Happifying

I have mixed feelings about "the modern generation." Social media is awesome and has certainly served me well. I go waaaay back to the dark ages with internet friends....all the way to 1995. I know a lot of people don't understand how you can be friends with someone you've never met, but these are real, deep friendships for the most part.

As far as other media goes, for the most part, it's been a Good Thing for us, except on those days when I want to throw it all out the window. My big boys grew up without TV for many years. Now we have three televisions, all hooked to cable, one of which is hooked to a dvr. I don't know how we lived without dvr. We didn't have cable until 9/11. The events of that day had no bearing on our getting cable...we'd moved and the house we were in didn't get decent reception with the rabbit ears. However, the 9/11 images were the first clear images they'd seen on live television for years.

Even then, we only had the most basic cable package...local channels only, mostly. I think there were 11 channels. Then, four years this month, we expanded our cable package to be able to watch the World Cup, and have never looked back. Then we added wireless internet, a dvr, and now each person has his or her own laptop and cell phone, texting and facebook account....

there's even a dedicated gaming computer up in the boy space.

We went from "NO VIDEO GAMES;" they are evil, to....ok, hand held Gameboys......to OK the Play Station you found in the trash.....to....oh, all hell has broken loose.....we have an Xbox, a Wii, a PS2, and a Game Cube as well as one remaining Gameboy, Two Gameboy DS's, on PSP, various Ipod devices (at least 3 shuffles, two classics, one nano, and my touch).

Before you start adding up the expense, please consider that not a single hand held system was purchased new, and only one of the other gaming systems was purchased new, the lap tops are nearly all low end of the line machines, and the gaming computer was built for us by the wonderful Uncle Guy, at no expense to us.

None of this was the original intent of this blog entry, though. What is happifying about this is how much more in contact we can all be, as this picture can attest. We are all about soccer this month (well, most months, but this month in particular). Here's a picture of Nathan and Tynan, sitting together on the couch. They are watching a World Cup game, playing World Cup on the PSP together, and Nathan is texting with friends about the soccer game and plans for getting together here to watch the USA/Ghana game later in the day.

So, it's not all bad. And there is quite a bit of good. And their multitasking is working to help them form some good relationships.

In fact, while I was composing this entry, two other boys have shown up over here, the game is over, and the PSP game has been won, and now they are all out fixing a stereo speaking in someone's car, after first googling and youtubing how to do so.

Ahhh....technology, how well you serve us. How happy you can make us.