The Holidays

Our lives in the west seem to revolve around ourselves and our immediate families. There was a time when the holidays meant spending time with extended family. Visiting parents and grand parents, catching up with uncles and aunties and so on. Recently though there has been a trend for families to spend their holidays just on their own. Due to lack of time and the pressures of work, parents now use the holidays to get away from the tedium of a stressful routine. Many parents who hold high powered jobs abide by the mantra that if they work hard they are entitled to play hard but by thinking on these lines they subliminally nod to the selfish thought that the holidays are for them alone. No one, not even their partners or their kids should get in the way of that time off. The best kept secret for a successful holiday is also the most obvious; endeavour to make the holiday the best for the rest of the members of your family and you will find perhaps surprisingly to you that they would do the same for you.

Time to economise - Cut down on the contracts

I've been on a mobile phone contract for a number of years. Both, for my wife and I, we would pay anywhere between 30 and 50 pounds a month. The attraction of course was the option of being able to own a spanking new handset at the beginning of the next contract.
Times have been hard and like many others, we have been looking to tighten our belts. Each family is different and phone usage is different. In our case, we found that we called Sri Lanka often, spoke to family in New Zealand and Australia and locally, we would call landlines a lot. About a year ago when my last contract with Orange ran out, I opted for a SIM only contract with them which gave me 300 minutes and unlimited calls to landlines for £ 15 a month. The downside to these kind of contracts was that when the 300 minutes exceeded, you were charged a packet. I am also a Cable customer and use Virgin Media for Phone, broadband and digital TV services. I was probably spending well over £ 60 a month for Virgin Media's Talk 800 and their basic TV package and broadband.
To make a long story short, I wanted cut down my phone bill by at least £ 30 and the way I went about it is this:
I purchased a cheap unlocked hand set for £ 20 (it would have cost £ 20 to get my existing phones unlocked), cancelled my contract with orange and asked for the PAC code (you will need this if you want to keep your existing number), signed up with Giff Gaff (runs on the O2 network) which provides excellent PAYG rates and also provides free Giff Gaff to Giff Gaff calls. My wife and I use the same network.
I then downgraded my Cable service to Talk Weekends and now the phone, TV and broadband bundle comes to £ 23. In place of this, I signed up with skype and 2 subscriptions, the first of which offered unlimited calls to land lines within the UK, US and Australia and New Zealand for £ 9.19 and 120 minutes to Sri Lanka for £ 8.04. Skype calls to Sri Lanka is not the cheapest. You can get a better deal with chillitalk. For a £ 10 top-up, you get 200 minutes plus and additional 200 minutes free to use during the weekends.
I've included some useful links in this post for you to see if you can cut down on the overall cost of your calls:

www.chillitalk.co.uk
https://giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/thatsminedad
www.skype.com

Where are the dads?

Last weekend should not just be a wakeup call for the government, it needs to be a wakeup call for dads!
Quite rightly, the riots that convulsed North London and then spawned elsewhere in the UK were condemned by all government leaders and the post-mortem is currently underway.
One of the questions many community leaders are asking is 'where were the parents?'.

This is a question that we dads have to honestly ask ourselves. If any of these kids who took part in the riots were our own, will we step forward and take responsibility? Will we be able to stand beside them in court and if it applies, own up to the fact that we may have failed as a parent? Will we be able to stand beside them in court and if it applies, show tough love?
One thing is sure, the riots were not racially motivated or politically motivated. They were opportunistic. People did what they did because they thought they could get away with it. What is worrying though is the more deep seated issue with these rioters needing to be taught that stealing is wrong.

A Dad's Thing

A Dad's Thing

Here's a link to an interesting post from a fellow dad.
Shamusburke refers to himself as a simple guy but in this article he explains vividly the challenge that dads face trying to balance their need for space and do their own thing and family.

When mom is poorly

When mom is poorly, the day does not seem to start off so good. Those things that you take for granted that moms tend to do have to be done by dad. It is only then that dad realises how much moms actually do. Of course, like any thing, when one is not familiar with something, it takes twice as long to complete it. When faced with organising Hannah's bag in 10 minutes prior to leaving the house for church, this proved an impossible task. Took me 40. Actually, no, thats not the truth. I panicked and had to ask my poorly wife to organise it for me.
There was a fair at Daisy Farm park. I had some complimentary tickets handed to me which Hannah and I used at the fair. This was just another thing that I could do to keep Hannah occupied during the day while Mitzi rested. Hannah was not too keen on the rides so much and preferred instead to go to the playground nearby where she spent the next half hour on the slide. It was an especially hot day and after the fair, I thought it a good idea to take the paddling pool out. This was the first time that she was to use the paddling pool. Other than dipping her feet in the water, she did not try anything more adventurous. She is still only 2 years old so I am probably asking too much of her.

