Taking your kids on adventures…

Family Time

I’m a new dad so maybe I’m no expert but one thing that we continue to do with Eva is take her places. I’m into photography, you might have noticed my link to The BenSpark on the right, that is my main blog for my Photo-A-Day Project. Well, Allison and I just joined a photography meetup.com group and we both enjoy going to events. Well, if we both go then what do we do with Eva. We take her along for sure.

I know many families that keep the kids in the house and become hermits once the baby comes along. We can’t and won’t do that. There are just so many things that we want to do and we can take Eva with us on each adventure. Sure there might be some tough spots….

Baby off roading

… and you really have to plan differently when you have a kid in tow. For instance I am hyper punctual and having a baby has ‘mellowed’ that a bit for me. However, sometimes Allison and I are still assuming that we are the same people we were before Eva. So we have to communicate with each other so we work as a team to get all of Eva’s needs met so we can go on our adventures and have everything we need so Eva can enjoy the day too.

So, plan ahead, pack ahead and look ahead when you are taking kids with you on adventures. That will help cause less stress in your life.

The other great thing about these adventures is that we have such great memories of our times together and whenever we get a chance we take tons of photos of the family. I never get tired of taking photos of this kid, I mean, look at this expression.

"Hold Me Back Momma....

She’s ready to take on the world.

HIMYM – The Goat

I am a day late with this and will tell you that yes, there will be spoilers.

Of the episodes this year this one has to be one of my favorites. Was it the ‘Bro Code’, ‘The Devil’s Three-way’, ‘Barnabas Stinson’ or the Goat? No, it was skymall. Yes, skymall is what totally made it for me this episode and I will tell you why. Barney is the guy that skymall was made for. I travel, a whole hell of a lot, and I read the skymall catalog at least once a trip from cover to cover because I am bored, I finished a book and I want to see if there is some cool gadget for me to buy. However I don’t buy any but I’d like to. Seeing Barney’s office covered in inspirational posters and the Coup de grâce was the hot dog toaster/cooker. I mean, it cooks the dogs and toasts the buns at the same time and he had it in his office. What guy hasn’t wanted one of those at the office on his desk. That would be sweet!

Okay, skymall aside the episode had many great points. We start out with the morning after between Barney and Robin. Was it awkward, not really, Robin is pretty cool pretty quick. She seems to forget that things ever happened quite easily. Barney however introduced us to another Barney-ism, the .bpeg The .bpeg is a mental digital image of nude pictures that Barney keeps in his head. And he asks Robin for a high five. Sure Barney seemed cool in that bed but once he got out….

Barney has some great ticks once he is nervous about something. He nearly feel to pieces as the group talked about “breaking the barrier” to their 30s. Of course in Barney’s guilt ridden, sex-addled brain he figures that everyone already knows that he slept with Robin. Barney is cracking, cracking under the weight of his guilt. He feels guilty because he broke, the “Bro Code”.

Later Barney hired Marshall as his lawyer because he needs 1.) to tell someone about sleeping with Robin and 2.) He wants that lawyer/client privilege and 3.) He wants Marshall to find a loophole in the ‘Bro Code’. The ‘Bro Code’ is a leather bound book that Barney has, I suspect he wrote it and got it printed through a place that will leather bind a book that you wrote, someplace like a skymall. But Barney claims that the ‘Bro Code’ was written by his ancestor in 1776. That ancestor, Barnabas Stinson. I loved the wig and the Gaston looking outfit of Barney’s.

Of course Marshall totally cracks, he of course tells Lily about it. This makes for a funny conversation on the roof. Lily has a part to play in this episode as she is the one who supplies the goat. The goat was brought to her kindergarten class by a drunk farmer. The farmer told the kids all about the goat and then proceeded to tell them how a goat gets slaughtered. Nothing like a little ‘The Jungle’ for your 5 year olds. The class begs Lily to save the goat, she does and is going to bring it to the ASPCA but they can’t get the goat till Monday. So the Goat stays with the group in the apartment and is part of Ted’s birthday celebration.

Ted is turning 30, he is packing up a box of stuff that is no longer of any use to him. Ted is pretentious and I am not the biggest fan of Ted. He should be a sympathetic character and I think in the first season he was but now we are seeing so many more of his annoying personality flaws. One of those flaws is overreacting. Are the minds behind How I Met Your Mother trying to keep the Ted/Robin romance alive a little? Ted is supposedly moving on from Robin, they dated a year and a half ago. Ted is with Stella now, but we don’t see her in this episode. Just a little back story for these scenes.

Barney could not find a loophole in the ‘Bro Code’ and it looks like Ted could have written the code himself as he is a pretty good follower of the code. Some funny flashbacks attest to that fact. So Barney figures he is going to buy his way out of his own guilt. Barney kidnaps Ted in a limo and is going to whisk him away to Vegas for a 30th birthday to remember. Some big bucks are being dropped on this (Barney must not have spent everything at skymall). But Ted wants to go back to the rooftop party and in an argument Ted reveals that he knows that Barney slept with Robin. Flashback to Robin telling Ted. Ted is okay with it, he is not mad… at Robin. Ted is furious at Barney and Barney offers Ted a ‘Free Shot’ anywhere but the face. Ted goes for the crotch, ouch Ted, you are really really mad. However, that wasn’t cool.

Ted then tells Barney that maybe Barney should be in that box of things he no longer has any use for. Ted tells Barney that they are no longer friends and gets a cab back to the party. I think Ted totally overreacted. But I think Ted does that a lot and he can be a brooding whiny pain. I’m not a fan of Ted, I am a fan of NPH. You just don’t do that to someone.

Oh, Lily, so of course Marshall tells Lily about Barney and Robin and at the rooftop party Lily starts asking about any weird sexual stuff with Barney. She says she is repulsed but she is also so curious. I’ve noticed that Lily is probably supposed to be like a meek librarian but is wild on the inside. I find it pretty funny when they let that deviant part of her slip out once in a while.

So throughout the episode Ted is talking about what the goat did and at the very end he says. “Wait a minute those can’t be Robin’s facecloths she wasn’t living there at my 30th birthday, so it must have been my 31st. So apparently Robin will be moving into the apartment? Strange ending and it really will get people talking.

Oh and one other thing that was great, they brought back Ranjit. This guy drives everything.

You can watch the episode at CBS.com