Well, that day finally came! It made this Star Wars fan’s heart proud to sit down with his two daughters and see those blue letters on the screen, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

There are, of course, different schools of thought in regards to when and how you should introduce your children to the Star Wars universe. Here’s a Public Service Announcement about talking to your children about Star Wars (sent to me by my brother).

Regardless of when you choose to introduce your children to Star Wars, sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with the “other Star Wars.” You know, the one with Jar Jar Binks.

A week or two after watching the original trilogy with the girls, we sat down and watched Episode 1: The Phantom Menace because they had been asking about it. When it was over, I was almost afraid to ask what they thought. What if they liked it better than the original Star Wars? What if they *gulp* actually liked Jar Jar Binks?

My fears turned out to be unfounded. Both of them agreed that they liked the original Star Wars better. Emily said, “I liked the other guys better…Luke Skywalker…Dark Vader (as she calls him)…the shiny guy (C3P0)…princess Leia. I liked her hair.” It brought a tear to my eye.

Have you had the “Star Wars talk” with your kids yet? How old were they when you introduced them to Star Wars?

If my Emily had a motto for her life it could definitely be, “born to create drama.” She loves to stir the pot and keep us on our toes. When she was six, she once told some friends she was staying with that Lisa and I locked her in a cage. Honestly, I count ourselves fortunate that one of her stories hasn’t sent Child Protective Services knocking on our door.

Do you have a child, sibling or spouse that was “born to create drama?”

I convinced Lisa to let me paint her as a tiger. Here kitty kitty…

Emily was a butterfly. As you can see from the smudges and one solitary antenna, it was rather challenging to keep her costume pulled together. She had fun anyway.

Chloe dressed up as a Beauty Queen (which was really just an excuse to put on lots of makeup).

I went as a Roman Centurion. And yes, there is a story behind this costume. Earlier this summer Chloe was out hitting some garage sales and came across this costume someone was selling. She thought it was so cool that she paid $15 of her own money for it so I could wear it for Halloween (a big deal for someone who holds on to every dollar she can). I added a sword to complete it and painted a beard on since I can’t grow facial hair worth a darn. I have to say, it was kinda fun walking around with my hand on my sword all night.

We met up with some friends and headed out on the only night where it is acceptable to ask complete strangers for candy.

Earlier in the weekend we also carved some pumpkins. I decided to go with Spider-Man.

Emily carved Darth Vader (with a little help from Dad) and Chloe and I carved Yoda for her pumpkin.

We had a chilly but fun night trick or treating last night and came home with way more candy than any kid should be allowed to eat. Looks like I might have to help take some of it off their hands…

Did you or your kids dress up yesterday? What did you go as?

There are over 1.2 million geocaches hidden around the world in even the most remote locations. When I first fired up my app I was surprised to see how many caches were hidden with just a mile or two of my house!

We explained how geocaching worked to the girls, grabbed our phones and set out to find some caches. The girls loved it. Once you find a cache you get to sign the log book and see everyone else who has found that particular cache before you. The cache pictured below (GCH9DJ) has been hidden since 2003! Needless to say there’s quite a few names in this log.

After you sign the log, you can take your picture with your cache in hand, like this (taken at Geocache GC274D7)…

…or this (taken at Geocache GC1VWCB)

…or this one that we found at an old cemetery down in Martinsville (GCQW17).

Each cache has details about how hard it is to find, the terrain you’ll have to navigate to get to it and the size of the cache. Some of the caches are quite small and well-hidden…

…others will send you pretty far off the beaten path (GCZGMV)…

We have been using the Groundspeak Geocaching app from Geocaching.com (available as a free Intro version or the full version for $9.99) but you can also use your Android phone or any handheld GPS unit.

