So just as the week was a blur for us, please enjoy this whirlwind photo tour of the weeks highlights!

What is Calli sitting on? A stone wall?

Nope! This is a sculpture of a serpent named ‘Squiggles’. Squiggles lives at the Arvada Center of Arts and Humanities in Arvada, Co. Here, Kat helped Calli make it to Squiggles’ head. I’m not sure how big Squiggles is, but he’s HUGE! The Arvada Center is where we went to the People to People presentation. We probably could have spent the entire day here…

Tristin looked thoughtfully over his sisters playing on the giant serpent. That’s Daddy’s little Jedi!

Kat and Calli pose at the tail of the beast.

We went to the Downtown Aquarium in Denver for lunch. Unfortunately, they were having a big Valentine dinner event and couldn’t seat us. But Tristin looked amazed by everything anyway!

We then wound up at the Colorado Mills Mall, where Calli and I got to ride a turbo-charged carousel. This is a huge outlet mall, and Calli and Tristin came out of Gymboree with entirely new wardrobes!

Tuesday, we got to feed Tristin for the first time. Due to a back order issue with the pad we ordered from Fisher Price, we didn’t yet have a high chair to put him in, but that wasn’t going to stop us from getting some carrots in to this kid! I apologize that I’ve worked my way in to these pictures. Just pay attention to the cute kid with the quizzical look on his face, not me. (Like that’s hard to do! )

Gimme that spoon, Daddy! I'll do it!

Calli: Hey, Daddy! Can I help? Tristin: I told you I got it!

That's the face of a baby with a full tummy!

I certainly hope you enjoyed this week in review! I know I’m having fun!

Happy Fatherhood Friday!

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Image via Wikipedia

This Friday before Valentine’s Day, let me just join PJ Mullen in saying ‘I hate Valentine’s Day!‘ That being said, I find myself this Valentine season thinking about how I went from a nerdy kid who hated Valentine’s Day because I couldn’t get (read muster up the courage to get) a girl, to a husband and father with four Valentines that hates being told there’s one particular day to celebrate your love. Although I generally do not enjoy planning the future further out than tomorrow, I find myself looking to the future for my 4 Valentines…

Tristin

It’s easy to envision a bright new world in the sparkling blue eyes of a nearly six-month old baby boy. Has it really been six months? It seems like I was just blogging his birth from the hospital room!

This coming week, Tristin will eat his first solid food, or as solid as baby food can get. The days of sweet-smelling yellow poo will be over, and soon will arrive the stinky poo. I can’t wait.

Although it’s certainly too early to see the interests that my son will have, there is a gleam of curiosity and possible mischievousness that I can’t wait to watch develop. Barely sitting up, this boy is already reaching and grabbing at anything that comes near him. Snatching the glasses off of my face is a favorite triumph, as well as grabbing at whatever food the person that’s holding him is eating. He’ll be a handful, but if I have survived his sister thus far, I think I’ll be alright.

Which brings me to…

Calli

If anyone can be described as a fireball, Calli can. Even while watching TV, this kid is on the move. We very nearly have to tie her down at night to get her to go to bed. (Not literally, please don’t call social services. I know how things posted on the internet can get…)

I have never met a more compassionate child. If one of us is sick or in pain, she is the first one there to offer condolences and see if there’s something she can do to help.

Nothing is more important to her than her family. In fact, as I’m writing this, she’s singing ‘One Big Happy Family!’ from a Winnie the Pooh DVD that she loves. She often reminds us that we are one big happy family.

Kat

Very rarely does the elusive Teenager allow her picture to be taken, so please excuse the reissue of her Halloween pic!

I find that it’s hard to convey what I feel about the Teenager. She’s a teenager, so she drives me crazy with the constant texting, IMing, Facebooking, and anime watching, often (literally!) at the same time.

But then she’ll turn around and say something that blows me away.

It doesn’t take much for us to push each other’s buttons, and my wife constantly tells me not to egg Kat on. But that’s just the relationship we’ve built, and I think it’s rock-solid.

Tomorrow we’re driving down to Denver to learn about the People to People program. They want to send Kat to Australia this summer. Her dream is to work with animals, so their brochure that claims you can ‘cuddle with a koala’ is just too irresistible to not at least go see what they have to say. I’ve heard these things are pretty expensive, but I can’t let an opportunity like this pass her by. Any ideas for fund raising is certainly welcome!

Which brings me to…

Bobbette

My wife and I celebrated five years of wedded bliss this past November, and ten years of being together. Did I mention time flying earlier in this post?

