The Ramp Up to Back to School

This year we will have two kiddos in school! Taylor will be going to the third grade and Rylan will be making his maiden voyage into the magical land of Kindergarten. Taylor has been the best student in the past couple of years. She has made straight A’s and hasn’t faultered or had a major meltdown so far. Now as for our meltdowns, that is a different story in and of itself.

I’m going to really honest here. I am really worried about my son starting school. He has not been in any sort of off-site daycare or had any sort of preschool that taught him the basics. He does however get along with other children (besides his siblings) in a public setting such as church or play dates. I am a little worried that he is going to bust out a “your not the boss of me” or “my daddy will beat you up” comment to the teacher or another esteemed member of the education system. His speech has not always been the best but has really gotten better over the years as he grows and his vocabulary grows as well. I know some parents who have said that they had had an issue with their children’s hearing had affected their speech. I ran into some ways that I could improve phonological awareness in him but I think that he should maybe actually start school first.

When thinking about the points and worries in this post and the times that my mind had wandered to think about it in the past I have come to the conclusion to just shut off my brain. He is a child. Taylor has turned out great and we worried the same way that we worry with Rylan. He will get it and we will be there to watch him climb to new heights…I just hope he doesn’t drag a teacher to that height and throw them off of it.

July 20, 2011 | Filed Under Family | 1 Comment 

Preserving Our Digital Life is Hard Work

Every once in awhile when I go over to my mom’s house she breaks out the huge photo albums and we sit there and reminisce about the good ol’ days. Today we all try to shoot as many photos as we can day in and day out. Then we take our extremely powerful cameras with ten times the photos that were in all my mom’s albums and put them all on a small memory card about the size of a stamp. Then what do we do? Well if you are like me, you end up sitting in front of the computer and edit pictures all day. I have literally spent hours in front of my laptop just messing around with one or two photos.

There are some great programs today that have made this a whole heckuva lot easier. Programs like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro have made it easier though over the years. I am always worried though that what if all of my family’s history disappers in the form of a fire, flood, or my laptop getting stolen? I do backup every once in awhile but I don’t always do it regularly. I think what I am going to start doing is not spend so much time getting the perfect shot or touching up photos because the light was bad or there were pimples on someone’s face. In the past people took pictures on whatever they had and cherished them no matter how they turned out. I mean I have a picture of me and Spiderman and the original General Lee on old Polaroid pictures. I think that I’m going to just shoot life and let it be from now on. Spend less time editing life and spend more living it.

July 12, 2011 | Filed Under Family, General | Leave a Comment 

Marriage is Easy When it’s not Hard!

My marriage is great. We are the best of friends and the ones we confide in the most. Crystal and I have been together for a little over ten years and have been married for almost nine years now. I think that between us in the relationship area I am the one who tries to do the most to work things out. I mean I am no Mort Fertel but I do my best to see where I went wrong and try to remedy it as soon as possible. You do notice I said where “I” went wrong?

In every marriage there will be arguments. In my non-professional (but time tested and mother approved) opinion, if a married couple does not have a spat, incident, or argument at all…something else is wrong or going on behind the scenes. There are things out there that are like marriage “fitness” classes like Marriage Max that teaches you how to neutralize your problems and put into practice a system of relationship habits that will shift the momentum of your marriage. Then there are more known things like marriage “counseling” where the process of counseling a couple in a relationship in an effort to recognize and to better manage or reconcile troublesome differences and repeating patterns of distress in their past and present.

To be honest there have been no knock-down drag out throw-downs at our house…or even in public. We have children, responsibilities, and we took a vow to keep this marriage together no matter what. We are finally getting to the point of extinguishing the small fire before it becomes a roaring blaze. Communicate, apologize, make-up! That’s it! Doesn’t that sound simple? Just remember that when you start to act like a raging lunatic.

 

July 9, 2011 | Filed Under Family | 3 Comments 

Uh… What broke?

I came home the other day from work and everything was going on as normal. Kids were driving Crystal crazy, the dog was on the couch as he was not supposed to be, and the smell of dinner was lingering in the airmosphere. After food and playtime I noticed that it was really warm in the house. When I wandered over to the thermostat it read 85 degrees! I was like “what the crap…what do I do now?” We don’t have any sort of home protection plan that covers this and I don’t know how to fix it.

