Yesterday I posted Part 1 of the 10 New Things I Learned On Our Family Bahamas Vacation where I talked about Trapezery and Biking X 2. So let’s continue the fun with what I learned about my kids.

3. Our Kids Love to Be on Stage (at least in theory)
I didn’t know what to expect heading into an all-inclusive resort with a Kids’ Club. I thought that I would feel guilty for even thinking of leaving them off with some stranger while we went to the beach. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The first day we took the kids to the Club they met Denise, the most fun 20-something from Mexico that anyone could meet. The kids immediately fell in love with her, and BEGGED to go to the Kids’ Club every day; especially the rainy ones. There was always something to do, and they met lots of other kids their age to hang out with. Every night before the live entertainment there was a mini disco where Mason and Anna got up on stage with Denise to dance silly songs. We thought it was great for Anna who has developed a little stage fright in anticipation of her dance recital later this year.

We had also reviewed the entertainment schedule at the beginning of the week to see what shows to attend. At the top of Mason and Anna’s list were Pirates of the Caribbean and Lion King. So, imagine our surprise when Mason came out of Kid’s Club one day saying that he was going to be Baby Simba. We thought for sure he was imagining a little too vividly. Sure enough by the day of the show, Mason had befriended Gustavo, the resident choreographer and had also volunteered Anna for a part too. This made Anna very excited as she had been jealous the previous days for all of Mason’s squawking about being the star of the show.

Needless to say we were thrilled for our kids to get this unexpected opportunity which made the trip for them. After a week now we are still creating mini-performances of the show in our basement, and the kids are glued to the Lion King DVD. Enjoy the show! Make sure you watch the last minute. They just crack me up.

Mason and Anna perform in the Lion King at Viva Wyndham Fortuna Beach March 25, 2008

4. Teenage Girls are Born at 4 Years Old
Anyone who has parented a fiery little girl out there I’m sure already knows this to be true. I really don’t need to give this much more of an intro, other than to stop laughing long enough to click the play button again.

5. Snorkel First in the Pool
Hee Hee. I got a good Daddy lesson after I heard for so many days that Mason wanted to snorkel. Tricia went to Target before the trip and got each of the little ones a snorkel, mask and flippers. Mason couldn’t contain himself any longer when the sun finally came out. He had to snorkel. I’m not sure what came over me, as I thought that the swimming lessons at the Y had properly prepared the boy for deep sea snorkeling.

So, we had fun putting on all the equipment. Sticking a snorkel in his little mouth was a very unfamiliar experience for him. He learned to walk backward with the flippers and how to spit in his mask to keep it from fogging up (he loved that of course). Then I took him out into the shallow water and had him lay on my hands. Immediately he took a big gulp of saltwater that leaked into his snorkel and came up coughing. That was the end of that lesson, and I thought, snorkeling for the rest of his life. This picture gives a glimpse of the brief ocean adventure.

Mason’s First Ocean Snorkel Experience

Afterward I got to thinking. There’s a 1.5′ deep kiddie pool with no salt water and a shallow bottom, why not go over there and learn? So I convinced Mason to give it a whirl one more time. I made sure that the snorkel was actually sealed to his mouth. and that the mask was tight enough not to leak around his face. Then I gave him the Ultimate Challenge. I threw a bottle opener on the bottom across the pool. I told him to go find the bottle opener. Sure enough, that got him to put his face in the watter and use his snorkel to breathe. The rest of the trip he couldn’t wait to keep playing snorkel in the kiddie pool. Maybe next time around we’ll try the ocean again.

I’m still headed toward 10 new things. In my next post I’ll tell you about my experience breathing underwater for the first time too. My dad and Mike and I learned to SCUBA. Plus other oddities that only happen on Rzepkowski vacations. In the meantime keep looking at the Bahamas pictures.

I spent last week with my wife and kids, my parents, and my sister’s family in the Bahamas. We stayed at the Viva Wyndham Fortuna Beach near Freeport on Grand Bahama Island. The trip had been in the works for over a year, with Mom and Dad choosing this all-inclusive resort for some good family R&R.

It took me over a day to unplug my brain from work, eased by all the food and drink I could handle. Once I vegged out just a bit it was time for activities. When my brain is free to explore other interests I learn lots of new things. So, here are 10 new things I learned while in the Bahamas

1. Trapeze Tricks
Yep. The flying circus act. Who knows why a resort decides to install a trapeze as an amenity? Perhaps it ranks right after the cucumber facial exfoliation wrinkle reducing treatments and before heated toilet paper. Whatever the case may be, we had a 30′ high apparatus not far from the back porch of our first-floor beach front rooms. We were fixated on watching the pros do it, and joked with Anna that she should try it. We checked the schedule which included kid sessions in the morning and adult sessions in the afternoon. Mike, inexplicably volunteered to take the challenge. I was perfectly happy to chicken out, but I’m just too competitive. So, after he came out alive I decided to do it. Dad is even more competitive than me, so he took to the sky to prevent any ‘skirt’ jokes. Even Mason gave it a try late in the week, because all of his camp buddies got into it.

