On Sunday December 17th, the Brooklyn Cyclones are hosting a Breakfast With Santa at MCU Park.  For $10 per person or just $30 for a family of four, this is an absolute steal.

If you are not sold, consider your typical Christmas picture with Santa.  You park only God knows where in a crowded mall parking lot.  After that, you have to wait in a long line with your children.  As we know the mall is hot, and your children are going to be cranky.  That crankiness goes up a level if you have them in a nice Christmas outfit.

This leaves you collecting winter jackets or imploring them to leave them on.  It’s a nightmare.  You then have to rally them when they get to the front of the line to stop being cranky, smile, and take a nice picture.  Depending on the age of your child, that may be a Herculean task because your child may be scared or intimidated.

For all that effort?  Well you get to take one picture which may or may not be good.  Even better, using the Short Hills Mall as an example, the whole exasperating experience will cost you $26 and up.

Instead of doing that, you could go to MCU Park and have an IHOP pancake breakfast.  You then get to do picture with Santa and the mascots.  Instead of standing in an interminable line, you child gets to do arts and crafts, have a story time, sing-a-longs, and have giveaways.

With this being 2017, the camera on your phone is more than good enough to take the picture yourself.  You can then order that picture through Walgreens, Snapfish, or Shutterfly for less than a buck.  Better yet, you can make that your Christmas card for the year.

Really, the question is why you would consider braving the malls this time of year instead of having Santa be a fun experience for your children.  It makes no sense whatsoever, and that is why you should elect to do Breakfast with Santa instead of the staged photo.

Even if you can’t make it to MCU Park, you should still seek out Breakfast with Santa options.  I did it once again this year, and I was thrilled with the result.

Even though the one I went to was more money than the one at MCU Park, it was still cheaper than a digital photo package from the mall.  On top of that, I had breakfast with the family and an overall fun day.

EDITOR’S NOTE: this was not a paid advertisement.  Rather, this is just strong advice based upon my experiences.

Can’t believe it’s been four years. 

I’m more proud of you than you’ll ever know. 

Happy Birthday. 

For the second straight year, we had a last minute cancellation for my son’s birthday party. It’s quite understandable as life gets in the way. Children and parents get sick. People unexpectedly drop by, and there are family emergencies that need attention. 

Someone could just plum forget. It happens. 

The issue is what should you do when you have to miss a birthday party. 

Now, there are two different scenarios for this. The first is you’ve RSVP’s no to the party. In those instances, you can do whatever you want.

On a personal note, we treat each instance differently. If those kids have gone to my son’s party in the past, we’ll return the favor. They spent on a nice gift, and we’ll do the same. 

If they’ve never gone to a party for our son, depending on how close a friend the kid is, we may give a small gift like a busy book or nothing at all. 

The other scenario is where you’ve replied yes, but for whatever the case may be, you couldn’t make it to the party. 

What I’ve found to be odd is that in both situations, the late cancellation did not provide a birthday present. 

My presumption was that a gift is owed, and I’m not sure why people would feel otherwise. 

At that point, the parents have already undertaken the expense of your child’s attendance. This includes cost of the child to attend the event as well as the cost for the goodie bag. There are other minor factors as well such as ordering pizza, cake, cupcakes, etc. 

Bottom line is there was an expense paid upon your representation your child would attend. 

Considering you also likely purchased a gift, you probably should give the gift to the birthday boy or girl. 

Unless there’s some etiquette to the contrary of which I’m not aware, or there are real extenuating circumstances preventing the giving of the gift, giving a gift after a no-show or last minute cancellation should be considered an obligation. 

If you are anything like me, you took your child our trick-or-treating, and you collected far more candy than your child could or should ever eat.  My son loved trick-or-treating so much this year, we collected the equivalent of three of those jack o’lantern pails.  He’s not going to eat one of them let alone three.  This leaves us searching for ways to get rid of all that candy.  If you arent’t eating it yourself (surprisingly, I’ve never taken anything from my son’s Halloween haul), here are some suggestions to get rid of it:

1.  Donate It

There are plenty of charitable organizations like the Ronald McDonald House or Soldiers’ Angels who will gladly accept the candy and provide it to children or soliders.  These are just two examples.  A simple Google search could discover more, or if you have a favorite charity send it to them.

