Weight Loss Wednesday: Happy America Day!

One of my friends on Facebook has renamed the holiday that we celebrate today, the 4th of July. He has coined it America Day (or more specifically 'Merica Day. Check out his Tumblr and I promise you will smile at least once). I really liked this sentiment, as it reminds us that the true name of the holiday is Independence Day, not "fireworks, barbecue and a day off of work." Today we celebrate our freedom and independence.  

Photo courtesy of http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

Instead of a regular weight loss Wednesday post, I am going to share a few things a coworker shared about this great America Day. This nation's independence is the reason that I have the freedom to write in this blog. It is the reason that we are free to assemble, speak our minds and make our own choices! I know it is not a typical Wednesday post, but I hope you enjoy.

·         1776- U.S.A. declared independence from Great Britain.

·         1777- On the 4^th of July, 13 guns were fired once in the morning and once in the evening in Bristol, Rhode Island.  Philadelphia celebrated our country’s first birthday with toasts, 13-gun salutes, speeches, fireworks, and parades.

·         1778- George Washington marked the 4^th of July with two times the ration of rum for his soldiers.  He also had an artillery salute.  Benjamin Franklin and John Adams held a dinner for fellow Americans in Paris, France.

·         1781- Massachusetts became the first state legislature to recognize the 4^th of July as a significant day.

·         1791- The first recorded use of the name “Independence Day” occurred.

·         1826- On July 4^th, former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died.

·         1870- Congress made the 4^th of July an unpaid holiday for federal employees.

·         1884- In Paris, On July 4^th, the Statue of Liberty was presented to the U.S.A.

·         1941- Congress made Independence Day a paid holiday for federal employees.

Photo courtesy of http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

As you relax and enjoy your America Day, I hope you will take a minute to ponder, and to teach your children about, the reason most of us are enjoying a day off of work. Have a safe, fun day and a great week. Thanks for reading and sharing this blog!

Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 6

Those of you who have children know, these little creatures say some very entertaining things. I got some great advice from someone I work with. She speaks from experience, as her children are now in their late teens and early twenties, when she tells me, "Chuck, you need to write these things down."
I decided that I not only need to write these things down, but I need to share them with other parents as well. Most of these quotes will have no context, because, to be quite honest, we usually don't get any context from the kids. We just happen to hear a part of what they are saying, and they will almost never repeat the phrases or explain them to us.

An actual conversation between the boy and I this week. 

Boy: Austin (a cousin) has armpit hair like you 

Me: Yup that's right.  

Boy: Some boys have armpit hair. 

Me: Where is yours? 

Boy: It is a really light color so you can't see it.

I picture something like this.
Only visible on a black background.

We caught another funny moment on our vlog... well, sort of. A few days ago the girl walked out of the back of the house, came up to me and said "I zombie ducky. Quack Quack. Brains." I tried to get her to say it for the camera (This never works by the way, the magic of a funny kid's saying cannot be extricated on command.) but she switched it to "I zombie monkey. Oooh Oooh, Eeee Eeee!" Here is a video in case you would like to watch. She says it at around the 2 minute and 10 second mark.

As I was getting ready for work on Friday morning, the boy was in the bathroom "helping" me to brush my teeth and participating in general 4-year-old-hi-jinks. Carley told him to go to the living room so that Daddy could get ready for work. His response was to cover his ears, run to the living room, spin in a circle and announce "Help me I'm going crazy!"

Those were our funny quotes this week. With kids around, you never know what to expect. Please let me know in the comments section any of the funny things the kids in your life have said. I'd love to hear your stories!

Related Posts:

• Crazy Things My Kids say, Volume 1

• Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 2

• Crazy Things My Kids say, Volume 3

• Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 4

• Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 5

Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 5

Those of you who have children know, these little creatures say some very entertaining things. I got some great advice from someone I work with. She speaks from experience, as her children are now in their late teens and early twenties, when she tells me, "Chuck, you need to write these things down."
I decided that I not only need to write these things down, but I need to share them with other parents as well. Most of these quotes will have no context, because, to be quite honest, we usually don't get any context from the kids. We just happen to hear a part of what they are saying, and they will almost never repeat the phrases or explain them to us.

The other night we were talking about monkeys, which is a common topic at our house. I asked the boy what his favorite type of monkey is. His response... "Zombie Monkeys!" 

Yeah, I drew a Zombie Monkey. What?

After I complimented the boy for following directions "Like a champ," he responded, "Like a champ-anzee?" I guess Monkeys are the theme this week.

 The boy randomly walked out of his bedroom and announced in his best Master-of-Ceremonies-voice "I'm Toooooooooooooom Burgeroooooooooooooon! (Tom Burgeron, from AFV.)

