Philippe Lazaro
OCTOBER 2016

Restaurant Farewell

At the risk of getting way too sentimental about something like restaurants, I’ll say this… be kind to the venues that host your day-to-day routines. You often don’t realize how baked in to the rhythms of your life they are until seasons change and they become strings of nostalgia.


And go ahead and support a locally owned family restaurant. Those things aren’t easy to own, and when you see someone put love into what they’re doing, don’t take that for granted. Remember, they also need revenue to keep it going.

Notes from Porto

Travel notes from Porto:

🇵🇹 They do love their foamy drinks over here. Every smoothie or milky coffee concoction feels extra whipped.

🇵🇹 I found a cafe space for sale here. €50K. This is now my life’s backup plan. If someday things don’t work out and I need to flee the country, come visit me in my Portuguese coffee shop. I’ll find some YouTube tutorials so I can learn to make you an egg tart.

🇵🇹 The Porto City Park is now one of my top municipal parks in the world. There’s this open space by the pond, and I tell you, the inner peace I came upon in that meadow SLAPPED.

🇵🇹 I really miss the Bom Successo food hall right about now.

San Diego's Gastropocalypse

IS EVERY RESTAURANT AROUND ME SHUTTING DOWN?

Earlier in the week, I saw an article announcing that Las Cuatro Milpas, the beloved San Diego institution of Mexican food, was shutting down after 91 years.

Thankfully, these were just rumors. Loose interpretations of discussions around the property and passing the restaurant on to a next generation.

Still, part of what made it so easy to believe was the fact that this autumn, an unseasonably high number of San Diego restaurants have closed their doors. Hammond’s Ice Cream. Voltaire Public House. Even Tip Top Meats, which has been serving for 60 years.

It does make you wonder, what’s going on San Diego? Turnover in the restaurant world is part of the industry, but San Diego seems to cycle through eateries faster than any other place I’ve lived.


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I don’t envy many in the food industry. From the kitchen staff through management, it seems like a pretty cutthroat and chaotic environment.

In a lot of industries, the misery is typically concentrated with the frontline workers, as ownership sits pretty. But being a restaurant owner seems stressful and tortorus as well, unless you’re some sort of mega-owner at the top of a chain or conglomeration. But the fail rate is high, the burnout rate is high, and you better have a legitimate passion for what you’re doing.

Thankfully, I have met so many chefs and people in the food world who do have it.

Passion.

And they’re the perfect reminder that the root of the word passion basically means suffering. Your passion is what you’re willing to suffer for.

So, when a beloved independent restaurant closes up shop, it’s a pretty sad day. I mean, even the nostalgia of a big corporate chain brings up some feels (anyone else grow up with a Hungry Howie’s?), but of course, its even more tragic when what’s lost is a person’s passion project that they poured a lot of their soul into.

It’s made me wonder what it is about San Diego that makes it so prone to restaurant closures. 

The obvious culprit would be the cost of living. And San Diego is expensive. At one point this year, it clocked in with the highest cost of living. Those costs tend to feed off each other, as more expensive rents necessitate higher wages, which increase operational costs.

And yes, all this is more manageable when things are distributed a bit more equitably throughout an organization, but it’s the small businesses that have their hands tied up.

I suppose this makes me feel a little more justified in a habit I picked up during the pandemic, of eating out a little bit more and convincing myself that in doing so, I’m doing my part to help keep local business afloat. 

And to be sincere about it, that means actually eating out at a family joint that could actually appreciate and use the support. Not, like, Din Tai Fung, much as I love those dumplings. An actual migrant owned restaurant that helps connect people with culture is a nice bonus.

With all the announcements of restaurant closures the past couple of months, it’s kept me busy on a little quest to try and eat at as many of them as possible. That hasn’t been easy in many cases, as some of the most beloved institutions have had lines out the door since their announcements. But, hey, it’s been a tasty, bittersweet challenge.

For me, the most essential ‘last meal’ happened at a quiet curry shop in Pacific Beach. World Curry.

As its name implies, they spent close to 20 years serving up curry from just about every cuisine that had a curry to offer. Thai, Japanese, Indonesia, Indian, and even British curries were on the menu, and it was the British dish that had a spicy enough level of heat for people to get their photo on the wall for completing it.

The deeper reason I knew I needed one more meal here was a friend of mine. Years ago, we worked together at a nearby office, and World Curry was a frequent lunch suggestion. Three years ago she passed away unexpectedly, and it seems like recently her memory has been surfacing in all kinds of places.

I went to World Curry partly to relive all those lunch visits over one more plate of Balinese Beef.

While eating, I managed to get a little moment to talk to the shop owner. She shared a little bit about how things slowed down for them over the past couple years. I suppose I’m a classic example of why- with fewer people “going into the office,” lunch rushes have become a thing of the past.

I then told her about my friend and how much she loved her curry. I know closing a restaurant after 20 years isn’t an easy thing to do, but if the knowledge of someone’s fond memories there makes things any easier, I thought she should know. Plus, its one more person in the radius of my friend’s legacy.

At the risk of getting way too sentimental about something like restaurants, I’ll say this… be kind to the venues that host your day-to-day routines. You often don’t realize how baked in to the rhythms of your life they are until seasons change and they become strings of nostalgia.

And go ahead and support a locally owned family restaurant. Those things aren’t easy to own, and when you see someone put love into what they’re doing, don’t take that for granted. Remember, they also need revenue to keep it going.

Plant Native Species

When you plant trees, working with native species is best. Those species have spent millennia adapting to their surroundings and developing compatibility with the other living things around them. Planting an unfamiliar species can disrupt ecological balance and create a lot of unintended problems.

I appreciate how Engeda’s team in Ethiopia is able to generate such a strong local enthusiasm for native trees without being prescriptive and while respecting the autonomy of the local community members. Kindness is showing people that you trust their decision making.

Carlos Bulosan

“America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world.”

“This is also what critical reading of our histories makes possible: we cannot repair what we cannot reconcile; we cannot truly know what we will not truly see.”

– America Is In The Heart

Filipino-American History Month! This year’s FAHM art piece could be no other than Carlos Bulosan, the activist poet.

The fact that Bulosan’s words can be celebrated and canonized today is no small thing. He was a labor organizer, a conscious writer, and a voice for anticolonial struggles going on in the Philippines. In other words… he made a few enemies along the way! He was blacklisted, harassed by the FBI, and often in poverty and poor health due to the struggles. But, true to his community-based orientation, his circle of friends took good care of him. Though he spent the later part of his life couch-surfing, the friends who hosted him along the way held on to his work.

Feedback on Feedback

Why you need to know how to recognize worthwhile feedback

I’m in a creative role, where I find myself on the beginning and receiving end of creative feedback quite frequently.

Since we’re living at a time when it’s really easy to hear other people’s opinions about things you put out into the world, I think it’s important to differentiate between opinions and feedback. It’s important to know what good feedback looks like, both so you can give it, and so you can filter whose voices are more ideal to listen to.

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1) Good feedback is less about catering to individual taste as it is about accomplishing an objective.

Certain things just aren’t up my alley. Heavy metal, period piece dramas, and the majority of fantasy novels fall into that category. That doesn’t mean things created in those genres can’t be high quality. Metal drummers often come up with some of the most sophisticated and impressive polyrhythm displays… I’d just file them into the good, but not-for-me container.

Givers of good feedback recognize the inherent subjectivity of art and can step outside the need for things to appeal to them.

Good feedback makes sure to understand the objective of a piece of art. 

“Why are you making this? Why does the world need it?”

Rather than trying to make sure a creative work is aesthetically appealing to their tastes, a good feedback giver will simply try and make sure creative decisions are serving their intended purposes.

2) Good feedback aims to bridge the gap between intent and impact.

It clarifies and honors what a creator is trying to do and removes barriers that are getting in the way of that happening.

You can usually tell someone gives strong feedback when they frequently ask “why did you decide to do this?”

It’s a question I’ve been trying to ask more when I’m in the reviewer’s seat.

When you ask this you’ll either get a lot of clarity around what a creator was aiming to do, so you’ll be able to give more focused suggestions, OR you’ll perhaps discover it was a decision made out of habit or some other assumption. And you candle it more intentional.

Approaching creative feedback from the framework of:

What is your goal?

How can we remove the things getting in the way of that goal?

can help steer away from clashes over subjective tastes and personal attachments and towards the shared goal.

3) Good feedback givers demonstrate trust in the creatives.

Poor feedback often sacrifices the future development of the creative in favor of strong-arming a short term decision.

But good feedback can turn the project at hand into a springboard for sustained creative growth.

What makes the difference? For me, a key element would have to be trust.

When a feedback-giver lacks trust, this quickly and frequently takes the form of micromanaging. Feedback is more oriented around whats than whys. Decisions are forced and expedited and critical thought is uninvited.

Not only can a lack of trust be insulting, it also essentially takes the creativity out of the assignment given to a creative. They are no longer creating but simply executing.

4) Good feedback recognizes when a good idea just might not be in the right spot

This goes hand in hand with trusting the creative.

It’s rare that a creative decision is bad… more often than not it’s just distracting or confusing. And that’s because its in the wrong spot. Good feedback often includes the line “maybe that could go somewhere else,” and often, that somewhere else ends up being a totally different project.

Good feedback frames things around opportunity and possibility. I love this quote from Todd Henry:

“Feedback isn't just about pointing out what's wrong, but also about painting a picture of what's possible.”

Creativity is about making connections and that requires you to see from beyond your own immediate vantage point. That means the input of somebody else is extremely valuable.

That’s why it’s important to develop both the skill of giving good feedback and the awareness of whose feedback is worth paying attention to. And that is served by knowing what’s at the core of good feedback.

Remaking Thumbnails

Continuing my quest to give a little facelift to some of my old video thumbnails and reliving some past adventures in the process.

In this most recent batch:

My time in a climate-resilient village in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans

My tasty, tasty investigation into why Thai food is everywhere

That time I tried to eat as many ethnic cuisines as possible in one Toronto weekend

The time I took my kids (at ages 1, 1, & 3) to go live in the Philippines for a month

Planting trees and pounding down tlayudas in Oaxaca

Biodiversity Corridors

If the Ethiopian Church Forests were *JUST* these epic forests cultivated around Orthodox Church buildings for centuries, offering a glimpse of what Ethiopia’s landscape could look like instead of the damaged, desertified lands you see outside the forests… they would be cool enough.

But they’re more than that.

They’re reserves of all the species of insect, bird, and animal life that needs those forests to survive. In other words, they’re not just religious sanctuaries, but sanctuaries for biodiversity.

If they remain isolated, you’ll likely see these species start to branch off genetically. Those subpopulations might see less genetic populations, which makes disease more likely. Rejoining these populations is important, and building corridors between these church forests is one of my favorite efforts Plant With Purpose is up to!

You aren't just one thing

NOTES ON IDENTITY

It’s probably a very common experience for the early years of parenthood to come with a bit of an identity crisis. First of all, it invites a whole new role into your life, so there’s that.

If you and a partner are in it together, and are taking it seriously, it’ll probably bring up all kinds of things about your expectations and your own experiences with your families of origin.

Meanwhile, the demands place a whole lot of constraints on your time, money, and energy so that the other facets of your life become harder to tend to.

Having more kids you have in a shorter span of time will probably put a multiplier effect on this.

And I think moms will have a much harder time with this because of social expectations and what not. And if you’re a full time, stay-at-home parent, whether a mom or dad, that’s going to be a challenge too, because you don’t have that outside sphere to stretch that side of your identity.

At the same time, having a lot of different roles, jobs, and activities isn’t an easy road either.

Between having a pretty involved job and a gazillion interests, it’s been a challenge to grapple with the fact that time I spend working or traveling, doing things I love, or engaging meaningful work still comes at the expense of time at home with my kids. And while that’s my top priority, cutting everything else out doesn’t feel like the healthiest course of action either.

But I’m a stubborn believer that there’s a way to achieve harmony among the different areas of life. And while it’s always a give-and-take and requires compromise, I think that this harmony is something worth pursuing.

There’s a  story about Charles Schultz- the creator of Peanuts. People often asked him about Charlie Brown, a very likeable character, but also a bit of a sad sack.

Anyways people would often ask Charles Schultz if Charlie Brown was supposed to be him.

And he would answer yes, but actually all the characters were different versions of him. Charlie Brown was like his tough luck, melancholic side. Lucy was more of his salty side. Snoopy was his cool, mischievous self that he wanted to be more like. I don’t know how we’re supposed to interpret Pigpen, seems like there’s one unflattering way to, but Charles Schultz did and in doing so gave us an all time beloved character.

