Keeping your life in check is a big challenge most of the time for me. I am constantly having to stop and ask myself if this is really important, or if this is the direction I want my family to go. One of them is sports for us. We love sports, after all we have a house full of testosterone. Den loved playing sports in his youth, and all of our boys  thoroughly relish it too. We have always believed that sports, in moderation, bring about a greater good for our boys. For instance, it teaches them consistency, practice makes perfect, self discipline, obedience to others (outside of a parent), commradery between other children. Honestly, the benefits are huge, in our book.

The challenge lies in how much and for how long though. In the beginning, with our first two, it seemed that a sport or two a year was no big deal. Although, now having 5 sons, this has become a burden to us many times. I feel like I am booked all year trying to make sure that each child gets the same amount of play time. The other dilemma is that they are not all in the same age bracket, so we have different teams, different sports, and different practice and game times for each. It is so exhausting!

So as I started this post I will end it on the same note, Den and I are constantly reevaluating our lives and our time as a family. There are many things that we want to teach our boys, one of them is priortizing their time and their lives.  If something like a church trip comes up, and its at the same time as a tournament or a game, they need to decide which is more important. So far we are making a very good balance, but it is rather strenuous keeping things in order, and all of our spiritual balances in check.