Kim and I recently hosted some good friends for lunch. Among the troupe of visitors was a five-year-old boy with blonde hair named Elroy. He approached the door with a pointy yellow crown stationed on his head. It was crudely bejeweled with markers of varying color. "What's with the crown?" I asked. He didn't skip a beat. "I'm the King of Pretending," he exclaimed. I was honored; it was the first time we were able to welcome royalty into our home. As I observed him throughout the day, playing with cars and creating things out of Play-Doh, it became very clear that this monarch was the …
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Try The Alligator
During a recent trip to southern Louisiana, I tried me some deep fried alligator. It tasted like chicken (with a hint of fishiness.) I enjoyed it immensely. I also tried frog legs for the first time, and some warm, delicious beignets from Café Du Monde in New Orleans. We had a program near Lafayette, and tacked on an extra day to explore The Big Easy. I'm not sure which was better: the people or the food. Our hosts were friendly, gracious, and Cajun to the bone. And the yummy shrimp, jambalaya, gumbo, and red beans and rice still has my tummy smiling. It's a close call, but both made for …
Too Old To Draw
At a speaking engagement in Fort Worth, Texas, we passed out paper and crayons to the audience and asked them to draw a funny picture with the intent of hiding it in an unexpected place for someone else to find. We call it a Doodlesmile. Eager for the opportunity to draw with crayons, most of them dove right in. Except for a nice-looking lady in her seventies. She sat with her paper blank and her arms crossed. My brother-in-law, who happened to be sitting right next to her, asked, "Aren't you going to draw something?" Her response: "I'm too old to draw." Too old to draw? Hmm. I …
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
I have heard other parents say about parenthood that if their child lives to see adulthood it'll be a miracle. Forget about raising "good kids" just try to keep them alive! I've been very aware of this recently. There are times in the middle of the night when I'm so out of it that I think it's a miracle that I don't accidentally bump Lucy's head on the doorway as I walk her to the living room for her feeding. With having an infant in the winter (in Wisconsin), there have been so many occasions when Jason or myself are carrying her in her car seat and have had to balance ourselves over ice …
Benefits of a Different Kind
When I was a teenager, my Dad always stressed the importance of getting a job with benefits. He made a convincing argument, but in the back of my mind, I always feared that I'd end up disappointing him. Even then, I knew that my career path was unlikely to take a normal route. At that time, I envisioned a career as an illustrator. Most of the cushy studio jobs were gone, and freelancing was the most likely option. Benefits were a long shot, but I reasoned I'd rather do something I loved without them than spend fifty years in a job I hated just to have them. My career path made some …
What Did YOU Want To Be?
One of the questions that Kim and I almost always ask when we interview someone is, "When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?" Sometimes the answer to that question is the best sound byte of the whole interview. It's certainly always interesting, and it never ceases to amaze me how often it ties in to the life's work of the interviewee. Particularly the ones who are doing what they love. Our friend Brett Farmiloe is making a career out of getting people to think differently about their career paths. We interviewed him a while back (listen to it here) and when we …
Goofy Dads
I was blessed to have grown up in a household with a super fun dad. Every 4th of July I would wake up to the sound of fire crackers being set off outside my bedroom window, along with patriotic music blaring from the living room. Every April 1st he'd wake us up with a big story for us about school being canceled or a snow storm that hit overnight. My dad is one of those fun dads! I am confident Jason will be one of these dads. Afterall, it is true what they say about marrying someone like your dad. Jason proves this theory on a daily basis. We ran across another fun dad last week at a …
Tip of the Week: Hero For a Day
This week’s Escape Plan challenge (aka our Tip of the Week) is #35: Hero For a Day: Do something to make the day of a child. In almost all of Jason's speaking programs he talks about a problem that many adults have, which is that they live by rules that don't exist. One example he gives is how I accomplished Challenge # 11 during our original undertaking of The Escape Plan. I decided to eat dessert first. Why? Because there's no rule saying I can't! It was glorious! In yesterdays intergenerational program (ages 5-105) Jason asked the kids "How many kids here would like to have dessert …
Quality of Life
I'm reading an excellent book, "The Mystery of Children: What Our Kids Teach Us About Childlike Faith," by Mike Mason. One line just jumped off of the page today... "Is the quality of your life such that your children come to you to find out what your secret is?" Hmm. That's truly something to contemplate. You can easily replace the word "children" with coworker, spouse, neighbor, sibling, etc. Notice the word "quality." That word can mean so many different things for each person. I guess the common denominator is happiness. Are you living life with a level of happiness that makes others ask …
Tip of the Week: Paste Is Not A Food Group
This week’s Escape Plan challenge (aka our Tip of the Week) is #38: Paste is Not a Food Group: Make someone a homemade gift to show how much you care about him/her or to thank him/her for a job well done. Kids are experts at this! Any kindergarten teacher will tell you that there simply aren't enough bulletin boards available to post all of the "gifts" that they receive in a school year. Jason, being the creative/artistic (and childlike!) type has always been one to show his appreciation and affection through homemade gifts. His family home is filled with gifts he made for his parents …
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