A Father's Heart

I'm an introvert. I get restored by being alone. Weird to many, but it's just the way it is. Because of that, I spend a lot of time alone, and some of that time I just spend just thinking about things.

Today I was thinking about my girls. How much I love them. How precious they are to me. How much I hurt when they hurt. I've never really had a way with words. I'm more of a hugger than a talker. Sometimes I just don't know what to say, but I hope my girls know how much I love them anyway. When they call me hurting, I just want to hold them tight in my arms and let them know it's going to be ok... Like when they were little kids. It's a bit harder now that they are "all growed up."

Because of some stuff going on over the last week, it really made me think about this tonight. Everything is ok, but it just made me think about it. And is want to happen, when I think about my dad relationship with my girls, it makes me think of my Dad's ( God's ) relationship with me and other humans. As I sit here thinking about how I wish I could make it all better when something goes wrong, or how I hope they know how much I love them, or how I just had the right words to say... I hear the Holy Spirit expressing similar feelings to me.

We sometimes step out if what God has for us, and it sometimes makes it hard for Him to bless us in the best way possible. We sometimes don't talk to Him and that makes it hard for Him to say the right things to us... Not because He doesn't know what to say, but because we don't listen. He also worries about whether or not we know how much He loves us, because most if the world doesn't, and because there are so many incorrect views in the world of who He is.

As I think on how short life is, how my girls childhood went by so fast, and how I grieve, in a way, for missed chances, I think about how God misses all the days He could have had with us, but we did not know Him. Or all the things He could have helped with, but we did not ask. But, just as I also am happy with all the things I can participate in now with my girls, and how grateful I am that Jaime is close, and Tif is just a text or FaceTime away; I also know that my Father in Heaven takes joy in the fact that I soak to Him now, and that I have a good relationship with Him.

So anyway... Yeah, introverts. We say things on the internet we'd never say face to face... Because hey, it's only a few million people here ;)

Love your kids, they grow up way too fast. And love your Dad. His heart aches for you!

Stuffed Italian Vegetables

Jaime watched Dinner Impossible with Michael Symon and thought the Stuffed Baby Eggplant looked really good, so sent emailed me the link with "Dad - I think you'd really like this. You should make this for dinner on Thursday while we watch the season premier of Grey's. :)"

I read it and agreed! Then decided to do something "based" on that. :)

So the initial thought was eggplant, but then decided to extend it to multiple veggies - the taste would be good and it would be colorful: purple eggplant, green zucchini, yellow squash and red bell pepper. I figured I would just use mild Italian sausage, but then thinking about the Turkey Sausage Meatball recipe, I decided to mix in ricotta and parmesan. Then bake it in sauce, with mozzarella on top. The original recipe called for making a sauce for 8 hours. I had some left over spaghetti sauce I had made a few days before - and it was enough of a base to just add in some diced tomatoes and let that slow cook for the day until I got home to put it all together. Cooking the sauce "all day" when it has diced veggies in it; lets them all pretty much "melt" into the sauce and gives it a nice deep rich flavor.

So like all my recipes, here is the basic idea - experiment and adjust based on your tastes!

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Sauce:
1 jar spaghetti sauce to start as a base,
or you can use some good tomato sauce. Probably about 3 cups
or a couple cups of sauce and some diced tomatoes
1/2 onion minced
1/2 green pepper minced
2 Tbl olive oil - gotta add that flavor
3 to 5 cloves garlic minced - depends on how much you want to "kick it up" :)

Add in some Italian seasoning - a few tbl of basil and maybe one of oregano

Let it cook all day on low in a crock pot

Veggies:
Cut 1 eggplant, 1 zucchini and 1 yellow squash in half length-wise. Scoop out the seeds with a spoon, being careful not to go too deep and puncture the outside of the veggie. Sprinkle kosher salt on the exposed flesh and let sit for about an hour (I did this for about 15 minutes because we were hungry). The idea is that the salt will pull the moisture out and so you won't end up with so much liquid when you cook it. You can put these upside down on a rack over your sink so that they "drain" as the moisture is pulled. Pat them dry when done.

Cut one bell pepper in 1/2 length-wise and remove the seeds.

Filling:
1 lb mild (or hot if you prefer) Italian sausage
1/2 cup of ricotta
1/4 cup parmasen
mix together

Cover the bottom of a 9x13x2 baking dish with sauce; stuff each veggie with the filling, and place in the dish. Given there were 8 halves, it was a pretty tight fit. So you made need another dish, depending on how many veggies you use and how big they are. Cover the veggies with shredded mozzarella and bake at 350 for an hour; or until the cheese is all melted and the filling looks done.

