In the world of geocaching, many states/provinces create associations that are made up of local geocachers who share a common interest and live in relatively close proximity. British Columbia Geocaching Association, Ontario Geocaching Association, Georgia Geocacher’s Association, Atlantic Canada Geocaching Association, Maritime Geocaching Association. I think you get the point.

As part of a CUNB side project last year, I had to do a lot of research about Canadian geocaching associations. I learned very quickly that all of the websites were cut from the same cloth. You get to the main site, have some generic information about caching, maybe some news updates, links, and a forum. The forums always had the most activity because people were always “talking” in there about whatever was going on. This “typical” geocaching site is pretty much the standard across the board. Almost every one of these types of sites follows the same set of rules and the site basically becomes dead while the forum is where the activity is.

When I was coming up with the concept of Cache Up NB, the last thing I wanted to do was to simply just become another association with the same sort of typical links and forums that you always see. In fact, I didn’t want it to be an association at all. I wanted it to be different somehow. Anyone who knows me knows that I am very adamant about trying to be original and steer clear of what everyone else does. My first geocaching event wasn’t a potluck, or a breakfast, it was the Race For Cache. I have always been someone who likes to go against the grain because it shows that you aren’t afraid to be different.

In coming up with a concept for CUNB, I actually decided to use Slashdot as a model. This tech site has been around for years and is more or less a blog style site where the news items are posted, and people comment on those items. It’s not a forum but the community itself still exists through the comments. Anyone can submit items/news and the folks who run Slashdot decide what gets posted and what doesn’t. This format seemed to be very different from the typical “forum” sites I had seen so this is the format I went with.

At first, there was a bit of a resistance because people weren’t used to seeing a “geocaching” site laid out like that. But as time went on, people got the jist of how it worked and for the most part, it’s gone over quite well. 3300+ comments thus far proves that the community is interested in what goes on there. We’ve even done polls on the site to see if folks wanted a forum and the response has always been a resounding “NO!”. We even put a forum up for a short period of time and no one used it. Hence, it seems perfectly clear to me that the audience we have isn’t really that interested in a forum.

Recently, a cacher who is not a fan of CUNB chose to go on a long rant about how “awful” our site was because he “can’t even find the forums”. Now, this particular individual was upset about something unrelated to the layout of our site, and is not someone who has spent much time on there. Regardless, them being upset about their inability to find a forum that didn’t exist showed me that even in the smaller realm of geocachers, there are still people who seem to think that because things have traditionally been done one way, they should always be done that way. Why not just be like everyone else so that we all look and act exactly the same and nothing will ever be different and original? Let’s just conform and be the same all the way across so that even people who are educated and should know better won’t have to think at all about what they are looking at. If that were the case, a sport like geocaching would never have been created.

Going against the grain, doing something different, trying to innovate and be unique is what makes the world diverse and interesting. If everyone was the same the world would be a pretty boring place.

So what exactly am I trying to say? I’m saying that I am proud of the fact that I chose to go against the grain in many of the endeavours I’ve taken on. Although I’ve had some misses, by far and large my choices to do something different instead of the same have proven successful. My mother-in-law’s favorite Christmas gifts are the ones I give her because they are always very different. My first geocaching event has turned into a yearly event that saw 150+ people attend last year and it even made the local paper. My wedding proposal to Tamara has put several other women to tears in how “romantic and sweet” it was since it wasn’t just the same old “take her to a restaurant and propose”. I successfully launched a magazine called “Vibrating Anal Jizz” (yes, I kid you not. That was the actual name) which ran for five years and reached as far as Australia in it’s readership. And last but not least, I launched and continue to manage Cache Up NB which has become the main contact for geocaching in the province of NB. Enough that municipal, and provincial governments now work with CUNB to coordinate geocaching projects in the province. All of these have been unconventional in their execution and they’ve thrived.

So those out there who would gripe about things you don’t understand, or throw insults because things aren’t the same as everything else, take a look around you. The world is made up of people who go against the grain. The ones who choose to be like everyone else are the ones who are left behind and forgotten. I’m more than happy to continue to be “different” and “unique” while others gripe about the fact they don’t like something because it’s not the same as everything else.

