Family

The Importance of Small Wins

My son enjoys playing sports, but he isn’t a top athlete.  He likes playing more for the fun and the experience.  The teamwork helps as well.  He’s been in a few leagues with a few different sports.  Unfortunately, most of the teams haven’t done that well.  Still, I’m here to tell you that the small wins are important.

Past Leagues

The past couple of teams that he played on haven’t done so well.  Last summer, he played baseball and I think they won one game for the year.  They were mostly players who had just gotten started, and a lot of the other teams had been in place for a couple of years.

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10 Practical Baby Shower Gifts Every Mom Will Love

Ah, the baby shower.  The time to give all that’s cute for the new life about to enter the world.  While many gifts will draw ooh’s and ahh’s during the shower, there are some that will bring those later.  These are practical baby shower gifts that every parent will appreciate when it matters most.

Diapers (Size 1 and 2)

Diapers are a fairly common gift.  But, here’s the thing, most diapers for yet-to-be born babies are Newborn size.  This is great except that many babies are out of this size in a flash.  While you can usually exchange unopened diapers for a bigger size, make it easy on the mom to be.  Give them the next size or two up.  When that Newborn size diaper just won’t fit, your gift will be at the ready.

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Ramona Books And Others I Loved As A Kid

I’ve written several times how much I love to read.  The thing is, I’ve loved to read since I could.  So, now that my kids are of reading age, I’ve gone back to remember some of my favorites.  These are some of the books I remember that I loved as a kid.  As you can see, I’m even trying to pass along my love of these great books.

Ramona Books (Or Anything By Beverly Cleary)

Probably some of my favorite books are of Ramona Quimby.  She was the star of a series of books featuring a rambunctious, misunderstood little girl, and the series of many adventures.  I read these books over and over again.  They made me laugh and I got a lot of the feelings that she expressed as a kid.  These books are timeless.  I’m now enjoying reading these to my daughter.  She looks forward to our reading time and brings these to me!

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The Power Of Bad Habits

The other night I got really upset with my kids. They are 8 and 6 and they were bickering.  Again.  About what?  Nothing.  I got upset because their bickering has become nearly constant.  I sat them down and talked to them about it becoming a bad habit.

Two Different Personalities

My kids have two very different personalities.  They’re opposites in many ways.  My son is more the bookworm who is just fine playing on his own.  He has a difficult time fitting in, which breaks my heart because I was the same way around his age.  My daughter loves being around other people and has no problem making friends.  My son thinks very logically, where my daughter often drifts around in her thinking.

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12 Snow Day Activities For Kids

Kids love a snow day, right?  Every time it snows, the kids want to know if they will have school tomorrow.  On occasions they don’t, that’s great news!  For the kids, anyway.  For parents who now have to fill an unplanned day, it can be daunting. Thankfully, there are some easy and fun activities for any snow day!

Outdoor Snow Day Activities

image from Morguefile courtesy of zevik

If the kids are home with a snow day, that means that there’s snow on the ground.  Go outside and take advantage of it.

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10 Things You Learn After Having Kids

There’s no manual on having kids.  That’s one of the first things I remember being told after we first became parents.  That was over eight years ago, but the words still ring true.  I’m sure I’m not the only parent that often feels like a manual would sure come in handy.  Though one doesn’t exist, there are some truths that I’ve learned.  Here are things you learn after having kids that I bet ring true for many out there.

You’ll Parent Like You Were Parented

Nobody is an exact replica of their parents.  But, on many occasions I’ve seen my parents come through in what I do.  My wife has pointed out the same thing.  While we all end up with our own unique styles, our parents have influence on this.

You’ll Learn While Teaching

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Letting Go

Have you ever had something that you held onto that you knew you shouldn’t have?  Eventually the time came for letting go.  For me, the recent example of that was my old artificial Christmas tree.

My First Adult Christmas Thing

I had the tree in question since 1996.  That was the year I graduated from college.  So, that holiday season, I bought myself my very first tree.  It was nothing special.  It was probably around 7′ tall and fit nicely in our small apartment.

This was in the days before pre-lit trees.  The tree was in layers.  Each layer had about 7 or 8 branches that you stuck into the pole.  They were all color coded at the end so you knew which ones went where.

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Fall Fun At The Cider Mill The Way It’s Meant To Be

Fall is not my favorite season.  I’m definitely a summer guy.  I like warm temperatures, beaches, and long days.  Still, fall has a lot of fun things.  One of those has been to head to the cider mill.

I wrote a pretty discouraging article a couple of years ago about a cider mill ‘gone bad’.  They took a bunch of long standing traditions and scrapped everything in the name of money.  It was obvious that customers were just dollar signs.

Still, I knew that while some places turned to the dark side, not everybody would.  There had to be good cider mills out there.  Cider mills that stayed true to the roots of good cider, donuts.  And some good apple picking was a bonus as well.

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10 Thoughts On Our First Week Long Camping Trip of 2017

We generally do a week long camping trip twice per summer.  One is always over the 4th of July week.  We wrapped up our trip and it was a success.  I thought I’d share some of our (mostly) ups and downs, as well as a few laugh out loud moments.

The Popularity of Outdoor Activities Is Increasing

Driving on the freeway to get back and forth to the campground showed just how popular outdoor activities have become.  Michigan is always home to great summer activities and always has been.  However, even versus a few years ago, you can see a tremendous uptick.  The number of campers and boats shows that more and more have climbed out of the hole of the Great Recession.

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Trading Less Stuff For More Memories

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that vacations and such are a very big thing for our family.  We love to camp.  An annual trip to an indoor water park is almost required.  We’ve had a couple of great trips down to Florida.  We have really come to notice how our family just works so well when we’re on the move.   Over time, we have created many more memories through our travel than in many other areas of life.

Experiences Turn Into More Memories

After our last trip, we sat down and talked as a family.  Even though our kids are young (7 and 5), we talked to them about our trip and how great it was.  We also talked about how much vacations mean to us.  Part of our discussion centered on how many things they remember from our various trips.

The kids got it right away.  They started talking about trips that we’ve taken for as many years back as their young minds can remember.  Remember that time at Disney?  Oh yeah, and that one time at the water park!

It was really cool to watch.

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