The longer I am a parent the more I realize how much karma exists for how we behaved as children. There are numerous times that I see how my children act and remember the way I acted when I was their age. These aren't pleasant memories to be sure. It is also embarrassing to be reminded of your weaknesses, which children are great at doing.

I was reminded of this again yesterday. My daughter Sarah was upset at her brother Ryan for something he was doing and used a naughty word because she was angry. As you might imagine since I am writing this it was a word that I have a proclivity for using. As a part of her punishment Becca had Sarah call me to tell me what she said and why. It really isn't a good feeling to have your child do something that you have a weakness with.

When Sarah was talking with me, I asked her where she learned the word, hoping of course that she would say that she heard it from a friend. With the innocence of a child she replied that she had heard me say the word. Yep, that certainly felt great. I told her that it isn't OK when daddy says it either, and that the both of us would work together to make sure we don't say that word anymore.

I guess it ended up being a good lesson for the both of us. Sometimes it is good to be reminded that while our words says things, our children see (or hear) or actions as well, and if they aren't consistent they are going to observe that. Perhaps it's time for me to go get the soap and wash my own mouth out.

I had a really nice Father's Day with my family yesterday. It started out with breakfast in bed and each of the children brought me their gifts. I guess my kids (and wife) know me pretty well as they gave me some new XBOX360 games. Also, my daughter game me a beaded gecko key chain she made at school and some coupons that I can exchange for service from her. They are things like being nice and being home on time, etc. I thought the it was a pretty cute gift idea.

After breakfast we all got ready and went to church. Unfortunately it was one of the worst Sundays we have had with the kids in awhile. Sarah and Ryan were pretty good, but the twins were pretty worked up. Once we got home Becca took the kids outside to play in the water and I cooked up some ribs on our grill and tried out my new games. We had a nice dinner and even had Key Lime pie for dessert so it was a nice day.

I called and talked with my mom while we were getting the kids ready for bed since my dad has been dead for several years now. She will be coming us here next month, and we are looking forward to it. In any case my wife and kids made sure I had a great Father's Day. I hope they know how much I love and appreciate them. I couldn't ask for a better family.

I thought I should post a picture of the whole clan up here on the blog. From left to right we have: Ryan, Joshua, Rebecca, Sarah, Dale, and Jacob.

This picture was taken while we down in California visiting my family for Christmas.

In preschool this year the teachers worked with the kids on poetry and using descriptive words to express your feelings. As a part of this lesson the kids each drew a picture and wrote a poem about something they were interested in. Above is the poem Ryan wrote along with his picture. Since the words are small and hard to read here is Ryan's Poem

Cookies

Round

Chocolate chips

Some have white chocolate

I like them

It feels hard in my mouth

But I can eat it up

Really Yummy!

By Matthew (Ryan) Churchward (Age 5)

OK, so I know that graduating from preschool isn't the same thing as completing high school or college, but when you are five it is still a momentous occasion. My son Ryan finished his third year at Cascade Preschool last night and will be entering kindergarten this fall. I have really noticed this year how much he has progressed socially and also how much he has learned. He seems fully ready to enter a new phase of his education as he follows his sister into Monte Cristo Elementary this fall.

At this time I also want to say a big thank you to his teachers at Cascade Preschool. All of my kids have attended the school for at least part of a year with Sarah and Ryan being the two graduates so far. The teachers (Miss Jody, Miss Deborah, and Miss Jenny) are excellent and I can see the tremendously positive impact they have had on my children.

Here is a picture of my kids with their teachers. I have not suddenly picked up a fifth child by the way, but we did have an uninvited guest sit in on the picture. In any case it was great to see Ryan growing up a bit and getting ready for his next big adventure in kindergarten. I'm sure he will do great and enjoy being in the same school as big big sister Sarah.

I know that I congratulated my in-laws on their 50th anniversary, and talked about the party, but I don't think I posted a picture of them celebrating their big day.

Here is a picture of Moe and Wesley celebrating 50 happy years together. Congratulations again for this remarkable achievement.

My half-sister and her family were up here a few weeks ago for a visit. It was nice to see them and we spent some time together at the zoo, and at a Mariners game. It was a lot of fun having them up here, because we also got to see our nephew Eddy for the first time since he was born. I have put some pictures below from their visit.

Here is Sarah holding cousin Eddy. She really thought it was cool to have a baby around again, and interacted with him pretty well.

