MormonDaddyBlogs – Featured

One in a Million

May 5, 2012 By Dennis 1 Comment

Some guys just seem like they were made to be dads. Not that all of us guys can’t get there eventually, but some, like maybe one in a million, seem like they come ready made to be great dads.

Josh Tenney is one of those.

I’ve had the opportunity to know Josh through some key milestones in his life, from finally finding The One (took awhile, but she was worth the wait), to his marriage to her, to giddily expecting his first child, to her birth.

Anna Liberty Tenney. A little sweet-pea, if ever there was one.

I also saw Josh go through the pain of seeing his treasured Anna stricken with sunburns so severe, even with limited exposure to the sun and the protection of copious amounts of sunscreen, her eyes would blister shut.

Several trips to the doctor’s office later, as well as traveling cross country to the specialists at the National Institutes of Health in D.C., the diagnosis was confirmed. Anna has XP, an extremely rare condition that has changed how the whole family’s lives.

Some characterize XP as being allergic to the sun, but Josh points out it is much more than that.

“Each day, Anna’s skin is covered with sunblock and lotions,” writes Josh on his blog. “She must remain indoors to be completely safe. Before going outdoors on occasion, Anna must wear shoes, long pants, long sleeved shirts, gloves, sunglasses, and a custom made hat with a specialty UV-blocking plastic face shield.”

Josh has created a blog about his daughter’s life with XP. It’s called Anna Liberty: A Girl Who’s One in a Million, including this post here, which explains how the family is approaching the coming summer, with its longer days, but with the treasured warm, post-sunset hours, when Anna becomes a night owl.

Math for me seldom makes sense. But sometimes, when the one-in-a-million kid scores the one-in-a-million dad, it clicks.

Filed Under: Actors, Featured, New to MDB, Parenting Tagged With: Anna Liberty, Josh Tenney, Xeroderma Pigmentosum, XP

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation

April 28, 2012 By Scotty Taylor

Motivation can be a four-letter word, especially when you want to do something and you know you should be doing something, but things get in the way.

Chas Hathaway is an author, musician, blogger, and Mormon father of four rambunctious munchkins, all under the age of 7. They are, as Chas calls them, “A Blast.”

He shares his thoughts and talents at his website: Overtones and Ice Cream Cones, The Blathering, Chattering, and Musical Clattering of Author and Musician, Chas Hathaway.

Check out his thoughts about how he stays motivated as a husband, author, musician and dad on his post: Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation.

Filed Under: Featured, Music, Writers Tagged With: Chas Hathaway, music, writer

My Peeps

April 7, 2012 By Dennis

Going off the rails a little bit for this one, in that it’s a post by a Mormon mommy (gasp!). But it is, frankly, too good to resist, and it has a nice little message for our Mormon daddy community, too.

Kacy Faulconer speaks beautifully of what it means to be enmeshed in a ward of her “peeps,” fellow Lattter-day Saints, with all their weirdnesses mixed in with their beautiful acts of kindness. (My favorite line: “Every ward has a few weirdos and if yours doesn’t–it’s you.”)

“Peeps in my ward plan parties for me that I don’t even want to go to like they are some over-eager friend. But then I go (begrudgingly) and it’s fun and good. I used to plan those parties for them and they came (begrudgingly) and it was fun and good. Left to my own devices I would stay home and do nothing (don’t get me wrong–this is not without merit) but sometimes a little nudge to do more is OK. You can’t anticipate what you’re going to get from these peeps because you don’t always know what you need. I didn’t know I needed a frozen chocolate drumstick with nuts from my gal-pal/80-year-old neighbor yesterday but as it turned out, it hit the spot quite nicely.”

This Easter season, Kacy’s post, which you can read here, hit the spot quite nicely.

Filed Under: Featured, General, Writers

MDB Spotlight: 3 more posts you don’t want to miss

March 31, 2012 By Dennis

This week, MDB featured a post, called “I’m a Mormon and I Don’t Watch Fox News,” which served as a timely reminder for the need for civility and respect for those who may share your chapel but not your politics. While we’re speaking of Fox News, there’s another MDBer who not only watches it, but is frequently an invited guest on Fox News.

In a recent post, author Jason Wright gives an intriguing description of the five hours that are required to generate a 3-minute interview segment in Behind the Scenes of a Fox News Appearance.

When I visited a new website, called Mormon Explorer, one word popped into my brain: genius. It’s an innovative site that is designed to facilitate connections between Mormon families in their travels throughout the world. The idea for Mormon Explorer began two years ago when Mormon dad Jeff Paul took his family on a 3-week adventure through a number of European countries.

“With two kids (one and three years-old) on a student income (or lack thereof), we had to be creative in how to stretch our budget to be able to experience the best Europe had to offer. We quickly identified our nightly hotel costs as the largest and most manageable expense. We experimented with the different options available; budget hotels, hostels, and staying with friends (some whom we met at church and others through online communities). By far, our most memorable experiences from the trip were the evenings we spent in the homes of strangers, sharing meals and sharing stories.”

