I had the privilege today to attend my eight year old daughters classroom Halloween party. Both my wife and I volunteer quite a bit, teaching P.E. classes and throwing parties. It’s awesome to be able to be so present in the lives of my children.

Happy Halloween

As I walked the hallways of the Thatcher Elementary school, I felt like I was in a Harry Potter movie. The hallways were filled with Halloween decor and kids were coming and going, occasionally stopping to take a poke at my baby boy. Everyone was extremely happy. I don’t think I saw a single child with a frown on their face today. Every class I walked by was having a Halloween party. What kid wouldn’t be happy on a day like that, right?

Read the rest of this entry »

Normally I’m a weather nut, meaning, I love to be caught in a bad down pour or crazy snow storm. Well, I shouldn’t use the word “caught,” I guess. I love to go out in them, as long as I know I can make it home safe and sound. Even if that means having to ram my SUV into a bank of snow just to get into my driveway! I know, give a man four wheel drive and he thinks he can do anything, right?

With that said, getting caught in a hurricane, such as hurricane Sandy, is another story.

Read the rest of this entry »

A little over a month ago, I committed to myself to publish a blog post once per day for six days out of the week. Since then, I believe I had one or two days where I hadn’t posted a blog post. So, today, my commitment to post a new blog six days out of the week is being revised!

The cool thing about setting a goal, if you don’t complete your goal, instead of considering yourself a failure, just revise the goal and continue on. My goal was a realistic goal. It’s easy for most people to post one new blog post per day, six days out of the week.

But for me, having four kids and a wife who loves getting out of the house on the weekends, it’s not so easy.

So today my new goal is to blog five days out of the week. I realized that finding the time to post on Saturday was stressing me out. On top of that, I was taking valuable time away from my kids.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some aspects of being an employee make life a little easier, such as shopping for medical insurance. In most cases, there’s no shopping involved! You take the insurance your employer has setup, pay the monthly premiums for your family and you’re good to go. However, medical insurance for the self employed is an entirely different story.

As a family, we’ve been blessed with very good health, so finding medical insurance hasn’t really been a huge focus of mine. The worst thing we’ve had happen recently was our newborn son receiving a helicopter ride to the Tucson Medical Center. I’ll go ahead and knock on wood, just in case! But that incident inspired me to dig a little deeper.

In the past, we’ve just paid cash for all of our medical expenses such as regular check-ups and birth expenses. Most medical facilities bill differently and give significant discounts for those paying cash. So if you’re health history is pretty good, you might consider that option.

Read the rest of this entry »

So there I was, sitting on the couch with my laptop, as is my normal routine, working on some content for a blog post. My daughter, who is probably the cutest four year old on this planet (I’m slightly biased!), has this little nine inch TV that she watches VHS movies on. This little TV is perfect for her as she can pop them in and out whenever she wants without scratching DVD’s. The movie she was watching was “The Iron Giant,” and the phrase,”You are who you choose to be,” was said several times throughout the show.

And as you might or might now know, I’m a huge movie nut. Not that I can quote every single line through an entire film, I just really enjoy a good show. And I enjoy it even more when it has some sort of an inspirational message.

“You are who you choose to be,” is Hogarth’s message to the Iron Giant. For those of you who have seen the movie, The Iron Giant is not of this world, yet he is very curious and is discovered by a little boy, which goes by the name of Hogarth. And to make a long story short, the Iron Giant has massive weapon capabilities, kind of like the aliens in the movie, “War of the Worlds,” with Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. In a time of peril, Hogarth’s message rings true to the Iron Giant. Instead of accepting what he was made for, he still had a choice in who he wanted to be.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most basic ways to make money online is through affiliate programs. In this post, I’m going to show you how to join the best affiliate program ever and show you why you should join.

What is an Affiliate Program?

If you don’t know what an affiliate program is, I’ll explain real quick. To put it simply, it’s a way for you to sell everyone else’s products for a commission. Most affiliate programs offer a one time commission, which is a percentage of the sale price, such as 15% or 30%. So on a $100 product, you’d make a one time commission of $30. Hosting companies such as Godaddy and Hostgator have affiliate programs that pay you around $100 per new hosting account opened. Sure, the hundo (hundred) is nice, but if you know anything about hosting costs, it’s nothing compared to the money the hosting company will make from your affiliate sale over time.

Read the rest of this entry »