Tag: Wellness

Food For Families

Central Florida volunteers gather at a local High School every Thanksgiving Day morning to pick up and deliver boxes of food to needy Families.

Tomorrow will be our tenth year of this Thanksgiving Day family tradition.

A decade ago, and even before Cheryl was pregnant, I suggested to her that we find a way to show our children that we are here to serve and not to be served.

This is a simple, and seemingly insignificant act of kindness influences our thinking, and our actions, all year long.

A Publix Grocery Store Produce manager started Food For Families many years ago.  With help from Central Florida Churches, Schools, and community members, needy Families are identified.

The Central Florida Community also delivers Food for Families on Christmas morning and Easter morning, providing us opportunities to put others first on three special days where we traditionally didn’t.

Bear Hug

Are you thankful for the seemingly overwhelming obstacles that appear in front of you?  Many times, I’ve finally come to learn, the solutions are simple.

What began as anger turned into an amazing blessing.

Bear hugs began about seven years ago when I was struggling to adapt to a new rule our son’s child care provider put in place.

My wife takes our son to day care, I pick him up. Upon arrival, the first thing I’d do is scoop him up and give him a hug. In many cases, I had not seen him (awake) since the day before.

The new policy change had you remain in your vehicle as your child was placed in their car seat. You never got out of the car. Some parents liked this.

I did not. In fact, it made me really pissed off angry. Fuming mad.

Solutions are often simple and many times, come from unlikely sources. A friend, gay and never ever ging to be a parent, gave me the best parenting solution.

He said, “After you pick up your son, why don’t you drive around the corner, park, get out, and do your bear hug?”

Duh!  It was the perfect solution. Perfect.

There have been a few days where we are several miles from his school when one of us realizes we didn’t do our bear hug.  Do we wait until we get home? Nope.

What overwhelming challenge have you had that turned into one of your biggest mid life blessings?

Father Son Traditions

Yesterday, you heard a promise.  Here it is, the traditions a mid life Father put in place, using a lion’s share of midlife creativity.  It would be easy to discount their value, because they are so simple.

  1. Bear Hug
  2. One, two, three
  3. Twistee Treat Day
  4. Food For Families
  5. Dinner Prayer
  6. You’ll never get in trouble for being honest
  7. If you lined up all the boys in the world….

What simple, repeatable traditions do is ingrain key messages.  Simple messages.  Life altering messages.

While we are insanely busy, we all have one life to live. We ought to be insanely thankful for that, and then set out to make the most of it.

PS.  If you regularly follow Mid Life Celebration, you already know there’s a really strong chance each tradition will be explained in future posts, maybe as soon as tomorrow.  And if f you’re new here, welcome.

Thankful for Pushy Women

Who loves pushy women?  I mean, who is completely thankful for pushy women?  What am I talking about?

Women who pushed the boundaries of what people thought women could do.  I don’t know what motivates or inspires you, however, it would seem that we all have more in common than we think.

Most people know and understand this simple truth – there are people who push the boundaries of what’s possible. They make the impossible, possible.  How can we not be thankful for that?

Wednesday in Alaska, I was simply walking through the Anchorage International Airport, and saw a picture on the wall, walked over to see what it was, read the description, gave thanks for Susan Butcher’s life, and then shot this short jeffnoelmidlife You Tube video: