faulker009

Disclaimer : If you are a parent, you will probably do a lot of nodding during this blog.   If you don’t have any kids, you will probably do a lot of nodding off. Either way, I hope you enjoy it.  It is Sunday night and we just completed a marathon. Not a real marathon, that’s too much work, but... It all began Friday night with game one of my son’s weekend baseball tournament. Following a satisfying win and an even more satisfying meal with the family, we got back home at around 9:30. It was a quick lights out as the alarm clock was scheduled to go off at 5:50am to get us ready for game two. A quick lights out for everybody but me. I’ve always been a night owl and no matter what is scheduled for the next day, I always have a hard time getting to bed early. I have this little unwritten rule in my head though, as long as I sleep five hours or more, I am fine.   Four hours and 59 minutes or less and it is guaranteed to be a two coffee day. For this night, my goal was Midnig...

I am officially running for Father of the Week. I realize it is a long shot, and I know the week is not over, but I feel like I’ve done my part to at least be under consideration for the award. Of course, I have my good friend unemployment to thank for giving me this great opportunity and a boat load of free time. The week began on Monday with Field Day. Field Day is the official name for “kids get a day out of the classroom to play a bunch of games in a local park.” It always comes at the end of the year and ours included a BBQ, jumpy castle, pickup soccer games, softball, lacrosse and a whole lot of quality gossip time. My daughter and her friends seemed to enjoy the last part more than anything. She took full advantage of the break to hang out with her buddies, but we did sneak in a four-on-four flag football game before lunch. There were probably more than 200 students there, representing sixth, seventh and eighth grades. The sixth graders occupied most of the field, playing every ...

What an almost perfect weekend it was. I’ll get to the almost in a bit, but like the good book, let’s start at the beginning. I got a call a few days ago from a friend who said that she was going to be in the neighborhood this weekend. Well, not exactly the neighborhood, but my state. Considering she lives in a different time zone, a two-hour drive was the least I could do. So I loaded up the car and took the two older kids on a road-trip. My wife stayed home with our six year-old and the dog. The ride there gave me and my 12-year old daughter and 11-year old son a great opportunity to catch-up as they entered their spring break. I’ve got satellite radio in my car so we had a lot of musical options. For the most part they wanted the Top 40 station and I gave in to be a good dad. Did you know that Lady Gaga and Lady Antebellum are not related? Who knew? At one point, I was looking to get a little break and give the kids a little culture, so I flipped on preset #7. The Broa...

There are several family traditions that I hope will never change, no matter the situation. Turkey on Thanksgiving. BBQ on the 4th of July. Gambling on the Super Bowl. I certainly realize that being unemployed should trump dipping into my savings account to guess whether or not a team is going to win the coin flip, but I have always been very disciplined in my gambling, NEVER betting more than I can afford to lose. Of course, we have passed on those rules to my 12-year old, 10-year old and six-year old. Child services, on line four. My son, the middle of the three, is a HUGE sports fan, just like me. Like me, he would watch any sport at any time. I used to think that he really loved sports, but as my wife explained to clueless old me a few years ago, he just wanted to bond with me. Looking back, I think that was probably true when he was younger, but now he is a REAL sports fan. The last thing he does at night is check the scores. The first thing he does in the morning is w...