Episode 20 – Holiday Traditions

Gingerbread Train 2011

Gingerbread Train

I talked about Family Identity in Episode 12. It is important for dads to cultivate a sense of family identity. Getting your family together for a project like an annual gingerbread train or house is a great way to build family identity. Enter your creation into a competition. Have some fun with the project by creating some custom cars. Read more about the annual Osborne Family Gingerbread Train on Grill’n Time.

The Father’s Mandate – Where to learn more?

Best – Take a Growing Kids God’s Way class in a small group setting
Better – Go through the videos as a couple at home (GFI.org sale)
Good – Read On Becoming Childwise: Parenting Your Child from 3-7 Years

Find a Growing Kids God’s Way Class in your local area by visiting the GrowingKids.org web site. Use the “General Ministry or Curriculum” contact email address to ask about classes in your area.

Listen to the eight part series on The Father’s Mandate

1.  A father must cultivate a sense of family identity.
2.  A father must regularly demonstrate love to his wife.
3.  A father must understand and respect his child’s private world.
4.  A father must give his children the freedom to fail.
5.  A father must be the encourager of the family.
6.  A father must guard his tongue and his tone and learn to measure his response against the excitement on their faces.
7.  A father must routinely embrace his children.
8.  A father must build the trusting relationship on God’s Word, not on human wisdom.

Update on Caden – He broke his arm and the next week was hospitalized with pneumonia.

Tech Time:

Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson – Security Now Podcast

Which apps are safer? Apps from the Android market or the Apple App store?

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Dads – Stay Home or Work Outside the Home

The stay home dads seem to be well represented and encouraged on the Internet. A fairly large percentage of the more popular dad blogs that I read seem to be written by dads who stay home. There seems to be a deficit of encouragement specifically for dads who work outside the home.  Even harder to find is encouragement in blogs for dads who work outside the home while mom stays home.

This blog will help fill in that gap. We will provide encouragement for all dads in terms of parenting tips, finances, family fun, marriage, but will provide an extra dose of encouragement for dads who work outside the home.  To take things a step further we will help encourage dads who desire to be the sole bread winners of their families so that mom can be provided the best opportunity to stay home with the children. There are few things more discouraging for a young couple than having a desire to allow mom to stay home but being stuck in circumstances that just will not allow for this to happen.  Allowing mom the opportunity to stay home is a great goal and there is hope to make it happen.

My wife and I both graduated college and entered the workforce as a two-income household. We originally (before children) planned on her going back to work after maternity leave.  Our plans changed and we are glad they did. But we were not prepared for the change in plans…especially from a financial perspective. As this blog unfolds I will share some of our challenges in transitioning from a two-income household to a single income household.