What have I been doing?  I have been very busy doing other internet ventures that should be successful in the near future.  I am number 2 on Google for Dad Blog and have not been putting it to good use.  I will be updating my blog in the future per the insane amounts of comments I have been receiving. 

As you can see on my last post, I was going to start a new Dad Blog awhile back because I am tired of the laziness of our society and the new laws that were being passed to encourage even more laziness.  Then I decided against it because I want to promote a positive point of view and lead by example. 

In the past year, my son is growing by leaps and bounds. He is now 2 and keeps us very busy. 

I have been doing super dad duty the last 2 months.  My wife is on bed rest as we are expecting our 2^nd child in March!  With my son, we did not find out his sex.  This one, well, my wife could not wait. We are having a girl.  I am very excited to have one of each. 

So, yes, I am back.  You will be hearing back from me again on this blog.

This will be one of my last dad blogs at real dad blog.  I will be having a new domain and new dad title.  I am excited for the change as my new blog will be bigger and better.  Stay tuned and get ready for a new journey!

One of my big rewards as a teacher is being able to do community service projects as a teacher.  The last two schools years I was able to get a grant to take my students on a monthly community project.  The grant covers the transportation to get form point A to B and then back.  Some of my favorite projects have been packaging food for hungry kids in Haiti through Feed My Starving Children, organizing books for shipping at a place called Books for Africa, and doing fall and spring cleanup in the local community.

Today’s community service project was at a place called People Serving People.  It is place that provides homeless families with a place to live while helping them finding jobs and provides education to get them back on their feet.  People Serving People has a very good thing going on there.

Today, my students made poinsettia ornaments so kids could get presents from church families.  We put in our time for a very good cause.  It is very neat to see my students want to go on community service projects.  My students come from a variety of financial backgrounds.  Some of the students are filthy rich and some are very poor.  The neat thing is that they all like to give and make other people happy.

I was touched walking into People Serving People today.  I saw little kids without homes being given a chance to be warm.  As a dad, my heart goes out to them.  I am just glad the parents and the children have a chance to receive help to get back on their feet.

I am excited to share these same experiences with Rylan and my future children.  It is good to give time for good causes.   All dads can show their kids it is important to give your time to help people.  All people need a friendly hand.

Dad Loser - Bad Dad

Real Dad Blog Version: I think William T. Hurley might get the dad loser of the year for this incident.

A few days ago, a dad got mad at his 10 year old son for who knows what. What happened next was a child’s worse nightmare. His dad started beating him with his fists and burned him with a hot iron. The boy escaped from his father and sought refuge in the oven. The dad, in his not so brilliant moment, decided to turn the oven on. Luckily, the boy got out when the oven started getting warm. The cops finally came and the boy was rescued.

The police arrested the dad. To make this story worse, the man told his police that he would beat his son again and then actually tried to beat him in front of the officers.

This dad does need some serious help if he ever wants to see his child again. William T. Hurley, you get the dad loser award and probably should never see your son again. Know matter how bad your 10 year old son is, he doesn’t deserve what you gave to him. A spanking is one thing, but burning him and beating him? Then you have to go and turn the oven in when he was so scared of you he was hiding in the oven.

Your son is my prayers. I hope he gets the reform he needs so he will never be like you.

I was thinking the other day what are some good qualities of a dad.  I want to make sure I show these good qualities to my children on a regular basis.

1. Strive to be a good dad – without motivation, you are lazy and nothing. Find motivation and you will have a happy fatherhood.
2. Learn from your mistakes and other people’s mistakes – Mistakes are great if you learn from them and try your best not to do them again.
3. Talk to your children – Yelling at a 2 year old?  They learn from you. Talk to your children about the rights and wrongs.
4. Read to your children  – A great bonding experience plus higher IQ’s!
5. Play with your children – Play has a lot of benefits like memories your children will have.
6. Tell the truth always – There is no reason to lie to your kids unless you want them to lie to you too.  My wife taught me that telling the truth is very important.  I live my life with honesty and feel better about it.
7. Treat your wife well – Your children must learn how to treat the opposite sex.  They learn the majority from you.
8. Treat other people well – Saying please and thank you and helping your neighbors goes a far way.
9. Promote good health – You are your child’s role model of what your kids eat and how much they care about exercising.
10. Want to be a dad – If you are not ready, keep it in your pants.  Children are a lot of responsibility and deserve good parents.

