The end of Childhood

On the eve of the night before my youngest daughter graduates from high school, I'm reflecting on how much time has slipped past. It seems like yesterday when my oldest child was off to his first day of kindergarten. Now it's time to send my youngest daughter off to college and she can't wait to go. 

There are a few words of wisdom that I'd like to pass on. First, don't be afraid to get your heart broken. It just means that you aren't afraid of falling in love. I've been married for over 32 years and I've never regretted taking what I thought was a chance and asking my sweetheart if she'd marry me. If you asked her she would tell you there was no risk of what her answer would be.

Second, find out what you love to do and find a way to make a living doing that. You will never get tired of doing something you love to do. And it will never feel like you're working.

Third, don't be in a hurry to spend everything you earn. I regret not saving more when I was younger. Now, I'm playing catch up trying to make sure that if there ever comes a day when I can't work, that I will have enough money to live on. If something is on sale one day, you can be sure it will be on sale at another time. Businesses want you to spend your money on their products or services. Do yourself a huge favor and make and follow a budget. Budget for things you want to buy and save the money to buy it. Whenever you earn some money, pay your tithing first and put something in savings second. It doesn't matter how much you save, it just matters that you get in the habit of saving. You never know what might happen and its nice to know you have something in reserve should you need it.

Fourth, when you become a parent spend as much time as you can with your kids. You will never regret it. I'll never forget the time I came home from an extended business trip and my youngest daughter, at the time, didn't recognize me when I got in the car. She was pulling away from me so I sat in the seat behind her. As we drove home, I was telling everyone about the trip and once she heard my voice she couldn't turn far enough to see me in her car seat. I called home every night while I was gone and she did recognize my voice from all those phone calls. Tell your wife and your kids how much you love them frequently. They can't hear it enough.

I'm proud of everything that my kids and wife have accomplished in their lives so far. I have been blessed to have a family. I wouldn't be who I am without you all.

10 Rules for Dating My Daughter :-)

I read about 10 things to do with your daughter in my daily email subscription from All Pro Dads.com and it triggered a memory of the 10 Rules for Dating My Daughter. So, I Googled it and found this, 10 Rules for Dating my Daughter, enjoy.

Working Moms

This year is a Presidential election year. The rhetoric is flying in both directions with both parties pointing fingers and placing blame.

One thing that caught my attention was the comment by Hillary Rosen directed at Ann Romney made during an interview on CNN.com. She made the statement that "Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life". I take issue with that statement because being a full-time mom is what I would classify as "real work."

Taking care of kids is a lot of work! Quite a few years ago, my wife and I both worked. We had one 2 year old at the time and a new born daughter. We found we were spending all of one our salaries, or the majority of it, on daycare for both kids. After looking at our finances, my wife decided to quit her job and stay home with the kids. It was NOT and easy decision for either of us, as she was the major breadwinner of our family at the time. I took the opportunity to stay home with them for a couple weeks while my wife was finishing up her 2 weeks notice at her job. I have never worked so hard in my life!

My wife came home each day of those 2 weeks to a house that looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. I was constantly cleaning, feeding, changing diapers, etc. all day every day for those 2 weeks. My sweetheart would come in the house and say, "What happened here?!?" I would give her a blow by blow description of what had happened and we would move on from there.

A few years later, my wife went to a Women's Conference for a week and I stayed home with the kids. We were up to 3 kids by then. You can imagine what the house looked like. It looked like it was "lived in", is the best way I can describe it. When my wife got back from the conference, I told her that I didn't know how she got everything done during the day, that needed to be done. I asked her how she did it and she just laughed. I am a firm believer that ALL DADS should send their wife out of town for a week and stay home with the kids, if for no other reason, than to gain a better appreciation for everything their wife does.

I have the utmost respect for women who CHOOSE to stay at home. I realize that it does put a financial strain on the family when the family has to adjust their lifestyle to only having one income provider. It may mean selling their nice house and buying something within their budget. It may mean that the existing cars may have to be sold and used cars bought in their place. It is a sacrifice, however, it is a sacrifice well worth making for the sake of our children.

Our children were taught, by their mother, important values that they still use today. Those values include, but are not limited to,  Love, Humility, Respect, Responsibility, Kindness, Generosity, Trust, Integrity, Accountability. They used these values with their siblings. They used these values in school. I think that one of the reasons we are seeing problems in our schools right now is because kids didn't, or don't, have a mother at home to teach those values.