Again, somewhat random... the boy informed me that his plan for the day was "I'm gonna famous you up."

The kids emerged from the bedroom one night this week with their backpacks. The contents of the boys bag - as many toys as he could fit; the girls bag - one diaper, a pair of underwear an a stethoscope. They told us they were "Ready to go to Illinois."

Those were our funny quotes this week. With kids around, you never know what to expect. Please let me know in the comments section any of the funny things the kids in your life have said. I'd love to hear your stories!

Related Posts:

• Crazy Things My Kids say, Volume 1
• Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 2
• Crazy Things My Kids say, Volume 3
• Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 4 

Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 4

Those of you who have children know, these little creatures say some very entertaining things. I got some great advice from someone I work with. She speaks from experience, as her children are now in their late teens and early twenties, when she tells me, "Chuck, you need to write these things down."

I decided that I not only need to write these things down, but I need to share them with other parents as well. Most of these quotes will have no context, because, to be quite honest, we usually don't get any context from the kids. We just happen to hear a part of what they are saying, and they will almost never repeat the phrases or explain them to us.


Since my wife and kids were out of town this week, I didn't get many funny things out of them this week. Here are a couple of highlights though:

I am trying to lose weight. My son offered this gem, "S'mores are good for you when you are on a diet, Daddy." I have to admit, I like his style.

My wife and I teach some small children during Sunday school at church. One of our little guys told me "Mia is my girlfriend, but she doesnt play with me very much."

Those were our funny quotes this week. With kids around, you never know what to expect. Please let me know in the comments section any of the funny things the kids in your life have said. I'd love to hear your stories!


Related Posts:
Crazy Things My Kids say, Volume 1
Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 2
Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 3

Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 3

Those of you who have children know, these little creatures say some very entertaining things. I got some great advice from someone I work with. She speaks from experience, as her children are now in their late teens and early twenties, when she tells me, "Chuck, you need to write these things down."

I decided that I not only need to write these things down, but I need to share them with other parents as well. Most of these quotes will have no context, because, to be quite honest, we usually don't get any context from the kids. We just happen to hear a part of what they are saying, and they will almost never repeat the phrases or explain them to us.

We took a trip to the zoo this week, and the boy treated us to two gems:

As we were walking down the path Nate asked his Mommy why she had brown hair. She told him, "That is the color God made it." He then proceeded to look at a teenager who was passing by and commented to Carley (my wife) that "God made that girl's hair purple." Carley explained to him that sometimes people can change the color of their hair by using special dyes. He took a few minutes to think this over and said, "Oh, I guess Grandma must have chosen to turn her hair white then."

Here is another one that I caught on video. Click here to jump to the moment when we had the conversation, or watch the whole video below.

We took a train ride at the zoo, and as we drove past the elephants, I decided to ask Nate, "How do the elephants smell?" He looked up at me and very matter-of-factly stated "With their trunks." Even the strangers sitting with us on the train car got a good giggle out of that.

 

Those were our funny quotes this week. With kids around, you never know what to expect. Please let me know in the comments section any of the funny things the kids in your life have said. I'd love to hear your stories!


Related Posts:
Crazy Things My Kids say, Volume 1

Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 2

Crazy Things My Kids Say, Volume 2

Those of you who have children know, these little creatures say some very entertaining things. I got some great advice from someone I work with. She speaks from experience, as her children are now in their late teens and early twenties, when she tells me, "Chuck, you need to write these things down."

I decided that I not only need to write these things down, but I need to share them with other parents as well. Most of these quotes will have no context, because, to be quite honest, we usually don't get any context from the kids. We just happen to hear a part of what they are saying, and they will almost never repeat the phrases or explain them to us.

After Mommy said something about him being four years old Nate asked her "A four year old headache?" 

Out of the blue from the back seat of the car, "Dad, did you know Jesus has two daddies?" 

"Grandma wears underwear at night." 

During a prayer before dinner, "And please bless that we don't get hit by a meteor."

Those were our funny quotes this week. With kids around, you never know what to expect. Please let me know in the comments section any of the funny things the kids in your life have said. I'd love to hear your stories!


Related Posts:
Crazy Things My Kids say, Volume 1

Things My Children Said This Week, Volume 1

Those of you who have children know, these little creatures say some very entertaining things. I got some great advice from someone I work with. She speaks from experience, as her children are now in their late teens and early twenties, when she tells me, "Chuck, you need to write these things down."

I decided that I not only need to write these things down, but I need to share them with other parents as well. Most of these quotes will have no context, because, to be quite honest, we usually don't get any context from the kids. We just happen to hear a part of what they are saying, and they will almost never repeat the phrases or explain them to us.