This is only our first week geocaching but we learned a few things quick. Here’s some beginners advice:

• Dress appropriately. Some of the caches require you to push through heavy underbrush or walk close to streams. Dress like you would for a day in the woods just to be safe.
• Check your cache details online or on your app ahead of time Each cache has a description and a rating for size, difficulty and terrain. Pick a cache that is a good fit for your experience or the age of the people you have with you. Young kids can get discouraged and lose interest if the hunt is too hard (we spent 20 minutes looking for our first cache and ended up skipping it).
• Read the logs of people who have found it already. In some rare cases a cache may have been stolen or moved from its original location. If the last 5 people who have tried to find that cache reported that they couldn’t locate it, you may want to save yourself the trouble of looking for something that might not be there.
• Use your GPS unit, but don’t rely completely on it. The GPS is supposed to take you to the location of the cache but after you’re there you need to use your eyes and look around. Make sure you’re close to the marker and then put the GPS back in your pocket.
• A good piece of advice I read online was not to look for caches, but instead to ask yourself, “If I were hiding something here, where would I hide it?” Once you start looking for hiding places instead of a little box you’ll be amazed how many caches start jumping out at you!

We’ve had a blast doing this as a family. The nice thing we’ve found about geocaching is that it is something anyone can do anywhere you’re at. For example, we were visiting a partner church down in Martinsville on Sunday so we decided to pull up some nearby caches afterwards while we were there. Any trip can turn into a full-on treasure hunt at a moment’s notice!

Have you been geocaching before? What was your favorite find?

On Saturday we drove out to Turkey Run for a family Fall Hike. The weather could not have been nicer! Here are a few pics we took along the way:

Have you ever done a family staycation? What did you do?

I honestly didn’t hold out much hope for catching anything. For one thing, I wasn’t sure if there ever were much fish in this little pond. Plus, we were fishing with just a few lures on an old fishing pole and I had no idea if I was even using the right tackle for whatever was in the pond. However, I assured myself that it was more about the memory of going fishing with dad than actually catching something.

We had been fishing for about 25 minutes or so when I told her it was time to go. And then, “Dad! I think I caught something!” I thought she had maybe just hooked some seaweed but then I saw the pole jerking and knew she had something on the line.

She reeled in for a few seconds and then I saw the fish splash out of the water. It looked big! I grabbed the pole and helped her reel it in. Now I’m starting to worry that the line we had might break. We managed to get the fish on shore. Chloe had caught her first fish and it was a pretty nice one (I say that out of my extremely limited fishing experience).

After a few minutes of coaxing (Ewwww, gross! It’s all slimey!) I finally managed to get Chloe to hold her catch so I could take a picture:

We threw the fish back in and headed home. Chloe was pretty proud of herself for reeling in her first fish and I was just thankful that God showed a little mercy on a Dad who didn’t have a clue what he was doing! Someone commented on my Facebook status and said, “You’re the only man I know who’d rather paint fingernails than go fishing.” Ok, that’s not entirely true…let’s just say that maybe I can be good at both.

Do you have memories of fishing with your dad when you were a kid?

Her name is Bella and she has managed to capture the hearts of everyone who has come over and seen her so far. Bella is a designer breed called a Mal-Shi or Malti-Tzu, which is half Maltese and half Shih-Tzu. As you know if you’ve been following me on Twitter we’ve been looking for a dog for a couple of months now. The longer we looked the more we began to narrow down our search. Early on we decided that we wanted a smaller dog  (nice thing about small dogs? Everything is cheaper – smaller crates, less food, easier to transport). Trying to find that was small enough and cute enough to pass the “There-Is-No-Way-I’m-Going-To-Walk-In-The-Park-With-That” test proved to be the challenge.

We found several adorable dogs online in different states but nothing close to Indy. Then over the weekend Lisa spotted an add in the paper for Mal-Shi pups. She called on them and found out that the parents were both under 5 pounds and that they had two females left. Bingo.

We drove over later that afternoon and fell in love with this adorable little fur-ball.

We’ve gotten quite a kick out of little Bella although we realized just how much like a child a little puppy can be when Lisa and I had to get up 3 times during the night to let her go to the bathroom.

Watching her play in the grass is hilarious because the grass is as tall as her.

And so, after years of waiting we have finally joined the ranks of proud dog owners and our two girls couldn’t be happier. As for Lisa and I? Well, we’re more like proud parents that we would probably care to admit. I’ve already caught Lisa showing her off and sending pictures of her online. If you know Lisa, you know how big of a deal that really is!

So this post is for all the pet owners out there…what kind of pet(s) do you have and what do you love about them?

