Life Lessons - from Dad and Uncle Bern

By: Matt AKA Dad Sports have played a significant role in the lives of my family. My wife and I both played multiple sports, our parents, siblings, cousins and friends all were involved in athletics too. It’s only natural that we also follow college and professional sports teams. Now that my 9 year old Caiden has become a full-blown sports fan, I decided that it was time to share my thoughts on sports fandom. Let’s start here: I root for Penn State football and wrestling, Duke basketball, and the Detroit Lions. My favorite college teams have had relative success but the Detroit Lions have been downright awful for a long time. That being said, my sons are welcome to root for whoever they want. In good conscience, I can’t force that misery on them. My thoughts on being a sports fan are split in two ways. First, you should never be so passionate about a sports team comprised of athletes that you most likely have zero personal connection to that if they lose, it ruins your mood...

By: Matt AKA Dad Having a little brother can be challenging at times, but if you play it right, it can be A LOT of fun. My brother Zack is 7 years younger than me so we didn’t have much in common for the first few years of his life. However, by the time he turned 4, it was clear that he was the entertainer of the family. I still remember him climbing onto the kitchen table during dinner and doing bodybuilding poses to show off his muscles! As he got older, Zack’s love of the spotlight grew. Enter Houdini. I don’t really know where he learned about magicians or Houdini, but all of a sudden he was claiming to be an escape artist. It started small, with simple death-defying acts of escape from beneath a pile of couch cushions. It became trickier as we added blankets to the mix, wrapping him up like a mummy. My friends would come over and create different ways to contain Houdini Hoffman, but he would always find a way to escape. These fun escapades led up to two separate events that ...

By: Matt AKA Dad This is a post on the importance of friendship and how to tell who your real friends are.  But in order for this first part to make sense, let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of the Rocky movie franchise.  How big a fan?  When my first son, Caiden, was born, I brought the Rocky I on DVD and played it in his hospital room so that it was the first movie he ever "saw".  When my second son, Mason, was born, guess what he got to watch?  Rocky II!  When I found out my wife was pregnant again with my third son, I had Rocky III all ready to go.  Unfortunately, there wasn't a DVD player in the hospital room for Collins or he would have gotten learn about "the eye of the tiger" on his day of birth.  Now that we have established just how much this film franchise means to me, I want to share a lesser known line from it.  Sylvester Stallone plays a sometimes slow-witted boxer in these movies, but he always seemed to come through...

By: Matt AKA Dad I’ve spent much of my life allowing my self worth to come from other people’s opinions. It has been a maddening race to try to live up to what has been, in my mind, the crushing expectations of my parents, friends, teachers, co-workers, supervisors, spouse and everyone else in my life. This wasn't due to anything they had done, it was a direct result of me wanting to please everyone, all the time! What I had been neglecting is an important truth - self worth literally can only come from one person, yours truly. While it’s important to use constructive criticism to grow, it should only be used as a tool for improvement. Knowing this, it is imperative to me to ensure that my children don't suffer from this constant self-doubt.  That being said, I don’t want myself or my kids to develop a laissez-faire attitude about self improvement. Quite the opposite, actually. Instead, we need to be able to reflect on our goals, make a plan for reaching them, and constant...