Plate and drizzle some of the sauce over the top!

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I initially cooked it for 45 minutes - but it didn't look quite done enough. And at one hour the sauce had gotten quite a bit more thin - because more liquid cooked out of the veggies. So an hour seemed about right.

It was really good - but there is always room for improvement. :) - Next time I'll probably add a 1/2 cup of bread crumbs in to the filling as well; as I think it would have made a little bit better consistency.

Or another thing we might try, rather than the Italian mild sausage; is to use the Turkey Sausage Meatball recipe rather than the filling I posted above. It has a great taste and is probably more healthy.

Pics of this can be seen this Facebook Photo Album of mine. The first 3 pictures are for this dish.

UCCS Dean's List

Looking at the Spring 2008 Dean's List (3.75-3.99 GPA) under 'W' you'll see:

WAECHTER, LAURA ANNE
WAGNER, JAIME MARIE

Yes... that is the Jaime Marie Wagner! My kid... on the Dean's list.

You rock smart kid!

Its been a while since I read Paul Graham. I read his essay on How To Do Philosophy and passed it along to Jaimer, because she is loving logic in school right now. I then looked to see what else he had written that I had missed... Gee, guess its been a while, there is quite a bit. But I read Holding a Program in Ones Head because it looked similar to Great Hackers. As always, he gets it:

The weakest point in big companies is that they don't let individual programmers do great work.

and

Good programmers manage to get a lot done anyway. But often it requires practically an act of rebellion against the organizations that employ them.

How true... I'm feeling that a lot lately.

The Coz

Jaime and I hate a Daddy/Daughter day today. We went to Jack Quinn's for lunch. It was really good. Had Guinness and Corn Beef & Cabbage. Yum. Then we went to the Pikes Peak Center and saw Bill Cosby. He was awesome. And we had 4th row seats so that was very cool too. It was like sitting around with a grandpa and listening to really funny stories.

It was fun to get downtown early, walk somewhere for lunch and then catch a great show. We are going to a number of other shows as we got tickets to Broadway in Colorado Springs. We'll see how much I like Musicals... but I have great hopes. I think it will be a fun time with Jaimer.

First day of school

Jaimer's first day of school is tomorrow. She's starting at UCCS. Tomorrow its philosophy and psychology. Yeah - what a liberal arts major. :) Not what I did, but I did take philosophy and thought it was great. I think she'll have a good time with them. I'm so excited for her. Thinking about this brings up a story I wanted to blog but haven't gotten around to.

So we went to UCCS for orientation. Parent's can come and I was deciding if I should go or not. Jaime said it was ok if I went, so I had pretty much planned it - but wasn't sure if I would spend the whole day or what, since I had a lot going on at work. But the night before:

J: So you're going tomorrow right?
M: Yeah
J: Are we taking one car?
M: Well I thought we'd take two, then I could do the parent thing and then maybe go to work for a while.
J: But you're going to stay and help me register right? And its only a few hours between the two.

At this point she kind of had that excited but scared first day at school when you drop them off for kindergarten look on her face. Yeah... a young woman in many ways and still a kid in others.

M: We can take just the one car.

So we get there and she is nervous (introvert like me in these situations) and feeling somewhat weird that she brought her dad, but then we see most everyone has parents with them. So its all cool.

So we spend the day listening to talks, getting tours, eating lunch, etc. I'm actually really glad I went and feeling a bit excited. Its been a while since I went to school (on a campus) and I'm getting more and more excited for her. This is going to be awesome. So its all good and very cool.

We then go to register. This is basically an advisor for your program talking to all of you that will be in the program, and then a few of them helping you figure out what classes to take. Turns out Jaime's program is very structured and loaded. Since she is going to be a teacher, she basically is getting most of her classes in 3 years, so she has no electives. She can take other stuff if she wants, but it won't count towards her degree. So she pretty much has to take what is listed. There are choices, but if its not on the list - she shouldn't do it.

Anyway - we are stumbling a bit through stuff and then the head of the program comes over, after working with several students, to help us out. We are a bit worried at this point, because it looks like most the classes she needs are full. So we tell him that, and he says no - its just some sections that are full and he should be able to get her into what she needs. So he sits down and asks for her paperwork.

A: Looks at Jaime, ask for her papers, looks down at her ACT scores, then looks at her again. Wow. These are very impressive.
J: Just kind of grins.
A: Where did you go to high school?
J: I was home schooled.
A: Looks at her, looks back at her scores, looks up at her again. Well I guess that worked out well for you!

