There are people out there who would tell you that you shouldnt take three young children under the age of the 6 on a trip overseas. They may be right. I don't actually agree with them but somewhere over the Atlantic at 2:00 am when I was trying to...

We’re leaving on a house swap this Sunday. A “what” you might ask? A house swap. It’s like a wife swap, but instead of giving my wife to a stranger in exchange for his wife, we just do the same with houses. If we were to have a...

I had a dream. It was a simple dream and one that I was sure that I could accomplish. My dream was to lose a little weight while I was visiting my family in Kentucky. Now, I’m not super-overweight or anything. Small children don’t turn and...

Yesterday, we crossed the river into Illinois to visit the little town of Metropolis. Now, from what I can tell, this town only has two things going for it: 1) A casino, which attracts old people, money and pawn shops. And 2) The name Metropolis, which...

On Sunday we began the first leg of our journey to visit family and friends spread out through the middle of the Eastern U.S. We drove from Maryland down to Tennessee and then from Tennessee to my parents’ home in Western Kentucky. From here we’ll...

I am off on a grand adventure, if you can call driving to Kentucky with three small children a grand adventure. Well, you can definitely call it an adventure - the “grand” part is still up for debate. Luckily, our kids are well adapted to...

Yesterday, my daughter Audra finished her last day of Kindergarten. When she got on the bus in the morning, she was just a wee kindergartener. At the beginning of the year she could barely sound out words, had no idea what subtraction was and had never...

I was raised in the South by a Feminist. This did not happen very often. I remember in seventh grade this obnoxious kid turned to me at our lockers and said, “are you a feminist?” He asked it in the way you might ask someone “Are you...

One of the fun things about being a parent is the opportunity to see the world, once again, through a child’s eyes. We spend so much of our time as adults thinking about things in a certain way that it can be hard to change our brains around and...

Have you ever met someone without a filter. You know, the kind of person who has zero sense of what is appropriate or inappropriate to say to someone. They don’t ever pause to think about whether something that is forming in their head should or...

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the trauma of taking my youngest son, Micah, to get an EEG. It was a tale of pain, agony and general child abuse. It was also my birthday (woo hoo) (The full story of that disastrous day is here: http://familiesonly...

I need to get a haircut. My hair is fairly thick (I know, I know, it’s a curse I’ll just have to live with) and so it grows pretty quickly. The problem is that my hair will look fine, look fine, look fine and then I’ll wake up one morning...

Last night, my wife, Sarah, and I were in New York City on a College field trip and I beat up a bouncer. Ok, perhaps I should preface this story by saying that this was actually a dream. That’s not a particularly important aspect of the story, I...

I’m sure many of you have been confused and distressed as you have watched over the last year or so as our national economy has begun to curl up and die like a spider in the toilet. I’m sure you’ve listened with confusion as you have...

I have a secret for you. It’s a secret that you probably don’t want to hear and one that, if you’re honest, you will agree with, but you probably don’t want to. Are you ready? Here it is: If Susan Boyle was pretty she wouldn’t...