Thursday, January 03, 2008

All Pro Dad

Jason and Elizabeth attended an All Pro Dads day at the Indianapolis Colts' practice stadium last year. Tony Dungy is a big promoter of the All Pro Dads program, and Jason and Elizabeth had a great time doing activities and drills that day. Since then, Jason periodically gets e-mails from All Pro Dads with encouragements and ideas for dads. The following story comes from an All Pro Dads idea that was pretty neat.

The two letters arrived, one addressed to Elizabeth, the other addressed to Anna. The return address had our home address, so needless to say, I was a little confused when I looked over the mail. Elizabeth ripped open her envelope and found inside a letter from her daddy. The letter stated how he is proud to be her daddy and for the coming year, he wanted to know some ideas of how she wanted to spend time together. Attached to the letter was a sheet with four questions, and he wanted her to fill out the questionaire and return it to him so he could "plan for the next year." Elizabeth excitedly found a pencil and ran off to complete the task. In the meantime Anna opened her letter, and I sent her to Elizabeth to have Elizabeth write in Anna's answers for her. When they both came back to Jason with their completed answers, we were greatly humored at the difference between our 8 year old's answers and our 4 year old's answers. They were as follows:

Question #1 What one thing have you wanted to do with Dad but have never done?

Elizabeth - "fly on an airplane." Hmmm. That shouldn't be too hard some day.
Anna - "sleep in bed (all night) with Dad." Guess she is forgetting the first six weeks of her life when she was a permanent fixture in the middle of our bed each night.

Question #2 What one thing would you really like Dad to teach you, or tell you, that he never has?

Elizabeth - "How do things work?" With further probing, we found out she wants to know how computers work, how the body works, etc.
Anna - "How do you do homework?"

Question #3 What have you done with Dad in the past that you really enjoyed, but don't get to do enough?

Elizabeth - "spend time."
Anna - "play games." Guess he can knock both of these out at once. Just play games with both.

Question #4 What one thing is really on your mind that you want Dad to know about?

Elizabeth - "I love you so much." Ahhhh.
Anna - "I want to go to Chuck E. Cheese." Not nearly as endearing, but pretty funny. She actually got this wish because we went last Saturday. Which leads me to a little interlude about Chuck E. Cheese...

I was going to post on Chuck E. Cheese quite awhile ago after another memorable excursion. For the record, I think my parents took me to Showbiz (the old fashioned Chuck E. Cheese) as many times in my life as my kids get to go in a year. We make it at least 3-4 times a year. When I was a kid we maybe got 5-10 tokens apiece. Now when we go, we get the family meal deal that comes with 80 tokens, and Jason doesn't play games, so the kids get around 30 apiece and I take a few for the pop-a-shot basketball game. Hey, I'm just trying to earn them more tickets. This past Saturday after I finished up one of my pop-a-shot games, the bells and whistles started going off and tickets started spurting out uncontrollably. They kept coming and coming and coming, and I didn't realize how many I had won until I looked at my score - 86! This was my best ever, and the sign says that if you get over 80, you get 100 tickets. After retrieving my 100 tickets and running back to the table to shove down some gourmet barbecue chicken pizza, I grabbed a few more tokens and headed back to the pop-a-shot. If I could get 86 so easily, surely I could get 80 over and over again, thus collecting so many tickets that my kids could finally "purchase" the Barbie doll for 6,000 tickets that would cost $9.99 in the store. However, despite my valiant efforts, I could not achieve over 80 again. I got 78 twice and 79 once, but I could never get over the 80 hump. The tokens were spent and it was time to cash in the tickets. There was a long line at the ticket redeeming machine, and then I found another quarter in my pocket. One last chance! I cashed in my quarter for a token and ran to the pop-a-shot. It was going to be the Hoosiers movie ending that I had dreamed about. One last chance, a magical quarter, and I would get over 80. Nope, I got 74. I trudged back to the ticket redeeming machine with the 5 tickets I earned, we cashed in all the tickets and headed to the prize counter with just under 400 tickets. Of course, the squishy eyeball that both girls wanted was 200 tickets. We were 6 tickets short. Jason asked the worker if we could buy points so both girls could have the squishy eyeball (he is an All Pro Dad, you know,) and she said yes, at the whopping price of...a penny a point! What? She was telling me that the 100 tickets I worked so hard to get would only really cost me $1.00 to purchase. Suddenly the novelty of the tickets wore off. A penny a ticket. Wow. He paid the lady a few cents to get the squishy eyeballs (which by now are either broken, lost, or banned to the "we don't play with this any more" toy bin.)

Back to the original story. In looking over the lists, all of the kids' requests seem very doable for Jason to do in the next year, except for the airplane one which may have to wait awhile. Now I am just waiting for his letter to me...