Hallmark Moments

(upbeat music) - Hi again everybody, welcome back to the MilesPaf cast, the flagship podcast, "A Father's Day." Happy Father's Day to everybody, and especially first and foremost to my dad, he's, you know, I wouldn't even know where to begin if I'd begin to like to try and like, think and for all he's done between all the memories, all the farming stuff and baseball and hunting, and the list goes on and on for all that he's done and all the how far he's gone out of his way for us, and all the memories, I, you know, I can't, I've said it before, I can't weave these things into words because there's just, there's simply no way I could do it justice. So, happy Father's Day to my dad, and then I've learned I gotta keep the shout out just like my immediate family or else, I'm gonna inevitably forget somebody 'cause like, where'd you draw that boundary? So let's stick to this, like happy Father's Day to Garrett and to Tyson, to Funko and to Uncle Jarrett, and everybody else, all of the dads, and I've got a whole bunch of people in my mind, but I will forget somebody if I start going down that road and I gotta learn from my mistakes. We got great plans for Father's Day. We'll be out at the lake, everyone's gonna be out there, and it'll be awesome. We're gonna obviously hang out at the water, we're gonna boat over to Harrison, we're gonna get ice cream for the girls, it's gonna be great, and the weather looks like it's gonna be shaping up to be a good day, gonna use a black stone, it'll be a good day. It'll be a great Father's Day. It'll be fun to have everybody together for it and to have good weather that we can be at the lake for it. That doesn't always happen, so I'm excited about that. Today on the show, all the usual stuff, tell me something good. I gotta talk about Hallmark Moments, 'cause it occurred to me last weekend, actually, we're at the lake, I gotta talk about that. The IOU1, Sean's what he went into, and then of course, an Emmy-Cabbie sound bite on the way out. But first, (upbeat music) - Tell me something good. - Hallmark Moments, being an uncle now, when we were at the lake last weekend, all of the, well not all of them, but a lot of the nieces and nephews were there. Garrett's kids were there, Chandler's kids were there, and it's like, oh man, I'm an uncle, and I think about my own aunts and uncles, and they all have something that kind of stands out about them. Like a specific memory, or a Hallmark moment is kind of how I thought about it. And what's mine gonna be for all these guys? Now that I'm an uncle, I'm in that same position, what am I gonna be? But I'm thinking about the ones that I've had. And one of the ones that six my mind first and foremost is my uncle Ken. He used to tell us that he ate bugs or worms in particular, and stuck with it. And one day, we went to his house, and he had like a mason jar full of dirt, and of course there were worms in there. And I think he talked about how he's gonna eat them, for dinner later or something, and it's always stuck with me. Just like one of those little silly things, but as a kid, you're like, oh my gosh. What a crazy, crazy. Mike, Mike, Karen, one of the things I always six my mind is she taught me the amazing metric of using your hands to like multiply by nine's. So if you hold out all your 10 fingers and you look down at them, if you put down your, let's say you're doing nine times four, you put down your fourth finger from the left, your index finger that this would be, and it tells you what that answer would be. It'd be, you got three fingers on the left, that's 30, and then you have six fingers remaining on the right, that's 36, the answer's 36. It's a amazing little metric. I remember learning that from her at Lake one year, when I was trying to learn how to do multiplication. That was awesome. It's always stuck with me. My uncle Matt, he, every time we were down there, like when we were visiting him down at the farm, he would always tell us, Garrett and I, that he's like, I've just been able to look at the latest episode of the Power Rangers, where they got beat by Barney, or like just some wild thing that like our thing was the Power Rangers back then. And he'd always say, oh, they got beat by, you know, the Teletubbies or some crazy thing, which again, it always stuck with me. And every now and then I even catch myself, like when I work with a patient and I know like they're super into something like that, like it crosses my mind, like, oh, I could say like, did you hear that they got beat by blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, on, no, it's just one of those things. It was like the hallmark moment of like uncle Matt, amongst many other things, but like this is one of those things that just stuck in my mind. Aunt Teresa, I remember, several memories from her, like I remember we were at her house when the very first who wants to be a millionaire, millionaire was