2.  Sell It

Increasingly, there are places that will either give you cash, coupons, or swag in exchange for your excess candy.  You can find places that participate in these programs by vising Halloween Candy Buy Back‘s website.

3.  Save for Christmas

Look, in about a month or so, you are going to be hanging the stockings by the chimney with care.  Instead of going out and buying a Snickers or M&M’s with a red and/or green wrapper, just stick the candy with the normal wrapper in your child’s stocking.

4.  Use for Goody Bags or Piñata

Sooner or later your child is going to have a birthday, and with it a birthday party.  Instead of buying new candy or going without candy, stick a couple of pieces in the goody bags.  If you have enough leftover, you could even put them in a piñata to add another fun event to your child’s birthday party.

5.  Add It to Breakfast

One way to encourage your child to get them to start cooking is to use the candy to get them to help you make breakfast.  The easiest way to do that is to make pancakes or waffles.  The easiest candies to incorporate are M&Ms or Reese’s Pieces.  Although you could cut up the fun sized candy pieces down to smaller chunks if you wanted.  The easiest way to incorporate the candy would be to drop them onto the unbaked side of the pancake or waffle.  You could also toss the candy with some flour to help prevent the candy from dropping to the bottom of the batter.

6.  Bake with It

There are any number of things you could do with candy in baking.  You could incorporate them into cake or cupcake batter.  Another idea is once the icing is put on the cakes, your child could then stick the candy on the icing of the cake, or you could use a piece of candy as a decoration atop a cupcake.  If you’re really daring, you could make a cake or cupcake in the theme of the specific candy.  It should be noted we did this with my son’s birthday cake last year much to his delight:

For example, make a vanilla cake, put some peanuts and caramel between the layers, cover with chocolate icing, and then stick some chopped up Snickers bars around the cake.

You could also melt it down to make a bark or cover pretzels.

7.  Incentivize with It

Is there an area where your child needs to improve?  Putting toys away?  School?  Manners?  You can use the extra candy as an incentive program to help reward good behavior.  And yes, I mean incentivize.  There’s a fine line between incentivizing and bribing.  Bribing is telling them if they do something, they’ll get it.  Incentivizing is giving it to them without first promising it to them.

8.  Family Movie Night

Instead of going out to the movies, maybe have a family movie night at home.  Rent a new movie the kids haven’t seen, make some popcorn, and give them some of the candy from Halloween.  This way they get some of the movie theater experience right at home.  If you’re able to find a movie on Netflix or HBO, you’ve created a fun night without spending an extra dime.

9.  Bring It to Work

You know if you bring anything to work and leave it out in the open, the vultures around your office will soon circle and clean you out.

10.  Save For Next Halloween

Candy takes a long time to expire.  If you really have that much candy, just save it in a cool dry place and use it to hand out to trick or treaters who come to your home next year.

This postseason has featured some classic games that have stretched into the early hours of the next day.  For it’s part, Game Two of the World Series ended at 12:36 AM EST.

For many fans who have work the next day, this was far too late to be up.  For those with children, you likely had them in bed well before the end of this game.  In fact, many were in bed before the seventh inning stretch.  When faced with these moments, many renew calls for postseason day games or earlier start times.

West Coast Problem

The thing about Game Two of the World Series was it ending at 12:36 AM EST was that it ended at 9:36 PM PST.  That is not something that should be dismissed, especially when the game was actually played in California.

While people on the East Coast deal with games ending late, people on the West Coast have to deal with games starting too early.  Game Two of the World Series, hosted by the Los Angeles Dodgers, had a first pitch at 5:19 PST.  That is part of the reason why Dodger Stadium wasn’t at capacity yet when the game started.

That’s not only a problem for people attending the game.  It’s a problem for people who wanted to watch the game at home.  Imagine being a die hard Mets fan who had to somehow leave work early enough to beat rush hour to get home and be on your couch ready to watch the World Series at 5:00.  There aren’t many of us who can.

Yet, that is an issue people on the West Coast have to face every World Series.  It’s a problem not just for them, but for Major League Baseball.