This was one of those experiences that I was happy to have done once, and just as happy to never do again.

The ladies were glued all week to the high-flying theatrics. Ultimately, they could not let the other smiling guests have all the fun. So Tricia, Mom, Lindsey, and even little Anna built up enough courage to give it a shot. Tricia lived out her tom-boy, tree climbing, monkey swinging childhood. Mom conquered the very same event that her sister as an adult had promised to do at Circus World, but chickened out. Yeah Mom! You beat Aunt Darrell on that one 🙂 Lindsey’s experience was similar to mine. We were never ones to do the monkey bars, no less swing upside down. Hers was a conquest probably not to be repeated. And Anna…well, she finally got to do what she was begging to do.

2. How to Ride a Tandem Bike
On Thursday, only our second fully sunny day of the trip, Dad came up with the idea to leave the resort property and bike to Port Lucaya where there was some souvenir shopping. When we went to the security desk to check out the bikes I joked with Tricia that we should take out the only tandem bike on the rack. I really wasn’t serious. She spoke right up though and said, “That sounds good”. So, she climbed on the back and we started off toward Port Lucaya with my Dad.

The bike took a lot of getting used to. The two sets of pedals are chained together, and of course her handle bars did no steering at all. When I wanted to slow down she kept pedaling. When she wanted to see something ahead, all she could see was the red t-shirt on my back. After a while though we developed a system. I said “Coast” every time I wanted her feet off the pedals and this let the bike glide. If we were stopped and needed to get started easily, she acted as the “rear engine” getting us underway. The teamwork made the whole experience really fun, and actually far less effort for both of us (just ask my dad). If we ever get a chance to tandem ride again, I’m sure we will.

Kris and Tricia on a double bike in Port Lucaya

I promise, there really are 8 other new things I learned. I’ll talk about them in my next post. In the meantime enjoy my pictures of the trip, or check out Tricia’s vacation recap.

One night last week the kids were getting in our hair, and I just couldn’t take one more “I’m bored”. For some unknown reason I thought it would be good to do something I haven’t done for MANY years – a jigsaw puzzle. Yep, I have reached the height of excitement. I was either channeling my inner old folks home, or grasping for any way to make this winter go away faster.

We had this 750 piece Chicago Skyline puzzle from Buffalo Games gathering dust on the shelf. My grandma gave it to me at least 5 years ago. The minute I cracked it open, we had instant family entertainment. Mason and Anna have never seen such a large and complex puzzle, and of course Tricia and I were eager to dig in. We spread out all of the pieces and flipped them over. We did an initial sort, looking for all of the edges. By the end of the first night we had the edges somewhat constructed, and Tricia completed all of the lettering at the bottom.

Over the next 10 days the puzzle quickly lost its luster for the rest of the family, but not for me. I was hooked. I attacked this thing every morning before breakfast, and during lunch, and instead of watching TV at night. The whole experience was so much more stimulating and calming than I ever remember it. I’m convinced that the old school jigsaw puzzle is every bit as useful to the brain as BrainAge could ever try to be. As I built the puzzle I kept building different strategies for organizing and completing the different sections.

Tonight, at 1am when I can’t sleep on the eve of our family vacation, I completed the beast. When it was done, I could only wonder if there were puzzling strategies out there from world champs of puzzling or something. Without knowing it, I had in fact followed the strategies that puzzle junkies who do this all the time devised. Building a puzzle has some intrinsic satisfaction for the builder in me. It was as much fun as a home improvement project or building a website.

To top this off, let’s visit our friend YouTube for some jigsaw inspiration.

This work-from-home guy’s birthday is coming up April 2nd. If anyone at Hudson actually reads this blog, you might want to watch this lovely vignette from our friends at CareerBuilder. My Workplace Worth suggests that I should ‘cut my losses’. Not that I want the stripper to bust out of a five layer cake with a gold plated watch, but c’mon people. Chocolate Fountain!

I’m growing weary of reading information created by the entire marketing consulting world. From self-pronounced social media experts, to agencies, to marketing vendors who blog, to the hundreds of marketing newsletters offering ‘5 ways to energize your online, social media marketing, personal branding spend, strategy ROI’, to mainstream magazines. It’s becoming overload. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll continue to find and follow more pundits. What I find myself searching for are people like me.