What can I say? I just re-read my Wedding Anniversary post, ‘My So-Called Romantic Life‘, and naturally, it doesn’t begin to encompass what I am truly feeling. As much as I love my kids, and as much as I center my life around them, Bobbette is the one I have made the conscious choice to be with, and she with me. Years from now, when the kids have grown and flown, we’ll have each other.

There is no one in the Universe I would rather have at my side. Quite literally, you would not be reading this blog if not for her. She provides me with daily inspiration and much needed encouragement. She instills me with the sense that I can accomplish anything. When I feebly make a mess of something, she’s there to pick up the pieces.

She’s strong when I’m weak, smart when I’m stupid, fearless when I’m  a coward.

I like to think that I do the same for her, but I am certain that I am getting the better end of this particular deal.

I have to work on Valentine’s Day, so we’ve agreed that, yes, we’ll contribute to the commercialism of the day, but we’ll do it the day after – at 50% off! Luckily, Calli, who is oh-so looking forward to it can’t read a calendar!

I’d like to take one final moment to thank all of you for sticking around and sharing this life with me. I suppose I could have said I have five Valentines, you being the fifth. Without readers, I would have given up on this whole blogging thing long ago. Without the community of friends that we have built, I’d think I was wasting my time.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about me and my family as much as I have enjoyed reading about many of you and yours. Have a great Fatherhood Friday, and a wonderful Valentine’s Day!

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

image from squidoo.com

OK, so maybe this post is a little late. As you continue to read, you’ll understand why…

Happy 2010!!! You geeks out there that read this blog know that this is ‘The Year We Make Contact‘!!! Start striking your timpani drums now! So, my first resolution this year is to make friends with some Russians and go to Jupiter to look for monoliths…

All geeking out aside, I have been taking a lot of time to reflect on where I am as a husband, father, employee, and of course, Daddy Blogger. Since you are reading my blog, I am going to focus first on what I will be doing here going forward in this brand-spanking new year, and why you should keep reading!

Howefitz Blog New Year Resolutions and Hopes For The Future

• Deliver more quality content, maybe less quantity
  • Last year, I set a goal of blogging every other day. I failed. Of course, the reason for that is that I have a real full time job and a family. Some days sleep seems appropriate, and then it’s time to work or take care of the family. So I’m going easy on myself this year:
  • Generally, it seems I get about an hour in the morning to blog. This has resulted in a few rushed, phoned-in entries. So going forward, I am going to try to seek out better information, and really think through what I’m writing. I know a lot of my regular readers have become like friends, and for that I am eternally grateful. But I would still like to see this base grow, and to do that I need to take the time to research and do my best to provide quality content. Therefore, I may not blog but once, maybe twice, a week. Of course, these will still include funny anecdotes from my wife and children, but there will also be genuinely helpful (I hope) articles that others can find interesting beyond my friends and family.
• What About ‘Kids Play On The Net’?
  • My ‘weekly’ column, ‘Kids Play On The Net‘ over at Dad-Blogs will continue, probably in the same sporadic rhythm as last year, but you have my solemn oath that when I post there, it will continue to be about websites and online resources that I genuinely use on a regular basis and I hope you will find them helpful as well.

Beyond my hopes for creating a more resourceful, thoughtful, useful blog, I have personal goals as well:

• The Ever Popular ‘I’m Going to Lose Weight’
  • Our big family gift for Christmas this year was a Wii, with a Wii Fit. The first body test I took with it called me obese. A little voice said (Out loud!) ‘That’s obese!’ And my Mii character looked down at it’s ballooning form as if I had cursed it to a life of unhealthy plumpness. So, I will definitely start really watching what I eat. I considered going back to Tim Ferriss‘s ‘Slow Carb Diet‘, but I’m easily bored, so I will settle for avoiding ‘white foods’ and extra snacks. But the one day of eating anything I want? I could still get behind that!
  • And of course, I’ll be exercising with my Nintendo. (Welcome to the future. Oh the times, they are a-changin’!)
• Heaven Help Me, I Will Get Promoted
  • This past year I did a lot of complaining here, at work, and at home, about my job. The past several years I’ve felt like I’ve slipped and lost hold of something that I used to be very good at. I’ve heard a lot of complaining from others as well, and my response is always the same: ‘I hear a lot of problems, but not too many solutions’. A quick glance in the mirror made me realize what a hypocrite I was being. Here I was complaining and not solving anything myself! So, in this bright new year, if I find myself wanting to complain, I’m going to redirect that energy into finding and implementing solutions. And then if someone happens to notice what an improved manager I’ve become and thinks I should be doing more…