There’s this idea among visual artists that every drawing, painting, or sculpture is a self portrait, and I think that line of thinking can extend to all kinds of art forms and mediums. Acting, music. It’s all self expression, but just because every creative work is a self portrait doesn’t mean it’s a realistic portrait or a complete portrait. Like; when I’m playing a terrible dad on stage, I hope it’s more reflective of a fear or insecurity than actual reality. Similarly! No portrait is complete. You won’t ever capture someone from every angle, meaning there will be sides of us that always get left out. We contain multitudes and I think that’s a perspective I’ve come to appreciate more this way.

There’s enough depth, contradictions, and angles to any person to create an entire Peanuts gang from. Which brings up another important thing to remember: our identity is always multifaceted.

Personally, I find it very healthy to realize that each of us has a very multi-layered and multi-faceted identity. 

I think when people don’t allow themselves to accept this flexibility, you get instances of trying too hard to force one expression of your personality into a setting, you just might end up coming across as a caricature of yourself.

When it comes to ecosystems, you can see a strong link between resilient ecosystems and biodiversity. And in communities and human services, the more diverse perspectives and experiences and voices you bring in, the more you protect yourself from shortsighted decision making.

So all that is also true when it comes to your identity.

Pagkikikapwa

Archipelago.

Above the water, we all look like our own uniquely shaped islands. But then you dive in, dive deeper, and you find that we’re all connected. Our selves are shaped through the others around us.

As I’ve grow in faith, met people from all over, and taken more laps around the sun, our separation seems more and more like water. And on a day when you’re being your best self, it’s clear. You can see through it a bit more.

Pakikiisa. Unity. It literally translates to a shared state of oneness.

In the end, we’re all together.

Kolkata's Yellow Cabs

Yellow taxis are iconic, but these days they’re becoming more of a novelty. Most cities’ taxis use other colors, and thanks to ride sharing being in most countries, really any car can be a taxi. There’s still one spot where the Yellow Cab reigns supreme, and that’s Kolkata.

Riding around in these things felt classic, and it wasn’t just the color of the car but the vehicle itself was a throwback. Still, changing technologies come for us all. The number of yellow cabs operating in Kolkata dropped in half during the pandemic and continues to decline due to ridesharing.

Let's Get Back in Our Bodies

age & The motivation for a little maintenance

I finally got acupuncture a couple weeks ago.

I say finally because it’s something I’ve been curious about for a long time. I’ve had family members use it to treat allergies. Fertility. The way that you can work on wrist arthritis by connecting the wires running through a person’s foot? That seemed completely fascinating.

Except I’ve never had a good enough reason to get acupuncture myself.

I always thought it would be awkward to schedule an appointment and during the intake have to say, “oh, nothing’s wrong. I just want to check out your needles!”

But finally.

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I laid face down on a doughnut pillow in my underwear, wondering if the ambient music playing was cut from the same cloth as the background music of Playstation menus. I try and pay attention to the way my blood flows more freely up my thigh, the result of the pins scattered strategically in my leg.

I’ve been a lot more attentive to my body lately. Every little quirk. The way my right calf developed an involuntary twitch. The recent pressure behind my knee.

I have running to thank for all of that. The injuries, as well as the attentiveness. Long distance runs get you so familiar with your own body. Its capacity. What it takes to push yourself just a bit further.

On top of all that, there’s the quantitative data that running apps provide. I can see how my better and worse performances overlap with the days I didn’t get enough sleep, or the days I managed to hydrate better.

Salt intake matters. That’s a new one I started observing lately. I’m pretty proud of my own detective work there. I noticed that whenever I passed the nine mile marker, I typically had an intense craving for pho, ramen, or soup dumplings. Translation? Salt deficiency. Some electrolyte mix in the water bottle helped smooth things over.

I started getting back into distance running because of insomnia. There was an unfortunate convergence of when my kids started sleeping through the night, and when I found myself unable to. I soon attributed the overnight restlessness to going over a year without much physical activity. Before the kids were born I alternated distance running, weight training, and boxing.

Then when they were born, I decided boxing and sleep deprivation were a terrible combination.

However, the kids were a motivating factor for getting me back into action. I hear a lot of runners in their 30s or 40s cite that. Staying active helps increase the odds they’ll be around for their kids longer. I know I want as much time with mine as possible. My time with my dad was cut short early, and while some things are always out of our control, I wanted to play my part.

