To my 7 awesome members, I want to take a moment to thank you for joining Dads Days. I'll be shutting this Skool community down due to it not aligning with what I have envisioned for Dads Days. Just because this community is coming to an end, doesn't mean the Dads Days community is. If you want to continue following along on this journey with me, subscribe to the website and take a look around! The site has reached numbers I couldn't have imagined in only a few days, and I know with your support it will continue growing to be something bigger than all of us. Talk soon, and take care!! -Ryan www.dadsdays.com

So, where exactly was the “AHA” moment of my life? We’re getting there. We still have some years to get through! We briefly walked through what the early years of my childhood looked like. I would definitely consider it special, but there weren’t really any moments of “struggle” or “life changing/character defining” events that you hear about in stories or see in movies. We left off with a change of scenery, the new house! So, what happens after that? Let’s talk about it. I mentioned last week about how I was considered a “quiet” kid, and that personality trait came along with me to the new school I went to. I’ll never forget how I met my first friend (we’ll leave names out of these stories; you’ll understand by the end). It was lunch time on the first day of school, and for Junior High (Middle School) we were given the freedom to sit wherever we wanted. As a 12 year old kid, this new power carried a weight that made you feel like you can run down the halls singing I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T. You mean to tell me I can make a decision on my own?! Well… here goes nothing. I take a deep breath in as if I’m going skydiving for the first time, and find my seat that was calling my name across the entire cafeteria with some other kids. There’s a couple other guys there and I’m like “okay this isn’t so bad”. A few minutes after everyone’s got their food and has made their way to their seats, the Assistant Principal, who just so happened to be my 6th grade math teacher at the school I was at before we moved, got up on the stage at the front of the cafeteria to tell us the “dos and don’ts” of our lunch time. Along with the rules, he pointed out the detention table. “Over there you’ll see the detention table, you definitely don’t want to be sitting over there.” Guess who was sitting at the detention table, voluntarily. Me! I can’t even type out how embarrassed I was, but thankfully that situation didn’t define how the remainder of my Junior High years were going to go. Going into High School was an experience on its own. I joined my first “school sport”, Cross Country. I did it to get my physical education elective out of the way, so being involved in a team activity sounded way better than being around a bunch of PE kids who carried their kick ball musk off to their next class with them. No disrespect to the PE kids out there, I’m sure you all showered… eventually!

There’s always a beginning. Most people will never fully see the process of how a multi-million-dollar business came to be, or how the massive trees grew around the state you live in, it was all just kinda…there one day. Right? My point is to bring you in to why you’re reading this. Dads Days isn’t something that’s going to pop up and act like it has had this magic place for itself in the world like the massive trees have. There’s a beginning, and I’m going to tell you all about it. I’ve never been one to really dive into how I became the man I am today, so I’m taking the opportunity I have now with this blog to take you on that ride, and I hope you can take something away from it. It all started back in 1994… just kidding. Well, it did, but I wouldn’t know a single day from back then besides my parents telling me how adorable I was. And thankfully, my loving wife still reassures that to this day. If we’re talking about my childhood in general, then well… it was awesome! I loved being a kid, and more importantly I loved being my parents’ kid. I have these fond memories of chewing sunflower seeds with my dad and building these derby cars every year for Boy Scouts and listening to our favorite band Third Eye Blind. I grew up playing baseball and we’d go on trips in a two-bunk camper and have the best time, but our love for the same genre of music is what brought my dad and I so close. And my mom was beyond incredible too. She understood me and supported me in everything I wanted or didn’t want to do. That’s all any video game loving kid could ask for. When I was 6, our household of three grew by one and I got my forever best friend, Trevor. I turned him into a gamer faster than he could walk. I was always a “quieter” kid, as in I’d just keep to my close circle of friends, but I’d never dare go outside of that circle and spark up a conversation with someone I wasn’t good friends with. And when it came to girls in the Elementary years… OOWEE man I was bolting the complete opposite direction. I remember swimming in the neighborhood community pool with my parents one day, my dad was probably launching me at what seemed like 75ft up in the air for a cannonball, and one of my classmates Allison swam up to me to say hi. For all I knew, she was definitely NOT there, and I went right under the water and swam like Michael Phelps as far away as I could to alleviate the embarrassment of my parents asking the dreaded, “is that your girlfriend” question. Sorry, Allison!