To be or not to be Chief?

Had our monthly Longhouse meeting last night, this is a monthly meeting of the Nation Officers, Longhouse Chiefs and two representatives of each tribe. The meeting was short and sweet and we have a couple cool activities coming up. This month were having a movie night at the Y and in August we are having a night of free ice skating, this one should be a big hit for both the Dad’s and the daughters. Funny thing happened last night when I entered the meeting room, Steve the Nation Medicine Man asked if he could have a word with me outside, my first thought was “oh no what did I do”. When we got out into the hallway he asks if I would be interested in being the next Nation Property Keeper, the first step in the five year ascension to Nation Chief. Of course I was somewhat flattered that I was asked to join the hierarchy which will lead to being Nation Chief, but at the same time I was concerned about the amount of time, effort and commitment required if I accept the position. No to mention that my good buddy and fellow Creek tribe member had just offered to become the Property Keeper and was told they had others in mind. When I was asked, I mentioned to the Medicine Man that Paul had offered his services and was told that they want to change the way things are done and have any potential Nation Officer serve as Longhouse Chief first. So should I take the offer, there is a considerable amount of public speaking involved, and that’s not my thing but it would be really cool for the girls to have their Daddy be Chief.

The Fourth

What a great weekend with my girls. It was the Fourth of July this past weekend and I was able to leave work a little early on Friday and did not have to work at all on Monday. Friday night me and the wifey went over to a friends house for a poker night, it was fun. On Saturday I went boating with a friend, then came home and watched Monsters vs. Aliens with the girls. Sunday was going to be the big day out at the beach and doing family fun stuff, but as usual it rained nearly all day. Due to the rain we headed out to buy some fireworks, we went to a new place in Boca where everything was overpriced, so we left after waiting in a long line to get in. We headed up to the old faithful Sky King in Delray, no lines and fair prices. The girls were very excited to get home and blow stuff up, I was too. On our way home we received a call from one of Tati’s friends, they invited us over to watch the fireworks on the beach from their rooftop, beach condo. Since we were planning on going to the beach anyway to watch the fireworks, we accepted the invitation. What a great view from their nine-story building, we could see not only the main firework show at Deerfield Beach, but also all the fireworks going off from Fort Lauderdale to the south and Margate to the west. You could hardly focus on one spot, with so many things going off and blowing up in every direction.
Monday rolled around and it was Tati’s first day at surf camp. I dropped her off the went home and scooped up the little one and we both headed back to the beach for some sand castle building and body surfing, she had such a great time. When I went home for lunch today the first thing she said was “dad didn’t we go to the beach yesterday”. Tati is loving the surf camp, she was able to paddle out and stand up all on her own on the first day. Now its back to the old grind for me, cant wait for the weekend

Me and My Girls

This is my first foray in to the blogosphere and what better subject to talk about than my two beautiful little girls and the fun times we have together. A little background, I am a married father of two young girls ages four and eight. We live in a modest working class neighborhood in Southeast Florida, in an older, fixer-upper that my wife and I purchased shortly after our first daughter was born. After seven years of working on this house...it's still a fixer-upper, but that’s another blog entirely.

My daughters and I have been involved with the YMCA Indian Princess program for almost four years now. If your not familiar with the program, let me explain. The Indian Princess program is just like the Y Indian Guides except it is for girls. The group, when founded in 1926, was inspired by Native American themes, hence the name; however, in this time of political correctness, the official name has been changed to "Adventure Guides" as not to offend...(don't tell anyone, but we still call ourselves the Indian Princess program). The program is organized into "nations" and each nation is made up of "tribes" with each headed by a "chief" and so on. Our nation; The Seminole Nation consists of 15 tribes, our tribe is the mighty Creek Tribe.

Each tribe is different from one another in terms of geographical location of the members within the county, socioeconomic makeup of the members and of course the ages of the girls vary. Generally, everyone gets along well and the girls make new friends that they wouldn’t otherwise have met. When we joined the Creek Tribe, they were in the process of loosing a majority of their existing members as most of the girls were ageing out of the program. We joined with a childhood friend of mine and his daughter along with two other new guys. We have added several other members along the way, with most of those being current or former members of the church/school that my daughters attend.

That should be enough background for now, our activities consist of several camping trips over the course of the year and numerous other outings which will be the focus of this blog.