Weekend Plans + Football Friday

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

This weekend is all about staying home and working on some house projects, potty training and some family game time. Initially I was looking forward to getting the kids out of the house this weekend, but then I realized that a big decision we kind of made this week meant we are best served staying home. But that's okay, I am motivated to get some work done in the basement, in the never ending war of parents versus clutter and kids. I will probably take some time to watch some of the games this weekend, but my appetite for football has taken a hit recently, and now if there is anything else going on I should be content skipping watching.

Earlier this week we just kind of decided that the time had come for Emily to go full bore on potty training. Which meant that she doesn't wear anything but panties and pants at Day Care and ideally at home until bedtime. But that means this weekend is kind of crucial for her so it is best we stay home where we can keep her on the set schedule of times to go to the potty, and have a good supply of clothes to change into when accidents occur. Of course that also encourages us to keep focusing on Spotty's housebreaking. The side product of this is it feels like my life and vocabulary are all about poop and pee.

The basement project stems from my application of the broken windows theory of law enforcement. I think that if you have a cluttered house then kids are far less likely to try and do their part to clean things up. So it is up to us to do our part to reclaim control of our book and movie shelf area and desk so the kids don't see that clutter and become encouraged to destroy. I'll probably do some documenting on Flickr just for my own record keeping (and because I like to record processes like that).

Football

So the pro regular season and college bowl seasons are over, leaving the pro playoffs. And while I enjoy watching football, I am having a hard time getting really excited for any of the games. So any watching this weekend will probably be incidental rather than planned.

Now that the college bowl season is over I have come to a conclusion that what is needed is not a playoff. What is really needed is a salary cap on program spending and coach's salaries. I think as long as the Alabama's and Texas' are allowed to spend 3-5 million dollars on a coach, while supposedly equal programs don't have anywhere close to the samebudgets there is no parity. We already see a scenario where the last 8 National Championships have come from 6 schools in the Top 4 conferences, all of which have huge coffers. When seemingly only the top 10% of schools have a chance at a championship it takes away the interest in the game. There truly is no parity or true competition at the top levels of the BCS anymore, and I for one am getting tired of it.

Fitness

So we had our first full week of using the Wii for working out. I feel better about doing that than doing nothing. And hopefully with the routine settling down my eating habits can get back to what they were, and major progress will happen on the fitness routine. Of course that does mean that some times we have to fight the kids for control of the Wii, because the boys really enjoy playing games on it. But that is just a matter of setting expectations more than anything.