I am not saying that fathers are incapable of teaching children values. I am saying that mothers have an innate ability to nurture children that we fathers don't have. Can we, as fathers, learn to teach our children values? You bet we can! Just because we weren't born with that nurturing instinct, doesn't mean that we can't teach values to our children. We, as fathers, have a tendency to teach our children values by our EXAMPLES. Our kids watch and listen to us, even when we don't think they are watching or listening. We do our children a GREAT DISSERVICE by not setting a good example for them.

Do I disagree with Ms. Rosen? You bet I do!

My recipe for Smoked BBQ Brisket

I made a smoked brisket for a church gathering recently and it went over so well, I thought I would post it here to my blog. I like to start this in the evening after work to be used the next day.



Ingredients:
1 - Brisket (untrimmed)
BBQ Beef Seasoning
1 - Large bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce
Your favorite wood for smoking; I like Mesquite but feel free to use whatever suits your taste.

Directions: (Read ALL the directions before doing anything)

1. Light a fire in your smoker using whatever wood you prefer; something like mesquite or hickory will add a very nice flavor to the meat. If the wood is green it will produce a large amount of smoke, which is good in this case.
2. Rinse the brisket and season it liberally with the BBQ Beef Seasoning. Make sure you've got a good coating on both sides.
3. Put the brisket on the smoking rack and close the smoker, keeping the temperature at about 220 degrees. Smoke the brisket for 1-2 hours. You're NOT trying to cook the brisket at this stage. All you want to do is give it a good smokey flavor and 1-2 hours max over a wood fire will do just that.
4. Take the brisket out of the smoker and put it into a roasting pan. Make sure to seal the roasting pan with aluminum foil to seal in all the juices. Sealing the pan is key.
5. Put it in your oven at 220 degrees and leave it there overnight. I have cooked them at 190 degrees before as well. I like to start this in the evening after work to be used the next day.
6. Take the brisket out of the oven when you get up in the morning. The whole house will smell heavenly as it will be filled with the smell of smoked brisket. The brisket will be tender enough that when you start to shred the meat, pressing down on it with a fork will cause it to fall apart.
7. You will want to let the brisket "rest" after taking it out of the oven. Leave the foil and lid on the roasting pan during the resting period. 30 minutes to an hour is plenty of time.
8. I like to remove as much of the fat as possible, so I will trim off all the fat and throw it away. The juices can be used for a fantastic soup stock, but I don't use this either.
9. Shred the brisket and put the shredded meat in a crock pot. The bigger the brisket is, the bigger the crock pot will have to be. A 14lb. brisket will completely fill a 5 Qt. crock pot.
10. Mix in the bottle of BBQ sauce with the meat in the crock pot. Make sure you get it mixed into all of the meat. I have found that if you put a little bit of shredded brisket in the crock pot and mix BBQ sauce in, in small amounts, that you get a good even coating of BBQ sauce through all the meat.
11. Set the temperature to low and leave it for 3-4 hours. If you need it right away, set the temperature to high for 1-2 hours.

Serve on hamburger buns or rolls of your choosing. I promise that you will be very pleased with how this BBQ Brisket turns out.

Parenting tip #3

I have learned from experience, that kids need/want boundaries. Why do I say that? Because I have observed numerous small children with their parents out in public. I have noticed kids that understood that there were boundaries/rules of conduct when out in public and I have noticed kids that didn't understand, or maybe had not been taught when little, that there are rules of conduct based on the current circumstances.

Those children that had been taught, from a very young age, about boundaries were always well behaved out in public. They knew that if they "acted up" in public, they were going to answer to Mom or Dad and the outcome was NOT going to be one that they would be happy with. These children had been taught, when little, that some things/actions were pleasing to their parents and which things/actions resulted in some form of punishment.

How do you teach kids at home about boundaries? Start with very small, from your perspective, rules. For example, you might have a rule about snacking before meals. The negative consequence of eating within an hour of when dinner, or whatever meal we are talking about, will be served is that the children won't eat dinner. You or your wife probably just spent at least an hour fixing something that would be good to eat and bring the family together. If the child has broken the rule, they must face the consequences. In the example above, if my kids snacked before dinner, they knew that they would still be expected to eat dinner. If they didn't, they sat at the table until they did. Or, Dad would feed them. After they got to be about 9-10, they really didn't like having Dad feed them dinner. Because Dad would make it seem like they were still 1-2 years old when he fed them.

Some examples of rules to teach kids include: bedtime, meals, TV watching, reading, playing, computer, etc. The key to getting the rule to be obeyed is the "consequence fits the crime". Keep in mind, there are good consequences and bad consequences. Reward good behavior with something the child likes doing. When the behavior is bad, there needs to be some form of punishment. If you were to ask my kids what form of punishment was administered by Dad, they would tell you that he was a firm believer in "corporal punishment". Keep in mind, the punishment would be administered as soon as the offense was commited. The kids need to understand what they are being punished about and if the punishment can be administered as close as possible to the time the offense was commited, they will remember in vivid detail why they are in trouble.

