The best gift of all

This is another article from the Chicken Soup for the Soul weekly bulletin that I got from my email. It talks  about the best gift that a father can give his child which, unfortunately, many parents these days could not give their children. This gift is something you cannot buy but is the most treasured of all gifts when given to children. Hope you all like this as much as I liked it. This is something we all should think about.

From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Dad

The Best Gift of All by Mary Jo Marcellus Wyse

Kids spell love T-I-M-E. ~John Crudele

"Look! There's Dave Righetti!" My dad pointed at the taller of the two men leaving Cleveland Municipal Stadium. It was dusk and shadows had started to creep up the pavement, leaving us in cool summer shade.

"Really?" I stared at the Yankees pitcher. We'd been waiting for a half hour for the players to shower, change and head out so that I could nab some autographs.

"Go!" my dad said, but I was already scooting towards Rags, my ball and pen in hand. When I returned to my dad, triumphantly holding the signed baseball in the air, my dad leaned down and said, "Did you know that was Steve Sax with him?"

The second baseman? I gasped, spinning around, but the Yankees had already disappeared. "Darn." My dad laughed and clapped a hand on my shoulder. Maybe next time.

The birds and the bees

The other day, my inquisitive five-year old daughter and I were walking outside our building after buying her favorite Judge and V-fresh bubble gums. We stayed outside talking while I was carrying her and she was asking me a lot of questions. I don't know what prompted her but she suddenly asked me how she came into being. How she became human and who made her. I paused for a few seconds and thought of how best to answer her so that her five-year old mind can digest and understand it.

I told her that she was in her mother's stomach when she was made and that she only came out after nine months. "Who made me?" she asked in Tagalog. I said I put her in her mother's stomach. She seemed satisfied with my answers and I was hoping she would not ask for more details. When she moved on to another topic, I was relieved.

That night, I told my wife about the incident. I told her that our daughter was asking about the birds and the bees. She laughed and asked me how I answered. And I told her.

Pac-Man vs. Mario

I chuckled a bit when I watched this short hand-drawn video where the author put together game characters Pac-Man and Mario head to head in one game scene. Guess who wins.



[via forevergeek]

Thanks Dad

Got this from the email. It's a story from the Chicken Soup for the Soul weekly bulletin. I was deeply touched after reading it and I thought I'd share it with you.

From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Dad

Thanks Dad by Cynthia M. Hamond

To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter. ~Euripides

Every year of my childhood, our family of six would take a summer vacation. Over the Sacramento River and through the Idaho woods to our grandmother's house we'd go.

Trips were simpler then. No itinerary, no restaurants, no motel reservations, no travel kits or GPS units dictating the miles. Just a few old maps, historical landmarks, rest sites and Burma-Shave signs marked our route along the highway.

We were a large family on an educator's budget so we packed our own food, slept in the car while our parents drove through the night, or stayed at the welcoming homes of our relatives for reunion family fun from the West Coast to the Midwest prairies of North Dakota.

New Blogger Template Designer

For bloggers whose blogs are hosted on Blogger, they recently rolled out a new feature called the Blogger Template Designer. I was surfing the various blogger sites looking for a template for my blog and as I was about to import my new template, I discovered that Blogger made a major change in template design.

FarmVille not loading problem solved

My wife was mad early tonight. Her farm in FarmVille was not loading. The progress bar loads up to about 95% and then stops. So she then tried it in our laptop but still got the same problem.

I quickly googled her problem but came up nothing from the first page results. Hmmm. I told her jokingly that she has to make another account and start over again. She was definitely pissed off. But she was stubborn and persistent. She tried loading it over and over while at the same time searching over google for a solution until she finally hit the right one.

She found the solution at en.kioskea.net. Here are the steps for those having the same problem:

Hello, This is a fix for the loading problems from 6-10 and 6-11, 2010. 

1. Go to neighbor tab and remove a neighbor 

2. Have that neighbor send a new neighbor request 

3. Accept the request and you should be back to farming