At first, I was looking to just change the theme and as hard as I looked, I couldn’t find one I liked that was free. So, I finally found one that was actually relatively cheap and I paid the money and got it. After mucking around with it in my spare time, I finally managed to get it the way I liked it. The big problem was time. Trying to find the time to make the new theme work with all of the old information from the old site. That took a lot of tinkering.

But as time went by, I found myself wanting to do a lot more with the site. So I explored creating some mobile apps and found a quick and easy way to put something together. Then with the help of Chris, we started looking at ways to add even more functionality to the site. Sure enough, in no time flat, we started piling on the new features here and there. Thanks to Norm, I got an awesome new banner to really liven the site up, and before I knew it, I was starting to think about when to let this new look loose.

Well, as it turns out, the two year birthday for CUNB was in March so I thought, why not have an event to celebrate, and show everything off then. Turns out that coincided with CUNB’s official partnership with Groundspeak (the company that owns geocaching.com) kicking off as well.

The last few weeks have been insanely busy for me workwise. I’ve been on the road a lot and knowing that this relaunch was coming, I was getting a bit worried. Even as late as today code changes were being made, and things were being tweaked. I spent a lot of time doing tests. What people might not realize is that despite the fact that this site is a hobby of mine, I took the relaunch pretty seriously and put a lot of time and effort into making sure it would go off relatively issue-free.

Much like my real job, I staged the setup with a bogus version of CUNB that I could play with. I also did test installs and configs while the main site was in maintenance mode. That made it much easier to make sure things were working as expected before the actual cutover. The first two tests failed BADLY! The site was SO horribly slow that it rendered the new look useless. Thankfully I had an idea of what was causing the problem and sure enough, removing one plugin cured the problem. Once that was solved, the rest was easy.

Last night, I built all of the new menus from scratch and did a few other tweaks but beyond that, I was ready to go.

Tonite I was a bit nervous about the whole thing. It had been discussed over and over again and a lot of work had been done and after all of that, you really want things to go off without a hitch. Well, Ken came over at 8pm and around 8:30 we started the switchover. It took about 2 hours and there were still a few glitches here and there but all in all, the switch went really well.

I’m pretty excited about what people are going to think about the new look. Hoping to get a good crowd at the event tomorrow and then after that, I can put this relaunch behind me and start working on my next caching project which is the next race in August.

I had spent a week getting materials ready and had never done this sort of thing before. I had taken the job but had never really done it with that large of a group of people before so I was a bit intimidated. Fortunately for me, I knew one of the folks who would be there so somehow that made a difference.

The morning came and they started rolling in. Standing at the front of the room, I waited until I thought everyone was there and then I introduced myself. I told them a bit about who I was, what I knew, and what we were going to learn together. Despite being horribly nervous about the whole thing, the day actually turned out very well. Since my then brother-in-law had been part of the class, I got the inside scoop from him that week and he assured me that I had met with the class’s approval. It was official. I had become a teacher.

I was teaching IT at EBCI so it wasn’t like teaching high school but in some regards it felt like it could have been the same. Students who didn’t want to pay attention and others who were there just to have fun or because they felt they had to be there. But at the end of the day, it was that job that gave me my first real exposure to being an instructor and the world of training. I would last there for six months before moving on to becoming a Systems Administrator but then after almost six years of that, I went back to teaching at another IT school.

When I got hired at Whitehill, part of the job was providing training to our clients. For the first few years, I didn’t realize how much that part of the job was enjoyable for me. It’s not like teaching college. Training in a corporate world, especially to law firms, is a lot different in that these people are paying good money to have someone come in and give them training on corporate software. You still have people who aren’t interested in being there from time to time, but by far and large, it’s a lot smoother than teaching in a college.

