I was at my parent’s house the other day and I looked at lots of old photographs that they had on the walls and in picture frames around the house. I saw pictures from my childhood, family vacations, and some of my kids of course. And I was struck by something: there weren’t that many …
Continue reading Take More PicturesSteve Holt
When I was a kid my parents had one of those instamatic cameras with the square Magicube on top. Remember those? It would give you a flashbulb on each side of the cube and would automatically turn when you wound the film to the next frame. I remember many times watching my father take pictures …
Continue reading Flashbulbs of MemoriesMy 15 year old son is only 1 inch away from being as tall as me. It’s a strange feeling for me to see him looking straight into my eyes. His feet are as big as mine. His hands are as big as mine. And the little boy has grown into a young man. For …
Continue reading He Looks Like MeWe asked our kids the other day where they wanted to go for the family vacation next summer. We anticipated something like the beach, or Mexico, or maybe a theme park of some kind. Instead, the answer we got from all of them was “We want to go back to the mountains.” As a family …
Continue reading Boiled custard, warm cookies, and roasting marshmallows
Guilt is a great motivator. Well, maybe not every time, but sometimes it certainly can be. When you have kids, something happens. It may not happen overnight, but it happens. You start to think differently about things. You suddenly start to notice the words and images that are used on TV shows and commercials, when …
Continue reading A Father’s GuiltMy dad ran up and down the sidelines cheering me on and yelling at the top of his lungs. Â He didn’t know much of anything about soccer, but that didn’t stop him from being my fan. Â That taught me a valuable lesson, which I am using today. I have never been a basketball fan. Â High …
Continue reading My NBA Education, or, What I Learned From My 12-Year OldWe just got back from our yearly family summer vacation (a cruise to Mexico), and we racked up another bushel of memories that make us all cringe and laugh. If your family is like mine, family summer vacations are watershed moments in our lives that we talk about for years. Â As we rolled down the …
Continue reading Blast From The Past: The Grab Bag“A bro must wait 3 weeks after he breaks up with a girl to engage with said girl.“ “If the girl dumps the bro then another bro may not date her unless the dumped bro proclaims it.“ These are but 2 rules of The Bro Code that my son has created with his friends. I …
Continue reading The Bro CodeThe other night I had the occasion to be in the emergency room in the middle of the night, which is another post for another day. What I want to talk about in this post is what I saw that night. The emergency room was empty with the exception of one other family. They were …
Continue reading You Blink, and They’re GoneThis past weekend I was completing one of my to-do items on my list, and figured the new year was as good an excuse as any to get it done!  I have a stack of home movies of my kids on VCR tapes that I have been meaning for years to get converted to DVDs …
Continue reading From stuffed animals to puppy dogsA pistol grip on a AK-74U reduces the recoil and improves accuracy. By taking advantage of reduced gravity you can buy yourself a few seconds of advantage as you jump over your opponent. If you wait a few seconds before firing and allow more of them to come into the picture you can take out …
Continue reading Pistol Grips, Reduced Gravity, and Problem SolvingEvery time I talk about things regarding ‘back in the day…’ I start to sound like that old guy who yells at kids to get off his lawn. If there is anything universal I think it’s old people complaining about young people. And I have done my fair share for sure. I often get invited …
Continue reading Why Generation Y Is Better Than You and IIt is pretty darn easy for my 14 yr old son to get under the skin of my 11 yr. old. He knows exactly what to say to send his brother into orbit and cause a ruckus. Â I think pretty much every family can say the same thing, right? Your kids figure out pretty quickly, …
Continue reading Words are heavyMy little brother and his wife delivered their twins yesterday. It was quite a day and I am very proud of him and his wife as I think they will make great parents. Â I could sense the pride in his voice and it still blows my mind that my little brother is now a father. …
Continue reading Revisiting MemoriesThe other day I was surfing around inside Facebook and saw a post that was created by my 14-yr old daughter. One of her older high-school friends made a comment on her post and in the comment she said this, “…I want to no all about it…”. Â I made the remark to my daughter how …
Continue reading Facebook GrammarI have lots of people in my life who have things in common with me. I have neighbors who share our neighborhood in common with me, so when we talk to each other we talk about the neighborhood. I have work colleagues who share work things in common with me. I know the guy at …
Continue reading A Common ThreadThe list is long. My to-do list of work-related things is pretty darn long, and you know what I’m talking about. When you get something marked off your list it seems like 2 things make it onto your list. I am one of those people who doesn’t have a distinct separation between work and personal, …
Continue reading The Most Important Thing: Being ThereWe just got back from the family vacation to the Great Smokey Mountains, and it has given me time to reflect on the whole family vacation experience. Â I wrote a number of weeks ago about the whole saga of trying to figure out a way to get the whole family together for a summer vacation, …
Continue reading Spend Your Money On MemoriesRecently I spent a Sunday afternoon replacing the insides of one of the toilets in the house. It was finally time because I couldn’t tighten things anymore to stop it from leaking, as the hard water had taken its toll on the seals. So I set about my business. As is sometimes the case, it …
Continue reading Changing your toilet and other dad dutiesFor many years I have done my dad-ly duties by documenting the various family events such as birthdays, vacations, and sports games. Â I have more digital pictures than I care to count, and I will admit that I am quite fond of making music videos of the family events and posting them on Youtube (www.youtube.com/user/stevengholt). …
Continue reading Transforming My Son Into Steven SpielbergIt looked really cool. My 11 year old son had taken a piece of paper on the counter and folded it into a boat, although I didn’t know at that moment that he was the one who did it. At first I thought that he might have found it somewhere, but I asked him where …
Continue reading Is YouTube raising my kids?So we sat down at the computer like we always do (my wife and I that is) to figure out which week we needed to block out for the family summer vacation. We did this about a month ago, at the beginning of March. Â We are still trying to figure it out. I remember back …
Continue reading The Modern-Day Family Summer VacationI had the chance a few weeks ago to participate in a week-long training seminar on leadership. Toward the end of the week I was a little worn out with all the heavy mental calisthenics I had been doing and was really just interested in going home. Then we had a 4-hour session on the …
Continue reading The Watermarks of LifeWhen I was a kid my parents made me ride the bus to school. I hated it. Seriously. In fact, I rode the bus to school until I was able to get my driver’s license and drive to school. What is really telling is that I drove mom’s station wagon. Yeah, I was willing to …
Continue reading Do Your Kids A Favor And Make Them Ride The BusI think most dads would agree that their dad-ness is influenced in large part by the things that their dad did. I know that’s true in my life. My childhood was a normal one I think, with lots of great memories of family vacations, yard work, playground fights, and generally being a kid. I struggle …
Continue reading These Aren’t My Dad’s Shoes“I hate those quizzes dad.” Â That’s what my 10 year old told me. Â He got a Facebook account for Christmas and his friends immediately started sending him Facebook quizzes and polls. Â You know what I am talking about… “which garden tool are you?” Â and “So-and-so just took a quiz to see how smart you are. …
Continue reading Kids Are More Tech-Savvy, But Does That Make Them Smarter?The other day one of my kids ran in the house after school and made a bee-line to his room. In a matter of minutes the XBox360 was online and he was fragging (ask your kids, they know what it means) his buddies and trash talking (using his wireless voice-over-ip headset) his way through a …
Continue reading Nazi Zombies, Mudballs, and Why I Am Afraid I Am Screwing My Kids Up