crowned. I give her like being at her house, like I think we'd heard somewhere on the news that this was the episode where like person won a million bucks and remember like watching at her house, 'cause like our parents were out, I don't know, they went out to dinner or something and we're at the babysitter. But watching that guy who like he called his dad on the million dollar question and said, hey dad, here's the question, but guess what, I already know the answer and I'm gonna win a million bucks to reach his film in. It's, I've never forgotten that. It's like something so little in minuscule, but it's always stuck with me. I talked about like on the video game episode several times ago, like that was the first place I would play back here at baseball, like if it wasn't for her, who knows where that would be? And just like in little things like that, my uncle Mark, he's like, he's always had his plane. I remember like that's one of the hallmark moments from Mark. And also we were at his house once and he had this pet duck. And I've never seen a pet duck so well trained, but it just walk around, you can pet it. A duck of all things. But again, it's like those hallmark moments. So the point being is like, I gotta figure out what mine is gonna be or like if I can like stage it, so it's cool for these kids and you know, all my nieces and nephews. I mean, I hope it's cool. Maybe like learn how to do magic tricks. I always told myself and I had kids I wanna learn how to do magic tricks. So I could be that goofy dad and I haven't got there yet. I didn't do the Rubik's Cube, but no magic tricks yet. And that's maybe that's what I need to learn. So I can I can be cool if you will in that way. I don't know, I'm excited about it. It was a fun like last week in Rolte de Lake and it was cool having all the cousins together and then having them all play. It was great. All right, I owe you one. (upbeat music) ♪ You know who you are, yeah who you are ♪ This is kind of unrepeated, but I gotta go back to this because we're in the season right now where Kendall goes away for work. And when she does that, she leaves like on a Wednesday and she'll come back on a Sunday and it's like nine or 10, 11 times throughout the summer. That's really hard to do as one person because generally a daycare they could pick to pick up before I works out and I'd have to leave early to pick them up and it's just all the little things that kind of go in there that usually is like a couple you share like the mental load of having kids and it's it's hard otherwise. And Gigi Kendall's mom, my mother-in-law Laurie was instrumental last time. Last week when Kendall was gone so helpful. I picked up the girls each day, saved me perhaps to leave work early because I also had no other child to care. And then helping with the little things, like helping have their lunches ready and having them ready for bed. And I was able to go grocery shopping once which would have been hard otherwise and I was able to get my haircut. Just little things that really, really go a long ways that would have been impossible otherwise. Just having a four year old and a two year old. So the other one is to her and I'm sure it's gonna happen throughout the summer. And with all Kendall's work trips coming up, there's gonna be many, many more times in our opportunities where I'm sure she'll be happy to step up and to help out which is just, it's great. And you know, it's, again, it saves me probably work early and just the mental load of it goes down. It's really, really helpful. So if you're listening Laurie, I appreciate it so, so much and you were so helpful this last weekend on so many occasions. Like I would ask something and she'd be like, yeah, absolutely sure. And it's, it's fantastic. Really, really appreciate that. Last but not least, Sean's what are you into? - All right, listeners, it's time for hidden passions, wild hobbies and that one thing that you didn't know miles was obsessed with. Like a lot, it's time for Sean's, what are you into? - This is, I was gonna say it's like an Emmy edition, but it's not what Emmy's into. It's like what I'm into about Emmy and two things. One of them is the kind of like where she's at and like where she's going kind of thing. So first off, let's start here. When, how do I put this? When we, when she has like a hard time with something. So for example, like staying in her bed all night, we'll do something like a, I call it a targeted sticker chart. I actually recommend this to families at work all the time, all the time because so often like people do sticker charts or reward charts and it becomes so broad and so hard to follow through with it, there's not a whole lot of success. But with Emmy, like we'll do very targeted things. So for example, she went through a phase where like we put her to bed and then she'd call for us and then she'd get upset and then she'd want someone to snuggle her to sleep. And