Third Time Dad

Father’s Day was this past weekend and I had a great time. Nothing really happened as planned, but I still had a good time.

We planned to take the kids to Toy Story 3 as a special treat for the kids. (Of course it was only for the kids, and I haven’t been really excited about it since I heard that the movie was coming out last year. ). We bought 5 tickets for the 3D version online so we would be sure that we could get in.

Because of nap time, and how long it took us to get out of the house, we didn’t get there until 10 minutes before show time. The only seats that were still available were in the first two rows. The trailers were playing while we walked in, and they were a little loud. One of our daughters is sensitive to loud sounds, and she was very scared.  With the combination of the seating and the noise, we decided to leave the theater.

We then went to go for dinner, but every restaurant had about an hour wait. (We should have made reservations.) The kids were pretty restless, and wanted to go home or back to the movie.

We decided to go to a nice park instead. The kids had a good time. The older kids ran and chased each other, while I played with the youngest on the little kid playground.

When I was a new father, I would have wanted to have a “perfect” Father’s Day, watching a movie and having a nice dinner. I may have been disappointed or upset that things didn’t work out as planned. Honestly, I enjoyed the time that spent with them that day. We had a lot of fun at the park, and I am very lucky that I could spend it with my amazing wife. I can’t imagine a better Father’s Day.

Tags: expectations, Father's Day
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I mentioned RoboGames last year.  RoboGames will be at the San Mateo County Fairgound next weekend.  I think that the kids would have a blast here.

Tags: RoboGames
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My wife and I have been married 10 years, this year.  I am looking forward to growing extremely old with her.

(Extremely Old with You is a great song by Paul and Storm.)

Tags: Paul and Storm
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Microsoft, the Entertainment Software Association and others have partnered to create Get Game Smart. This website help education parents and children about the tools that are available to allow kids to be safe while playing video games.

I really like their focus on education about Parental Control settings, ESRB ratings, and finding family friendly games. In addition, this site has tips on how parents can talk to kids about cyber-bullying, and helping kids and parents creating balance with kids screen time.

I hope sites like this one will help prevent the FUD with video games, like stories like I mentioned before.

Tags: Get Game Smart, Microsoft, parental controls, video games, Xbox
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This post has a pretty funny, but pretty true, graphic describing how dads and moms dress kids

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A few months ago one of our family members had their computer taken. This computer had her financial information, and other important information like usernames and passwords. She eventually got the computer back. About a week later, there was $1100 of charges to her PayPal account.

While I was visiting, I set her up with a LifeLock subscription. I also signed my wife and I, and our kids up for a sibscription.   I want to make sure that no one using any of our identies.  LifeLock does a few things for you

• Sets up fraud alerts with the credit reporting agencies, and every 90 days.
• Requests that subscribers names are removed from pre-approved credit offers
• Requests that credit reports are sent every year.
• Helps to contact banks if your wallet is lost or stolen
• Helps to detect identity theft.
• Will hire lawyers if you are ever a victim of identity theft

Most of those things you can do yourself.  I figure that paying LifeLock to do it for you, reduces the the things that I need to keep track of.

Tags: LifeLock
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In this post, I mentioned that I created a calendar where I could put activities around the bay area for families. I have put it on this page to make it easier to find.

If you know of any activities that would be good for families, please feel free to leave a comment.

Tags: activities, calendar
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For our daughter’s birthday, she was given a great book, Jazz Baby by Lisa Wheeler.  Our kids love this book.  The kids like rhythm and rhyme in the book.  The illustrations are great in the book.  Our daughter likes to look at the people in the illustrations, and recognize similarities with people in our family.

Also, our son loves to read the book to our daughters too.  I would recommend this book.

Tags: books
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Every once in a while, we have  family movie night.  The kids can stay up a little bit later an watch a movie.   I have been scheduling various children and family movies to be recorded on our DVR.  Our kids have really enjoyed some of the classic movies.  They have really enjoyed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Mary Poppins, and Black Stallion.

Tags: movies
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RoboGames is coming to San Francisco in June.  A few years ago, I went and had a blast.  Maybe this year I will take our son.  I think that he would love it.

[via GeekDad]

[picture by Scott Beale]

Tags: RoboGames, Robots
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