City Dads Group

Navigating Fatherhood Together

5 Reasons Dads Should Take Their Kids on a Solo Road Trip

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Earlier this summer, my kids and I embarked on a 600-mile road trip without my wife. Many people thought I was crazy, including, most notably, my wife. As is almost always the case, she was right.

The drive from our home in Florida to North Carolina was a grind and the fact that we had to turn around and do it all over again in just a few days was downright brutal. The in-between part while we were on what some might call a "vacation" wasn’t exactly a walk in the park either, although … [Read more...]

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Friendship Worth Spanning Distance, Damning Expense, Braving Cold

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Friendship: What is it? Where do we find it? How do we keep it? According to Facebook, a friend is someone we may have met for a minute, added to a list and left to the algorithm. According to Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, friends (like Romans and countrymen, respectively) tend to lend their ears and are often prone to peer pressure. According to my youngest son, friendship is a compass that points to where your heart is, regardless of time or distance. Sorry, Bill, but I’m with the kid on this one. “I’m not tired,” said that same kid, lying through his eyelids, … [Read more...]

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Rolling on the River: Life Lessons in Family Travel

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By the time you read this I’ll most likely be dry, but at the time of this writing that is not the case. I am something less than wet, having been soaked hours ago, still slightly more than damp. The moisture is a mix of sweat and river water, having spent hours today atop a raft in hot weather and rushing rapids, hours more in a car on roads long and winding. My family is equally saturated, even the youngest — who used the last few moments of the day to dunk himself in the calm, rapids-adjacent waters, disappointed as he was that the boat didn’t flip. However, his skinny body dries faster … [Read more...]

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Public Breastfeeding vs. Public Urination: My Ethical Dilemma

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Our family’s most memorable summer road trip occurred when our two daughters were quite young -- and quite needy, as it turns out. My wife and I were taking the family to our hometown, a three-hour drive away. The first two hours went smoothly. My 3-month-old drifted between sleep and blank stares, and my 3-year-old napped before starting to watch a movie. We had recently indulged in a minivan with a DVD player, which was unthinkable a few years previous but I admit was wonderful for family trips. Granted, I had explained to my daughter that the mysterious video machine only worked when we … [Read more...]

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Family Vacation Tips to Make Your Trips Positively Memorable

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Traveling as a family is always memorable, but those memories aren’t always rosy. To get your next family vacation closer to postcard-perfect, I’ve learned a few tricks after traveling with multiple kids regularly, domestically and internationally, for work and pleasure from the baby years up through the tween and teen stages. Set your sights on limited sightseeing It is tempting to try to see and do aaaaaall the things because you’ve come aaaaaall this way and paid aaaaaall that money. You should not, however, because you will run yourself and your kids into the ground. Then all that money … [Read more...]

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