that happens every now and then, especially like when her routines like disrupted for a period of time and like she's got people to fall asleep with like when Gigi stays. Gigi sleeps in her bed with her and she gets so used to that and it's hard to back away from it. So for situations like that, like if other things come up, like hey, let's do a sticker chart. And if you can do three or five nights, well you know what it might be, you can earn something. And we recently did that to kind of head off something. She was doing great, but like I could see it coming, haven't been used like falling asleep and snuggle with Gigi that we needed something to like keep her away from, you know, the endless long nights where she's like she wants someone to snuggle with her and all of a sudden it's been two hours when she's in bed and she won't fall asleep. But but but anyways, we did this. And what she chose for like for her reward, which if you're listening to this on Friday, she'll have earned it on Friday assuming she did a good job tonight or as of last night if you're listening to this. She wanted a stuffed animal. She wanted a stuffy. And my first thought was like, oh my, you've got, you literally have a like a laundry size basket in your room overflowing with stuffed animals. Just so many of them from the time that you've gotten since you were born until now, I'm sure there's some that you wouldn't even, you couldn't pick out of a lineup. Like there's just some that haven't been touched in forever. And yet that's what you want. And that was my first thought. It's like, oh, come on, you've already got so many of those. But then I remembered it was this video that I think was Kendall sent me on Instagram, which I never, people sent me stuff on Instagram. I'm so about it looking at that. If you sent me like direct messages, I just, I just never see them. But this one I did. And it was this video of a dad. It was kind of the same story. It's like his daughter wanted a stuffed animal. And he's like, oh, you already have so many of them. But he's like, he was thinking about it. And it's like, you know, there's going to come a time where she doesn't want. a stuffed animal anymore. There's going to be a time where, as a reward, she's going to want anything but a stuffed animal. She's going to want makeup or she's going to want the newest like tech item or she's going to want something because she's going to grow up and there's going to come a time where she doesn't want stuffed animals anymore and that is a time I don't want to think about. So if she wants another stuffed animal, if she wants to live in that world, then I'll be right there with her. And that was my thought process. It's like, man, you've got enough of those but hey, if that's what you want, if you want another stuffed animal, that sounds great. We'll keep getting those because that's what you love and that's what makes you happy then. That's awesome. We'll live in this world as long as we can, which I thought was really cool. So that's what she wants. That's what she wants to start. She wants, so she just like makes stuff up. She wanted a cat flower stuffed animal or a flower cat stuffed animal. And though I'm behold, you go on Amazon, you search that. There is this cat that is all sorts of tie dye colors and it's got kittens that I'm sure you zip inside of it and it's got like LED lights in it. It is this absolutely wild looking thing. I mean, straight out of China or somewhere, it's just it's it's got the end. It is a lot. And that's what she wants. And she's so excited about it. And again, if it was not Friday and she did good night Thursday night, then hey, that's what she's probably enjoying right now. But it's great. We'll live in that world with stuffed animals and wanting stuffed animals long as we can. Even though we have so many of them, so many. And then the other half of this, the other part of what I'm into about Emmy is the other day we were out like laying in the grass. It was just me and her kennel taken gab somewhere. And she's like, hey, I want to make up a game. Like how about you go lay in the grass and close your eyes and we're going to play this game that I'm going to make up. And the game was very simple. It just was just her grabbing like all of these golf balls that we collect on our yards right by a golf course. We've got 50 golf balls. And she just goes and she kind of like lays them in the grass and I have to go find them. And it's not difficult. It's not hard. But the idea of like her wanting to make up games made me so happy because that's how we grew up like Garrett and I and she on our stomachs and like we grew up just like making up games because like we would we'd be outside and we would have a ball and we would have like this place to play. It's like, hey, let's make a game up where we hit this ball through this and it's worth this many points. But if you do this, then you lose points. I just