The Swarrell Life

Yeah this one might get a little sappy. I'll try to keep it to a minimum because I really don't want you to cry and have your nose run because then you'll wipe your nose with your hand and then on your pants and then you've officially turned into a snot-spreading machine. Gross. Seriously, go wash your hands. No, wash  them, don't just rinse them under running water. Use soap. Okay. And yes, I do feel much better now. Ahem, where were we? Ah yes, sappy! For the record, I haven't always been a holiday guy. It's really been since I got married that I started to pay attention to them. Yeah, I just want to be like the cool kids (and my wife!). Father's day is cool because, well, it means that I get to spend time with those that made me a father to being with. That starts with my wife. Thanks to a wonderful woman who puts up with me (mostly) day in and day out. I couldn't do much without you! Another side note (yeah there might be a few, ...

I read a while back about a small movement that is starting to focus on 5-9. In our society we focus so hard on 9-5, that often the 5-9 is forced to serve it, when in fact there are twice as many hours there. So what can you do with 16 hours? The idea behind the movement is to have mini adventures, even during the week. I think that's a cool idea that I would like to explore, but often life gets in the way. Take last night for example: Trinity and I took a trip over to Boise this evening. We started taking her over for speech therapy a few times a month. One of the times that we take her is Wednesday evening and today it was my turn. I picked her up at 3 from daycare and we hit the road. Autumn had packed us a bunch of food for snacks and dinner, so we were set!I should have guessed that it wasn't going to be a normal trip when we had to stop less than 20 miles in for a roadside potty break. For those of you who know, it was the Durkee exit. Trinity took care of business ...

 If you hang out with our family long enough, you'll discover something: we like to run. Autumn has been running for quite a few years and I have been regularly running for a few years now. It's a regular activity around our house, although Autumn and I try and impact family time as much as possible. But even then, the kids are well aware that we run. We rarely run the same events, so one of us almost always has the kids there to cheer one of us. It's not something that I have put much thought into, but I like the idea that what we do makes an impact on our kids. A friend of mine told me that there was a study (yeah, I know, another study) that talked about reading. It turns out (according to this one study) that it wasn't how much you read to your kids that makes them a reader as an adult, but simply how much you read. They were more likely to develop the habit because it was what you as parents did , not what you told them to do.  Interesting. Given that, you can im...