With Thanksgiving just a few days away, my wife suggested we pick up the classic board game Monopoly for when we visit my side of the family in Alabama. That gave me the green light to carry out my own related agenda: to also buy the classic game Crossfire, from my own childhood.
Speaking of agendas, my son had one of his own, as well. He still had a few bucks leftover from his birthday, on a gift card to Target that he was eager to spend.
So he and I hopped in the 2019 Chevy Traverse that our family still has from our trip to Destin, FL. (More on that in the days to come…) Exactly 3.8 miles later, we had arrived.
I couldn’t have known this, but it just so happened that Target had just started a special 20% sale on family board games.
I feel really good about this. My wife’s idea was spot on.
Classic board games are a great way to unplug for the holidays while the family is together.
It’s easy to forget how great it is to break out some board games after the meal and have some mandatory fun.
My son ended going with a Squish-Dee-Lish. It’s funny how big he is into those “don’t know what you’ve got until you’ve opened it” toys.
I think it ended up being a sleep-deprived alien jet pilot?
Once we got home, I admit it took my longer than it should have to assemble Crossfire while my wife finished preparing dinner.
To my surprise, my daughter actually seemed more into the game than my son.
Good call, though. Stock up on board games for Thanksgiving, especially while they’re on sale this week at Target!
Now that it’s October, it occurred to me: You’ll be turning 8 next month!
Just like for your 5th birthday, you have chosen a family road trip to Destin, Florida; instead of a birthday party.
Considering that we’ll be staying for free using hotel points and that Chevy will be sending us a Suburban filled with a full tank of gas, we’ll actually be able to have a pretty amazing road trip cheaper than it would cost to throw you a birthday party around here in Nashville.
I think you’re making a very smart decision. Why have a party when you can have a road trip with the fam?
At the time, you were barely a year old; so while Mommy and I had a wonderful time, you don’t remember it at all.
Now at age 5, you are the age to where I believe you would be able to truly be able to appreciate and remember such a fun trip.
We spent our first night in Naples, which might be my favorite American beach yet. That’s the first time we ever saw dolphins in the wild. We collected seashells that first morning; those shells remain in our home 4 years later.
From there, we drove through the Everglades and then to the Keys.
It was such a dreamlike experience to be literally driving in the middle of the ocean, driving on a series of bridges connecting islands off the Florida coast.
But on both sides of the narrow roads, all we saw was ocean.
And I remember how Chevy put our family up in this really cool, historic house. You would love it now!
If our family were to revisit that trip, it wouldn’t simply be better just because you’re older now. There’s also the fact I have better camera equipment, as well as the skills and ability to make more artistic photo collages and well as music-laden videos to put on YouTube… like these two:
I don’t know when we can do this trip again, but at some point, I would love to make it happen.
Our family has made two different trips to Florida this year; back in June to Pensacola, then to Destin for your birthday in November.
My inner Jimmy Buffet is starting to reveal itself; it’s only enhanced because I tend to leave Sirius XM on Channel 24: Margaritaville.
As for now, these few pictures I took from 4 years ago serve as bookmarks of that trip, as well as inspirational images for us to get back to Key West.
Next month makes 4 years since my family has been involved with Chevrolet. Back in December 2011, we drove a Chevy Volt from Naples to Key West, Florida. They’ve flown me up to Detroit a few times as well. And this past summer, they let us drive a 2015 Colorado to go see our nephew graduate boot camp in Montgomery, Alabama.
This week Chevy invited me to the Nashville Auto Show, to check out their new 2016 vehicles. I particular enjoyed getting to sit in the 2016 Corvette… but what guy wouldn’t?
I’ll be going there with my son tomorrow so he can see all the cars. But as for today, I had the whole place to myself.
With the way Nashville traffic works, I knew that if I didn’t leave super early, I’d get there fairly late. So I was able to take pictures of the vehicles, in order to share them with anyone out there on the Internet who is such a Chevy fan they wanted to catch a peak of the new line-up.
