MY WIFE IS HELPING ME THROUGH IT...

So we are about to venture out and do the unthinkable that we do not very regularly because we don't like doing it and that is going grocery shopping. Yeah, it sounds pretty terrible and scary, I know. Buh buh buh! So we're about to head out here in a few minutes, get our kids together and Danielle's doing, I don't know what she's doing, but I'm going to start throwing these kids in the car here and get out of here, head to Walmart. Guys, can somebody please tell Danielle to let me go get my hair cut? Whenever I was single, I used to get my hair cut at least once a month, probably once a month. Maybe once every three weeks if I was keeping it shorter, but I'm over here looking like a bum and I'm not happy about it and I don't have time to go do it or she doesn't have time to really do it and so I need to take some time and go get my hair stinking cut. Look at this. Why don't you see how long this is? That's how long my hair is getting right now, to my nose, past my nose. Anyway, so obviously I'm looking like a bum and I'm not happy about it and it's my birthday tomorrow. I'm going to look like this for my birthday. Everybody's going to be asking, why do you look like a bum, it's your birthday and I'm going to be like, I haven't got a haircut. Danielle won't let me. And then when I say everybody, I'm talking about the kids naturally. What? I'm not talking naturally, I'm just trying to convince you to let me get my hair cut. I look like a bum. Happy bum day to you. See she wants to cut my hair. When are you going to have time to cut my hair? When do you get home? Did you put her in her car seat? I'm just trying to add to the rest of this stuff. Show everybody what you're doing. I'm trying to do this online grocery shopping at Walmart thing, but I don't think I'd love it because my grocery cart is ridiculously full of things that I'm not sure if I need. Oh no, I thought that might help you. I would if I sat down and made a list. Grocery shopping is my least favorite thing to do and making cooking food, cooking dinner. I don't feel like I'm good at it and so it's hard to do it. And so I'm trying now, but I feel like I'm missing stuff. I don't really like the way it's laid out because unless you search exactly for what it's called, it doesn't really pull it up and then if you go by category, it misses stuff. It's just kind of weird. So I'm not really a fan of their app. How do I have kids? Yeah, but like, how do I have kids? I'm just me. I'm just John. I'm just a kid myself. How can I have kids? You're not a kid. Do you ever do that as a parent? Like it just kind of hits you randomly that like you have kids and you're just like, how do I have kids? I feel like I'm just a young kid myself taking care of people. Let's not do that. Anyways. I have to provide for them. I have to help them live. I said that Adelyn was my littlest daughter and it just kind of smacked me in the face like, yeah, you have daughters. Not just even one. You have four. Is that good? Anyways, there's another one of them, but they're all sweet and I love them. Okay, let's get your shoes. You want your shoes? Oh, it's part of growing up people. You have kids and then you got to grow up. So we're here at the mighty Walmart, king of all retailers. So here we go. It's already starting out pretty good. Jude's a little grumpy about getting in the stroller here and Elena was just sleeping so hopefully she'll fall back asleep, but probably not. Let's be honest. She'll just be grumpy. Tyler, hold on to the owl. See this owl? It's the best invention. Show everybody your owl. Hold it up. Yeah. It holds on to the stroller and then Tyler holds on to it and we make sure she doesn't get hit. Did you shut the door on the other side? Yeah. Oh, we got all the shoes. We don't need all the shoes on Adelyn. Some extra shoes just for fun. So whenever you have so many kids, you don't get out that much, it's hard for Daniella to get out. You go and you get your birthday card with your family. They pick it out right in front of you, but don't worry, I've been closing my eyes. You are beautiful in every way, baby. Yes. Here, where's the one you were going to get me? Yeah. The hole. She was going to get me this one. No, this one. Okay, one second. Let me show them this. That's too funny. And perfect. Perfect. What's this? I wish I weren't an old man. Poof. Son of a... That's funny. Probably not appropriate for you though. No, gigantic. We're arguing over how big these tires are and they're huge compared to these and then Bam, that's like a car tire. What is it? Mold. It's ginormous. It's scrapey. Ooh, beef jerky. Hey, do you want to play baseball? Yeah. Tyler, what sport do you want to play? Do you want to play baseball, soccer, or basketball? She said basketball the other day. I was proud of her. So proud of her. What do you want to play? Baseball? All right, we'll have to get you set up, signed up. You want one of everything. Where'd our group go? We've strayed away. We're lost in Walmart. This is about where a thousand of our dollars go, and these food pouches, they're so easy because all you do is open up the top and then you made it. It's done. Look, I do make some at home. I just haven't been to the store to get any produce. And here we are. I can buy produce, but Walmart's produce is always kind of hard. Yeah, it's... These, also, I can throw in my purse and we can throw them wherever, and so that's very valuable. When you have this many kids, I don't always think about, oh, let me get the pureed bubble gum roll. Yeah, and they'd be rolling back their prices. Look at that. Roll back, roll back, roll back. But sometimes I see the rollback stuff and it's like it was this price and it's now this price, but then the sticker's underneath it of what the original price is, and it's actually the same price as the now price, and it's not what they said it was. So that's just trickery. Walmart, get it together. Guys, cheer Mommy on. Say, you can do it, Mommy. Tell her she can do it. We believe in you. Say, we believe in you, Mom. Oh. Just 20 more dollars. You can get that 50 cent stuffed animal. Oh, buddy, I'm sorry. We tried so hard. I'm not doing five more dollars. We did all the money we had. I don't have any more. I'm sorry, buddy. I'm sorry. Come on, we tried. Let's go. See, if these things were, if these people were smart, they'd put a credit card machine on these games because Danielle would be playing them all day. All day. Guys, I'm a little, I'm sitting here, well, when you see this, it'll be my birthday, but right now it's the eve of my 30th birthday, and you know, it kind of hit me whenever we that, you know, I just don't even know where the last 10 years of my life