I want to find some people who attend conferences, not speak at them. People who read books, not write them. People who are building interactive marketing strategy for their company, not giving advice to others. This is an open call to all internal marketers to connect with me. Why? I just want to read your tweets and your blogs as you build your strategy. I just haven’t found you very easily on the social networks – especially Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere. But, I haven’t really been looking that hard either. All of the consultants flood the airwaves with their self-promotion so you haven’t been served to me on an over-tweeted platter.

So, today I started with a simple Google on ‘CMO Blogs’. I found this article from 2006 (*now that’s old news*) by Mario Sundar on Top 10 CMO Blogs. So now I follow Mario – the online Community manager at LinkedIn who writes an excellent blog. This led me to Eric Kintz who blogs about his work as a marketer at HP. He also wrote an informative post on why blogging as a marketer matters. That led me to dig into the work of David Churbuck, who blogs about his marketing efforts at Lenovo. He kindly outlined his thought process into his online strategy for the Lenovo 2008 Olympics sponsorship. He built a bold athlete 2.0 strategy that has value at its core, rather than overt company sponsorship.

Well, that’s my web wandering for the day. If you are out there, I’d love to connect with you, oh Internal Marketer. Here’s my criteria for the best connections.

Ahh…Easter. It’s that time of year in Western New York where every day is 40 degrees and overcast. Piles of old dirty snow line the sides of the road reminding you that winter was but 5 days ago, and it could yet bite again. It’s also the time to take an hour ride to Buffalo and visit the Broadway Market.

2008 Family excursion to the Buffalo Broadway Market

It is a place steeped with Polish tradition. The history is recounted on their website:

The Broadway Market is over 118 years old.

As immigrants flocked to the east side of Buffalo in the late 1800’s, they looked for the continuation of old world customs in their new and unfamiliar environment. While they wanted to enter the mainstream of city life, they also sought to preserve their Eastern European traditions and heritage. The Broadway Market would prove to serve these needs quite well….

…Famed for its ethnic old world shopping atmosphere, the Broadway Market’s fresh food merchant base is comprised of family-owned, family-operated butcher shops, poultry stands, fruit/vegetable stands and bakeries….

Since we won’t be around for Easter this year (we’ll be taking a vacation to the Bahamas), and we had a HUGE morning Easter Egg Hunt at our Friends’ house, we thought today would be great time to do the market. Normally, I starve myself before the trip so I can partake in the best Beef on Weck that Buffalo has to offer. Unfortunately, we hit McDonalds to be able to last in the car ride and we weren’t really hungry.

We started our tour by finding some hand painted wooden eggs. We usually get an egg for each of us.

Mason and Anna show off their hand-painted Polish wooden Easter eggs

Next, we had to pick up some Polish sausage and pierogies. We found 2 varieties at one of the meat shops so I got a package of each – one was Wardynski’s the other Redlinski’s. The pierogies were HUGE. Each one was the size of a Hostess Apple pie. Sauerkraut is my favorite, so I picked up 6. My next mission was to pick up some potent horseradish. I went for the “Broadway Market Horseradish”. I bought small jars this year, because it will stay fresher in smaller quantities once I open each jar. I topped off the visit by buying my typical obnoxious Polish-themed t-shirt. Thank goodness there’s a new one every year.

We met Matt and Alison at the market. This was their first trip, and since they will be hosting an Easter crowd next weekend, they purchased a Butter Lamb. Excellent call! We decided that we couldn’t carry around 6 pounds of meat and not give it a try, so we convinced Matt and Ali to invite us back to their place for a taste test.

Before we went though, we had to pick up one more sausage varietal. This time we acted on a hot tip from a Buffalo local who said to hit the Market in the Square grocery store in West Seneca for some Dubel’s sausage. We rushed back to the apartment and had a “Sausage Fest” complete with the appropriate laughter at how inappropriate that sounded. We had a very scientific toothpick system for keeping the different sausages straight. We all preferred the one without the toothpick which was Wardynski’s. It had by far the most complex and delicious grouping of spices.

Tricia and Alison get cheeky at the Sausage Fest

Thanks to Matt and Alison for letting us invade. It was fun spending our Easter tradition with you.

Apparently the future of customer relationships is empowering the rank-and-file to act as a conduit of the brand message within the online socialscape. This is suggested in a Wall Street Journal piece via Scott Monty. If that be the case, and we also agree that the job is less about ‘managing the message’ and more about interacting in the community on behalf of the company, then marketers better get into the education game quickly. We need to become fluent in online community and social media to the point of being able to teach it to the rest of our organizations.