"And then, the golden Jesus will make it go faster!" - The boy graced us with this from the back seat of the car one afternoon. We never learned what he was talking about.

One day last week I asked Nate why he had some bandages on his legs. I knew full well that he had been to the doctor that way, but his response brought a smile to my face. - "It is because I got shot!"

"Please bless us that we don't get hit by a meteor." - During a prayer before dinner tonight.

"I need like, one hundred books and a motorcycle." - When asked what supplies he would need for pre-kindergarten.

We were lucky enough to catch this last one on video. The quote happens at about 2:20 into our daily vlog.  He told us that his plan for the day was, "I'm just gonna pee on some ladybugs."

 

Those were our funny quotes this week. With kids around, you never know what to expect. Please let me know in the comments section any of the funny things the kids in your life have said. I'd love to hear your stories!

Synergy and the Allegory of the Long Spoons

Synergy is defined on Wikipedia  (I know, I know. This is not the most credible source I could have chosen, but it serves my purpose for this post.) as  two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable. We commonly talk about this phenomenon by saying, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." This quote is often attributed to Aristotle although there is no place in Aristotle's Metaphysics where the phrase "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" or anything similar can be found.


The Allegory of the Long Spoons is a story that we all know in some form or another. I would like to relate it to you, with some artistic license, as I tell it to my children.

In a land far, far away lived a group of small, colorful and furry creatures called the tots. There were two different kids of tots, the long-arms and the bendy-arms. The long-arms could stretch up very high into the sky, and the bendy-arms, while their arms were much shorter, could move their arms around any way they wanted.The tots' favorite food in the whole world was the sparkle-fruit. It was a fruit so delicious and juicy that the tots wanted to eat it all the time. It was very hard for the tots to eat a sparkle-fruit though, for you see, sparkle-fruits grew in trees  high up in the air. Each day the long-arms would go and stand under the sparkle-fruit tree and dream of eating the delicious fruit. The long-arms could reach the delicious fruit, but they could not bend their long arms to their mouths so that they could eat it. Since they could not eat the fruit, they would not pick it. The bendy-arms would also go and stand under the sparkle-fruit tree each day and dream of eating the fruit. If they could just get one of the fruits, they knew they could eat it, for their arms were short and bendy and could reach their mouth. The bendy-arms were not, however, tall enough to reach the fruit high in the trees.One day a very smart your tot named (whatever one of my children I am telling the story to... yeah, that is right, earning brownie points with the kids!) had an idea. He said that the long-arms should pick the fruit for the bendy-arms, and in return, the bendy-arms could feed the fruit to the long-arms. The tots learned to work together and ate sparkle-fruit as a team ever day after that.

As you can see, the story here effectively illustrates the idea that we can achieve more as a team than we can as individuals. I encourage each of you to keep this story in mind, or even share it with your team/children as appropriate. One of the key ingredients to a well-oiled team or family is, after all, teamwork - or synergy.

In true geek fashion, Hello World!

So, each day I make a vlog on YouTube. I usually start out my vlog by sharing some sort of anecdote, story or experience. My lovely wife has informed me that people don't want to hear that, they come to see the kids act silly. She may be right. I am not he most eloquent person in the world, and my southern drawl may take away from any good point that I do have to make. My new plan is to continue to share the happiness that my children bring to our family in the vlog, and place the rest of my rambling musings in this blog.

I am a junior to mid-level leader in the banking industry, directly or indirectly supervising from 20 - 25 people, and I have the ability to influence about 250 other associates on a regular basis. I am a happily married, proud father of two. I am active in my community, my church and my children's lives. I love all things geeky, but have a special spot in my heart for video games, Star Wars and spreadsheets. I have been known to keep a spreadsheet about a Star Wars video game... but that is a story for a different day. It took me almost 30 years to find out that there are other people like me in the world.

Each day I learn something that helps me to better serve those I work with, my customers, my community, my family or just helps me to live a happier life. I have learned a lot of things that I am happy to share with others, and I think some of it may even be useful to help other aspiring leaders to grow their careers.

As this blog progresses, you can look for me to post about my various interests and talents. Most likely the following topics will recur quite often:

Leadership and management
Parenting
Personal Finance
Happiness
Video Games
Random things that don fit any of the above categories

If you are a daddy, or want to be; If you are a leader, or want to be; If you just want to share thoughts with a fellow geek, this is the blog for you. I will try to keep the posts informative, thoughtful and entertaining. Please comment and share, as you will get out of reading this blog whatever you put into it. If you don't comment, I still get the therapeutic catharsis of writing out my thoughts!