Remember, it’s not baseball’s responsibility to ensure friendly end times for baseball games for people on the East Coast.  It’s their responsibility to ensure that as many fans in America as possible get to watch the game.  That’s their responsibility not just to fans, but also to advertisers.

In making that decision, someone is going to have to suffer.  West Coast fans have to deal with missing the beginning of the game, and East Coast people will have to deal with being sleepy the next day.  Like all compromise, everyone is left a little unsatisfied.

Getting Young Children Interested

There’s not doubt an early start time would be friendlier for children.  Depending on their age, children are in bed before the game even begins.  For others, they will have to be in bed before the game ends.  In some sense, that’s not much different that the problem many adults face when watching the World Series.

Here’s the thing about that.  It’s really not much different that the regular season.  Are you really going to tell me that hour makes a real difference between your child watching the game or not?

Personally, I know my son falls asleep while watching regular season games, and he is already in before the World Series start times.  I know I smiled the other day when he told me he doesn’t like it when baseball is over, and he wants it come back.  I also know his fandom is largely predicated upon mine, and if I continue to be the ardent fan I am, he is likely to follow in my footsteps.

I also know his fandom will likely be shaped as he gets older.  With the anniversary of the Mets 1986 World Series having just passed, I talked to my dad about it.  I was allowed to stay up for Game 6 to its end in large part because it was my parents were hosting an engagement part for her at our house.  My Dad also revealed to me I watched many two minutes of Game 7 because I was already in bed because I had school the next day (Thanks Mom).

It wouldn’t be until Kirk Gibson‘s homer in the 1988 World Series that I would be allowed to stay up late for a game.  It is something I would do from 1988 until the present.  My missing the 1986 World Series had nothing to do with my fandom or my love of baseball.

World Series Day Games

The counter-point to this is maybe we can counter-balance the first two issues by having World Series day games.  In reality, this ultimately will have the opposite effect.

The logic behind it is fairly sound.  By having games at a time when everyone can watch, more people will be able to watch the games from beginning to end.  That goes double for children from coast to coast.

This argument ignores what it is like to be a parent of a child on the weekend.  In fall, especially the Month of October, parents and children’s days are already full of activities.  During the fall, there are soccer and football games.  There are some fall baseball leagues.  This doesn’t even include indoor sports that can be and are played year round like basketball, swimming, gymnastics, and dance.

There are also piano (or other musical instrument) lessons.  Recitals.  Birthday parties.  Pumpkin Picking.  Trunk or Treats.  The list goes on and on, and that is before you account for laundry, grocery shopping, and all the other househould chores that need to be accomplished by Monday.

During the Month of October, parents are running from place to place.  Even when there is nothing to do, you are outside playing with your children or taking them over to a friend’s house to play.  It just doesn’t end.

The reward?  Well, after a day of running around like that after a hard work week, you should be able to pop open a beer and watch the World Series.  Of course, you can’t if it has already been played at 4:00.  Instead, you are trying to catch pieces of the game here and there while you are doing things with your children.

Football Problem

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if baseball or football is more popular.  What matters is there’s going to be a conflict with day games.

If you’re a college football fan and a baseball fan, you’re going to have to choose between the two or toggle back and forth.  If your team is still in the playoff picture, and your baseball team is out of it, you’re likely going to watch your college football team.

Same goes on Sundays when it is a matter of the Jets or Giants and the World Series.  While there might be some toggling back and forth, you’re likely going to focus on your team rather than the World Series.

Why would baseball invite fans splitting their interest between two sports?  It’s insanity.  Oh, and by the way, there is no way Fox would every allow it.

Early Games Don’t Make Sense

Like everyone else, I would like earlier start times to games, and I would love games to end at a reasonably early enough time for me to get to bed at a decent hour.  It’s never going to happen, and it’s not happening because people don’t just live on the Eastern seaboard, and people have conflicts with earlier start times.

Like anyone else, I’d like to see a World Series day game in my lifetime, but it’s just not going to happen.  And even if it did happen, I probably won’t get to sit down and watch it for another 20 years.

So, as this World Series comes to a close, I’ll be more concerned about the quality of the games played than their start and end times because at the end of the day, I’ll always remember how great Game 2 of the 2017 World Series was, and I probably won’t be discussing how I was so tired at work the next day.