I lead a pretty busy life even for someone that usually spends a lot of time on Cougarboard. I work from home so I have the opportunity to be on CB a lot as nobody is looking over my shoulder and any boring meeting that I'm forced to virtually attend that I'm not already multi-tasking on something else in I get to bask in CB's light.

I had hardly done any votes before this round - mostly because of how busy a time of the year this is for me. For those that don't know I have 10 kids (5 boys/5 girls). Those alone are enough to stretch you a little thin (but somehow it seems to make me more thick/plump than thin ). Also as of this coming April 1st I will have 2 daughters off on missions and a very thin budget (why can't this be the thing that is thick/plump?).

This time of the year becomes extremely busy for me with the end of the wrestling season as a coach of both a middle school and youth club THIS is the season we work for - EVERY THING may go on the back burner in life for 2-4 weeks during this time in a typical year. So voting in a competition like this would likely not be in the cards for me during this time of year at all. I also serve on the board of a few sports teams/leagues, I operate the web sites of several - most of which culminate this month - and I serve as the director at the state level for one organization who's championship event was TODAY (yes a Sunday - I'll accept my fate some day).

But when the individual prizes came out I really thought I need to be a part of this. Honestly I thought I could drop in 1-5k votes this week and have a forum where I could talk to Tom Holmoe. I've never been one of those that send him an email but I've always wanted to talk to him about the possibility of re-adding wrestling and possibly including womens wrestling as a sport as well. As most of my kids (boys and girls) wrestled - this is important to me. So I thought 1-5k votes was doable. Even with what would likely be on my plate.

This was the week of boys state (Thur-Sat) - heavy practices M-W then constantly in a stadium the rest of the week. Today was the Girls State Championships and I was ultimately responsible for making sure it all happened. My daughter had a starring role in a school musical I must attend and the elementary school kids had a Saturday fun fair at school. But I certainly could slough off at work enough to get the 1-5k to talk to Tom and also help the Cougars out.

Then a funny thing happened...no kids from our teams qualified for state meaning no practice or long stadium days. Sure I did the obligatory 3-4 hours helping with weigh-ins and set up for boys state but a huge window opened up in the evenings and the upcoming weekend. Several things that were being worried about for pulling off girls state pulled through and eased the expected burdens and even allowed me to spend some extra time/energy on preparing some extras items that were not originally planned for the event. I had originally thought that 1-5k would be easy and probably able to be knocked out in 1 day before life got more busy later in the week.

An even greater thing was my wife asked me what I was doing that first day and I told her I wanted this opportunity to talk to Tom to talk about adding wrestling so that my kids would want to go to BYU to pursue their sport and everything else that IS BYU. As it is my kids that wrestle are starting to think about Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Northern Illinois, or even a White Water, WI, etc. So just that one possibly very brief conversation or question with a minor response could mean a lot to me and to them if it did make a change and they could see BYU in those same dreams. My kids do still dream of attending BYU but they are definitely conflicted.

What I didn't know is my wife had read all the prizes over my shoulder and thought she'd like to see me get an opportunity at tickets to a game. After all paying for any tickets over the next few years seems almost impossible with the 2 missions going on. When BYU first went independent I decided to buy tickets to the Ole Miss game and take 5 of my kids that wrestle to the game. We had a blast - for those that were there we were the big (very old) motor home in the parking lot at the fireside. It was important to me to spend that time with my kids and let them see the players at the fireside. I spend so much time as dad & coach that I'm not sure they ever really felt I was DAD first. I wanted them to also see that other things like faith and education should be high priorities. Yes some of them are showing the potential in their age group that if they maintain that comparative level to their counter parts that one day a scholarship to one of the schools mentioned above may be warranted. But I wanted them to know that I had higher priorities for them in other areas of their life and who better to emphasis that message to them than Bronco and his players at a fireside.

My wife decided to see if she could boost my votes by voting as well from a device I'd logged into in the past. At first I believe it was when she knew I couldn't work on it due to work, etc but then continued when I was online. She also works almost full time hours at a job outside the home. After the first day I think I was in the lead as she told my kids all about it when they got home and they started to vote as well. The youngest is 6 and even he voted from a tablet. It became their mission to help their dad and give back to me for taking them to the Ole Miss game and tell me they love me.

Now they were often distracted and while they'd set goals for an hour they almost never met them as they'd play, fight, or get bored. I read that some on CB (I believe jokingly) said that they punished their kids by making them enter captcha's. I couldn't do that because they all got started in an apparent expression of love. But I did go to the store and buy a bunch of candy and snacks and would reward them when they'd came close to the goals they set. I participated in the gorging on snacks and gained 8lbs this week .

In the end I caught a bad cold (likely due to the weather changes this week), the musical attendance was long (I did get 300 in on a tablet during act II one night which she was only in the first small scene of that act), the fun fair was boring for me (but I got about 700 in during that time), and having to be up at 4am today to travel to and handle final setup for girls folkstyle state where I couldn't type at all did us in and we were surpassed in the end by the singular OvalY to finish in 2nd place (we must bow to his accomplishment). At one point I wanted to just win because as a competitive person when something like this (no matter how trivial it is) is staring you in the face - WHY NOT WIN!!!

But what I get now apparently is 9 ping pong balls instead of 10 and as my wife and kids love to say "may the odds ever be in your favor". And whether I get the grand prize or not I'll get 2 tickets to a game - which I may have to choose MTSU just because it is closer and less costly to go to. But what I really got, and most importantly, was evidence that my kids will torture themselves doing something they don't enjoy for their "old man" just so I can have something I care about that may be meaningless to them or others. What I got this week is an impression that if what the original poster stated as "the best is yet to come" I can not fathom the amount of love and greatness that will be poured out over me during this life of raising these kids. I was blessed and am very grateful for their support...

Thank you NCAA 6th fan contest, Cougarboard and theROC for the events that transpired for me to witness this outpouring from my wife/kids....