He then talks to her about a few classes, then:

A: Do you know your GPA... Oh, I guess not because you were home schooled.
J: Explains that she went through an off-campus school and that they kept her transcripts, scores, etc. 3.954
A: Looks at her again... OK... so you could have told me *that* sooner. Home schooled huh...

He then puts her in some tougher classes. He then asks her about work, what she's been doing, etc.

J: I've been out of school for 2 years, so I studied quite a bit for the ACTs.
A: Looks down at her scores again then up to her. Apparently.

:)

Anyway - it was very cool. He was very impresses with her scores, her grades, what she had been doing, and remarked how well home schooling had worked for her. Given he is the head of the program... cool stuff. I was the proud parent.

What a smartie. :)

Watching your kids grow up

Watching your kids grow up is a bit sad, but exciting as well.

Jaime was home last night when I got home. We'd been away at the rally since last Sunday, and when we got home on Friday she was heading out of town to go to church camp. She is one of the youth leaders. When I got home last night she was there.

It was really good to see her and she talked about all kinds of camp things. The worship, the kids, the food, etc. Brings back lots of memories.

All the kids calling her "Miss Jaime". Kind of weirds her out - she is trying on this whole new "adult" thing. And people that she grew up with as leaders/adults (like Miss Janie) who know include her as one of the adults and talk to her that way. And a teen girl guessing her age... "30 maybe?" WHAT! "Ok... so I'm terrible with guessing ages." Jaime kept ribbing her all weekend. And the kids leaving her cards, "You are such a great leader", "We had so much fun in your cabin, you are awesome", etc.

Its with pride I watch my little girl grow up... its also with a bit of sadness. She's going to be gone before I know it - but I'm going to enjoy all the time left while she is here.

And then there is PeaBaby to spoil too. Life rolls on.

Math - its a cool thing

One more thought...

Helped Jaimer with her ACT math practice tests. Yeah - its been a long time. I don't remember how to do things like quadratic equations and other things - but I'm still good at graphing (which she was having a problem with). For the most part, I might not be able to quickly figure out the right answer... but given a problem and a multiple choice set of answers - I can usually figure out which one makes sense. So we spent time going through all the problems she missed, and when all was said and done, I showed her how to get the right answer on many of them.

I thought it was fun and why I like math so much. One answer makes sense and it is "easy" to see. "The graph kind of pops out in front of your face and you can see what a line represents", etc. She wasn't so thrilled with the concept as I was - but she got it much better than before, so that's good.

What a cutie

Got home Mon night and was sitting on the couch watching TV and getting warm. Heard the garage door open and then Jaimer walked in.

"Hey... who is in *my* house! No one lives here except ME!"

What a cutie.

She didn't have to be to work till 11:30 yesterday, so we spent a good hour or more just catching up and talking about what is going on in her life. Her day with Miss Christie was awesome. She told us all about it, "Miss Wagner... Miss Wagner - can you come eat lunch with me?" "Miss Wagner - you are my bestest bestest friend."

She spent the day in kindergarden - and now she wants to go to college to be a teacher! Not a big surprise. She has always loved little kids and wanted to do *something* with them. And Miss Christie's class was so fun. We talked about college quite a bit. The good and the bad. How you'll love it - and hate it at times. I loved school and have always missed it. So much I went back for my masters and thought about getting a doctorate - and maybe I will some day - but not right now. I just treasure my time with my family too much and school takes quite a bit of work!

But I'm so excited Jaimer is seriously looking into it. It will be a great time for her. And while teaching isn't about the money - it is something she is passionate about, has been "called" to do since day one probably - and will love doing. So its all very good.

It was great to be home and spend some great quality time with my kid - talking about what's going on in her life and what she sees for the future.

stats

Jaime looking at my blog and talking to Tina

Lets look at the Label counts:

• Hog: 29
  
• Politics: 22
  
• PeaBaby: 15
  
• Vacation: 9
  
• Geek: 8
  
• News: 5
  
• RedLightConversations: 3

and...

• Jaimer: *ONE*

I guess we see where *I* rate.

OK... now there are *TWO* - she's moving up the list. ;)

That's my kid

Sitting in the dinning room working on my laptop. Jaime is in the other room watching American Idol on Tivo from last night.

Ryan: Coming up next singing Areosmith and

Jaime: Oh Lord... ... A girl, singing Areosmith.

This is pretty much exactly what I said last night when I was watching it. :)