I did my morning runs around a lake. The road around the perimeter stretched five miles, and there was a good cover with trees. I got to know my fellow runners who were lake-regulars. One was an East Asian man. He was most likely in his mid-to-late fifties, and he was still pretty fast. It was always a bit motivating to come across him on a run. I hoped it was a peek at my future. In my 50s, my kids would be in their 20s, and the thought of being able to keep up as they bust out on their own adventures is appealing.

That said, I’m at the age where most pro-athletes retire, so unsurprisingly running brought me a good collection of odd injuries. Scraped knees from a fall. Knee damage from overuse. Calf cramps that were a bit of a mystery.

Your calves are pretty much like rocks, Alex remarked, as she removed the needles from them. Typically, firm muscles are seen as desirable, but mine were tense to the point of being uncomfortable. 

She recommended a little pause from running. Maybe a month while my muscles repaired themselves. Instead, I’d benefit from working on weight training, core strength, and yoga. I wanted it all. In my ideal world, I could do each of these regularly. And I’d love to be in a rec baseball league or something at the same time. Of course, the challenge is often finding the time to do all this.

That said, a lot of issues can be attributed to spending too much time in our heads, and not quite enough in our body. Even if the most ideal regimen is elusive, it’s worth finding some time to move. I decide that while I might scale back the running, I’m doing so in order to keep running a part of my life for the long haul.

The day after an acupuncture can feel strange. Alex warned me not to be surprised if I even feel sick. “Your body fast tracks getting rid of stuff after all those channels have been opened.”

I don’t experience the cold she described, nor did I envy it. Instead, the day after, I felt something akin to a hangover… except strangely good? That night, I managed to score some of the best sleep ever.

I’ll take that as a win. This whole saga started with a bout of insomnia.

Intellectual Humility

When access to all the information in the world is constantly sitting in your pocket, there’s something you might not know.

You might not know how to deal with not knowing things. Uncertainty. Ambiguity. Liminal space.

I wonder if that’s why sometimes it feels like progress in information technology has led to a regress of basic humanity. Because there will always be the unknown.

To me, this makes intellectual humility one of the most attractive things to see in a person.

Someone who knows they see through the lenses of their own culture, upbringing, and experiences.

Someone who knows that their ideas and the beliefs of others have room to expand, and will likely evolve over years.

Someone who isn’t threatened by different ideas or perspectives and prioritizes everyone’s humanity above the need to be right.

Do things that scare you. Order the least familiar thing on the menu. Take a chance on a random new class. Whatever it looks like for you, cultivate your relationship with the unknown. Take it on dates. Sharpen that intellectual humility.

Sustainable Populations

I often hear people talk about population and climate with confusion… or at least overlooking some important elements.

Intuitively, it makes sense that a growing population makes people wonder, how are we going to support that many people?

But, as far back as the 1800s, population growth and ecology has been used by some to advocate for letting people in poverty be completely neglected or worse. It’s an area of conversation that can’t afford having so many people misinformed.

Countries with the fastest growing populations very consistently have the highest rates of poverty and lowest carbon footprints.

This means the real work is to keep improving people’s quality of life while also working on other ways for people across the board to keep their emissions down.

Expectations, Plans, & Interruptions

Ever since 500 Days of Summer gave us that Expectations vs Reality split-screen, it’s been the way a lot of us understand disappointment. The larger the difference, the greater the disappointment. It’s not a bad working definition.

This also makes a good case against overplanning your life.

When you live your life by one checklist after another, you might be extremely productive, but when things get in the way of your tasks, it creates a rift between what you expected and reality.

When those interruptions take the form of your kid wanting to play, a conversation with a stranger taking a man interesting turn, or birdsong calling you outside, a part of you knows deep down that these are worthy interruptions. They’re the ones that years from now, you’ll be glad you said yes to.

But, when you live by the rhythm of getting it all done, you learn a different muscle memory. It kicks in, processing these invitations as threats to the day you were expecting. In order to avoid disappointment, self preservation kicks in. The kids, the stranger, the birds, they all get sorted as distractions.

All that to say, checklists can be helpful until they aren’t. Don’t go so overboard on planning, you talk yourself out of saying yes to some of the best parts of life.

CreativeMornings SD (2 Year Anniversary)

Two years ago, I got invited by the CreativeMornings SD team to speak on the topic of depth. It turned out to be a perfect springboard to share my story. I got to have all these different dimensions of myself come out for a jam sesh together: the traveler, the environmentalist, the dad.

