faulker009

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 ...

Football, Soccer, Ping-pong, Gockey. Name a game and we pretty much played it during our school’s three-day retreat to the mountains last week. And that was just during our “free” time. There was not shortage of activities, which made for some great father/daughter bonding time. She beat me in Tetherball.  By cheating. I beat everyone in Ga-Ga, three times.  By getting lucky. We lost as a team in Ping-Pong.  By two points. After two action packed days, the trip was coming to an end, but not without the finale:  Eco-Stratego, Mini-Survivor meets tag meets hide-and-go-seek Here are the rules -- two teams hide in the mountains... each player represents an animal...  one player on each team is the sun. Find the sun and you win.   Along the way, if you run down someone from the other team, tag them, and exchange your rank. Spider beats fly.  Human beats lizard.  Bear beats Lion or is it Lion beats Bear. Rule book please. As you might imagine, this is s...

For those of you that have read my blog since Day 1 (or even Day 11), you know that I am Jewish. And other than perhaps some of my rebellious brethren from the good book, this just in, Jews don’t hunt. Or fish. Or camp. Ok, maybe some do, but I don’t. Don’t blame me, it was the way I was raised. I was also raised that there is nothing more important than family and now as the parent of three, there is nothing more important than the kids. I guess that explains why I just went on a three-day camping retreat with my daughter’s school. To some of you diehards, it may not have been camping by definition, but the combination of mountains, cabins, sleeping bags and 56 seventh graders, qualifies for me. In plain and simple english, it was a GREAT time. Great father/daughter bonding time. Great getaway from the real world time. Great time. This is the second straight year that I’ve been a chaperone on this school trip.   Last year we went to one part of our state.  This time we went t...

My wife loves kids. She loves our three kids. She loves her 400 kids. That second group is the number of children she has taught in the last 15 years as a first grade teacher. This year she has a class of 26 students, but today only 25 showed up. The absent child would have preferred to be at school, but she didn’t get that choice. Over the weekend, she attended a birthday party, where there was cake and ice cream, and a slide. Unfortunately, before the dessert was served, she fell off the slide and bumped her head. Her parents took her to get checked out and they were told their child had a mild concussion. A few hours later, the headache became a lot more serious when the little girl started throwing up. As you would expect, her parents immediately took her to the emergency room where a cat scan showed severe swelling in her head. Had the parents waited, the result could have been tragic, but thankfully, the prognosis is for a full recovery. The doctors said t...

Performing under pressure in front of a crowd is nothing new to my 12-year old daughter. In fact, just three days ago, her dance troop was the opening act at a packed arena before an NBA game. This afternoon, the crowd was in the hundreds, not thousands, but the pressure felt like no other. It was her school spelling bee, attended by the entire student body. She was one of a dozen participants looking to win the title and represent her school in the district championships. In the past, work has precluded me from being able to attend such events. But as they say, unemployment has its benefits. Like many of us, I’ve enjoyed the National Spelling Bee, watching kids sweat it out and in some cases pass out, from the competition. But I’ve never had anything invested in it. Until now. I can guarantee that being a parent during a spelling bee is 1,000 times worse than being a participant. While I was sweating out EVERY letter, my daughter was calmly cruising through her words. I wa...