Happy Kids Archives

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Category Archives for Happy Kids

Here’s why Grandparents are Awesome

Grandpa Esko passed away a couple weeks ago so it’s made me look back at some of my memories of him and my Grandma Norma. My childhood had a seismic shift when Grandma passed away because things I was used to would never be the same. I guess that happens for everyone when someone we love […]

Find Your Gift

Dear Sydney and Trey, You gotta find your gifts. They’re out there somewhere, you just gotta find them. I’m not talking about presents under the tree or from the Easter Bunny, I’m talking about the gifts that are sitting inside you right now ready to be discovered. Trust me, you’ve got gifts. We all do. Some of us […]

Be The Check Mark

It’s Thanksgiving morning, the year is 2017. I’m downstairs on the couch while Randa and the kids are still asleep, they got home pretty late last night after spending the day at the movies, out for supper and then the North Carolina Arboretum. Before I head down to the workshop to make some hay on the […]

Disney World Can Wait

Yesterday we made the hard decision to reschedule our family trip to Disney World. Actually, Hurricane Irma made the decision for us. The flooding, power outages, mass evacuations, gas shortages and overall destruction in Florida was just too much to overcome. And now that we’re starting to see images of the toll Irma took on […]

The Time Trey Wore a Dress For Picture Day (and looked wonderful)

Every year we take the kids to the mall to get their pictures made, and every year Randa and I usually spend an entire evening debating outfits with the kids. We like their outfits to match without being too matchy-matchy and we don’t like them to be too dressy-uppy either. But this year was a little […]

Yesterday was our best day!

Yesterday was the best day for our new family business. We’ve been working hard getting our business off the ground over the past five months, waking up early and sometimes working really late. It’s totally been a labor of love. The kids have crates named after them, and they seem pretty excited about that but there’s always […]

Labor Day Kneeboarding at Boone Lake

We spent the Labor Day holiday with the family at Boone Lake in Tennessee. The water levels were still really low because of the dam repairs but that didn’t stop us from having a great time together. We also celebrated Hayden’s 11th birthday…I can’t believe he’s 11 already! When I moved to North Carolina he […]

We Love The Asheville Drum Circle!

On Friday night the four of us went to the Asheville drum circle for the first time together. The drum circle is where Randa and I went on our first date almost eight years ago to the day. A couple years ago we took Sydney with us and she loved it so we were looking […]

Girls Can Do Anything Boys Can Do

Over the past few weeks I’ve been noticing Sydney questioning the roles girls and boys play in society. One night we were watching astronauts in the space station on YouTube and Sydney asked if girls can be astronauts too? So we did a quick search and watched girls floating in the International Space Station. Then […]

4 Of My Favorite Sentimental Gifts For Kids

I’m going to have to delete this post about sentimental gifts for kids because when Sydney and Trey start surfing the internet in a few years I don’t want them to see some of these gift ideas still waiting for them. Last night I taught Sydney how to use bookmarks on the family laptop so it […]

Our Kids Forgot To Blink At Disney On Ice Tonight!

Tonight we took the kids to Disney On Ice presents Let’s Celebrate and they had a blast! We had a blast, too! Disney on Ice never fails to impress. The kids wore their favorite Queen and Princess dresses and both of them were completely awe-struck at the beginning of the show when all their favorite […]

Our Son Likes Wearing Tutus – Is That a Problem?

Our son likes wearing tutus, and if you don’t like it that’s your problem…not ours. Is that harsh? Maybe. Do I care? Not even a little bit. We enrolled our kids in ballet together because they said they wanted to be in the same class. A nice perk of that is it made our lives […]

Be The Nerd – Do What Makes You Happy!

When I graduated from high-school we all got to choose a quote to go beside our graduation picture in the yearbook. Some of the quotes were funny, some were philosophical and some were inside jokes only a few people understood. My quote said…’I can’t wait to raise little football players and dancers.’ That was […]