I love being a dad. I am not as good a father as my dad but nonetheless I enjoy watching my kids learn and grow each day. With that said however I have been doing fatherhood all wrong. For me, being a dad is extremely hard and takes a lot of time. Steering the fatherhood ship takes a lot of time and effort so that things don’t get off course. According to President Obama, this shouldn’t be the case. Juli and I were watching a show on Hulu the other night and this ad came on:

According to him, it shouldn’t be hard and only requires a few minutes a day. Wow, I wish someone had told me this earlier! Sorry Juli, I will not be able to help anymore with the kids at night because it is too hard and takes way more time than a few minutes. Let me know when you are done taking them to soccer or t-ball practice, feeding them, cleaning up after them, reading night time stories to them, brushing and flossing, getting them water before bed and potty time is over so that I can spend a few minutes to tell them I love them and kiss them good night. I’m glad that our president has taught me that it can be so easy and not take up a lot of my time! This new mantra should free me up to work on a lot more worthwhile things.

Speaking of worthwhile things, how about General Conference? I thought that Elder Holland’s talk about the Atonement last conference was incredible and extremely thought provoking and I remember thinking, “we won’t hear a talk that inspirational and motivating for a long time.” Of course all the talks given resonate with someone in a powerful way, but talking about the Atonement in that manner was meant for everyone to hear and understand. Little did I know that he would top himself 6 months later. If you haven’t heard, read or seen it, I would recommend you doing so. Look in the Sunday PM session Elder Bednar also gave a great talk on bearing false witness. He is one of my favorite speakers by far.

I took the kids to the pumpkin patch the other day. I now know that I probably shouldn’t have done that because it took way more time than a few minutes and was not easy. Never the less it was a lot of fun watching the kids go crazy with all the pumpkins. Noah loudly declared in the car that he was going to find the biggest pumpkin in the patch and that would be the one we would get. Well he made good on his promise!

Hailey and Joslin also had their ideas of what would make a good pumpkin and had a good time rolling each over and inspecting them!

Once we all agreed on a pumpkin, we proceeded to buy it and talk about how we were going to carve it up. We purchased a pumpkin carving kit and at home we all agreed to the flaming face. Of course it was the hardest to carve but that was the one decided on so we begin to ‘gut’ the pumpkin. The kids were fascinated but afraid to touch the pumpkin guts. Noah said that was the grossest thing he had ever seen. Juli asked him what his favorite pie and he quickly replied, “Pumpkin!” Once he said that though, he looked back at the now gutted pumpkin and got this weird look on his face realizing that he was probably eating pumpkin guts. It was classic. We’ll see if he eats pumpkin pie this year.

Joslin also got a small pumpkin and when we started cutting into the ‘Momma pumpkin’ as she put it, she took her baby pumpkin and proceeded to comfort it saying that we were not going to cut into the baby and that the ‘momma pumpkin’ was going to be ok. At one point I think she didn’t believe her own words and took the baby pumpkin and ran away with it to hide it. She is such a sweetheart when it comes to her dolly’s Why not a pumpkin? In the end, this is what we came up with:

You know what? We had such a good time doing this together. It took a lot of time to do and was not easy, but it was so worth it. Call me a fool, but I think I will disregard our president’s advice and continue doing things the way I have been doing them. It may be hard but it is so worth it.