My father-in-law came over and took a look at it and said either the fan motor or a small electrical transistor went out. I asked him if he knew how to fix it but that turned out to be a “no”. He did know a guy that works on them and said that it shouldn’t take too long to fix. I called and a couple of days later he came out and fixed me right up. Turns out it was a small itty-bitty little electrical component. I’m not saying how much that little thing and the visit cost me. Since then I have looked into some ways to safeguard me against little things that go out and break on me. Home warranties like what American Home Shield has to offer look really appealing. I just know that the I need to look into something before I spend all my free time on the phone trying to find someone to fix the junk when it breaks and then go broke trying to pay them.

June 23, 2011 | Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment 

Game On! Redbox Giveaway

They have finally done it. Redbox has entered the game rental market. The geniuses over at Redbox have amazed us for years with the deals that they have for movie watchers everywhere.  Redbox game rentals are going nationwide in 21,000 locations this Friday, June 17.  In conjunction with Father’s Day this Sunday, the fine folks over at Redbox wanted me to give away some FREE game rentals!

 

Giveaway

One (1) winner will receive:

  • 15 promo codes (worth $2 each) for game rentals .

How to Enter

Tell me your preferred video gaming system.

Extra Entries Available

After you have completed the first entry, you are eligible for additional entries. Make sure you leave a separate comment for EACH entry. Each counts as one extra entry unless noted otherwise.

  • Vote for Daddy Digest in the Camp Dirt Contest.  You can vote once a day till July 8th. (2 ENTRIES)
  • Subscribe to Daddy Digest by reader or email.
  • Like me on my Facebook Fan Page.
  • Follow Daddy Digest on Twitter AND Tweet about the giveaway. Leave the URL to the Tweet in your comment. You can tweet once a day, but remember to leave the URL to each tweet.
This giveaway will end on June 28th at 10:00 PM Central time. Winner will be chosen via a random number generator. Giveaway is open to US entries. The winner must contact me in 24 hours to claim their prize. Good luck to everyone!
The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely that of the blog owners. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider.

 

June 14, 2011 | Filed Under Family | 188 Comments 

The Carpet Dilemma

As some of you may know we are desperately trying to get our house ready sell. It has been on the market for around five months now. The house is becoming a little more than a shell of it’s former self with most of our family photos taken down and half of our belongings boxed up. While making little improvements like touching up the paint on the base boards, keeping the yard imaculate, and repainting the entire house there is still one dilemma we don’t know the best way to handle. The carpet in the boys room.

This room has tons of stains on the carpet from Kool-Aid to baby powder explosions. We have tried everything from spot treating to using two different carpet cleaners . We have even thought about getting a carpet cleaning service to come out and take care of it. We aren’t sure what we are going to do yet and don’t want it to be an eyesore. We were thinking about just replacing the entire room with new carpet but then we didn’t know what the best style or color would be. The realtor said we could do one thing and that would be go to our local home improvement store and pick out several different types of carpet we would be comfortable with and get samples to let the potential buyers pick out which one they like the best and have it installed as soon as we move all of the stuff out of the boy’s room.

Whichever way we go with at least the next family that buys our house will have great carpet!

June 5, 2011 | Filed Under Family | 6 Comments 

World’s Greatest TV Dad

Growing up when I was young meant that I had a good bit of different influences when it came to “father figures”. My parents drove through splitsville when I was barely able to walk. I got to spend every other weekend with my dad to where he tried to do his best to cram as much fatherly stuff in as he could. My mom remarried and then I had a step-dad that molded me week to week in the way he thought was best. In addition to two powerhouses of daditude taking turns showing me the path to become a man I also had my grandfather who I saw during the week everyday after school. Three dudes in my life that all had different views on family, faith, values, politics, movie choices, and even soda choices.

I feel like even though I had several different influences on what guided me down the path to becoming a man and eventually a father were all instilled by one common factor…love. My dad showed me love for all of the time he had to spend separated from me. His excitment over having two full weeks in between visits made our time more meaningful and filled with pure adoration. My step-dad showed me love for providing a home for which I felt like I belonged to even when they added to the family in the form of a sibling. In a situation where I wasn’t his child he sure did treat me like one of his own. My grandfather filled in the gap between the others and understood me and knew how to make me smile. He gave me the love of not only the grandfather he was to me but as a seasoned father to my mother that included all of that experience.