Read more about the creation of this site in Mormon Explorer – Uniting Through Travel.

I hope I might be forgiven the self-indulgence of highlighting Will People Come, Ray?, but it is for a good cause. As a Mormon daddy, I am witnessing one of my daughters who, in addition to working full-time as a Special Ed teacher at a local high school and taking a full load as a Master’s degree candidate at BYU, is doing her best to generate funds for her school’s new Best Buddies chapter.

Best Buddies is an organization that seeks to foster meaningful friendships between kids with special needs and mainstream kids.

My daughter has been doing everything she can to help fill the auditorium for a benefit concert. It will feature a terrific line-up (The Whits and Allred). If any of you are in the Provo area on April 7, I hope you can join us and bring the family. (There’s a $2 discount if enter promotional code “buddy” at the Get Tickets Here box at her online ordering page.)

If you do, please say hello. It would be a pleasure to meet a fellow MDBer.

Filed Under: Featured, Film/TV, General, Media, Music, Writers Tagged With: Dennis Agle, Fox News, Jason Wright, Jeff Paul, Mormon Explorer

To Every (Political) Thing, There is a Season…

March 28, 2012 By Scotty Taylor

Photo by sidknee23. Creative commons license. Some rights reserved.

Two things we generally try to avoid on this blog are politics and religion (not that there’s anything wrong with them, it’s just that they are already well-covered elsewhere). So what do we feature in our first post from Brett Nordquist‘s blog? Politics and religion!

Brett gives us a timely reminder that there is more than one side in the political realm, even within the Church. You may agree or disagree with what he has to say, but one thing’s for sure… forsaking civility and spewing vitriol towards those on the other side of the political spectrum won’t get us any closer to fixing anything.

Brett lives in the Seattle area with his wife and four children and works as a custom PC builder. You can check out his blog post: I’m A Mormon And I Don’t Watch Fox News, or other posts on his blog simply titled: Norquist’s Blog.

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Scott Taylor is the writer of an award-winning short film, Wrinkles, and of the upcoming feature film, Edwin. He and his wife have four children. Scott touches on a variety of matters on his blog, Scotty Watty Doodle All the Day.

Filed Under: Featured, General Tagged With: Brett Norquist, Scott Taylor

If You Could Go Back, What Would You Tell Yourself?

March 26, 2012 By Ammon Beckstrom

Possessing all the wondrous knowledge you’ve accumulated since your teen years, what would you say to your sixteen-year-old self if you could go back in time?

Blogger Seti Matua over at LeFoluga.com keeps it real. Among the wisdom he’d impart to his younger self is this choice nugget:

“You’re an idiot.”

Other than telling myself to buy as much Apple stock as possible, that’s probably not too far off what I would have said.

Read the rest of Seti’s advice plus his usual, unique blend of Samoan insights in his post I regret being 16.

Talofa. Afio Mai!

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Ammon Beckstrom is a husband, father, and self-admitted geek. His blog, Slightly Insightful, features his thoughts on life, technology, and doing more of the things that matter.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Ammon Beckstrom, Seti Matua

Wanna Help?

March 3, 2012 By Dennis

On the home page of this blog, right smack dab in the center column, is our blogroll, a never-ending river of posts that lets me know that the Mormon daddy blogging community is alive and well, despite the lack of updates to these pages.

The idea was that I’d highlight more of your fine work in our feature stories. But real life keeps colliding with that idea. Which leads me to this request.

Wanna help?

I am looking for a few contributors who feel like they could keep an eye on that flowing river, and when they see a gem that they think is particularly fine, fish it out and write a few paragraphs about what makes it so fine. Just once a month (I know you’re busy, too). Like home teaching (but not necessarily at the end of the month). Ideally, you’d post it as a contributor to the blog directly in WordPress (fairly user friendly). It will be our featured article (the one with the big graphic on the home page) for the week, or until the next featured article comes along.

I see the featured article as basically our “blog post of the week.” Clearly there are more candidates for “post of the week” honors than we are currently able to feature. In fact, there are clearly enough good posts out there that we could have blog posts of the day, but I’m trying to take baby steps here.

I know I’ve put out a request like this before, but this time I have a better idea of what I’m looking for. You:

are willing to keep an eye out for blog posts that are candidates to feature on these pages;
have a way with words and would be willing to put together a couple of paragraphs introducing a blog post you chose to feature and what about it caught your attention (feel free to read a few of the past featured articles to get an idea of what we’re looking for and the basic style of how the posts are structured);
are willing to commit to prepping one feature per month.

For bonus points, you could submit a graphic that we could use along with the post. But if that’s not up your alley, we can take care of that on our end.

There. That’s it. Not so bad now, eh?

Here are a few more particulars.

Is there pay? A lot of blogs don’t pay their contributors anything. We’re one of those. Sorry. We wish there were money in this gig, but there just isn’t now. You’d be doing this out of the sheer joy of helping the Mormon daddy blogging community thrive.

