Primary Purposes of Paternity

As a father, I have come to the conclusion that I have three primary, basic, roles: 

1. Provision:  This is the one that has been on my mind foremost as of lately, due to two rounds of layoffs at my company, the bad economy, the news, etc.  Amanda and I both prefer to be a one-income family, so that she can be home to take care of the kids.  While she does help with this a little (and I appreciate and respect it so very much), this responsibility is predominantly mine. 
2. Protection.  In a civilized and law-abiding society, this is probably the least important of the primary roles.  Nonetheless, in the unlikely event that a threat would befall my family, this job is primarily mine to assume. 
3. Presence:  Sure, children all over the world survive just fine without a father, as they do sometimes without a mother.  But both parents provide different and equally important characteristics and learning opportunities to the kids.  And I am very confident that my presence, although less available, is just as valuable to them as Amanda's.

Yes, there are many additional roles and duties of fatherhood.  But none are more important than these three, and most can be categorized under one of them.

Unfortunately, t in my current circumstances, all of these roles are in conflict with one another.  I'll expand more on this in subsequent posts though.

Thankful for the Thanksgiving Weekend

I know, I know.  I really should reply to the numerous comments about the previous gay son posts.  I have much to say in response, but I honestly just don't feel like it.  Maybe that's God making me keep my mouth shut.

Anyway, Thanksgiving weekend was full of socializing and awesomeness, so I figured I'd post about it so I can a) share it with whoever cares (1-2 people I think), and b) remember it better later.

For Thanksgiving day, our good friends and neighbors The Walkers invited us to join their family in the Pollock Pines/Sly Park area.  After only an hour drive or so to get there, we were in about two feet of snow!  So not only was it great to be with good people (8 adults and 10 kids total) during the holiday, but our kids got to see and play in the snow too!  I'll add some pictures soon.

Friday and Saturday day, we unshelved the Christmas tree and decorations and started putting them up.  It was fun family time.  Unfortunately, I also had to work from home for a few hours on Saturday.

Saturday evening we went to our friends' house from church for our connect 3 group. This group consists of 3 families, and meets for dinner 3 times, once at each of their houses.  This time it was at the Kahn family's house, with the Porter family meeting there as well.  It was a really enjoyable evening of good food and fun conversation, and the kids all played together really well too.  We'll really miss that group!

Sunday we skipped church to meet our friends from Bodega Bay, the Carnahan family, at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.  The day started off rather painfully though.  We arrived there at 11:30, only to realize that the park didn't open until 2pm. Then on top of that I realized I forgot my cell phone at home.  No big deal, right, especially since Amanda has one too.  Except that we had programmed the phone number to our friends' cell phone into mine!  You know, the friends we were supposed to meet there!

So we parked our car there at the entrance to the park and waited for 45 minutes, hoping to see them pull up.  When that didn't happen, we headed to a nearby park to eat the lunch that Amanda packed and waste some time until the park opened.

The good news is that the park was pretty sparsely populated compared to previous visits.  It was a great time, and we finally did meet up with the Carnahans as both of our families were walking around the park.  Then to top it all off we all met at and enjoyed Denny's breakfast for dinner.

To summarize the weekend: we drove 1 hour East, 1 hour West, had dinner with friends on 3 different evenings, and got some stuff done around the house too.