A few years ago, my son was caught red-handed teasing his younger sister. He was about 10 and she was about 8. I was walking down the hall of our house, from our bedroom, and saw my daughter come out of the TV room. My son was right behind her and didn't see me coming down the hall. I observed him kick his younger sister. I was on him in about 3 steps. I picked him up and he started screaming bloody murder, thinking that Mom would rescue him. My wife was in the kitchen and came around the corner and saw me holding my son in the air. Keep in mind, I was not mad when I picked him up. My wife did not see what had happened and was not in a position to levy a punishment. I did see what happened and was able to administer a suitable punishment. I took him back into the TV room and got down on his level. I asked him why he had kicked his sister. I got the typical "I don't know" answer. I told him that if I ever caught him disrespecting any of his sisters again, he would not be able to sit down for at least 3 days. I did not spank him or hit him or anything else. He knew that I meant it and I never had any of those types of problems again. The "disrespecting his sisters" rule was cemented in his mind from that point on.

When he respected his sisters, he got rewarded with something that he liked to do. He was a very fast learner and found that he liked the rewards much better than the punishments. Especially when he got into high school. We never gave the kids a curfew. They would come home somewhere around 11-12 at night, because their friends had curfews and had to be home by a certain time.

The key to rules/boundaries is that the parents need to be the parents. They are NOT their kid's friend. They are the parent and sometimes they are going to be the bad guy when it comes to their kids. It's OKAY to be the bad guy Mom or Dad. If the punishment/consequence is administered with LOVE, the kids will eventually understand that you do love them. If the punishment/consequence is administered in anger, the kids will grow to hate, or dislike, their parents.

I also feel very strongly that when kids know they have rules/boundaries, they are happier and more well behaved. Start when they are babies. Yes, you heard that right, start when they are babies. The sooner you start being the "Parent", the sooner you will find out that you have become your kid's hero.

Remembering 9/11/01

I remember exactly where I was on 9/11/01. I was asleep. I was living in Oregon at the time and when my alarm went off in the morning, I thought it was weird that the radio was playing the news. That’s not what I usually use to wake me up in the morning.

As I listened to the news, I started hearing them talk about something that had happened in New York City. When I realized what they were talking about I turned on the TV and got on a news channel. It was then that I realized the magnitude of what had happened.

My wife woke up when she heard the TV on and asked me what I was doing. I told her that someone had flown a plane into one of the Twin Towers in NYC. She came right awake. We both watched in awe as the TV showed a 2nd plane crashing into the 2nd tower. We continued to watch as the towers started to collapse and wondered how many people must have been in both of those towers and died that day.

I went outside and said a silent prayer that the families of those who had died when the towers collapsed would be comforted and watched over. I also gave thanks for the chance that I had to be AT HOME with my family when this tragedy occurred.

I then went back inside the house and talked to my wife about friends that we knew. A good friend of ours had gone out of town with some friends and had gotten stranded because all air traffic had been grounded. She and her friends were able to rent a car and drive home, but they had all called their families to let them know that they were all right.

Scouts: A Learning Experience

As a Scoutmaster, I was responsible for making sure that my scouts went on campouts once a month. For months, I had done my best to make sure the boys planned for everything when it came to the campouts. It was like pulling teeth to get them to sit down and plan out where they would camp, what they would eat, what groceries needed to be purchased to fill out the meal plan, etc. There was one campout, where I am absolutely sure the boys learned the value of planning ahead.

One campout, the boys had planned out their menu and where they would go etc. The mom of 2 of the boys took her 2 boys and one other scout to buy the groceries for the troop. Bless her heart, she let them fail! Why do I say that? When they got to the grocery store, mom stayed up front while the scouts went shopping. She shadowed them the whole time to make sure they didn't destroy the store from the front of the store.

Well, the boys got everything on their list and came back up front. Mom, bless her heart, looked down in the basket and asked, "How many boys will you be feeding?" The boys told her how many would be eating. She looked down in the basket again and asked, "Are you sure you have enough food?" That should have been a tipoff to these boys that they didn't have enough food. They, however, answered by saying, "Yeah, yeah, we have enough food." Mom, being persistent, asked again, "Are you sure you won't run out of food? You are feeding x number of boys." They responded with, "We have enough. Let's go!" So, they left the store after buying the food in their basket. At this point, you can see what's coming, I hope.

I had to work late the day of the campout and a couple of the dads got all the boys transported out to the campsite. When I arrived, it was about dinner time. I unpacked my food and went to get utensils out of the trailer. I found what I was looking for, but it wasn't washed from the previous campout and needed to be washed. I asked, "Did anyone bring any water?" The scouts responded with, "I didn't think we would need to bring water with us." I asked them, "Do you see any water spigots out here?" It was a primitive area without posted campsites, if you couldn't tell. One of the dads spoke up and said, "I'll take a couple of the water containers and go back to town and fill them up." I said, "Great. Go for it." This dad took off with the water containers to get them filled up.

Meanwhile, it's starting to get dark and the boys are starting to get hungry. I, and the other dads, had planned our own menu and had purchased our own food. So, we set up the stoves and got our food cooking. We were cooking steaks with veggies and a dutch oven cobbler. When we broke out our food they all started complaining that we were eating better than they were. I told them, "Of course we are eating better than you, we brought our own food from our houses for this campout.

Anyway, they started cooking their hot dogs. That was what they had planned for their dinner. The hot dogs started getting done and someone asked, "Where are the hot dog buns?" The scout who had gone to the store and bought the supplies spoke up, "They are in the trunk of the dad's car that went to get water." Scouts are resourceful, I'll give them that. All the other scouts, except for the one who had spoken up and the dad's son who had gone for water, started eating the hot dogs without buns. We had some boys there that could have eaten a whole pack of hot dogs by themselves. The 2 boys who were waiting for the hot dog buns to return sat in a tent talking and amusing themselves until dad got back. By the time dad got back the hot dogs were history. These two boys ended up eating hot dog buns for dinner and whatever they could beg from the adults. I thought to myself, "This is working out quite well. The boys, hopefully, are learning that they have to THINK when they are planning an outing like a campout. They may go to bed hungry, but they certainly won't starve to death before they get home." As you can probably tell, there were some boys that went to bed quite hungry that night.

The next morning, I got up early to get the adult's breakfast started. I had planned a One Oven Breakfast in a dutch oven and needed to get charcoal heated up and everything mixed up and cooking, because it took an hour to cook this meal. The dad that had gone to town got up and helped me start mixing ingredients together for this meal. The recipe I was using called for 1 and 1/2 dozen eggs. We got all the eggs broken up and mixed in our other ingredients and got it all going in the dutch oven.

Meanwhile, the boys got up while we were mixing up our ingredients and started breaking out their food. They had purchased 2 16 oz. cartons of the pre-broken eggs. I could just see their little minds working in the store thinking, "I hate getting egg white on my hands when I break eggs. Hey! Here's some eggs that are already broken. And look, it says on the carton that there are the equivalent of 8 eggs per carton. We only need to feed 8 boys, 2 cartons should be enough." Well, they got both cartons poured out onto the grill and started cooking them. Those cartons of eggs really don't produce a lot when it comes to scrambled eggs. The scout doing the cooking turned to me with the pan in his hand and asked, "Do you think we'll have enough eggs?" Knowing that the answer was no. He then asked if I had some extra eggs that they could have. I told him that I had just dumped a dozen and a half eggs into the dutch oven and it wouldn't be done for another hour. He was dissappointed and the boys had about 1 bite each of eggs and they were gone. They had also bought some hash browns, a 5 lb. bag, for breakfast but nobody could find it.

Meanwhile, the adult's breakfast is finishing up cooking and I've made enough for at least 8 people. I was only feeding 5. Of course I had leftovers, but I told the boys, "You have to wait until we have finished eating before you can have any." I have never seen so many boys drooling like puppies before. We finished eating and I turned what was leftover to the boys. They finished off everything in the dutch oven including the crust on the bottom in less than 3 minutes.

What I was attempting to teach them was that, 1) You have to plan for success or else you will fail, and 2) When estimating how much food you will need for a meal, estimate on the high side.

When it came time to take the boys home, I took the 2 boys home that had done the shopping for the meals. When we got to their house, they started taking their gear out of the car and found out that the 5 lb. bag of hash browns was in the car the whole time. One of these boys had been told to bring those out of the car and put them in the cooler, but he felt like playing more than working, so he blew it off and didn't bring them in. He also forgot what he had done with them. Oops!

When I dropped them off, I took the mom and dad aside and thanked them profusely for letting the boys fail. The mom told me about their excursion to the grocery store and how everything went. She even gave me the commentary that I mentioned above. Mom took it as a compliment, but I could tell dad was a little ticked at me because I let his boys go hungry. I don't know if these boys will remember this campout, but I can tell you this, I will never forget it. Thank you Scouts for teaching me.