About three years ago I came to the realization that training was really what I enjoyed the most. I am a geek at heart and all of that IT/programming/solution stuff is cool, and challenging, and gets the mind going really good. But for me, at the end of the day, when I gave training classes, that’s really when I enjoyed my job the most. It was always the most satisfying of all the work I do and so I decided to try and pursue it in some regard as my full time work.

Now, for software companies who have a formal “training” group, these folks typically do nothing but training and spend a LOT of time on the road. Pretty much every training position I saw on the job board at Oracle (my employer three years ago) had the travel requirement between 80-100%. I was never interested in travelling that much. It’s just too much time to be away from home. Plus, I always wanted to somehow incorporate my love of technology and “geek” stuff into my training position so that I could get a balance of both training and other stuff. It seemed very hard to try and find the right position.

I have to admit that when our group got bought last year, I was pretty upset. I had finally scored an interview with someone within Oracle’s training group and it went well. but because of the acquisition, even if they had wanted me for the position, they were not allowed to hire me and thusly that opportunity died. At first I was pretty mad. But as I got to see what a great company Thomson really is, that quickly disappeared. Then, about a month ago, a blip appeared on the radar.

I had made it known to my manager that I was interested in getting into training more. Through various communications of his, a director within one of the training groups in Thomson Reuters (my current employer) became aware of my interests. Turns out they had an opening in their training group and were looking for someone. We spoke on the phone and the “interview” went very well. I was pretty excited. I tried it keep it out of my head but doing my best to remain positive, and when I did speak of the job to Tamara on a few occasions, I purposely said “when I get the job” as opposed to “if I get the job”. A small thing to do but yet another way to remain positive about the opportunity.

Then, last Sunday, while waiting at the gate in Houston, Texas, I again spoke to the director and he offered me the job. The offer alone was enough to make me want to jump up and down in the middle of the airport cheering. But with a considerable raise, and a travel ratio that I was happy with, I really didn’t know how to react. I got off the phone and I called Tamara who wasn’t home. I left a very emotional voicemail on the phone and gave her the news. I couldn’t stop smiling. Thanks to voicemail-to-email technology, I now have that message to keep and re-live that moment again anytime down the road. Minutes later, I sent this tweet out sharing my excitement without being able to tell anyone exactly what it was I was so excited about.

Yesterday at 12:59pm, I received the official offer from my new manager, signed and returned it. It was at that moment I realized that what I had worked so hard for had finally happened. It was actually real. Until then, it was all just phone conversations and talk, but having that letter in hand made it very real. I actually had to get up from my desk and go for a walk around the back part of the office because I was visibly emotional from being so excited. I went out back, took a few minutes to myself, and then came back to my desk ready to continue my day.

I officially start my new position as a Technical Training Consultant on March 5th. I’m off to Albuquerque, New Mexico in two weeks to meet our team and learn all about my new role. I’m slowly closing off my existing projects and in no time flat, I’ll be on my way in my new role.

Words really cannot describe how I feel these days. I said in January that 2012 was going to be MY year and at the end of February, there’s already big things happening. If this is any indicator, the rest of 2012 is going to be even more fantastic. Right now I feel like I am the luckiest, most fortunate guy in the world. An awesome wife. Two fantastic kids. Great friends and family. And now finally, the job/career I really wanted. Now is my time and I am damn sure I am going to make the best of it.

Having learned my lessons about blogging about my job, I none the less am going to go on a bit of a rant without getting into specifics. Thusly, it allows me to vent without getting myself, nor anyone else, into trouble.

Today, I had a bad day. I don’t know if anyone else at my work noticed, but it was a bad day. If I did my job right, hopefully very few people noticed how truly awful of a day I had. But it doesn’t change the fact that in six years of working in that building, I truly feel like today was the worst.

This week I’m giving training. Of all the things I do in my job, giving training is the one I enjoy the most. I enjoy it so much that I could actually do it full time if given the right opportunity and the right money. But since my job is more of a technical nature, I don’t get the chance to give training as much as I used to. So when the chance comes up, I jump at it because not only do I enjoy so much, it happens to be something I am extremely good at.