Here’s a case in point. My wife wrote a scathing rant on her blog about an awful experience with our local Sears retailer. She followed up that missile with the typical phone runaround with varying levels of drones and retail managers until the issue was resolved. It is likely that this heated piece of prose will sit in net space for a long period of time, in all of it’s Google-optimized glory just waiting for other outlets to pick it up. Were the marketing team within the Sears hierarchy able to train every employee to use Google Alerts to find these gems, the response could be swift and genuine. We need to train our people to fight the company’s battles on the customers’ turf, out in the open. Those that do so, ultimately are going to win. There is a HUGE opportunity out there for new tools and new roles in teaching every employee to do social-media marketing. The content must shift from ‘What is Facebook, blogs, wikis, etc’ to ‘How to respond to a negative blog post about our company’.

I could not help but be drawn into the story line of this viral campaign. You have got to see this and try it for yourself. I sent the piece to myself so you could see it in action here:

Dead Man Blogging

Let me know what you think (beside how disturbing the actual message is).

Sunday was Mason’s final ski lesson for the season. The weather was heading toward perfect all week. A snow storm on Tuesday and Friday gave us 6 inches of fresh powder, while the Saturday temps in the low teens headed toward midday highs of 35 yesterday. With bright sunshine and no wind, there could not have been a better day for skiing ever. We went down as a caravan – the Rzepkowski’s and our friends the White’s as we had done earler in the year.

When we arrived at the mountain, the trails had just been groomed and Mason was psyched to try out his new skills on the real slopes. He started out his 10:15am lesson on the magic carpet, and quickly advanced to the real lift. He was now able to ski Swain completely on his own which was a huge difference from the first time this year.

While Mason took his lesson, Tricia, Anna and I went up the lift for some skiing together. Anna did very well with the help of an outstretched pole, or some between my legs skiing. Had the magic carpet not been packed with lesson kids, we should have had her ski there all day so that she could learn to stop. I can’t wait till she’s old enough for lessons next year at Powder Mills because I know that she’s going to pick this skiing thing up quick, and be racing by year’s end.

When Mason’s lesson ended, his instructor, Ron told me that he just wasn’t able to give Mason any instruction. There was another kid in his class that was over his head and needed to be carried down the hill. Ron offered to give Mason another lesson at noon. So, we went back to the lodge for a break and some lunch and convinced Mason that getting some more one on one ‘professional help’ would be great for him. In fact his second lesson was good for him as Ron told us that Mason made a lot of progress. He also said Mason’s legs were popped out by the end, and he needed a break.

Tricia kept the boys and Anna in the lodge so Andy and I could hit the perfect conditions for some real skiing. We took a couple of GREAT runs, and then somehow I let Andy convince me to do a Nastar race. I’ve never raced in all my years of skiing. All you had to do was pay 5 bucks at the top of the hill and you could ski the course for time. I was definitely nervous and my first run didn’t calm my nerves at all. I fell on the second to last turn which cost me 15 seconds to end up at 45 seconds. We went up the hill again, and on my second run I managed to finish with a turtle-slow time of 35 seconds, but at least I stayed on course. Andy’s best time of the day I think was 29 seconds which awarded him a bronze medal. Racing was really fun, and I could have done it the rest of the day, but alas we wanted to get back to skiing with the kids.

In retrospect the second lesson for Mason wasn’t the best idea because it cut our family time short. Our second run together up to Mile Sweep, Mason skied awesome at the top of the hill. But his legs and mind were so shot, that he melted down somewhere in the middle and wanted me to carry him the rest of the way down the hill. I coaxed him down the rest of the way by holding a pole next to me. That was at the end of this highlights video – a summary of a day of great family fun and great times with great friends.

I hope we might get out one more time skiing this year if our busy schedules allow it. Otherwise, I won’t be sad if this perfect day of skiing is the exclamation point on a terrific 2008 at the slopes.

People work for bosses not companies. Today, that sentiment is more true for me than ever before. When the leadership team asked Rick Gray to emcee the annual Sales Awards conference I bet they thought he would have a humorous quip or two. Or maybe he would throw squishy balls with the Hudson logo into the audience (we are from the marketing department you know). I doubt that ANYONE would have expected this. Take a look at what someone caught on their camera phone.

While the song certainly has no chance for American Idol, it does show me a person willing to be creative, gutsy, and unafraid to shake things up. How could others in the crowd not be motivated by a fellow employee on fire for his company like that? That’s exactly the kind of person I like to work for. Nice job Rick!

This post also has me asking the inevitable question about whether or not to blog about my boss. This same question arose for Tiffany Monhollon in her post titled Is Your Boss Reading Your Blog?. She covered my sentiments very well:

I will also tell you that if I didn’t have a great relationship with my boss and know that he fully supports me as a person as well as the entirety of my career, I probably would have had a bit more pause in my decision. But in the end, it turned out to be the best move.

Learning about social media has been a good time for both of us. It has been one of the most challenging projects in my career. Why not blog my boss’s first public appearance on YouTube? We haven’t figured out the power of that medium yet, so we’re going to start now! If you like his song pass it on.