Can I feature my own blog? No. We prefer you to feature somebody else’s blog. It’s better karma — let somebody else feature your blog.

Can I feature a blog on some aspect of Mormonism or politics? Or maybe my MLM? No. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things (except maybe MLMs), but it’s just that they already seem to get plenty of attention.

But what else is there? Plenty of stuff. Our ideal post is just dads who happen to be Mormon doing their thing. Let us take heart from one another’s efforts to keep the faith while keeping our families together and food on the table.

Do I have to stick to the posts on the blogroll? No, but if you find a good blog that fits that we don’t know about, let us know and we’ll add it to the blogroll (in fact, we have several good blog submissions that we need to get added to the blogroll — backlogged. Ugh.)

Do I have to be a Mormon daddy to be a contributor? No. All you need is an appreciation for the Mormon daddy blogging community. And know the difference between you’re and your.

OK, I’m interested. What’s next? Just send and email to mormondaddyblogs@gmail.com and let me know you’re interested. I promise to reply this time.

Filed Under: Announcements, Featured Tagged With: daddy bloggers, mormon, mormon daddy blogs, mormon dads

One Year Old, Not Breathing

January 28, 2012 By Dennis

“Engine 51, Medic 143, you’re responding for a 1 year old unconsciousness and not breathing. PD is also en route.”

Thus begins the latest post by a new blogger to MDB, a firefighter/paramedic working in California.

The blog is a fascinating account of the life of a firefighter/paramedic, from rolling in the middle of the night on calls where an elderly woman is spending her last moments of mortality to lighter fare where the subjects get what’s coming to them.

The experiences, even the big ones, are typically recounted in a very matter of fact way, from the unresolved end of the 1-year-old’s episode to this resolution about the elderly woman:

“We followed the ACLS protocol without success. The patient went from a ventricular PEA into asystole. After 30 minutes resuscitation efforts were terminated.

“90 minutes after the tones went I found myself back in bed, slowly drifting back to sleep….but not before turning off my alarm.”

Because of the nature of his job, he maintains anonymity for himself as well as his department. He also maintains the privacy of his patients by not revealing their personal information and by changing minor details of the calls he goes on. I knew him briefly when I lived in California, before he took up his chosen profession. He’s a 34-year-old who is married and has three young children. Not surprisingly, he serves as his ward’s emergency preparedness coordinator.

Welcome Firefighter/Paramedic to the MDB blog.

Filed Under: Featured, General, New to MDB Tagged With: http://mormondaddyblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/paramedic2.jpg

How did the Chicken Cross the Ocean?

January 16, 2012 By Dennis

For many of us, a big, scary thing would be writing and producing a musical. For Erik Orton, a writer/director/producer in New York City, it takes a little something more.

Erik’s big, scary thing is sailing around the world with his family. Not on an ocean liner. In a sailboat.

He admits that it is a daunting challenge. And when faced with such a daunting challenge, Erik and his family are breaking it down into what they like to call “chicken steps.”

“Here’s how we’re starting out: our children need passports for this undertaking. Getting passports is less scary than sharks. So…getting passports is what we call a chicken step. Next scary thing: how in the world are we going to pay for such a ludicrous undertaking? We don’t know exactly, but why should that stop us? What we do know is that we have a lot of stuff around in our apartment that we don’t use or really need…certainly not on a boat. (That’s my wife’s idea. She’s just dragging me along.) What if we sold all that stuff and put it toward passports? Small stuff, but it’s a start. That’s a chicken step. Starting to get the idea?”

Erik was raised primarily in Germany and the suburbs of Washington D.C. He graduated from BYU in 1998 with a Bachelor of Arts in Media Music and a minor in Playwrighting. He began writing and producing theatre while a student. In addition to producing and directing a number of plays, Erik has also written a number of works, including the musical Berlin. Erik and his wife, Emily, live in New York City.

MDB would like to welcome Erik Orton to the blog. Be sure to read Erik’s post, Chicken Steps.

Filed Under: Featured, Stage, Writers Tagged With: Erik Ort, Erik Orton

Hand Holding on Holding Hands

January 4, 2012 By Dennis

For those of us way on the other end of the tied knot, it can be easy to forget the delicate nuances involved in timing and initiating that first hand-hold in a new relationship. These are high stakes here. Blow the timing or technique here could doom an otherwise promising relationship.

The ranks of Mormon dadhood might experience some growth, thanks to a recent posting, “Holding Hands,” in The RMTC (The Returned Missionary Training Center). The post not only helps the recently returned missionary recognize the timing cues, it offers a technique, which derives its name from that masterpiece Kung Fu Panda, for how to float that hand-holding trial balloon.

“The Wushi Finger, (aka the pinky brush) is used to determine whether someone is interested in holding your hand. It requires you to ever so slightly brush your hand against your dates hand. It needs to be fluid — no ferreting around in pursuit of your date’s hand. The point of the Wushi Finger is to allow your date a chance to politely decline by moving her hand away in a subtle manner.”

Read the full article here.

Filed Under: Featured, Relationships