Just a brief thought for this weekend before the roundup.  I am glad that so many people enjoyed my special Valentine’s Day post about “A Happy Marriage.”  The number of views that the post received were absolutely astounding.  Thank you to everyone who shared that post with friends too!  That one article received more shares on Facebook and Twitter than anything I have ever written.

One follow up thought to that post.  I truly enjoy being home!  For the most part, when I am home I try to really be there.  Sure there are times when I am working from home and need to be on the computer or phone as part of my job.  But for the most part I try to avoid watching TV, or cruising various sites on my phone, etc.  I try to engage my wife and daughters in meaningful activities, spending actual quality time together.

Is it easy? The answer might be a bit surprising.  Up until a few months ago it was pretty challenging actually.  I wasn’t taking care of myself and I was fueling my body with crap.  (I don’t particularly like to use that word, but it is a fitting term for the fast food diet I had been eating.)  I was staying up till all hours of the night working after everyone had gone to bed.  I was getting very little if any physical activity.  I was a mess and when I came home I was tired and crabby.

Now, with the changes I have made I feel pretty good on most days when I come home.  Depending on the schedule of the day, I might head into the office as early as 6am and head out around 2 or 3pm.  Those days especially, I come home primed and ready to spend some time with the family.  I spent years insisting I was a night owl and having my body hate me for it.  Now I can barely make it through a TV show at night with my wife before I pass out.

Getting around to my point, it is good to be home.  I often look through the photos on my phone and see photos of doing things with my girls at the house.  With spring-like weather, we have been getting out and planting things in the garden, playing out back, and other fun outside activities.  If you’re a Dad, get yourself to the point where you are home to spend some time with your family.  Even better, make sure that you are taking the necessary steps to be fully connected with your family when you are there.  And if you are a believer, make sure you are living, modeling and teaching your children the word of God.

Spending more time with your family is the best investment you can make.  It might mean turning down new job opportunities because they will require more of your time.  Trips to the golf course or other adventures might be a bit more limited.  Your children are only young once.  Blink a few times and they will be teenagers.  Soak up every minute you can and love on those children and your beautiful wife.

My blog posts…

What a great week it has been for my blog!  I’ve had some of the highest traffic I have ever seen and I accomplished a goal this week that I thought would take several more months.  One of the measures of site traffic is the Alexa score.  The general consensus is that an Alexa score inside 200,000 is when a blog is really doing well.  As of this week, I have been blogging for two months and my Alexa score is now under 500,000.  When I first started I was at 13,000,000+.  I was also excited to see that at least 85 people shared my posts on Facebook or Twitter this week.  I think these statistics are pretty amazing and I owe a big THANK YOU to everyone who is reading.

Monday – Money Boo Boos & A Goal Update – Lots of good feedback on this one and it was good to hear from several of you about your budgeting tricks and tips.

Tuesday – Pens In A Paperless World (and) Family Worship – My weekly family devotionals have been getting much more traffic since I have started writing an additional thought to go with them.  My friend Kevin also suggested using the term ‘family worship’ instead of ‘family devotional’ because this is a hot search term when families are looking for this type of material.

Thursday – A Happy Marriage – This was a very enjoyable piece to write.  My wife said it was better than a Valentine’s Day card.  This post has received the most views in a single day of anything I have ever written.  It continues to be highly viewed.

Friday – Favorite Things Friday: Power Cookies – Again, a fun post to write.  I know there are tons of recipe sites out there, but I enjoy cooking and will occasionally share one of my favorites on here.

Some of my favorites reads…

Inspirational Prints – Iheartnaptime.net – This is one of the Mom blogs I follow.  They posted up some free inspirational graphics that you can download and print.  My favorite, “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

Whole Wheat Muffins – MoneySavingMom.com – I made these to go with dinner one night.  They were super easy and tasty.

Top 15 Things To Buy at Dollar Tree – MoneySavingMom.com – I guess I’ve been missing out for a long time, because I just discovered the savings at Dollar Tree.  There’s a lot of things I would skip at this store, but there are several things that are surprisingly good deals.  The 14th thing on their list – party decorations – is probably the biggest savings item I have found at the store.  When I am putting together a big event at church, I get my decorations at Dollar Tree for about 1/5th of the price I would pay at one of the party stores.