It had been five years. Five years!!!  We took it for granted that our family would always celebrate Christmas, birthday celebrations, vacations, Sunday dinners all together. In a blink of an eye, four ankle biters grew up and left a loud and controlled chaos household in Tucson, Arizona and began i...

10 Connecting Lessons From COVID-19 to 2021!!! I tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, December 1st. It all started on Thanksgiving day. My Korean wife loves Christmas! She shops all year long for people. Hallmark movies are recorded and watched again and again. The house is transformed into nativ...

There is HOPE. As 2020 comes to a close (can I hear AMEN?), I want to encourage you that there is hope! In spite of the many challenges this year has brought to most of us, a light is peeking through the darkness. I can see it in my three grandsons. I experience it when...

As a kid, I loved Saturdays in Seattle. Those rainy, cold afternoons, I turned on our black and white television to watch the opening of The Wide World of Sports on ABC (here it is for you Millennials and GenZ-ers who have no clue what I am talking about: WILD WORLD OF SPORTS. The opening...

I’m not a big fan of doctors’ offices. My earliest memories were acting as a sacrificial guinea pig for new drugs. Asthma and eczema plagued me greatly during my childhood. Oftentimes the clinics would pay for participating in these clinical tests, which was nice having money to go to the local drug...

Right after I completed my Masters in Teaching degree from Seattle University in 1991, my wife threw a surprise graduation party for me. Even though I am not a big surprise party type of guy, it was a joy to celebrate with family and friends. One of the gifts I received that day was a...

I’ve got a problem. Okay, I’ve got lots of issues as many of my friends and family know all too well. My singing hurts the ears of those too close to me in proximity. I don’t run anymore unless someone is chasing me. If I mistakenly eat a peanut, egg, carrot, any kind of fish,...

During my years as a leader in education, I have interviewed hundreds of applicants. There is one question that I ask prospective teachers that [they] most stumble over and now, I think, I know why. The question I ask usually occurs in the middle of the interview and it goes something like this: “Wh...

We recently escaped the brutal Arizona desert heat with a road trip to San Diego. Paradise, right? Fog in the morning, beach temperatures hovering around 70 degrees, beautiful scenery and stunning colors, and an enormous number of vehicles displaying Arizona plates vying for parking spots! I expecte...

Business travel- it used to be such a glamorous thought. New places. Restaurants. Hotel rooms. Jumping on the bed when no one is looking. Impressing people by telling them all the places you have traveled or are traveling. But now that I am older and somewhat seasoned in travel, it has lost much of ...

It was a normal night in the Towne home. I came home from work tired, hungry, and needing a safe haven to sit and be quiet. Four rugrats had learned to give Dad a break those first minutes upon entering their world of play, adventure, questions, and innocent zeal of life. As I sat down,...