I’m not one to talk myself up, but I know that this is a skill I am really good at as I have heard it said to me over and over again. It’s one of the things I just know I am good at and happen to love doing. Despite being good at something, and really enjoying something, we all have days where it just feels like no matter what you do, nothing is going right. It’s kind of been like that this week with my training. I had put a lot of time and effort into building the right type of training environment to try and reduce any “technical difficulties” but it seems that despite that, I encountered far more than I wanted to see. And it wasn’t just in the technical areas that trouble surfaced.

Even the best teacher can struggle to give a good training class when the tools provided are not adequate enough to provide a quality training session. The last time I did this particular type of training, I was using a different, how best to describe it while being vague at the same time, “toolbox”. Let’s just say that for this class, I’m using a toolbox which has all the tools and materials for building a kitchen table. The toolbox I had the last time worked very well. All the tools were there, batteries were charged, and seemed relatively new. The “drill” got stuck a few times, but it always worked exactly as it was supposed to after banging on it a little bit. In general, that toolbox worked really good but it wasn’t a toolbox we owned. It was one we were sort of borrowing.

This time around, I’m using a different toolbox. A custom made toolbox specific for the type of job I’m training folks on. The toolbox has basically the same tools but made by a different company. This time around, the drill I got to use is made specifically for the exact job I am doing, unlike the previous drill. You would think that this would make it a better tool. When the drill works, it works fantastic. FAR better than the one from the old toolbox. But when it doesn’t work, there’s no manual to tell me why it stopped working, there’s no display or lights or anything on the drill to tell me there’s a problem. It just doesn’t drill anything. I stand there, scratching my head, trying to understand why this doesn’t work. I flip a bunch of switches, turn some knobs, maybe even unplug the drill and plug it back in again and pray that a combination of all of this somehow fixes the issue. Today, somehow I did manage to get everyone’s drill to work, but now I’m looking at the rest of my week and wondering if the drill, and anything else from the toolbox, is going to give me the same problem.

So as you can imagine, when trying to use this toolbox and the main tool doesn’t work, and you have no idea why, nor any real good means to troubleshoot it, it becomes increasingly difficult to try and teach your students how to use it. When you have a fairly large class of students, and more than half of them are experiencing all similar issues, it’s really difficult to try and move the class forward and continue on with building the table. Everyone wants to learn and see how to build the table, but when the tools don’t work the way you want them to, or need them to, the difficulty increases exponentially.

To add fuel to the fire, some of the folks who came to the table building class don’t really know anything about the tools, the table, or even how to hold a drill. Nice people, but from what I can see, they are not the best folks for trying to learn how to build this table with this set of tools. Also add to the fact that after a couple of days of training where most of the class has half the table built, they’ve only drilled a couple of holes in one piece of wood. It concerns me greatly that these students may not get their table completed by the end of the training. In most cases, students who don’t wish to do the work, I really could care less about. That might sound a bit harsh, but the reality is that if you are paying to be in a class for a specific reason, and you choose to do other things other than what you’re being trained on, I’m not going to give you much sympathy about “not understanding” anything. However, these specific students are new to the world of table building and need to learn how. I am eager to teach, but not eager to overuse my time on things they should be paying attention to.

With the toolbox not working as it is supposed to, and some of the students drifting off doing wood sculptures instead of building tables, it made my day today quite miserable. I came home, I hung out with the kids and the wife, and at one point I could feel the stress throughout my whole body. My hands were shaking and I was just SO pissed about my day. I asked Tamara to put the kids to bed. I came into my office, and literally just read emails, chatting on gTalk a bit, downloaded some stuff, and then rejoined sanity inside. I think at that point I was fine. But then when I went to bed, I laid there wide awake thinking about tomorrow. To solve that, half a pill of Zopiclone and I’ll be out shortly. I can feel the effects now so this post will end shortly.

In summary, I had a mother-frakkin horrible day. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow but I also know that I only have two days left and this will be done. I’m going to get up tomorrow, start a new day, and convince myself that it will be FAR better than today (since this was the worst in 6 years I think) and MAKE my day better.

