Get Outdoors and Enjoy Nature

Exercise and healthy eating lead to a longer and more satisfying life. Making exercise a part of our daily family time helps us all to enjoy long, healthy lives.

Exercise has a positive effect on emotional well-being. Children who are depressed or having emotional problems benefit from increased levels of physical activity.

There are many opportunities for good moral development through sports and physical activity. Upw ard Basketball and Soccer - both under adult guidance and structured to support positive growth.

Sports can be a great avenue for developing more mature moral reasoning skills that are characterized by more assertion and less aggression, and more compliance with rules and fair play. We learn excellent lessons - about sports and life - when we participate in any sport! Encourage your children to Get out and Play!


Most children are healthiest and happiest when they have a sense of optimism and self control. Sports and physical activity enhance positive feelings about oneself - at any age!

Just a few of the many benefits of exercise:


* Teaches Children Good Health is Fun!
* Exercise builds self esteem.
* Exercise helps avoid mild to moderate depression.
* Builds self confidence.
* Exercise reduces various types of stress.
* Exercise can have a beneficial emotional effect - a natural high!


Encourage your children to eat healthy and drink six or eight glasses of water each day. Teach them to drink less soda and more water. You'll save money at the dentist's office and drinking more water is good for your whole body!

Blessings

today's thought comes from 1 Peter 3 -

Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous:

Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.

For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile:

Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.
1 Peter 3: 8-12

Love and Girls

Dear Son,

One of these days you will meet a girl who makes you feel good inside. Like you want to become her best friend and you want to enjoy her company all that you possibly can.  Hopefully you will treat her like the special Angel God has sent your way. Try to be the guy who treats her like this -

Keep Your Wits About You

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:




If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:








If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’




If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!


Source: A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1943)

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

 Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. 

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

 Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

 Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. 

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. 

  Be cheerful.

 Strive to be happy.

Doing The Right Thing

He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness, and honour.
Proverbs 21:21

Ye that love the Lord, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.
Psalms 97:10

Life's Tough Lessons

   Have you seen that Movie with Denzel Washington as a football coach at a newly integrated high-school in Virginia back in the 60s? He tells his peer - when we are soft on our kids - we aren't really making their lives better - "We are crippling them".  When our children get out in the real world on their own - no one is going to give a darn about "their feelings or needs".  It's up to us parents to teach and instill the lessons they need to deal with life's challenges.

 Zig Ziglar had a famous line about being hard on yourself often leads to a better life down the road. (Please excuse my simple attempt to paraphrase Zig.) Well, old Zig was right, wasn't he? If we discipline and teach our children well - maybe their lives will be a little easier. Maybe they will be better prepared to handle life's inevitable hardships.