remember doing that over and over again. I remember doing it recess at school. We did we'd make up so many games. And I feel like that kind of ultimately is what got me to wear a mat today, like being an occupational therapist and playing with kids. Like we make up stuff all the time. Like we'll make up. Hey, if you want to we got the scooter board here and we've got these blocks. Like what if you paddle around and you got to grab these blocks and then you got a paddle back on the scooter board and build something. But if you hit this bomb, then you lose life. I don't know. It was awesome though to see Emmys imagination. Her one like create this game with rules and boundaries and setbacks, if you will. And it made me really happy. I was thinking about the games that we made as a kid. We were always in the backyard like playing baseball. And like one of the most basic ones is we had this really really big yard. My parents had this big yard and we would somebody bat on one side and we would have all the linings memorized like we knew like hitting first is you know, A B and C from this team and the other person is the other team like we knew line up so well at that point in time. And we just played baseball games and like it was Garrett and I and he'd throw the ball and he'd you know, he'd hit it in the air kind of like a fungal bat and if it were in the trees, it was a home run. But if you caught it falling out of the trees, you were out. And if it got stuck in the tree, you were out. And if it was like a bouncing ball and it stayed in the grass, it was a single or a double. We had all these rules for it. But a really fun one that really comes to mind was we would say like on the backside of the garage. And the point of this is like it was like a it's like a long pretty sharp. Wow. How do I describe this? Like a sharp inclined roof. And if at the very top probably like five feet from the top, if that maybe even like three or four feet, there are like these air vents like these big square air vents and like there's three of them across the length of the crotch. So what Garrett and I would do is we'd have a kickball and we'd stand at the bottom and you kick the ball up on the roof and it would bounce along the roof and if you could kick it onto the roof and it bounced down without being caught, it was a single. And if it was caught like if it bounced off the gutter and you cut the ball, oh the person's out and we'd go through innings of this. If you could do all the way of the roof and you had to run across and get it from the backside, you were out. But if you could kick the ball on it, bounce right near the top between the gutters or not the gutters, the air vents and the top without going over, it would be like a home run. And we'd all these like little rules. If you have the air vent, it's a double. And if it goes up in this part, it's, you know, it's a triple. All these really cool rules. And we would just play inning after inning of this. I mean, we would have an entire imaginary game going in our heads where like, oh, this person's on second, this person's on first. Oh, you hit a double. Okay, this person scores. Now there's person's on second and third. And inning after inning like we do nine inning games and we would do like world series best of seven games, the rest of seven series. And we'd send hours doing that. And we would play until it's dark. And we would remember a rat and we'd go out and we finished the series the next day. And you know, all that to say, like we, we had so much fun making up games. Like all it took was, you know, a ball or an item and some like little set up slash environment and imagination. You were there. And it's really cool to see me picking up on that already. She's only four and she's already making up games and it makes me excited. Cause like, that's what being kids all about. Like kids, it's so easy to be caught up in, you know, doing other games that are created for you, whether that's on a screen or whatever else, but the fact that she's wanting to make up her own games and use her imagination and involve me in it. That was so cool. It made me really happy to see that. All right, that's all I've got for you. Thank y'all so much. Happy Father's Day to all the dads. Enjoy the weather. Go Mariners. And we will talk to y'all on the flip side. Amy Gabby, you sound bite on the way out and catch you later. Bye. And will you earn tonight if you sleep in your bed all night? My kitty. What do you, what kind of kitty is it though? Light up kitty. To light up kitty. Was it a flower kitty? Yeah. What do you have to do to earn it? I'm going with, no, I'm coming in. And I will do that. All right. You think you're gonna get it? How many secrets do you have so far? One. Now, how many do you have so far? I got one and I got two and I got three and I got four. So you need one more to make? Yes. If you get one more, how many secrets do you have? Good job.