Oh, and as I guess I should add this is that for 1) I didn’t actually have a toolbox and drill issues. It’s a metaphor. and 2) The above post reflects my own personal opinion of my rather crappy day and situation and in no way implies a view or opinion of my employer.

Now that this is all done, I can go to bed.

I have several blog/websites that I run that are all powered by WordPress. Specifically, I have Bobsroom, Dylan’s House, Megan’s World, Moncton’s Race For Cache, and Magestik Cottage Rentals. That’s five completely different sites all with their own installation and setup. They each need to be maintained in their own way and when updates are necessary, it’s a pain doing it for all of them.

Today I tinkered with using the Network/Multi-site options for WordPress. They let you combine multiple sites into a single installation which has a “network” of sites. You only have to maintain one installation and updates are applied against all of your sites at once.

I played around this morning and moved all five of my sites to a new installation. It seems to be working quite well.

This has made me feel a bit better as it certainly helps to reduce some of the headaches I have had in the past. Hopefully, I won’t see any issues. Now all I need to do is write more

I moved to Moncton in the summer of 1985 just before started grade 7. I was also very small for my age. At 3’11″, I was a very small kid. When my mom went to register me for school that year, the secretary actually thought I was being registered for first grade. When I walked into my home room, the teacher told me that I had the wrong class and that the first grade classes were downstairs. It was very clear that I was a bit small for my age.

The next couple of years proved to be some of the hardest “growing pains” I ever went through. For starters, my first year at Queen Elizabeth school proved to be a bit of a challenge. A lot of name calling, being made fun of, stuffed in garbage cans, hung inside lockers, pushed around, and generally treated like shit. I shied away from anything having to do with the people from school. In fact, the only friends I did have at that time were several years younger than me.

There were a few exceptions to that. Tony Bishop, a guy I became good friends with (whom my mom would always refer to as the potato guy since he ate 13 of them when he came with me to the cottage one weekend) since he was on the opposite side of the spectrum (he was something like 6 feet tall in my class), Chris Bhagan, Mike Mollins, and a few others were folks I hung out with. But junior high was pretty brutal. Grade 8 was probably the single worst year of my life. That was the year that “bullying” took on a whole new meaning.

It seemed that despite having been at the school for a year, the bullying got worse in grade 8. It actually all came down to one person: Steven Rooney

A friend of mine had come over to the house to show off his b-b gun. Steven was a local bully/punk and spotted my friend at the house. He came over and insisted that he be allowed to try the gun. He shot it at the Irving across the street at hit a guy’s bike. I don’t recall exactly what happened next but Steve got into trouble for it and blamed me. That then started the terror. I can’t count how many times I got beat up by him. I was so scared to leave the house or go to school because I didn’t want to get beaten up. I wouldn’t even go to the pool down the street because I was so scared of being beaten up.

At one point, I had decided to start carrying a steel whip I had found because I was scared of being beaten up and wanted something to defend myself. One day, biking home, I spotted a group of kids playing on my street. As I got closer, I realized who it was and tried to turn around. I remember quite clearly a kid named Brian Herman who grabbed my bike and wouldn’t let me go because he was trying to keep me around for Steven to talk to.

It ultimately came to Steven bullying me some more while the other kids laughed. He hit me a couple of times and as much as I had been taught to not hit or fight, I got mad, pulled out the steel whip, and hit him with it. This of course did nothing more than piss him off, and led to my having been beaten severely. He grabbed me, threw me to the ground and bashed my head against the side of the curb repeatedly. I screamed, put my hands to my head, and ran home as fast as I could. Blood poured down my face and rocks were embedded into my skin from having been beaten so hard. I got home and my mom took one look at me and got pretty pissed. I didn’t see what happened when she left the house, but all I know is she came back to the house still pissed, and she was going to try and find out where Steven lived.