Granted, I realize the “painting toe nails” isn’t the best thing to list under the Additional Skills section of your resume but I suppose people naturally assume artists are just better at stuff like that.

At some point my daughters began to realize that Daddy was the one to ask when they wanted their nails painted and so I picked up a couple of extra clients.

Let me be clear about a few things.

1. I do not paint my own nails nor do I think I will ever be emo enough to start. I’ve only had my nails painted once, but what youth pastor hasn’t?

2. I will not paint your nails, so don’t bother asking. I suppose there are privileges to living under my roof and having Dad paint your nails is one of them. That’s a perk I don’t plan on extending to others.

3. If you’re going to paint your nails invest in some decent polish. No artist likes to work with second-rate paint.

So yes, as a Dad to two girls and the husband of a beautiful wife I find myself surrounded by girls. I suppose that and the fact that I wield a pretty mean paintbrush has destined me to many years of painting nails.

So help me out dads, anyone else out there a closet nail-painter? Ladies, who else do you trust to touch a brush to your toes other than yourself?

I’ve got to be honest with you…some days I just feel like a terrible parent. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids. But sometimes I wonder if I was sick the day they handed out the parenting manuals because I feel like I’ve showed up late for a test I didn’t study for.

Yesterday morning started out ok. We all woke up late and had to leave in 25 minutes for a new church we were visiting. And so I did what any good parent would do: I bribed them.

“Ok kids, listen up…if you can brush your teeth, get dressed, brush your hair and eat breakfast in 20 minutes I’ll buy you an ice cream after church. Go!”

(I wish I could say that was the first time I’ve ever used bribery to get my kids ready for church…it wasn’t)

Later that afternoon we had some friends over. The kids played good until we heard fighting coming from the other room. It was some “end-of-the-world” problem about Emily not sharing the soccer ball with her friend. The kind of problem that make’s me want to pull a Seth Meyers, “Really!? That’s what this is about? A soccer ball? Really?!?”

I had to take Emily in the other room while our friends left so I could deal with the situation. The conversation quickly went downhill. Defiance is one quality that Emily has mastered (and probably comes by more naturally that I would care to admit).

I wish I could say that after our conversation she crawled up in my lap, hugged me and tearfully told me how sorry she was.

She didn’t.

There were some tears (but not the repentant kind) and plenty of angry looks (from both of us). Like many parenting battles, there was no real winner.

Later that night I tucked them in and prayed for both of them. Then I prayed another silent prayer as I walked out of their bedroom asking God to help me figure out this whole parenting thing for which I feel woefully unqualified for.

Parenting is just plain tough. Some days are tougher than others.

Yesterday was one of those days.

Ten years ago we were both lost in love with a head full of dreams.

Ten years ago we were still just beginning to discover who we were.

Ten years ago I had yet to write my first blog post and Tweeting was still reserved for the birds.

Ten years ago our world was so incredibly small but our young eyes saw opportunities everywhere.

Dr. Seuss’ Oh The Places You’ll Go seemed more than just a little appropriate for us when we started this journey. We had no clue the places we would go or the people we would meet. We were “on our way up…seeing great sights” ready to “join the high fliers who soar to high heights.”

But like most young couples we quickly realized that life had a way of knocking you off your high horse. Opportunities don’t always fly in your window like sparrows in the springtime singing a happy song. We often had to chase them down.

We’ve had some amazing wins through the years but we’ve also had plenty of losses.

We’ve started businesses but we’ve also seen some fall apart underneath us.

We’ve made some good money at times and experienced times when our refrigerator was as empty as our bank account.

We’ve given birth to two beautiful girls but we’ve also cried over a baby that was taken from us before she was born.

We’ve lived in everything from large houses to small apartments – even a mobile home and hotel along the way.

But in the midst of everything we’ve been through one thing has stayed the same. Lisa was and still is right by my side. Through thick and thin. That girl has more adventure and courage in her little toe than most people I know.

These 10 years have been quite a ride. God has done so much in our lives and yet I keep coming back to this verse: “Forget all that — it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do a brand-new thing” (Isaiah 43:18-19)

These 10 years with Lisa have been the best 10 years of my life. But we’re only just getting started…

Oh the places we’ve yet to go!