Category Archive

Dads, want to take your wife out in a inexpensive (perhaps free) manner?

1. Look through your wallet (and her purse).

2. Find all of the partially used gift cards (like the Borders book store card with $1.27 on it).

3. See how many of them you can use in one night.

Treat it like a scavenger hunt.

Dads,  do you want to hear the new hit single from the newly finished Fighter Verse CD?

Go here:

And you can also go see the new Fighter Verse Song Blog.

More information about how to get the new CD is coming soon.

Dads, let’s say you want to clean up the clutter around your house, but it’s everywhere and it’s overwhelming. Use the handy tool that almost everyone owns: the Card table.

Step 1:  Set up the Card Table in the middle of a room where much of the clutter is.
Step 2:  Go around the entire area, bringing all of the clutter to the card table.
Step 3:  Now that the clutter objects are in one spot, briefly sort them and disseminate them to their proper locations.
Step 4:  (Very Important) Put down the Card table.

Comments –
– It makes things less overwhelming to split up the ‘Find the clutter’ and ‘Put away the clutter’ steps.
– Get your kids to help with these steps. One time we played a game to see if Daddy could find clutter faster than the kids (with Mom’s help) could put it away.
– This may make it so you have to go to the garbage can, or the Lego bin, or the crafts supply box only once.
– Just like you shouldn’t go to bed angry. You should also not go to bed with a clutter table in your living room.

Does anyone have any tweaks to suggest for this list?

If your child is currently making a habit of acting up in some negative way, it’s okay to say ‘He’s in this phase, it’ll pass’ only if you are willing to proactively take steps that will discourage him from this behavior.

As I mentioned in the comments over at Stuff Christians Like. . .

Dads, I talked before about journaling about important events your children go through. One must admit, the day your child is saved by God is a very important event. So write it down.

Say, for example, one day your daughter comes home from school and asks what she must do to be saved. And you tell her. And she says yes. And you talk about it, and then she prays.*

Maybe tomorrow you will remember what she said in your discussion and what she prayed, and maybe next week. But you won’t remember in a year. And she won’t remember the details in five, fifteen or fifty years when she gives her testimony.

So give her a gift. Describe what happened. Read it to her to see if you have it right. And then keep it safe.

Maybe someday a biographer will thank you. And certainly your child will.

* Whether or not this is the exact moment she become a follower of Christ, I cannot say. Nor, perhaps, can you. But record it anyway.

So I can’t be the first to have thought of this, but I’m pretty sure I came up with it on my own, yesterday at our 66th picnic.

Dads, if you are throwing a football (or frisbee or baseball . . . )around in a circle with a number of kids who have different abilities in throwing and catching, do this:

Start in a circle so close that you are almost touching. Start throwing the football and every time a participant successfully gets the ball to the next player he gets to take a step back.  If the catch is not made (the ball is dropped), the two players involved take a step towards each other.

The result is a uneven circle with all players perfectly spaced.

The good news is that generally speaking at least 50 percent of the throw/catch attempts will be successful.

Dads, I think it would be wise for us to take this general truth from Jesus (Luke 11:23).

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

and apply it to fatherhood. If so, it’s a bit scary:

If you are not proactively pushing your children towards Jesus, you are pushing them away from Him

It’s never too late to let your child know that you saw and appreciated something good they did.  Do this especially when you know it was a challenge for them.

Lisa writes:

This is a completely unrelated question, but I know you guys are avid picnic-ers…we’ve been going on a lot of picnics, and are in need of meal ideas for them!  I feel like all we do is PB&J, and the kiddos are getting tired of it.  What do you guys bring?  😉  Any advice would be helpful!

Can I just say that I could have PB&J sandwiches on a picnic a couple times a week and not get sick of it. I really enjoy them. But not everyone is like me. Also they can be messy.

Here are some things we’ve done:

Easy: Subway or Grocery Store Fried Chicken.

Fun: We’ve saved a couple pizza boxes after we had a delivered and now we use them to bring homemade pizza on picnics. Everyone likes pizza.

Different from Sandwiches: Wraps. Put in anything your kids want.

For Cooler Days: carry Beef Stew or Chilli in a crock pot. Bring paper bowls. Not advisable for long hike picnics.

Unique: One time Debbie brought chicken pot pie on a picnic. Quite enjoyable.

Is that enough to get you started? Other suggestions from anyone?

. . . being a very special Tuesday Tip, where you can choose your favorite of two contradictory suggestions –

1. When planning a vacation, make sure you tell your kids a week or so in advance, so they can experience more joy, get mentally prepared and be excited.

2. When planning a vacation, make sure you don’t tell your kids a week or so in advance, or they will dwell only on that and be largely dysfunctional until vacation happens.

Which one do you choose?