the fun.

Next Time: Six Word Saturday

Multiplication and McCarthyism

Word Count Wednesday: 100 Words or Les


Crazy Uncle Dave here. It’s late Tuesday night, early morning Wednesday. Here are a few random thought to start/finish my day.

Yesterday, Charlie did double digit multiplication for the first time. Where’s the camera when you need it?


If comedy = tragedy + time, does parsley = oregano + thyme?
Speaking of comedy = tragedy plus time . . .

A Poem by Joseph McCarthy
Roses are red
Violets are too
Everything’s red
Except me and you
And I’m not so sure about you.




Next Time: You haven’t seen . . . ?!!!!?

Please pray for the o'connors

We met the O'connors right before Amy and I became engaged all the way back in November of 1998. They were a recently married couple who had begun attending our church. Within a short time of our meeting We and the O'connors became the volunteer youth group leaders of our church. For the next 3 years we maintained a close friendship with them as we ran the youth group together and Mike and I were on the deacon board together. Right before Amy Emma, and I went to Turkey in 2000 we asked the O'connors if they would consider agreeing to raise Emma, in the event anything ever happened to us. They readily agreed.

Shortly before Charlie was born in 2001, we moved away from the area where the Oconnors and our church were located. We were all still in the Chicago area but we were now relegated to seeing them on a much less frequent basis. A few years after Charlie was born, the Oconnors gave birth to their son Max. A few years after that we had Lucy.

In 2006, I lost my job of almost 10 years. I quickly got a temporary to permanent job but without insurance benefits. In December of 2006 the O'connors called and said they were coming over to deliver some groceries that our old church had donated to us as part of their benevolence ministry. When they came over they not only had the groceries, enough for our family to live off for well over a month, but they also had 100's of dollars of Christmas presents they had bought out of their own pocket for each of the kids. I mean each kid must have had 5-6 gifts and they gave us a pretty significant gift card for us as well.

We still don't see them very often. We ran into them at Great America in the Summer of 2008 and just caught up with them this past fall at a wedding of two of our former youth group members. We were excited to see on face book recently they were expecting another child.

This is where the prayer request comes in. Cassandra just informed us on a note in face book that she miscarried their son at 15 weeks. God has used this couple in such a mighty way in our lives over the years. We want to do anything we can to minister to them in their great sorrow. Please pray for Mike, Cassandra and Max.

The Day After

Yesterday was the Super Bowl and in what is becoming increasingly usual for us we stayed at home unable to watch the game. We are not one of those families that does not have a television. We have a television, we just can't watch t.v on it. For several reasons we have decided to not have cable in our home. When we moved to our current home we discovered that our ability to get network television was greatly inhibited. Our reception usually contained more snow than the Atlantic coast states received over the weekend. As a result, 3 or 4 years ago we moved the television away from the antenna, and use the t.v only to watch dvd's and videos. We do watch episodic television through hulu and other online sights. I have watched every episode of Chuck without using a television to do so. The problem we have is with television events like award shows and sports programming. I have become perfectly fine listening to sports on the radio. If I really want to watch a good game, I put on a dvd from the 2005 world series. But spectacular events like the Super Bowl are ones that we now forgo. We sometimes go visit family on such an occasion but nothing worked out this year.

I listened to parts of the game on the radio. Amy and I watched some of the commercials on the Internet and we played some games and read a little. It was a nice relaxing way to spend any Sunday evening, even a Super Bowl one.

Next Time: Works for me Wednesday