have gone. I'm grateful for the last, you know, years of my life, 10 years, 29 years, whatever. I'm grateful. I've learned a lot. I've come a long way. I'm happy to be in the place and position that we are as a family, you know, moving on to different things in our life with a career and just stuff like that. I'm excited, but it's still kind of like those last 10 years went by really fast, and I don't know, it's just kind of hard to be hitting that 30 mark tomorrow, and you know, it's just a little, I don't know, I feel a little sad. I think too that when you have kids, part of it is knowing, like, at least for me, how fast they're going to grow up, and like, if you can already be 30 and that, your life went by that fast, how fast is their life going to go by, and like, how old are your grandparents, and then they're going to be dead. Okay, I took it too far. This is morbid. I'm just saying, though, you do have to know that sometimes I feel like it's easy to look at your age and see other people and see how much they've accomplished, and they're always going to be people who have accomplished more than you. Did you just say poople? Poople. People. People who have accomplished more than you, and so I think that it's hard in the society we live in. We compare ourselves a lot to others. I also think that there's a lot of emphasis put on careers and success and fame and fortune and just, like, being known, and families are getting a lot of, like, families are looked at like a burden and a stress and something you do when you're older or something you do if you don't have something better to do, like, so I think it can get easy in this world and the society we live in to look at our life when we are just in the thick, in the trenches of parenthood and to not feel like we're accomplishing much, even though the Bible is very clear about raising children and that it is an amazing ministry, first and foremost, and it is, like, the most important thing that we could be doing with our lives. But our society doesn't look at it like that, and that's the devil. And so I think it's easy to say, man, I'm already 30 and all I am is a dad and I have this family and it's great and I love them, but, like, what else? And you just gotta know that God sees what you're doing way bigger than anything else you could be doing in your life. It doesn't even matter what the job is. You could be the president. You could be, you could be anything you wanted and it wouldn't be as important to God as raising children. And so you have to remember that when you get to heaven and you've done a good job being just a dad, even though it's so much more than that, that's where your treasure is. That's where you are going to be rewarded greatly and that's where you're going to realize how much it meant and how much more it may mean than those fleeting things like a career that's not going to matter in eternity. It's not even that. I mean, I agree with that. I think that's for a lot of people. It's hard to grow old because of that. They feel like they're not accomplishing all the things they've dreamed they would by that age. And maybe that's part of it, but it's also just like, it's just hard to like realize how fast the last 30 years of my life went. Like to know that if I do all that again, I'll be 60. Like that's crazy because it does go so fast. So I do just want to make these moments, especially these next 10 years, you know, till I'm 40, I want to make sure that I'm taking every moment of my life and really having a purpose with it and really like being intentional with everything we do. And so that's just something I guess I got to think about and be, make sure I do instead of just letting moments pass by that are just being wasted. I don't want to waste any time. I mean, that's kind of the feeling I'm feeling like I feel like I've wasted some time and I feel like now it's time to not do that and really be intentional with everything. We have to look at the important things. People, relationships, money, most important thing, money, relationships, relationships. That's why I meant relationships. Just kidding. Your kids, your family. Also, if you double my age, it's only going to be 54. Congratulations. I think, right? Am I 27 or am I 28? I don't know how old you are to be honest with you. I think I'm 27. No one knows how old Danielle is. I'm 37. Yeah, most people guess like 17, 14. Yeah, I mean that's one thing we both have going for us. We don't really look our age. Like if I tell people, I tell people I have four kids and then they're like, how old are you? I'm 29. Can I be 30 this year? They're like, oh, I didn't know, I had no idea you were that old. So, you know, maybe I have a 25 year old's look. Can I go for that? That makes me feel better. Yeah, yeah. I told you your beard is like 19. I know, this is a 19 year old beard for sure. Maybe even 60, some 16 year olds. Can we go by that? Yeah, if you go by beard age, that's what I'm doing. All right, guys, this battery's about to die. Have a good one. Tomorrow's my birthday. We'll see how it goes. Oh my goodness. It's going to be a normal day just like any other day. That's so, why would you say that? You're so rude. I just don't want you to get your hopes up. That's not, my hopes are not up by any means. Okay, but we can have a cookie cake. Thanks, I'll go pick it up. All right, I'll be picking up my cookie cake tomorrow, guys. See you. Hold on, you're going to see this. Adeline is cracking up. She thinks it's so funny. Adeline, you think it's funny? It's not funny. Daddy's going to be picking up his own cookie cake tomorrow. It's my birthday, you don't care. Oh, yucky. She don't care either. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Addie, say happy birthday to Daddy. A birthday kiss. Thank you. Oh, oh, yeah, great. See, that's a foreshadow of how my birthday is going to be tomorrow. I'm going to be pretty upset. We're going to try again, hold on. No, it's okay. That was a good birthday kiss. Give Daddy a birthday kiss. Give him a smoochy, smoochy. Wait, she's choking. Give Daddy a birthday kiss. No, see, I told you. Oh, that's a good one. All right, guys, we love you guys. Thanks for being there for us. Thanks for praying for us and always continuing to care about us. Even whenever we're super busy and have lots going on and we can't be responsive, we really appreciate all that you guys do. And we're going to be more intentional, even with you guys. Yes, and we love you. Happy birthday. It's not your birthday yet. It's his birthday tomorrow, but maybe by the time he's done. Thanks, buddy. I love you too. All right, see you guys later. Happy birthday, Mr. President. Just kidding, guys. Bye. We got a baby already. Bye.