Here are all my kids with Eddy at the zoo. My sister Brittney has her back to the camera but we can see (starting at the top clockwise) Sarah, Ryan, Brittney, Eddy, Joshua, and Jacob. That of course is me sitting in the middle :-) or it might be a statue of a gorilla, but it's a bit hard to tell. :-)

My sister and her family are back in Utah now, but will be getting sealed in the temple in a few weeks. I am sure that will be a great event for them and will bring them much happiness.

In my last post I mentioned that we were throwing a 50th Anniversary Party for my in-laws. That went very well last Saturday and they were very surprised to see Beccas brother and family at the party. They also enjoyed visiting with their friends and family. All in all, it was a very successful party.

On Sunday, I left to fly down to Las Vegas for the Microsoft Management Summit. The conference was great, but due to airline issues I didn't end up checking into my room until 2:00 a.m., about 5 hours later than I had planned on. Las Vegas was OK, but I don't choose to gamble, and didn't want spend money seeing the shows.

I got back from Vegas on Friday and my sister Brittney, her husband Eric, and my nephew Edward came up for a visit from Utah for the week. We went to dinner with them Saturday and then had them over to our house after church on Sunday. Yesterday we took all of our kids to the Woodland Park Zoo.

It has been a lot of fun having family visiting, and throwing the party, but I am glad things are calming down a bit.

We had Beccas brother and family arrive at our house last night. My in-laws are celebrating their 50th Anniversary tomorrow. It has been an exciting, but stressful time for us. We are throwing a big party for them tomorrow and so the last several weeks have been very busy as we have put together some displays showing some of the significant events during their marriage. I am looking forward to this significant event, and getting so many of Beccas family.

As a additional benefit to celebrating the anniversary we get to have Beccas brother and family stay with us. I haven't seen them or their kids for several years so it is interesting to see how much the kids have grown. Becca and I tried to make sure we had everything set-up to make it comfortable as possible for them.  I am really excited to have them visiting. When I was dating Becca, Stephen and Ashley were the first members of Beccas family I met. They treated me very well, and I am glad they are here.

I am sure this will be a busy weekend with the party and the visitors. I will be leaving for Las Vegas on Sunday to attend the Microsoft Management Summit. Unfortunately this means I will only have until Sunday evening to spend time with the family, but it is also important to attend the conference since I am doing a lot of work with our operations team.

When we took the twins in for their 3 year check-up we talked with the doctor about how their speech was behind. We got the twins tested and it was determined that their speech development was behind. Because of how far behind it is the twins qualified to attend preschool at the same school my daughter attends. As a part of this they get to ride the bus to and from school which they think is great. I took some pictures this morning of them waiting for the bus and actually getting on. I hope you like them.

It looks like Josh (left) and Jake (right) get along pretty well.

They were so excited to get on the bus.

My wife's brother and sister-in-law are coming up in a few weeks to stay with us while we celebrate my in-laws 50th anniversary. Since their children are older than my kids we decided to get Guitar Hero 3 so the kids would have a game to play while they are here. I was surprised at how much my kids like the game though. My daughter Sarah really like the game ad has been practicing "Slow Ride" by Foghat. While I am really tired of hearing the song, I am glad to see her take an interest in trying something new, especially when the game is pretty hard for her. I also like that in practice mode you don't hear the lyrics. This isn't a problem on Slow Ride for example, but is an issue for some of the other songs in the game. The younger kids also like the game, but they are either pushing the strum bar or the fret keys while Becca and I do the other part for them.

My son Matthew had his first tee ball game this weekend as well. He was really excited to get dressed and go to the game, but something happened when we got there, and he ultimately decided not to play. I have a real problem with him quitting on his team, but I believe Becca and I were able to help him resolve the issue and he is now attending practices again. He knows that if he quits again that he has to pay us back for the league fees and all of the equipment we purchased.

I recently started using Search and Give as my web search engine. It is powered by the Microsoft Live search engine, but as you search, play games, etc. money is contributed to the charity of your choice, or you can also collect tickets to exchange for prizes. I really like this option because I use Live search as my default engine in any case, and I can use the proceeds to help out the parent group at Sarah's school. For those that wonder if I have something against Google, I do not. In my time here at Microsoft I have seen the Live team really trying to make the search engine better and I like how it is working now. Also, as I use it I can provide feedback to help it become even better.

I really enjoyed this last weekend. It feels like we got a lot of work done, but also had some good family time as well.

Saturday

On Saturday we got up, started cleaning the house and doing laundry. I also had to unplug the sink in the kid's bathroom and repair a leaking toilet. I wasn't able to get the toilet fixed all the way on Saturday, but was able to clear the sink and help my wife with the cleaning. On Saturday evening Matthew and I went to see the Seattle Thunderbirds hockey team at Key Arena.

