Hello, everybody. I thought it would take this minute to introduce myself to you all.
My name is Gary, and I am the new owner of this site. I know that there are a lot of people that used to read As The Forest[e] Grows, and I wanted to take a moment to let you know exactly where this website is heading now.
First of all, I want you to know my particular background, and where I’m coming from as I’m writing this blog, and adding stories to it. I am a stay-at-home dad, with two children, and juggling a full-time job as an Internet marketer on the side. A busy life? You bet it is. But I enjoy every minute of it. Here’s a picture of the family on a recent trip to Palm Springs Air Tram. We also do a lot of Disneyland around here.
I was born and bred in Southern California. Probably one of the reasons that I like to do so much Disneyland is that I was an employee there some 25 years ago. I’m working on another blog project called That’s Disneyland that should be coming to you very soon. I’m making inroads with some backstage designers to bring you into info about the land that you may or may not have known.
But I digress. Back to this blog.
As a very active parent who’s very involved in the lives of my kids, and being a person who is very in touch with the happenings in the world around him, I go through very extreme measures to try to keep up with what’s happening. And there’s so much stuff that’s happening on a daily basis, it’s hard to keep track of it.
But, we need to keep track of it. As parents, they’re too many things that we need to know about. In many ways, I believe that this society wants to do more harm than good to our kids, both mentally as well as physically.
I know it sounds cliché but I’ll ask the question once again: what happened to the days when kids were just kids? What happened to the days where we could take our kids to the park without having to worry about it? Whatever happened to the days when our kids could go off all day riding bicycles? What happened to days when boys were boys and girls were girls, and everybody was happy with that?
(On a sidenote, if you really want an idea of how I look at life, you should take a look at the new movie “Parental Guidance” that’s coming out on DVD in a few days. It stars Billy Crystal and Bette Midler, and they pretty much mirror the way I feel about parenting and life in general nowadays. That was for free.)
So consider this new incarnation of this blog a type of watchdog. I see too many things in the news that makes me turn my head and say “what did he just say?”. But I believe that we can do more about it than just hear it, and simply blow it off. We have too much responsibility to do that. And we do have a certain amount of power, regardless of what the media and segments of society might want to to believe.
So this blog will be more about what’s going on around us that about me personally. I’ll throw some little things in here and there keep a personal level. But, trust me when I say there will be things of this blog will want to know and want to hear about. There will be subjects and interest pertaining directly to you and your child.
And at this blog grows (pun totally intended), we’ll see how big it will expand. I expected to be quite a ride, and I expect to be posting things that will make you want to tell others about the site as well. I’m hoping for that. I’m depending on that.
On a side note, this is also the beginning of my media company, I took out a small loan a few months ago to cover hosting, site development, programming and the like, so I’ll be on other projects as well as this one. I hope to blog at least twice a week, hopfully more, so please support me, and if there’s anything you have to say, let me know. I’m a cool guy at heart.
So once again, welcome to the new incarnation of the site. I like to personally thank the previous owner. She did a fantastic job, and I can see how putting in the many hours of time she did can be a grind. I wish her nothing but the best, even though I don’t know her personally, I did read her blog from time to time. But, as they say it’s a new day. So let’s get cracking.
Enjoy the ride. A batch of new stuff coming soon.
Gary