do you have any children
yeah i have two two boys twelve and sixteen
twelve and sixteen
um-hum how about you
well i have three and uh they're five and three and nineteen months
oh
so we kind of got a different ball game but uh
right
what uh
do you feel like you have anytime to spend with them
well
they're probably at an age where they don't wanna spend anytime with their parents parents
that's true you actually of course spend less time with them when they get older but it's of course still really important um
right
i have a kind of a fortunate situation i think right now with my sixteen year old um i work two nights a week at a i'm a librarian and i work two nights a week at the senior high school library they keep it open you know for kids to
oh uh-huh
do their work and he um and then they the school district hires an aide you know to work for me well my son is my aide
right
sure
oh well that's nice
so two nights a week for four hours we're stuck together and there's usually not very much business i mean some nights it's just real real quiet so
you're stuck together
no
i would suspect your nights would be pretty quiet for the most part
yeah so we i have sort of a captive audience so i really do spend probably more time with him than than most you know but um of course i'm away from my other son those hours too but his dad's at home
right
and so that kind of gives him uh time with his dad then gives him a little bit of that individual time
pretty much that time
yeah that's true yeah
but but it is hard once they get that age i mean their friends are the most important thing there is
right and they want to be able to spend uh
that's right
well i've even noticed that with my five year old she started kindergarten this year and
um-hum
everyday that she's not at school uh she thinks we need to have someone over and play
um-hum
and that kind of yeah it's hard i think uh i find myself getting my little projects going and
yeah it's kind of hard
not taking the time that i should i'm more worried about oh i didn't get this done i didn't get the kitchen needs to be cleaned this needs to be done and and i need to remind
yeah
um-hum um-hum
remind remind myself to slow down and it'll still be there tomorrow but that's kind of hard to do you know you don't see yourself getting
right yeah that's true yes it is hard to do right yeah well if you're kind of a person that likes things you know organized or neat or you know
um-hum
right
then i think it that it is hard it's um i think one of the nice things about holidays is that you know it does give you the opportunity to spend more time
slow down a little bit um-hum
yeah with family we have we often go to Illinois
uh-huh
for Christmas and we're not this year and it's just really nice because we can do you know the things you want to do and
you can do a lot more than
yeah just yeah that's right
than when you travel this is the first year we're staying home too and uh i think it's going to be real quiet but uh that's an opportunity to
get out the games and
yeah right we usually do that my my kids even have already gotten out um my twelve year old got out the Legos which of course he hasn't touched since last summer
right
of course of course
but you know but every now and then i mean he's got a lot of those technical those hard kind you know and he wants to be an engineer so he still likes all that kind of building stuff and um we have the train and we haven't had that Lego train together for years
oh yeah
and um so he sat down and i told him i really wanted him to build the train and we would put it under the tree and that i would keep it together i wouldn't take it apart
can't wouldn't take it apart after that
yeah and every year i'd have the Lego train under the tree
that'd be kind of fun
and um so he worked on that for the longest time ever since school was out on Friday and um then his sixteen year old brother started helping too you know so you know it was just kind of things like during the normal
rat race those kinds of things never happen but um
right right
no no in fact in
i think if a people would learn to turn off the TVs and i think that's a lot of the breakdown of the communication
um-hum yeah
yes yeah
any communication that would take place in a family uh usually people are ending up sitting in front of that
which is
um-hum and there's always a few people in the family that when they stare at it you know they're totally turned off to everything else the rest of
yes you can't communicate while you're doing that right
no that's right
whereas uh i'm the type of person i could not sit sit still well i shouldn't say i could not but be very hard for me to sit down and watch a program all the way through without doing something
yeah yeah me too yeah i don't watch very much of it at all even to to the extent that sometimes i feel almost embarrassed at work and stuff like that people are
because they talk so much isn't that the
yeah they talk about TV shows and i'm huh you know don't you watch that you know it's the best show on i go no but
you're kind of like what what are you talking about and uh
you feel like you're a little bit out of it don't you
they need to have a highlight in the newspaper or something tell us what's the