There were sometimes that I had away from all of them and most of the time it was filled with TV. Man, there were so many dads on TV that taught me a couple of values in all of those 22 minute episodes. Now if I had to weigh in about who had the most influence on me in the TV realm besides Optimus Prime(?!?) I would have to go with a tie between Jason Seaver and Cliff Huxtable. Both dads had great heart to hearts and had a real sense of “dad” to me. Thanks to Man of the House for helping me come to this conclusion. Now you too can weigh in on the World’s Greatest TV Dad and who you think should reign supreme.

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Dad Central Consulting on behalf of P&G and received promotional items to thank me for taking the time to participate.

May 26, 2011 | Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment 

Prom Review

Walt Disney’s Prom pulls all the right strings for a perfect teen movie. I think they do a better job then the teen movies I saw as a kid. The teen movies of my generation was on the bleeding edge of adult humor. Prom pulls far from raunchy jokes that I remember and centers more on teen angst, drama, awkwardness and fear of the future. There is no sexual undertones but a lot of romance that leads to extended kissing but nothing that feels like the audience is invading a private moment. Another flag for some parents may be a fight the character Jesse (Thomas McDonell) gets into.

I loved the humor played out in this movie. The awkward moments some of the comedic actors must endure is priceless. In one scene, Llyod (Nicholas Braun), who keeps getting turned down by every girl he asks, leaves a note on a girls locker asking her to prom. He, unfortunately, cuts out the letters from a magazine for his note and frightens the girl into thinking she’s being stalked. Fail.

I think my daughter loved the romantic story lines the best. Yes, story lines. The movie follows three major love stories plus many other romantic sub plots. It is a movie about prom and prom is very romantic. I have to say she ate it up. Honestly, some of my heart strings were tugged and I got a little misty. I didn’t fall apart. I kept it, manly.

It is a great film for teens and preteens. Adults in the audience will enjoy it too. Plenty of laughs and some tears (except me. I didn’t cry once) and my daughter and I both liked it. Check it out.

May 12, 2011 | Filed Under Family, Reviews | 1 Comment 

We Need a Vacation

Sometimes as parents we can get really burnt out. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love my job as a parent and I love my kids like nothing else in the world. I really feel like sometimes me and my wife’s relationship is really affected in the way of not seeing each other or spending quality with each other as much as we used to. Our kids grow up and our relationship with them also grows. It is really important for me to make sure that my relationship with my wife grows and matures as well. There are time when we need a little getaway for some time to ourselves. No, I don’t mean going all out and and taking 26 weeks a year and jet-setting off for some cheap holidays to Turkey but something a little closer would work I think.

A little while back the in-laws took the kiddos and we got away for a weekend only 20 miles away. We got a hotel, ate some nice meals, and had a great time just being able to talk and not get bombarded with questions or request to wipe butts or make drinks. I think this time we may look for some cheap all inclusive holidays where all we have to do is select where we want to go and pay some people and they take care of the rest. I really think that time alone with your spouse to repair and build on your relationship is extremely important. The more time you put in it, the stronger it becomes and it will last a lifetime.

May 1, 2011 | Filed Under Family | 3 Comments 

Are All of Those People Camping?

We all took a little trip as a family to the other side of Houston this past Saturday. It takes us about 45 minutes to get to the downtown area and the kids always have so much fun looking at the skyscrapers and really old buildings that are packed into the concrete jungle that makes up downtown. If you are not familiar with Houston it has fairly decent sized “downtown” area but the whole metropolitan area spreads out about 30 miles in all directions. Where we live they aren’t really any buildings higher than about ten stories tall. There are a lot of new things that the kiddos see every time we venture downtown and some awesome and then some we have to explain.

One question they had was why is there a baseball field downtown where all of the building are. That is a good question. I answered that it is there because the people of the city wanted it there. We as parents have those questions pop up from time to time that even when you give an answer you know that twenty more will be popping up one right after another. They noticed that underneath a bunch of bridges there were a bunch of tents all crowded around.  Inevitably they asked “are all of those people camping?” and I said “in a way”. “It’s a homeless village kids!” I just explained that some people that are in-between homes sometimes grab their tent and some sleeping bags and camp out until they find a new one. I didn’t go into the story of the royal family that lives in the large 4 person tent that was up on he hill that housed a princess that longs for a prince far far away. I will save that and incorporate it into story time one night.

Ryan

April 18, 2011 | Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment 

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