Dad of Invention

When Jim Whitney's daughters were ages 3 and 5, this Toronto dad found himself watching his kids play and wondering why there wasn't a toy that could be assembled and reconfigured in different life-size shapes. "I wanted something that could be a cave today, a pirate ship tomorrow, and a castle the next," he says. "Oh, and you'd be able to drape sheets over it for hiding." Voila! The Crazy Fort was born. Check them out at www.crazyforts.com or go directly to Barnes&Noble to buy the product here.

Children of all ages love building fun structures where they can play endlessly in their imaginary worlds. And Crazy Forts makes play so easy and so fun. Simply connect the balls and sticks and cover the structure with bed sheets to create places where imaginations flourish.

Dad Who Goes the Distance

There's a lot that 7-year-old Mary McAuley, of Hendersonville, Tennessee, can't do. Born with cerebral palsy and suffering from epilepsy, she's confined to a wheelchair, can't speak, and needs a feeding tube to eat. But her dad, Tommy McAuley, has helped her achieve awesome physical feats.

They are a father-daughter triathlon team. McAuley pushes Mary in a special stroller for most of his runs, pulls her along in a trailer when he bikes, and tugs his child in an inflatable raft as he's swimming. T.E.A.M. McAuley (older brothers, Grant, 11, and Griffin, 9, are members too) raises money and awareness for other families with special needs to get equipment to participate in triathlons. The biggest reason for racing is Mary. "She loves the feeling of not being disabled, spending time with her family, and the wind blowing through her hair," says McAuley. How can he know this about a child who can't speak? "If you saw her contagious smile, you'd have no doubt," explains this proud dad.

Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco III winner announced...

We're loving this series in the Dad-Blogs Fatherhood Friday's.

There were so many great comments, but this week winner has to go to WeaselMomma for the following:

After years of a dwindling audience, The WWF is pushing the limit of wrestling. This week it Chompers the Champ vs. Prissy the Pooch.

Cage match, throw down.

Go check out her blog, World Of Weasels, here.

Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco III

Thank you for joining in the third installment of our Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco.

We've missed the past two weeks because we've had family and friends visiting... but WE'RE BACK!

For our part in Dad-Blogs Fatherhood Friday's, we're posting pictures of other peoples children and we're looking for your best comments/captions. Why? Because you can be crowned the week's winner for best caption. What do you get? Praise. Laughs. Golf Claps. A virtual pat on your back. Oh... and a web badge that you can proudly display on your blog :)

You don't have to be a member of Dad-Blogs to participate...
Here we go:

Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco II winner announced...

Chris and I have been having an absolute blast reading all of the comments for this weeks Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco entry. Between the blog, facebook, text massages and emails, we've received 47 comments. Wow! It was tough this week to determine a winner as Chris and I had different opinions (what's new). What it all came down to was the voters choice. Yes, that's right. You all decided with your comments. So this week I'd like to give an Honorable Mention to Andrew's Daddies who came up with "Daddy?..I think I Ducked Up!". When I saw my blackberry light going off at 11:40pm, I checked it (because, even though I needed and wanted sleep, it just wasn't happening - too much caffeine in me) I started laughing out loud, which caused Chris to wake up and ask me what was so funny. When I shared it with him, his response was, "Wow... that's my favorite", and then rolled back over and continued snoring (that's the story of my life).

But... do to the overwhelming response from people who loved a certain caption... which spun (no pun intended) off numerous other themed comments, This Weeks Winner is - once again - Bella Daddy with "Spidey Duck, Spidey Duck, does whatever a Spidey Duck does..." So go check out Mr. Ghetto Fabulous in his Ed Hardy jeans and give him some mad props for this weeks contribution. Way to go...

Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco II

Thank you for joining in the second installment of our Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco.