The game was a lot of fun and the Thunderbirds beat the Kelowna Rockets 5-1. Matt really enjoyed the game even though he didn't seem to really be paying attention to the action on the ice.

Sunday

Sunday was an interesting day. I was able to get the toilet repaired, and I learned a lot. We also took the kids for a walk along the Centennial Trail. They did pretty well although got pretty tired at the end.

As you can see they look pretty happy to be out.

I think we are going to try and get the kids out walking with us more often. It was fun to spend time with them, play follow the leader, and see how they observe the world. Hopefully the kids will look back on these outings and remember how much fun they had.

For some reason it seems like it has been a long week. I have recently started going around fixing some things in my house that have been broken, either through normal use or by the kids. I held off for a while because I was afraid they would just re-break whatever I fixed. As a part of that I have had to re-hang the door to my daughter's room, replaced curtain rods, and will probably replace the garbage disposal this weekend. I really understand when people say that owning a house is a never ending project. Later this summer I am going to build some shelves in our garage, and repair the gate to my back yard. I think we will need to paint this year as well, and possibly put down new flooring in our kitchen and dining room.

Tomorrow I am going with my Venture Crew to hike up Mount Si in North Bend. That should be a good challenging hike. Afterward we are going to take the Venture Scouts to Triple X Root Beer in Issaquah. That should be a good day trip. We need to do a lot of hiking over the next few months as we will be doing a hiking centered High Adventure activity this summer.

Tonight I'm taking my wife out to dinner. Since I had some conflicting appointments around Valentine's Day and she was recovering from her back injury we weren't able to get out then. We are going to The Melting Pot for fondue. It is one of our favorite restaurants.

Sunday will be church of course, and a good stay to spend with my kids. The hike tomorrow will be too tough for them, plus I can't bring them on scout activities. I am hoping I get home early enough on Saturday to spend some time with my kids since I don't get to spend much time with them during the week.

I hope everyone reading this has a fun production weekend as well. See you next week!

As I said on Friday, I had tickets to take my son Matthew and two of his friends to Monster Jam at the Tacoma Dome on Saturday. My wife had purchased tickets to the Pit Party so we were able to go early, see the trucks up close, and meet the drivers. When my kids are older that will probably be a fun thing to do, but the lines for each driver were so long there was no way I was going to try and stand in them with 3 five year olds. For example the line to get a picture, autograph, etc. with the Grave Digger driver stretched all of the way across the floor of the arena. So we walked around, looked at the trucks, and purchased souvenirs.

Now you may ask yourself where bathrooms come into this story. I can best sum this up with Murphy's Law of Children at Sporting Events.

"No matter how many times you take them, children will always need to use the bathroom at the most exciting part of a sporting event." - Dale

I took all three boys to the bathroom just prior to the start of the show, hoping we would make it all the way through (naive I admit). Of course they were fine during the preliminary racking right up until the semi finals of the Monster Truck races. Right then 2 of the boys had to use the restroom. I took them of course as I didn't want any accidents. While we were out using the restroom we missed seeing Maximum Destruction beat Grave Digger in the final race. Of course that was OK because that meant we wouldn't have to fight the crowds during intermission...wrong! Right after intermission started the boys needed to use the restroom again so we spent the entire intermission time standing in line for the restroom. Oh well, at least this meant they would make it through the rest of the show...wrong!!! After 9 of the 10 trucks performed their freestyle routines, and we were waiting for Grave Digger to start, my son Matthew had to go to the bathroom. All in all, the boys went to the restroom 5 times in just over 2 hours.

For those of you that want to know if I had each boy try to go when I took them to the restroom the answer is yes, but it didn't make any difference. Also, they basically each had a medium drink during the show, but I didn't get them large drinks or multiple drinks or anything like that. As I write this today I still find it amusing at this point. In fact the people sitting next to us even said something about how they felt sorry for me having to get up so many times to take 3 children to the restroom. I don't feel sorry for myself by the way. There are some things in life you just have to laugh at. I still enjoyed the show, but more importantly my son had a great time as well, and asked if we can go next year. I told him yes, but this time it will just be a father son activity.

You know it is really interesting having 3 of my kids with birthdays within 8 days of each other and less than a month after Christmas. I am taking Matthew and a couple of his friends down to see Monster Jam at the Tacoma Dome tomorrow. I am sure it will be a lot of fun, but it isn't really my thing. Like many little boys though, Matt really likes big trucks and seeing things getting broken so I'm sure he and his friends will have a great time.

I know one thing Matt is really excited about is seeing the Grave Digger monster truck. He has a model of the truck since he was very young so I bet that will be his favorite tomorrow. In honor of his birthday here is a picture of his favorite truck.

Also, I couldn't end this post without a picture of the birthday boy himself.

Happy birthday Matthew! I hope you enjoy your special day, and get the thins you want.

I used to oftentimes hear people talk about how fast time goes by and not really understand them, but it became clear to me today what that meant. My youngest two children turned three today. It's funny because it seems like just yesterday that we were at the hospital with them. They spent the first two weeks of their lives in intensive care, but they are the picture of health and energy now.

In any case I hope Jake and Josh both have a wonderful birthday today. While I never wanted or expected to have twins I can't imagine our family without them. Well, OK, I can imagine our family without them and it would be a lot quieter, but much less interesting.

Here is a picture of them from Christmas talking on their toy cell phones.

Happy birthday boys!!!

Well I am certainly letting enough time go between posts. I hope everyone is having a good new year so far. For the holidays this year, we took the kids down to California to spend Christmas with my family. It was a lot of fun, although my kids were certainly little demons while we were there. We also went to Lego Land while we were there. That is a great little amusement park and the kids had a great time. I am going to try and write more often this year and get back to a better mix of personal and technical posts. I hope everyone has a happy successful new year.

I decided I couldn't mention my kids without putting some updated photos on my space.

Here is a picture of (left to right) Matthew, Jacob, and Joshua.

I also had to include this picture of Sarah, as she is a real trooper playing goalie during a heavy rain storm.

And finally, here is a picture of Matthew also playing goalie during soccer practice.

Earlier this year my manager Rick asked if I would be willing to go over to Operations for a few months to help out while members of the team were out on family leave. This was a win-win because I would get more familiar with the Operations tools, and they would get the help of an experienced System Administrator. My time in Operations is almost at an end and I have learned a lot, and kept very busy.

This last few months I have also attended Wood Badge which is advanced training for Boy Scout Leaders. I learned quite a bit about how a scout troop should run, and am starting to implement several of the principles with the young men I work with. At Wood Badge I created a ticket (goal list) of 5 things I can accomplish to help my Venture Crew progress and help me be a better leader. It was a great experience and I would suggest it to every scout leader.

On the personal front my wife and I are about to celebrate our 8th anniversary. I can honestly say that I love her even more today then the day we married. Rebecca is an amazing person and she does a tremendous amount to keep our family running. She can be hard on herself at times, but she really is a great wife, mother, and woman. She was diagnosed with Type-2 diabetes about two months ago. This has been a challenge to her and to the family, but I am confident we can work together and make the changes needed to help her keep the illness under control.

My kids continue to get older. My two oldest played soccer this year and they seem to have had a great time. My oldest also started 2nd grade and she seems to be doing well in school. Jacob and Joshua (youngest) both started pre-school this year. It is very exciting to see them growing up and acting more like little boys than toddlers. It also makes me feel old.

Right now my family is getting ready to travel to California for Christmas. I am not looking forward to the drive, but I think it will be nice to visit with the family. We are thinking about taking the kids to Legoland while we are there. Hopefully we will  make the trip in safety and the car will function as it should. I'd better get back to work, but I wanted to catch everyone up.

Earlier this year I promised Sarah I would take her to a Seattle Storm game this year. It was important for me to do that because I want Sarah to understand that anything boys can do, girls can as well (often better). Also, the Storm players are much better role models than most NFL, MLB, or NBA players, and it is much easier to get closer to the action at a Storm game and actually see the players then it is for most every other sport.

Yesterday morning an email came out from one of our admins indication that there were tickets available for last nights game. I quickly responded that I was interested and was able to get some tickets to the game. Becca's parents brought Sarah down here and we were able to go over to the game. It was even better than expected because the tickets were in the suite which means the seats are better, and they even provide free food. While Sarah didn't watch much of the game she was very excited to get a T-shirt, a necklace, and a pom-pom to cheer on the team. Here is a picture of Sarah ready to enjoy the action.

Honestly I wasn't expecting much from the game. I guess I have just heard so much about how the players aren't as athletic, and the flow of the game isn't as good as the NBA. I have to admit though that the game was great! There isn't the dunking you see in the NBA, but they play a real good tea game in the WNBA with lots of set plays. I also saw some nice drives and some nice shooting from the players. The Storm even won 94-76 over the Chicago Sky which made the night complete. In any case, I recommend going to WNBA games if you can. The tickets are much cheaper and the atmosphere is great!