• Be A Better Father
  • Living in the Rocky Mountains is tough in the winter time. I feel like my kids don’t get a lot of varied experience due to being inside all the time. However, I am making a vow to get out to more story times at the library, visit the children’s museum more, and, of course, teach them the proper way to have a snowball fight (if I can ever get the stuff up here to pack well enough…).
• Be A Better Husband
  • Having kids, it’s easy to neglect the marriage. Your spouse is relegated to an extra pair of arms and hands to get things done, and an extra set of eyes to watch the kids and make sure one isn’t beaming the other in the head with a Linky-Doo.
  • This year, I’m going to make sure I pay attention to adding more romance into my marriage. After all, that’s how this whole family business got started in the first place…

How about yourselves? Any plans for 2010? 2009 was a good year, 2010 will be great!!!

Yeah, it's the kids that stress me out. Riiiight...

Have you ever had one of those conversations that aren’t really about what you’re talking about? The true meaning is conveyed through innuendo and subconscious body language, etc. Sometimes we just blurt out a phrase that’s not the truth at all.

This morning, when the teenager woke me because she missed the bus, ‘You kids are KILLING me!’ was what popped out of my mouth.

We’ve all laugh at the sitcoms and comedies that depict a frazzled parent. As I add kids to my own family, that stuff gets even funnier.

Who could get mad at a 'Steampunk Mad Hatter?'

It was mostly in jest that I said ‘You kids are KILLING me!’ But it also had nothing to do with them…

The past three days at work have been nothing but, for lack of a better term, sheer hell. Murphy’s Law was not only in full effect, but it threw me on the ground, kicked me in the ribs, spit on me, picked me up and knocked me down again.

Nothing seemed to go right. The associates under me didn’t seem to want to follow direction, and what’s worse, they didn’t want to think for themselves and come up with their own solutions. For anything.

After 3 15-17 hour days of this, (without a full lunch break mind you, I’d finally break down and have to get something to eat and sit for 15 minutes) one gets a bit … irritable.

So when I got home last night, and Calli ran to me and said, ‘Daddy home!’, I was very happy to see her, but I also felt like collapsing into bed. So, as these things go, last night was one of those nights where she was awake every ten minutes asking for milk or a toy or just generally not wanting to sleep.

At one point I remember, in a sleep deprived haze, saying, ‘Can’t we just got to sleep?‘

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

The thing that kept me going through those tough days of going in early and staying late was the fact that when I was done, I would be off for nine days of vacation. Awesome. The first day I planned on sleeping in until dinner time.

Alas, I have kids. So when Kat shook my foot, wrenching me from blissful slumber, and I saw her hovering over me, I knew it meant one thing: she missed the bus and needed a ride. Go away kid, ya bother me…

The point of this post isn’t to complain, rather, I’d like to point out the dangers of bringing home the attitude you may have gotten from work. Don’t take it out on the kids.

As a general rule, I don’t. I usually unload everything on my wife, (which is fair, right?) and play with the kids to relax. I don’t yell at them because I’m frustrated with something else … most of the time…

So I’m throwing this out into the Universe to remind myself, I’m off work now. I’m on vacation. Time to exhale!

**Don’t forget to enter the Pay it Forward giveaway! Simply click on my post Paying Forward A Random Act of Kindness. Tweet about it and comment and earn entries to win a $20 WalMart gift card!**

Out of the blue, she started running up to us, bag or purse open, saying ‘Chick or Cheek!’ Sometimes we’ll be on the floor playing puzzles or looking at books, and suddenly, she’ll grab one of the purses that she’s amassed into a rather sizable collection and say, ‘I wanna play chick or cheek.’ She’ll then run out of the room and slam the door. Moments later comes a small knock. When I open it,

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online! This week's theme is, of course, Halloween!

there’s a three year old there, all smiles, saying ‘Chick or Cheek!’ At which point I drop whatever small toy was within arm’s reach into the proffered bag/purse. Calli then runs off giggling to show Mommy what she got for chick or cheek.

I’m excited, because we get to start tonight. Every year there’s a lot going on in the valley and we try to hit it all! Tonight we’ll be in Minturn trick or treating, tomorrow we’ll hit towns up and down the valley. I actually get Halloween off work, so we’ll fill the entire day with fun and adventure! If all the candy doesn’t keep her wandering our halls like the undead, I’m betting Calli sleeps well tomorrow night!

So that’s our Halloween, I leave you now with a bit about everyone’s favorite Halloween candy from Lewis Black…