So, for our part in Dad-Blogs Fatherhood Friday's, we're posting pictures of other peoples children (only because Saturday through Thursday we post of our own - ha ha ha) , and we're looking for your comments/captions. Why? Because you can be crowned the week's winner for best caption. What do you get? Praise. Laughs. Golf Claps. A virtual pat on your back. Oh... and a web badge that you can proudly display on your blog :)

You don't have to be a member of Dad-Blogs to participate...

Here we go:

First Weekly Winner

We are very pleased to announce that we have our very first It's Daddies. Plural. winner for our "Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco" Challenge. Wow... say that five times.

Chris and I have spent the day laughing at the post on the blog, the text messages and the emails. This weeks winner was very easy for us to pick out because you all told us who should win.

It's none other than BellaDaddy, with "SHIT EATING GRIN" . Come on... You all wanted to say it, and just didn't have the guts to type it! Well, Congrats to the bois over at http://belladaddy.blogspot.com/ for stepping up to the plate :)

Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco

We're jumping on the dadblogs band-wagon and partaking in their popular "Fatherhood Friday" supernova. And with that being said... foto (okay, really it's 'photo' but I'm trying to add a literary alliteration - a touch of swank if you will) fiasco will be my theme. And why you may ask? Because I thought I deleted a majority of our pictures of Kensington by moving files around on my computer [yikes].

I was informed last week by Jason, our IT (computer - not 'it') guy, that I would be receiving an email from our VP of IT because of the amount of files I have on my computer. Apparently everyone with 3GB or more in their "My Documents" (items that get backed up to our main server) were being notified that they needed to clean up and delete obsolete files. No biggie. I can clean items up.

Well, I had folder on my desktop (items not backed up) of all of our pictures since Kensington's birth. I've had to place them on my work laptop because our personal laptop was being worked on by Toshiba because of a bad battery thing-a-majig.

While I was moving items to a new external drive, I noticed in the upper left hand corner a 'delete' box with file and folder names that I didn't want to delete. It was my photo folder. Lets just say several expletives came out of my mouth. loudly. I quickly hit cancel and then looked in my recycle bin. Empty. They were gone. I ended up deleting all of our December pictures and about the first week of January. I cried.

I went into the office today and went straight to Jason. I was told there was no hope. It was on the desktop and not backed up. But while I was there, he wanted to show me his spreadsheet about my storage space. I was using approximately 58% of the server space from our office (of 25 people). Then he pulled the organization report. There was one person in NYC (Pam... hahaha, it's you) who used more space than me. Out of 500+ people, I'm the second highest storage waster... with 19GB of files on the server. I needed to clean it up, and pronto.

So I spent the day looking at my "My Documents" folder, and seeing what could be deleted, what could be moved to the shared drive and what needed to stay. While doing this, I saw something out of whack. I had a "Personal", "Desktop", "Desktop1234" and a "PEID" (my initials) folders. Last month when I got a new laptop, I backed-up my files in a "PEID" folder (I've had my files deleted in the past when getting a new laptop and learned my lesson. I want to keep my files, my fonts, my favorites and my settings and not put my complete faith in someone else's to-do list). When I went to back up, it said "102 minutes remaining" so I headed to a meeting and told Jason that I'd give him the old laptop after my meeting. About 30 minutes later, I saw that Jason left a note on my laptop and the files stopped transferring. So I created a new folder, "Desktop1234", and transfer ed again. While I was transferring files in my computer, Jason was actually transferring all of my files to a "Desktop" folder from his office. And for some reason, there was another set of the files in a "Personal" file. So I actually had 4 backups of these files... so I didn't have to scour through files to see what I needed to keep versus what I wanted to keep. All-in-all, I was able to reduce my storage space down to 3GB's. Jason and I are both very happy... but Pam - gurl, you have issues!

So, for our part in Fatherhood Friday's, I'll be posting pictures that children may have wished their dads would have deleted, and I'm looking for your comments/captions. Why? Because I said so, [I can't wait to say that... I've been practicing], and you can be crowned the week's winner for best caption. What do you get? Praise. Laughs. A virtual pat on your back. Oh... and a web badge that you can proudly display on your blog :)

Here we go: