Life is a Roller Coaster Sometimes!

Over the last weekend, my wife and I got to spend time with our firstborn!  There were several things we could of done with a wide open schedule and a whole weekend, but the one thing that got him and his girl friend, Jess really pumped was...Wonderland!

It was not something we expected to do that Saturday, but we were up for it!

Last time I was at Wonderland, I missed out on the BIG coasters and was wondering if I would get them in before fall.

The Behemoth and Leviathan were both pretty fun, but the real fun was just being able to hang out with "the boy" and his girl!

Sunday was going to be a church day but it turned into a day of shopping around Barrie in order to maximize daylight hours.  They had to drive that night back to New Liskaerd!  We DID have some enjoyable "God" conversations anyway, despite missing service!

After an epic journey through the malls, we headed to the Arboretum for a walk through what I call the "tree zoo"!  The fall colors are just starting to emerge and it was a special way to end off our short visit!

Now that we are temporary "empty-nesters", we realize how special the kids are and how our relationships with them grow and change.

When you are a parent of young ones, there are ups and downs, once you get through those, it's a fun/different stage.

They can't stay "kids" forever but they are always family!

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I have a new way to express the fact that something is good.

I am calling it..."all-caps".

If something is delicious, I will say "This pita wrap is all-caps yummy!" or "I saw Skillet live and they all-caps rocked it!"

My logic is this, when you want to express excitement about something in a text or post, you're more likely to make liberal use of the caps-lock button on your keypad.  So a baseball game can be thrilling or it can be THRILLING!

See the difference?

In regular speech, the only way to do this would be to yell, but that's not always the best thing to do.

So...

Just say "all-caps" before your description of how much you enjoyed, Guardians of the Galaxy.

"It was all-caps the best movie of the summer!"

This leads me to another topic I am wrestling with.  Superlatives.

I work in radio, but in essence I am a writer.  (See my previous blog)  Because I am a writer, there is an ongoing search for the right words to use in every break, weather report, traffic update and news cast.

I have noticed that my fall back words for certain topics tend to be "most amazing", "absolutely wonderful" and "really exciting".

I want to change this.

Here's the danger...the ever lurking superlative!

The definition of superlative is...the form of an adverb or adjective that expresses a degree of the adverb or adjective being used that is greater than any other possible degree of the given descriptor. English superlatives are typically formed with the suffix -est (e.g. healthiest, weakest) or the word, most (most recent, most interesting). One preposition, near, also has a superlative form, as in Find the restaurant nearest your house.

I found this definition through extensive skimming of Wikipedia.

Until I enter into the actual presence of our God, where words will never be enough, I don't think I could use the words "amazing" or "wonderful" about soup, cars or big events without feeling like I am over-hyping just for the sake of it.

So, it's game on!  Time for me to tighten up the language in order to be "most effective"!

How would you do it?

P.S.  Here is another challenge for you.  Help me replace another phrase.  "I want to encourage you to..."  This is a tough one for me!