I learned two important things yesterday. One happened in the morning, and the other in the evening.

I was helping The Fox make his usual breakfast. Which consists of a peanut butter on toast sandwich. The Fox eats this meal almost every morning. Seriously, every day. It is one of his favorite meals. I have made this for hom many times before. But, this morning was different. This was the morning he decided to tell me how to make the sandwich. “Dad, you put the peanut butter on the inside.” Then it hit me. He doesn’t think I can cook or make a sandwich. His instructions were very specific.

Later that night, I was reading The Fox a bedtime story. It was some Lego Heros book that we got from the library. We’ve had it for a couple of weeks and he has mostly memorized the story and a good percentage of the words. While reading the story to him, he started correcting me on my reading. Correcting me with what he thought was the correct words in the sentence. Does he not think I can read?

So it has begun, the youngest child is going to start correcting me at everything I do for him.

Woo Hoo, lucky me.

This weather makes me very happy. I love being outside.
Tonight may be the first nice night of the year. Definitely heading outside with the Little People.
What are your plans for the weekend?
Anything big planned?

Until next time, have a good one.

Get out and walk, dammit!

Get moving!

You can Donut!

Just do it!

Two events coming up, I want to share them with you.

Event One, The Kahuna Virtual 5k

Indy Walk Saturday, March 30th, 2013 @ 9am EST.

This weekend. Walk, run, or crawl a 5k. You have until today until Sunday to complete this goal. Many of you have been training. That’s awesome. There are group runs in New Jersey, Minnesota, and Indianapolis. The Indianapolis run, walk, crawl is meeting on the Monon Trail at 111th street at 9am Saturday morning. We’ll be walking north from 111th to the other side ofthe  bridge and back. That’s tomorrow. Come out and join us. This is not a race. Just a fitness walk. It will take as long as it takes you. There’s no cut off time. Also, it’s free.

Here’s the Minnesota info.

MN-Meeting at Lake Calhoun @ 9am. There is more info on the Facebook event page.

And the FB event link

 

Event Two, The American Heart Association’s National Walking Day

Wednesday, April 3rd 2013 @ 5pm EST.

This is their annual event to get people active. They want you to walk for thirty minutes on this day. I encourage you to get moving. Get out and walk. If you wait for a parking space close to the door when shopping, take it slow. Try parking at the rear of the parking lot.

At one point in my life, the only speed walking I did was to race to the buffet to beat out some senior citizen to get the last dinner roll.

There’s a group walking on the Monon Trail at 5pm on April 3rd. We are meeting at the 96th street parking lot. We’ll walk 15 minutes north and back. This walk should be about two miles long. We’ll walk to 106th street and back.

Here’s the Facebook event page.

 

 

Both events are free. Hope to see you on the trail.

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This week on the Kahuna Happiness Project,

Last weekend, I ran around a nature preserve while chasing my kids and pretending to be a zombie. It was unbelievably awesome. We were together, we were outside, we were playing, and mamma bear got to do her thing for the play she’s producing. It was the same as going to the park, except, it was in a small forest.

Since we live near the Ritchey Woods Nature Preserve, we were able to go on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday, it was a Fox and me day. Don’t tell MaM, but the Saturday adventure ended up with a shake and ice cream. Sunday, both kids got to be zombie victims. After a poll on Twitter and Facebook, we determined that if it is daytime, these zombies are friendly. If it was spoken on the internet, it must be true. To alleviate his own fear of zombies, The Fox kept telling me I was a friendly zombie.

Spending time and playing with my kids makes me very happy. Getting to see them enjoy the outdoors is an awesome thing thing to watch. Although they keep looking for deer, them screaming as they run away from me scare the the deer away from the kids and I. With my responsibilities at work increasing and the kids getting more involved in extracurricular activities, I need to make the time I spend with them extreme quality time. That mean reducing the time I spend staring at my phone reading status updates and looking at cat pictures. I am not trying to be preachy, this is what I need to do to be happy. If you think I’m a nut for wanting to spend time with my kids, you are more than welcome to. I pray you come to your senses before your kids become adults with their own lives. I want to think that most dads would want to spend time with their families.

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being most awesome, on the Kahuna Happiness Scale, playing with my kids at the nature preserve ranked a ten.

Get out and spend some time with your kids. Do it this weekend. You don’t have to plan, your kids just want to spend time with you. Just go with the flow.

As the weather gets warmer, I think I will bring back a feature we had last year on the blog, Parks We Visit and Play At. I just write up a short blurb about the parks we go to and whether or not the kids like them. We may also bring back the “Hot Mom” rating. We’ll have to see about that last one. If this is the one blog post my wife actually reads, we will not have a Hot Mom rating this year.

Take Care and Be Awesome,

BgK

I am on a new quest, to find out what makes people happy. You can call this the Kahuna Happiness Project(KHP). I am going on a mission to explore what makes people happy. I won’t be asking my wife this question because it will probably revolve around me doing the dishes. I want to talk to people about how they define happiness. How do you define it? What ( family friendly ) things make you happy? I wonder if the people who are working minimum  wage jobs are happy with their lives. Not that money is everything, but how do they view happiness.

What you do you think it is? Money, fame, recognition, power, serving others? I have no idea. I really don’t even know what makes me happy anymore. I enjoy my family, my job, and the things I do. But, am I happy? Or is this like The Matrix? One thing that does make me happy is exercising. That is one thing that I have consistently worked at over the last six months. I see working out as my therapy sessions. Of course there is some neurological activity happening there, but I feel a lot better on the days I exercise than the days I don’t. If I go two days without exercising, I get a little antsy. Three days and there’s a good chance someone is going to get hurt.

A couple weeks ago, we did the Free Hugs Indy event. That seemed to make people happy. Both the huggers and the huggees really enjoyed the event. In a couple weeks, we have a virtual 5k. There is a lot of chatter on our Facebook event page about people looking forward to this event at the end of March. That make me happy to see people bettering themselves.

I am reading a book that is a 52 week plan to live a more enjoyable life. I just started it and I am making some small habit modifications. The focus is taking care of me. Weeks one and two are about meditation and eating better. Yeah, easy start because I am already on that plan.Yes, I eat better. I am still working on mediation. I hope this does not chill me out too much.

So, our blogging journey is going to take a slightly different direction in the next few months. We are still going to have some fun but it will probably be a lot more calmer than the past couple of years. In social media they call it “re-branding”. At least that’s what I learned on Twitter. I hope you stick around. If you are an unhappy person, you may learn something. Or just stop reading and go away, it’s ok, I am not offended. If that makes you happy, that’s awesome.

Take Care,

LkM