The end result was Steven’s parents being shown first hand (within the hour) what their son had done to me and the very next day, Steven was as friendly as could be, and the bullying stopped. I never had an issue with him again. That did not however stop the permanent damage that happened to me that day, and through all of the other bullying I experienced during those years.

There were a few very important things that helped me get through grade 8. For starters, I did have friends who knew me and didn’t treat me like crap. I had a mom who loved me so much that she actually took on that bully herself, and won. She always told me that things will get better and to just try and find a way to work through it. I also found my first love in grade 8 so regardless of how many times I got beat up, I always had that to look forward to at school.

The following year wasn’t so bad. I got beaten up once by a guy named Paul Howe who got mad at me because I kept playing a video game at the arcade. When my classmates found out what he had done, many of the boys (thanks Jason, Vinnie, and Kerry) asked me if I wanted them to beat the crap out of him. I thanked them for the offer but declined because that wasn’t the type of person I was. As I recall, that was the last time I ever got bullied.

I’m 37 years old now and am happily married and have done pretty good for myself, but the sting of bullying lives with me to this day. As an adult, when someone cracks a joke at my expense at one of my eccentricities (we all have them), I can take it in good stride and know that it’s not meant to be harmful. But, every time it happens, I have to remind myself that it isn’t to be taken seriously. That it is just a joke. If I’m called a name “just in fun”, I know that it’s just camaraderie and not malicious, but there is still this tiny part of me that is stung each time it happens because it reminds me of what I endured as a kid. As an adult, I can deal with it and realize that it’s not the same, but it doesn’t change how bullying has affected me.

When I read about kids who take their own lives, or bring guns to school because of bullying, I have a very unique understanding of how they feel. They just want the bullying to stop. For some, that despair turns to anger and hence the reason why kids get shot. Look at me? I carried a steel chain. That could have easily been a gun given the right situation.

Today, I have no idea what happened to Steven Rooney or any of the other guys who had a hand in bullying me as a kid but I will never forget them and how they made me feel. It is a scar that lives with you forever and no matter how much time passes, it’s easy enough to remember what it made you feel like.

I can’t tell others what they should or should not do. I can tell you that for me, I simply turned to spending time at home, hanging out with the friends I did have, and talked to my mom (family) about the things that bothered me. I did a lot of writing in those days and I think in some ways that helped me get out some of the frustrations and feelings. But in the end, the truth is, you just have to find your own way to deal with it because eventually, it really does get better.

For me, it did. When I hit high school, I met new people and my life took a different direction. For others who experience it in high school, try something new. Find an outlet, a safe one, that let’s you channel the feelings you have, and don’t be afraid to tell people what’s happening. Bullying was a lot more “acceptable” when I was younger. Today there is a lot more awareness about it (even though it is still a serious problem) and all it takes is sharing it with the right people, and all of a sudden you’ve got a ton of people to support you and magically, the bullies disappear. So whether it’s talking to your friends or family, writing a story or a blog, playing sports, or having your mom kick a bully’s ass (ok, that last one is probably not such a good idea these days), find a way to let your anger and frustration out and just be patient. At some point or another, it really does get better.

I would however add one more thing… People can say “it gets better” all they want, but it doesn’t change how you feel right now. If right now you are being bullied, it’s kind of hard to think about how things will magically be better in a few years. You want to feel better now. So right now, in that moment of sadness, go talk to someone. Whether it’s IRL or online, get it OUT of your system NOW! Do not hold it in. If you can’t find someone, then write it out, or record a video of you talking to yourself and post it on Youtube or Facebook. Do something to get that sadness out and you will find that in no time flat, you won’t feel that sadness anymore. I wrote, talked to friends and family, and just acted plain silly when I could, and somehow, all of that together helped me make it through to the next day, and then next. You can too.

- MK

Four years old for me is a bit of a milestone even though I know next year with him going to school, it will be even bigger. The reason I see four as a milestone is that four years old is the youngest I can actually remember being. I actually can remember being that age and playing with friends, living on 111Ave in Edmonton, going to the park, and heading off to school the following year.

