In the course of a week, we had driven over the driveway snow more than 30 times with two cars, impacting it down. The ice hardened with a strong crust. When I drove my car into the driveway, the ice scraped the bottom of my car.

Last night I decided to finally shovel the glacier off. After 20 minutes of hard shoveling and chipping and digging, I came in exhausted and lay down on the couch. I had only finished about a third of the driveway — the easy part near the garage door.

After resting about a half hour, I returned and chipped away some more. I swung and chopped and pried and lifted and chipped in almost every direction with all my strength. I piled up the big chunks of ice on the side of the driveway.

Chipping away at a glacier covering my driveway

After this second round, I came inside and lay down on my couch again, just as exhausted, this time as thirsty as a buffalo. I gulped down two glasses of ice water and flipped on the TV. I was about to give up on the driveway, as comfortable as the couch was, but after resting 20 minutes I felt the urge to get up and start chipping away yet again at the glacier.

Little by little, I pried up big chunks of ice. I could hardly believe I was actually making progress, but the ice was loosening and revealing the gray cement below. I hit my second wind and gathered more energy with each loosened piece of ice. Digging in the shovel, I pried up large sheets of ice and flung them to the side. One big chunk, and then another, and another. Before I knew it, I finished.

Done (good enough anyway)

So much of my life is like this. Had I shoveled at the first sign of snow, I could have easily removed the snow in twenty minutes rather than nearly two hours. But more than a lesson in procrastination, seemingly impossible tasks and projects can be tackled piece by piece, if you just keep chipping away at them. When you get tired, rest a bit until you’re ready to return to it. Then keep chipping, and to your surprise, big chunks will start to loosen and separate. You carry them away and use your new-found leverage to chip away at more and more.

Drink water, rest beside your shovel, carry the larger snow chunks to your kid building a fort in the snow. But keep shoveling and shoveling. Before you know it, you’ll be done.

I know this isn’t a brilliant insight or even that interesting, but it’s a little microcosm of my life, especially with IT projects, which can seem so complicated and multifaceted at the start, but little by little they unravel and start to make sense.

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1. If you’re tired at work, rotate tasks on the half hour to stay productive.
2. If you want to save money on toys, take your kids to a thrift store and let each child choose his or her own toy.
3. If your bath tub drains slowly, remove the plug and use a bent coat hook to pull out the endless hair that’s stopping it up.
4. If your kid is having trouble riding a bike, remove the pedals, lower the seat, and let the kid scuttle along until he or she is ready for the pedals again.
5. If your kids act like hooligans in stores, get a small umbrella stroller and let one of the kids push another kid (it keeps them occupied a bit more).
6. If you need better sleep at night, turn off all sources of light (light prolongs the body’s circadian rhythm) and sleep in total darkness.
7. If your kids resist having their teeth brushed, brush in the rhythm of a song (e.g., “monkeys up, monkeys down, monkeys left …”).
8. If you dread folding immense piles of laundry, pop in headphones and listen to a podcast while folding.
9. If you lose your cell phone, call it with Skype.
10. If you have writer’s block, immerse yourself in information from books, listservs, RSS feeds, and presentations.

And one bonus tip: If something is hard to do, do it every day.

Blog Sponsors

• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

I think a blog can be a tremendous tool for teaching kids to write. Sally enjoys writing and getting comments, as well as participating in the same activities as Mom and Dad. We are strangely becoming a blogging family. We’ve always been writers, and now Sally is showing to be a real bookworm, just like Jane. Man, if I had been introduced to blogging at the age of seven, how would that have changed my life?

Jane uses pseudonyms for our family, so I’ve decided to do the same.  At first I really hated being called Dick. Now I think it’s funny. It provides some distance between reality and the written word, and it reminds me that what we write is a construct of how we perceive reality, rather than how reality actually may be.

To be consistent, and as a companion to Jane’s blog, whataboutmomblog.com, I’ve adopted the same pseudonyms.

Going to the hospital with one of my kids is always an unsettling experience. To hold her little hand while she cried and cried as the surgeon stitched her up — it tugged on my heart. I don’t get too many experiences with my children in the hospital. I believe it’s one of those times where I really, really appreciate my kids. I realize how fragile life is, and how precious my little family is.

Now that we’re back home and things have somewhat returned to normal, I’m back to putting her in time out and telling her to return to her room (at bedtime). But that moment while we were in the hospital — just me and her, each of us pretending to be the doctor while waiting for the real doctor, raising and lowering the hospital bed like it was a circus ride — it was loads of fun. Susan has such a funny, playful attitude. Kids love to pretend. She kept wanting to be the doctor, holding a little notepad and asking me questions about what happened. I made up bogus stories about a cat attacking me.

Now Spot is sick with the flu, and Sally bonked her tooth at school. I hope we don’t all come down with the flu or end up crippled by tripping on toys. But if we do, it might be one of those experiences that brings us together.

One of my favorite talks he gave was entitled “Slow to Anger.” Quite amazingly, he doesn’t recollect ever quarreling with his wife, who he’d been with for 67 years. In this talk on anger, he quotes a story that made me laugh:

Once a man who had been slandered by a newspaper came to Edward Everett asking what to do about it. Said Everett, “Do nothing! Half the people who bought the paper never saw the article. Half of those who saw it, did not read it. Half of those who read it, did not understand it. Half of those who understood it, did not believe it. Half of those who believed it are of no account anyway” (“Sunny Side of the Street,” Nov. 1989; see also Zig Ziglar, Staying Up, Up, Up in a Down, Down World [2000], 174).

For more info on his passing, see the LDS Newsroom, this article in the New York Times, or other tributes.

This beautiful grasshopper was hanging out on our patio wall all last night. I was able to get about a foot away and take this picture. The grasshoppers in Florida are gigantic.

Then we had some fun with photoshop. Notice how Lucy tries to save Avery.

I’ve watched other parents put their children to bed in 5 minutes, not reading them anything. Now that we’ve been reading to Avery at bedtime for nearly six years, it’s unthinkable not to read to her. This small and simple goal has given Avery a love of reading.  Little activities, magnified over time, can have great effects. I think these small, frequent goals are the best kind.

Here’s a closer view of what it says:

Apparently, on January, 10, 1914, John Koyle says he received a visit from two messengers (in a dream?) telling him gold was located in this mountain, and that he should mine it to deliver Utah from poverty. This is the origin of the “Dream Mine,” so named in reference to the visit.

Although the main mining shafts are sealed off with bars, a couple of off-shoots are still accessible. This one has a large Danger sign in front of it.

I’m not one to enter abandoned mine shafts with keep out signs, but they didn’t go down that far, and someone we knew had already explored them thoroughly (since childhood). At the bottom of the mining shaft, a steeper shaft opened off to the side that dropped down about 200 feet. We threw rocks down the steeper shaft and didn’t hear anything for a while. The rocks sailed quietly for a few seconds, bounced off the sides of walls, clinked on metal a few times, and continued their long descent to an unknown bottom. Koyle never found any gold, but you can still buy stock in the Dream Mine.

After the jaunt down the mining caves, we continued up the mountain on four-wheelers, passing a beautiful grove of white-trunked aspen trees. Passing these trees was one of my favorite parts of the ride. Instead of the rocky, steep trail directly in the sun, the ground was soft and shaded.

We finally arrived at the top! You can see for miles and miles up here — no photo does it justice. It’s quiet and peaceful, and there’s no noise except a soft wind rustling the trees.

Beside the radio towers is a helicopter launching pad made of a metal grate. When you walk out on it, you feel like you’re practically walking into thin air.  Shannon’s dad pulled out lunch from his backpack: wheat thins, mozarella cheese sticks, a large chocolate bar, and water.

After taking in the panoramic vistas, and figuring out which little town was which (Spanish Fork, Elkridge, Springville, Provo, Woodland Hills, etc.), we ventured back down.

I had to stop for a self-photo. Glasses don’t quite fit inside goggles, but you can see that despite our foray into dangerous areas, I was wearing a helmet.

Day 1: Absorb the shock and start planning. Let’s be real folks. The first day you find out about this, you’ll spend it second-guessing doctors, reacting defensively, and considering alternatives to prescribed ends (assuming its medical). Near the end of the day, you’ll begin planning how you’ll spend your remaining time.

Day 2: Spend the day with your children. Pick their absolute funnest place on earth and take them there. Devote the entire day to them, from sun up to sun down. Listen, run, walk, roll around playfully with them. Be their best friend complete and true without thinking a bit about yourself.

Day 3: Spend the day alone with your wife. Talk a long walk somewhere scenic with her, along the beach or along a country road. Walk and talk and kiss and be romantic. Share your thoughts and feelings openly and honestly.

Day 4: Climb a mountain. You know it always gets serious and spiritual when you start climbing high up a mountain. Go alone so you can think and reflect. Climb and climb — at least several thousand feet, or a few miles. Find a scenic rock and sit down and think. Look at the beautiful vista surrounding you. Soak in the beauty of mother nature. Listen to the silence and the quiet sounds — of birds, of rustling branches in the trees, of wind.

Day 5: Write your last essay. Sit down and type out your thoughts. Try to make them as clear as possible. Write down a few things you’ve learned throughout your life. What do you want your posterity to know — about you, about your life?

Day 6: Clean something out so others won’t have to. It’s a considerate, selfless act in your last days — to be thinking of others. Will your family want to throw away your relics? Do them a favor: get rid of everything you can (except a few mementos) so that you’ll only be a memory.

Day 7: Take pictures. Take pictures of yourself with your family. Maybe go some place special and take at least 100 to 150 digital pictures, pictures alone with each child, together, of you kissing your wife, doing handstands, giving camel rides.

Day 8: Read your favorite book of scripture and pray. It’s time to prepare. Start getting things in order. Get in tune and just reflect on the spiritual side of things.

Day 9: You don’t have time to travel, but haven’t you always wanted to do something crazy? I’ve always wanted to rent a hang-glider and jump off a cliff and glide through an open valley. If you can do it, now is the time.

Day 10: Spend the day with your entire family and friends. Make short phone calls to remote family members. Spend the day in hugs and tears. Get a haircut, take a bath. Dress your finest. Near the end of the day, lay down. Cross your arms over your chest. Close your eyes and think peaceful thoughts.

I wish I were always this happy, even when giants held me up.