There are many more qualities of a good dad.  These are the first 10 I could think of.  I will be posting more good qualities of a dad in the near future.  Just remember that being a dad is an awesome thing.  Your kids deserve the best.

Richard Heene - Dad Loser #3

Richard Heene, I am sure you can think of better ways to help your family.  Lying to the world about your child being in the balloon should have not been on the list.  I hope you are now a better role model to your kids.  I also hope you have to pay back all the tax payer money wasted in your hoax.

Your hoax got you on the dad loser list as dad loser #4.  Your face has been the media enough where I do not have to explain what you did more than I already have.

Dad loser 1,2, and 3 can be found on the dad loser list.

Baby First Time in Leaves

Real Dad Blog Version:  Sharing memories with your children is an awesome thing.  Watching your kids play in the pile of  fall leaves brings a lot of joy to this dad.

One of things I remember as a kid is raking leaves and playing in them. We would stack the leaves up as high as we could, jump in and out of them and try to bury ourselves so no one could see us.  Those were some good old days of playing in the piles of leaves.

Baby Popping out of leaves!

On Sunday, I spent some hours raking leaves into piles.   I was thinking to myself how much fun it would be as a dad to show my son the good times piles of leaves can be.  So, I decided to make a huge pile that my one year old could play in.

Baby Studying Leaves

I had to play the waiting game until my wife got home from the grocery store with our son.  When they got home, I ran up there to tell her that we have to have Rylan play in the leaves.  It would be so much fun.  She was then excited about it to.

Baby Hiding Leaves

We got Rylan dressed to play in the leaves with an old sweatshirt and sweatpants.  When we arrived at the leaves, I set him in there and the leaves were almost to his face.  He looked at me like, dad, what is going on.  He then got a huge smile on his face.  I knew that face was telling me thank you, this is the coolest thing ever.

He played in the leaves for about 20 minutes.  It could have been a lot longer, but we had a birthday party to get to and the Viking game to watch.  Having your child share in the joys you had as a kid is an awesome thing.  Seeing Rylan throw the leaves, crawl through the leaves and just have a good old time in the leaves, made me a very happy dad.

Swimming in leaves to get dad

Baby Gutting Pumpkin with Dad's Help

Real Dad Blog Version: This dad enjoyed his days of Halloween with his son.  I also give some Halloween suggestions.

Halloween starts weeks in advance for children and moms. Moms get the candy all ready for the big day and decide what costumes their babies should wear if their kids are not old enough to pick out their own. For dads, they probably do not really care as long as the costume their kids wear is pretty cool. We do get into a

Baby pumpkin puzzle

couple of things such as giving out candy to the kids, walking door to door, saying trick or treat, or bring our kids around the blocks with their pillow cases. We, also, do the pumpkin carving because we enjoy taking out the guts. The greatest joy is seeing the excitement of our kids faces.

Baby's Jack-o-Lantern

My Halloween started the night before as we carved out Rylan’s second Halloween pumpkin. It brought back the childhood memories when I got to take out the seeds and play with the gooey insides. Seeing Rylan getting excited playing with the inside of the pumpkin got me thinking about the future; the future of Halloween and children getting excited for their cool costumes and their creative jack-o-lantern designs.

Pumpkin Costume Getting Ready for Halloween

Our son was a pumpkin for his second Halloween. It was not this dad’s first choice but when it is a gift from my mother in-law and my wife just wants his kid to be cute, there is not much a dad can do. I just shrugged my shoulders and went along with the cuteness.

Back from Trick or Treating

Even though I wished he were something else, he still was a little stud in the pumpkin outfit. He enjoyed wearing his little costume. He also enjoyed going to trick-or-treating all around the neighborhood while seeing all the other children in the ghost and goblin costumes. My wife got to take him to all the houses while I got to hand out all the candy. It was an awesome feeling to see her so excited to have a cute little guy in a pumpkin outfit.

Calling it quits from a long night of trick or treating

When Rylan got back from the Halloween festivities, I saw a big smile on his face. He was so happy doing something fun and exciting. Even though he has to give all of his candy away and probably will not remember his first experience out tricking or treating for candy, I know it was a great learning experience for him. I am excited to share more memories of Halloween with him and our future kids. Bring on the pumpkin guts and ghostly costumes!

Look at my candy dad!

Dad Parenting Suggestions for Halloween

• Let your wife have her way with what your kids are for Halloween.  It is great feeling seeing them happy about their kid’s Halloween costume.
• Do not buy Almond Joys for candy or other weird candy.  Kids find that uncool. Whoops!
• Find a cool costume and not too scary.  I hate seeing little kids scared.   You can always find a scary mask for the older kids.
• Always make sure your kids are safe.  This comment is self explanatory.
• Your most important job is carving out pumpkins if your kids are not old enough.  A lot of wives hate the gutting of pumpkins.

Dreaming about eating candy in the Halloweens to come

Baby's first Halloween with Dog - The memories on how fast they grow!

Tonight we bought our son a larger toy box than we had before. We were in desperate need of a toy box for all the new toys he has received in the last few weeks.  One year olds have a lot of toys!

We bought him a Winnie the Pooh toy box from Toys R Us.  I was all ready to put the toy box together.  I pulled out the directions to take look at how easy it was to complete.  Unfortunately the directions were the worst directions I have ever seen.  Instead of it taking 20 minutes to put together as any man would think, it took me a little less than an hour.

With my son’s birthday a couple of weeks ago, I am starting to realize what my dad went through with six kids.  I am seeing the joys and frustrations of putting toys and other kids things together.  The toys Rylan has received have been very easy to put together.  Now his toy box was more of a chore than it should have been.

I have realized this is just a warm up for the years to come.  As more children come, I will be putting even more difficult things together than a toy box. I love the learning experiences I am getting as a new dad.

Dad Farts

Real Dad Blog Version:   Dad farts!  I do not think I need to go into any more detail.

We all know that our dad farts are smelly and disgusting to our wives. We also know that our wives do not fart.  As my older brother would say, all women play the air guitar. A nicer way to put it is they “drop roses.”  We could take the lovely smell in for hours at a time if it is our own.  If it is someone else’s fart, we may keel over and die.  Farts are a very serious matter as they can be both fun and disgusting.   When it comes to babies though, it is a laughing matter.

It all happened about a month ago when our son was about 11 months old.  I had a bowl of chili so my gas was primed and ready for some noise action.  The pressure was building up in my lower abdominal region.  The pressure got so great I had to let it go.  I let out rip roaring fart. My wife game a look of disgust while my son started laughing his head off.  He looked at me with tears in his eyes because he laughed so hard. It was a look of dad; you are the coolest for farting like real man.  I gave him a look back like I was proud of that one.   I also could tell he felt I scored one for the team by grossing his mom out.

Ever since that day our son will laugh if anyone farts.  He even laughs at his own loud gas bubbles.  What makes it a game is when he hears the flatulent sound he makes the fart sound with his tongue and then laughs and laughs.  It is unbelievable that he picked up the corresponding sound of his tongue and real farts.   I am glad I have a smart boy on my hands.  He is on his way to becoming a real man by enjoying farts as well as making similar sounds that correlate to his butt and mouth.   He’ll just have to learn in the future that when he gets married, it is better to hold it in instead of grossing out the wife.