Knowing that I can remember that far back, it puts things in a different light. Up until now, it’s been pretty easy to think that if something bad happens, or maybe I say or do something I’m not proud of with D, he won’t remember it because he’s so young. That phase has now officially passed. From this point on, I have to accept that memories made from here moving forward will now stick with him.

It’s not to say I do anything major or bad to my kids. I’m a good dad, but we all have days where our tempers are shorter and sometimes we snap, or we’re a little more grumpy than normal, and it’s that kind of stuff I don’t want the kids to focus on or remember. Thankfully, since these are few and far between, and the good stuff is FAR more abundant than anything not so good, so I think he’s in good hands to turn out well.

Next year at this time, he’ll have started school and it will indeed be an even larger milestone. Seems so far away but man, it certainly does go by fast.

Pulled from DylansHouse.com. Read the original post here

I’ve been pondering trying to get it listed on some of the eBook stores like iBooks and Kindle so I went ahead and tonite I got them formatted in the correct format, and sent them off to see what happens. As of right now, I have Gut Theory in the pending list for iBooks, Kindle, and Nook. I have an email out to Kobo about their stuff as well.

The eBook will sell for $5.99 which I thought was a nice lowball price since I am not interested in making big money but just wanted to try it out. I’ll have to wait and see how long it takes…

For two years old, this is a girl who is not afraid of anything, and is VERY devilish. You can see it in her face and by some of the things she’s doing.

She’s got a bit of a crush on Buzz Lightyear and now has one that she likes to take to bed with her. I hope I never wake up finding buzz between her legs.

She’s become MUCH more vocal and vibrant than before but much like her mom, she’s emotional. In fact, I can just say one little thing to her and she starts crying. It’s frustrating at times but I have to keep reminding myself that she is 2 and that she is a girl and that she is just like her mom.

Like her brother, she’s smart. She knows how to do a lot more things than I ever expected. She also has a tendency to pretty much do anything Dylan does. If she thinks what he is doing is fun or will get attention, she does it. I never realized how much siblings do this. Do you folks out there have the same thing happen with your kids? I had no brothers and sisters growing up so it’s a new world for me.

Her hair is getting long. Long enough that she’s always got it in a ponytail or pigtails now otherwise it kind of gets in her face and bugs her. She is however quite a little cutie. I love her to bits!

Pulled from MegansWorld.ca. Read the original post here

A few things of note with Dylan these days. He’s definitely the mellower of the two kids. He’s been a bit shy about being around certain strangers but he does eventually warm up to them. By strangers I mean people he hasn’t met before that I know (like friends of mine or Tamara’s).

He’s definitely not the most “tough” kid in the world. In fact, I think he’s more like me in that he’s kind of wimpy. It makes me a bit worried because I know where that got me when I was young but the reality is, I can only teach him to be the best he can and go from there. I know he will be fine.

He got stung by a wasp not long ago and now he’s a bit on a bug phobia thing. Kinda scared of getting stung but I have tried to explain to him that he just needs to be careful. Can’t say I blame him for being scared as bees and wasps freak me out too. Plus, he got stung by a wasp who ended up coming from a nest in Dylan’s castle that me and Tamara didn’t know was there. It is gone now, trust me.

Took him and Megan to Magic Mountain and they LOVE it. Haven’t had the chance to stay too long but we did buy season passes so we’ll be back as many times as we can during the year. They still love going to the beach. Dylan likes digging holes in the sand with me.

Took him to his first movie to see Cars 2 and although he loved it, I was not a fan of the movie’s content for a kid his age. It was James Bond in Cars format with guns and shooting and “killing”. Dylan ended up saying “I’m going to kill you” to one of his friends which we very quickly curbed and realized that it came from the movie. D didn’t know what he was saying so we made sure he knew that wasn’t something to be said. Definitely shows the influence of media on young kids. I’ll be more picky with the movies I take him to next time.

Lastly, he now likes to pretend he is Roscoe which is a robot from the Backyardigans. I don’t like the show but it is harmless and he loves it.

Pulled from DylansHouse.com. Read the original post here