Introduction

To All that are reading this good luck :)

For all that know me this blog could get interesting very fast. I am very liberal, oppinanatied, judemental, ecentric, prideful and many other words we wont talk about. At this point I am not sure excatly the point of this blog bu it will most likedly go many different directions. At first I am going to try to limit it to family, health and politics.

We will start with Politics! Just to be up front I am a Democrate in a very Republican Utah! I voted for Obama and would be happy to argue with anybody of why he is the best selection for President. Now when I say the best selection for President, I don't mean just out of Obama and McCain! With this being said I am going to post my first article. This article is from Best Life "What Matters to Men", it is from the Editor.

The World's Best Life by Stephen Perrine

One of my fondest honeymoon memories is of my new bride and me being chased by uniformed guards through the prison halls of the infamous Hanio Hilton.

We were making a quick stop in the former North Vietnamese capital, and we didn't weant to miss the chance to see a piece of history. But the guards at the prison gate were barring the doors, eager to close for lunch. So my wife and I squeezed past them and, as they turned to protest, took we went the opposite directions.

With the guards no in hot pursuit, we absorbed what we could of the tiny cells where the French once imprisoned the Vietnamese, and where the Vietnamese later imprisoned American POW's, including John McCain. Photographs detailing the French torture of native prisoners - and propaganda denying the mistreatment of Americans - lined the hallway, proof that more than three decades after the guns stopped firing, the battle for hearts and minds still wages. With shouths to halt in both English and Vietnamese echoing off the ancient walls, we dashed out back and into an open courtyard.

There, gleaming in the sun, 30 feet tall, was something we'dever seen before: a gullotine. We surrendered quietly.

That trip to Hanoi has haunted me all year as I've watched McCain's rise from lost cause to cause celebre. McCain and his rival are different form the average American, or een the average American politician. Both are men with exotic stamps on their passports, whose characters and worldviews have been shaped as much by their interactions with other culturs as by their experiences insdie the 50 states. Both have seen some pretty wonderous - and wrenching [ things in this world. And just as McCain's experience in Vietnama taught him respect for internations human rights, barack Obama's journeys to find his roots in Africa, and his quest for identity, have taught him that all people are capable of great love... and great weakness. Both men understand that the American mission - the pursuit of happiness - isn't unique to Americans. It's something all of mankind can agree on.

So this month's issue, a special edition dedicated to life-changing adventures that lay both within and outside our 50 states, comes at an auspicious time. Hot on the heels of successful Best Life launches in Spain and South Africa, we're popping open champagne corks this fall in both Russia and Chin, launching new editions to help men in these emerging luxury markets pursue their own visions of the best life.

No matter whome you pull the lever for this month, I applaud your vote. The mark of a great leader is a willngness to understand the points of view of others, to keep growing, learning, and improving. Best Life believes in that mission. I think our next president will too.

Just so you all know that are reading this these articles will be a commen theme. No matter what your thought is about Obama, McCain, Palin or the parties involved we are all Americans and it is our duty to serve this great country. Obama is our new President and if you like it or not he is going to be there are least for the next 4 years so lets but parties aside and lets do what is right for the country and all of our fellow americans.

Enough today about politics lets move onto family. As I stated I will be posting a lot of articles that I read that I thought would be good for anybody. I am a farther of two beautiful children and a husband to a great wife. I have been married to Krista for almost 9 years now and like every other couple we have had our ups and downs but I couldn't imagine my life without her. I have two children, Kennedy that is six and Zacary is 3. I am not the most patient person and both Kennedy and Zacary push my limits but that have also tought me so much about myself and who I am. They are amazing and am greatful everything day to have them in my life. I found this article that I thought was a good article for all parents.

To be a Winner by Mark Adams
Only by letting children stumble once in a while can you teach them what it takes to be the best

One morning not long ago, my oldest son, Alex, came home from school with the sort of tale that confirms a man's suspicions that he's a parenting genius. An administrator had popped into Alex's sixth-grade social studies class that morning seeking a volunteer to switch periods with another student. The teacher announced that he'd happily swap any pupil except my boy, because "Alex is the A-Rod of this class. You'd have to trade me three kids for him." Once we sorted out exactly who A-Rod is (Alex is more of a World War II buff than a sports fan, so I described the Yankees third baseman as a sort of George S. Patton in pinstripes), my son and I both walked around for days with our chests puffed out, as if waiting to receive a medal we richly deserved.

Two weeks later, the MVP moseyed into my home office around 9 p.m. to inform me that he'd just remembered he had a test the following morning, on ancient Egypt. He was obviously expecting a blowup followed by an emergency father-and-son crash session. For a second, every cell in my body wanted to oblige. After all, I'd proudly shared the three-for-one story with every sentient being who'd crossed my path recently, including a few who had offspring in Alex's class. We now had a reputation to uphold. Instead, I asked Alex if he felt ready, and he assured me he did. He'd managed to pull straight A's in social -studies thus far, so I sent him to bed.

