Dad's House

Single Parent Dating
& Parenting Teens


How to Get Your Teens to the Dinner Table

Posted on November 13th, 2009 | 14 comments

How do you get teenagers to the dinner table?
Sure, they’re hungry all the time. But that doesn’t mean they want to eat with dad or mom or siblings. After all, they have distractions – sports, friends, Facebook, iPod, video games, etc.
Some food gurus will have you believe the way to get teens to the dinner [...]

Cell Phone in the Dryer

Posted on November 12th, 2009 | 19 comments

My son’s cell phone went through the laundry.
There, I said it. And no, it’s not easier to say simply because it happened at his mom’s house. What happened could have happened at my place or anywhere.
You see, his sister did the laundry, and she doesn’t normally do that chore. She dumped things in the washer [...]

Crashing a Parents Party on Halloween

Posted on November 2nd, 2009 | 17 comments

My teen son decided to trick-or-treat this Halloween with a new group of friends. He’s in eighth grade and they’re in seventh, and I didn’t know any of these kids. When I dropped my son off, I made sure to go up to the house and meet the parents.
What do you know, there was a [...]

My Dad Invented Google

Posted on October 23rd, 2009 | 15 comments

I showed up at a local Laser Tag place to pick up my son from a youth group outing. He was paling around with some boys a year younger than him. No one I knew. But they were excited to see me.
They came over to me, bowing, proclaiming: We’re not worthy!
“Did you invent Google?” one [...]

The Police and My Teen Daughter

Posted on October 16th, 2009 | 20 comments

It’s the police!
That, a text message sent by my teen daughter, not twenty minutes after she left for astronomy class. WTF!?

Had she gotten into an accident? Was she pulled over for a driving offense? Did she get another parking ticket?

What’s going on? I texted back.
Silence.
I shifted into worried-dad overdrive. I figured I could drive to [...]

Hotel Housekeeping – at 9am!

Posted on October 5th, 2009 | 23 comments

My kids and I were in Albuquerque this past weekend, attending the Balloon Festival. Yes, it was fun. (I’ll post pics and stories as soon as my daughter uploads photos from her camera.)
We were awake at 5am Saturday morning for the festival (which is 4am to our California bodies), and stayed up late Saturday night, [...]

Parking Ticket at Astronomy Class

Posted on October 2nd, 2009 | 10 comments

Our local junior college has an astronomy class with a reputation for being very good. The school has a decent-sized telescope, and the instructor co-wrote the textbook they use. He’s not quite Carl Sagan (“billions and billions of stars in the universe…”), but might be close. People of all ages flock to his class.
With my [...]