This talk turned out to be about as good of “allow me to reintroduce myself” as I could ask for, so catch it here in case you missed it or in case we just met within the past two years!

Show & Tell #1

Favorite photo I took this month:

I’m presenting this giraffe without much context. I’ll fill you in on that story later.

Is it just me, or does it seem like everyone around me is also trying to recover from an extremely hectic stretch?

The end of August and start of September was quite the crescendo. I had a race, several improv shows, an international trip, and my work’s biggest event of the year all right on top of each other. It seemed like all these big events were landing mid month, and the other side seemed like this mysterious void of much lighter activity.

Greetings from that mysterious void. 

Happy to report that it is indeed a slower pace over here, but there is a lot of cleaning up and catching up to do after the chaos. 

Anyways, that was my experience this month, but it feels like I’m far from alone. So many friends have reported being in recovery mode following travels, big social events, and so on. Maybe this is the big back-to-school curve I’m getting reintroduced to, as my oldest just started!

How did I not mention that until the very end? That was perhaps the biggest event, and the biggest change for our family since we welcomed twins. I guess this month has just been that full. Now time to prepare my nervous system for baseball playoffs.

Somehow, I’ve still managed to find the time to make things, and I thought I’d share some of my favorite bits of creative work from this very, very full month:

Gig Poster: Metal People at Mockingbird

After a little stretch without an improv show, I finally got to take the stage with my Metal People and I had a blast. I feel like we’ve hit a good groove as a team. I put together a quick textable gig poster for the event since I feel like I need to get better at promoting our shows. On that note, this weekend (9/28 at 7) I’m playing with Brown Privilege at Finest City!

Video: Plant With Purpose’s 40th Anniversary

Plant With Purpose celebrated 40 years of work this month and I made this video to premiere at our gala. Making a commemorative anniversary video is a bit of a challenge. You want to celebrate your history and play to your community, but you don’t want to be too self-congratulatory and keep looking forward. I’ve been pulling this one together since June.

Art: Josh Gibson

I made this illustration of Josh Gibson to celebrate the incorporation of Negro League statistics into the Major League recordbook, quantitatively entering Josh Gibson into the conversation of baseball’s GOAT. Most art I see of the batting king features him in mostly black and white, given that he played in the 1930s and played for a team called the Grays. But I wanted to lean in the opposite direction and cranked up the colors here.

Video: My 50th Country… SURINAME

Made this video to celebrate my 50th country, which I entered in the form of a quick daytrip. I love how pleasant the capital of Paramaribo is to walk around. Old wooden buildings hang around, monuments and gardens all around the riverfront, and an abundance of good spots to eat.

Sticker: Metal People

Remember when I noted my need to get better at promoting our improv shows? I turned our team logo into a sticker to give to attendees. Branding, baby! The peel off back has a QR code to our Instagram page so people can keep tabs on us.

Art: Alec Bohm

Baseball playoffs… the most wonderful, blood-pressure spiking time of the year. My beloved Phillies clinched their spot in the playoffs, first place in their division, and a first round bye in their last three wins this past week. It’s been an incredible season, but it’s always about how you finish, huh? Peep some of my playoff thoughts here.

Creative Changemaker: You don’t need to be the one who hits launch

The founders and top leaders of movements and organizations are often the most celebrated within the world of social change... and it's not undeserved. Launching and leading good organizations is tough! But, there are also many other ways to be part of leading change and doing good that should also be celebrated. If everyone was a founder... we'd have a whole bunch of ineffective tiny organizations of one! Here's a spontaneous little riff on how those who find their specialized role within a system are also important changemakers.

Art: Mac Miller

Been catching myself listening to quite a bit of Mac Miller lately, so I decided to draw the late Pittsburgh artist.

I really liked the direction his career was going at the end, moving away from straight up rapping and instead parlaying his vocal style into halfway-singing. It blended well with his later concept albums, and his posthumous releases have only confirmed this evolution.

Short: Heart of a 1 on 1 Trip

I know I’m not gonna get everything right as a dad, but one thing I am pretty confident in, is that I will not regret making sure each of my kids gets some quality one-on-one time with me. 

It’s fun to have a large family, but it does mean having to put in the extra effort to make sure I get these special moments with each kid in appreciation of who they are.

And as a nice little bonus, sometimes they happen in Finland.

As always, thanks for following along. Love having you in my corner.