Amid all the lectures and warnings a father-to-be hears when he and his wife are expecting a baby—the need for tummy time, the moral imperative of eco-friendly diapers, the methlike evils of Barney—no one ever brings up the importance of failure. The day the obstetrician drops that little blank slate into your arms, the dormant protective paternal instinct ignites like a gas grill: No one is ever going to hurt you, little one. But sometimes a related thought seeps into the fatherly mind: It sure would be nice for all parties involved if I could spare this kid some of life's hard knocks. A new dad runs through the laundry list of painful mistakes he has made in his lifetime and decides that the tiny person sleeping in the crib next door is too fragile and important to deal with such setbacks. Daddy will smooth them over so that Junior can focus on captaining the traveling soccer team and earning early admission to Stanford.

Because there's no scoreboard for fatherhood, no yardstick like golf handicaps or numbers on a paycheck, most of us worry constantly that we might not be doing enough for our children. (Or worse, that other dads are doing more for theirs.) That's why we hear so many stories about fathers berating Little League umpires: Seeing your kid's .400 average in the local paper proves to the world, for a moment at least, that you've done your job. It's a shame that local papers don't publish stats on how many kids in a particular week screwed up but learned a valuable lesson. "Joey O'Connell struck out, but now he knows not to swing at a low curveball on a full count." How about a new approach to bumper stickers: my child missed making honor roll because he didn't know his irregular verbs. Experience isn't like blue eyes or preferred stock or 50-yard-line season tickets. It can't be transferred from one generation to the next.

As the sometime manager of fresh-faced people in their early twenties, I've heard a lot of talk about how annoying it is that the MySpace generation—raised by touchy-feely baby boomers—requires constant stroking. The alleged villain in these cautionary tales is the focus on every child's self-esteem, which parents have supposedly come to value above all else. (Call it EGAT syndrome: Everyone Gets A Trophy.) Tossing out a few verbal Scooby Snacks has never bothered me much, but a corollary of this need for instant gratification is worrisome. A lot of those same bright young minds that eagerly attack any project that has a specific outcome will freeze up when faced with an undertaking for which success isn't defined.

This hesitation always brings to mind my distant relative Timmy, who learned early on that his parents would bail him out of any situation. When he failed out of prep school, they bought him a convertible to salve his feelings. Instead of attending college full-time, he set up a bachelor pad in their basement, where he smoked pot and listened to Van Halen until all hours. Timmy has never had to decide on a career, or worry about getting chewed out if he overslept, or lie in bed awake at 3 a.m. faced with a dilemma more troubling than the eternal choice between 1984 and Women and Children First. Twice he has packed up and left town after a roof-raising farewell party, lighting out for an awesome new life in California or Florida. Both times he has returned within the month with his tail between his legs. Timmy is 35.

When I was nearing the end of college and facing the uncertainty of the lousy job market of the early '90s (now that was a recession), I thought guys like Timmy had it made. My own dad, who'd grown up in a one-bedroom basement apartment without a father, tried to explain the satisfactions of taking risks and working for a living. When that didn't change my mind, he told me flat out: "Once you graduate, you're welcome to visit anytime, but you're not getting any money and you're not moving back in." Sink or swim. For a man who'd had a rough childhood, tossing me overboard to swallow water while I learned to stay afloat was one of the most difficult—and loving—things he could have done.

The reason Timmy terrifies me now is that his parents aren't freaks. They're intelligent, caring people. They didn't set out to teach their son to avoid challenges; they merely wanted to shield their only baby from life's painful parts. But by letting Timmy ride with training wheels 24-7, they never gave him a chance to wobble, to improvise when things didn't go according to plan. A child who is never permitted to stumble never learns to catch himself.

Appropriately enough, I came to this wisdom through a Gigli-sized parenting failure of my own. When Alex started kindergarten, he picked up the habit of blaming other people or bad luck for anything that went wrong. In my attempts not to hurt his feelings (and, admittedly, not to look like Bobby Knight), I probably spent a hundred hours carefully explaining that good little boys are accountable for their actions. None of it sank in, which was my fault. You can't expect a 6-year-old to think rationally. Finally, after a lunch with Timmy, at which he showed Alex and me his new surfboard and told us he was "taking some time off" from the screenplay he'd been working on for three years, I was scared enough to act.

I sat Alex down and told him to memorize two short sentences: "I did this. What can I do to fix it?" Every time his pencil lead was snapped by gremlins or someone convinced him to trade his Lego Millennium Falcon for a handful of generic plastic bricks, he had to utter this mantra and devise a plan to extricate himself from the dilemma. Eventually, he learned to handle minor catastrophes. Take it from me: There is no sweeter sound than that of a first-grader scraping his own toast.

Which is why I was pleased to hear Alex mumble, "I guess A-Rod had better study next time," while I scribbled my initials next to the big red B-minus on his Egypt quiz. I'm betting that the ability to admit a mistake and learn from it will be more valuable to him in life than an intimate familiarity with papyrus-making methods during the reign of Ramses II. It would be great if letting your kids fail were like paying for their orthodontia: Endure a couple of uncomfortable years and everything is straightened out for life. It's more like brushing your teeth, in that you have to reinforce it every day. And if I can keep my fatherly ego in check long enough to let my sons wipe out, maybe someday when a teammate hands one of them a syringe in the locker room or a drunk buddy demands his car keys, they'll have something stronger than self-esteem to guide them. They'll have courage.

And if they don't, I'll know which one of us has failed.