So here’s your sneak peak:
2016 Corvette
2016 Chevy Silverado
2016 Chevy Malibu LT
2016 Chevy Impala
2016 Chevy Spark
2016 Chevy Sonic
2016 Chevy Volt
2016 Chevy Traverse LTZ
2016 Chevy Equinox LTZ
2016 Chevy Malibu 2.0 T
2016 Chevy Camaro
2016 Chevy Colorado
2016 Chevy City Express
2016 Chevy Tahoe
2016 Chevy Silverado
2016 Chevy Suburban
Thanks for taking a look at all these pictures I took of the 2016 Chevy lineup. Time (and statistics) will tell whether a post like this does well.
I just thought it might be a decent place for car enthusiasts to be able to catch some glimpses of the new Chevy lineup all in one place.
After seeing the City Express, it makes me sort of wish Chevy would turn this into a family friendly vehicle; kind of like a cross behind a small SUV and an updated minivan. That’s basically what it seems to me anyway; and I like it.
As of today, you are officially 4 years and 8 months old. At this point, you’re basically 5 as far as I’m concerned. But it’s not official until we’re celebrating in Destin, Florida; as we plan to do for your actual 5th birthday… still 4 months away.
This week I finally got to publish, “2015 Chevy Colorado Maxwell Air Force Base Road Trip,” which tells the whole story (with dozens of pictures and several custom videos I made) of us driving down to Montgomery to see your cousin Matt graduate boot camp and to celebrate your cousin Calla’s 4th birthday in Fort Payne, where I’m from.
(The pictures you see here are taken from that story.)
For the past several weeks, I’ve been sharing our newest Jack-Man webisodes with you in my letters. (We’ve made 17 Jack-Man webisodes so far!) However, I’ve decided that you and I shall take a break from them for a while.
One reason is simply because it’s so hot outside right now. With my Green Meanie costume, it’s already hot enough, but then to be running around in the sun for an hour or more at a time with you… I say it’s just too much right now.
Another reason we’re taking a Jack-Man break for right now is to test out a theory: that perhaps I can get just as many hits on YouTube by playing as my Green Meanie character to make informative videos, which require much less editing on my part.
For example, each Jack-Man video is about 3 and a half minutes long, but requires at least one hour of editing for each of those minutes.
But I can shoot a Green Meanie video in about 3 minutes and it only takes 20 minutes to edit.
Therefore, I’ve now published 3 of these Green Meanie videos in the past week. First I did one where Green Meanie shares his “Vegan Protein Smoothie” with everyone by demonstrating with a blender.
Then yesterday I made one where Green Meanie explains what he calls “The Protein Conspiracy.” He points out that most Americans believe we are in serious danger of not consuming enough protein, when in reality, we’re consuming too much protein, which leads to cancer and disease.
He goes on to point out that, ironically, most people assume vegans (like Green Meanie) don’t get enough protein. Green Meanie responds by using himself as a living, human experiment.
Since he hasn’t consumed any meat, dairy, or eggs in over 2 years (and no meat a year before that), he in theory should be just skin and bones; lacking so much protein.
Green Meanie then simply explains the 6 sources of his daily protein:
Veggies, fruit, grains, beans, nuts, and seeds.
So we’ll see how the free market accepts my Green Meanie character’s videos. You never know what might happen as a resort of something so silly yet deliberately educational and entertaining…
Love,
Daddy
P.S.
At the same time, I am very excited that last week, Health & Medicine Magazine reached out to me regarding my “Vegan Life” page here on Family Friendly Daddy Blog.
They have offered me a one-page space in theirmagazine, where I can share my thoughts, recipes, experience, photos and the most popular posts I have.
Health & Medicine Magazine is a high quality healthy lifestyle print publication that will be distributed free of charge for our readers throughout Florida. They wish to inspire many more people to join the healthy life and are working on securing funding via the Kickstarter platform.
In Florida, there are not such healthy free publications. So Health & Medicine Magazine plans to fill that void with their beautiful, quality publication promoting healthy lifestyle (fitness, yoga, healthy food, actual trends in health, nutrition, beauty etc).
Their magazine is completely free of charge to its readers.
Anyone can visit their Kickstarter page to catch a glimpse of what their magazine looks like and is all about: http://kck.st/1SZZqgm
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