The Good Father

Hello,

I just thought of sharing this article that was published in ezinearticles.com:

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Good-Father&id=6339079

Aquaponics as a hobby

I have recently been reading about aquaponics.
In a nutshell, aquaponics is a new way of approaching farming. Unlike traditional agriculture where you needed plants to grow vegetables through a process of nurturing, with aquaponics you need water and fish to do the nurturing of the plants in order to have healthy food on your table each and every day. Basically, aquaponics relies on the interdependence between fish and plants: the fish produces bio-nutrients for the plants, while the plants clean the water, creating a perfect environment for the fish to grow and develop.
I can see quite a few benefits aquaponics can be to a family. From a dad perspective, it is the perfect way to make kids more responsible. They will need to feed the fish each and every day and make sure that the air pump is working perfectly so that the fish get enough oxygen. Also, they they will have to monitor the state of the vegetables and when they get yellowish, they will need to announce it. These are not easy tasks, but will give them a sense of responsibility as they know that someone relies on them. In the process, they will see how fish and plants grow thus expanding their knowledge.
Vegetable are an essential source of good nutrition. Yet, finding fresh, organic vegetables in the market is not always easy. With an aquaponic garden in the house, you will not have to worry about purchasing your tomatoes and lettuce and other vegetables as these will be grown in house without having to invest too much time.
Here's a site that provides a step by step guide for building your own aquaponics garden at home. http://ihdcsl72.aquaponics.hop.clickbank.net

CBeebies mags

I am sure there are quite a few 2 to 3 year olds out there who are CBeebie addicts! Hannah's one of them for sure. It has not taken her long to find out that every newsagent stocks CBeebie mags. When I walked into the house this evening, I asked her how her day was and she said 'It's been fine, thank you' and proceeded to sit me down and show me her new CBeebie book. She loves the stickers and have already got the hang of sticking them where they are supposed to be stuck. There was a time when she thought that the only place a sticker would look good was on my forehead!

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The 'Desperate Dan Pie'

Having been to 'The Lark' nearly 10 years ago, I have never had the opportunity since to try out a Desperate Dan Cow Pie. You may ask, 'what on earth is a Desperate Dan Pie'? Well, the best way to describe it is that it is a main meal in itself. You will probably not want to have a starter prior to this. Trust me. The pie itself is about 8 inches in diameter and about 2 inches deep and consists of chunks of steak and kidney cooked with potatoes and carrots and brocoli and cauliflower. It also has two pastry horns sticking out.
Last Saturday, we decided to visit the Lark once again. The pub had not lost much of its character because it still maintained some of the old furnishings from the printing press that it got its name from. The pie itself was as delicious as it was 10 years ago. I was a bit dissapointed that there were no high chairs there but Hannah was as good as gold and sat on her chair and enjoyed the food the whole time we were there. I must remember to get ourselves one of those booster seats that you could fit onto a normal chair. That would come in really useful especially if you ended up in a place that did not have a high chair.

I've got an idea....

Hannah's into phrases now. Her latest one is 'I've got an idea...' to which I would reply, 'Hannah, what's the idea?', to which she would reply, 'Daddy, I've got an idea...' and on it would go. I am still coming to grips with the frequent question of 'Daddy, where's the car?'. The reply 'it's in the drive Hannah' rolls off the tongue without much thought now. I made the slip the other day of replying in this manner when I realised only too late that the car was not in my drive but at the supermarket car park.

Dummy Trouble Continued

Hannah's finally given up the dummy thank goodness!
I must say that it was a bit drastic. She had a habit of biting off bits of her dummy and then one day we found that ALL her dummies were bitten off.
I took Hannah along with the chewed 3 dummies and put the dummies in the bin while she looked on. She whinged a bit but now it has been more than a month and other than the two occasions when she wanted me to buy a dummy from the shop, she has not been too insistant.
Talking about dummies, here's a helpful guide to Pregnancy for dads:

Dummy trouble

On Christmas eve we thought of encouraging Hannah to give up her dummy. Easier said than done. We used the often mentioned method of father Christmas wanting her dummy in exchange for the toys that he would bring. That night amidst some mild protest and countless 'daddy where my dummy gone?' And the usual response of 'father Christmas wants it to get you your toys'. She finally fell asleep. Christmas morning, having enjoyed opening her presents, it was time to go to church. She probably asked for her dummy about 3 times but did not make much of a fuss. It was a bitterly cold Christmas morning as we made our way up the cul de sac, and past the surgery to the Anglican Church in the corner. As we settled in our presence the trouble began. It started with a whimpering of 'dummy' which gradually increased in frequency and sound until her cry for a dummy began to echo within the old church walls. Thankfully this was during the singing of the hymns and not the actual sermon. Embarrassed? You bet we were. Well, I had to also be thankful for Mitzi for ignoring my suggestion for not taking a dummy with us. The vicar at the end of the service had that twinkle in the eye as he shook our hands and wished us 'merry Christmas'. 'dummy trouble huh? '.