Dads can celebrate and appreciate each others’ parenting work on the night of June 15, 2024 — Fathers Eve.

The annual event, now in its 13th year, is meant to allow dads to have a chance to show gratitude and support for one another. This differs from Father’s Day as that holiday is for families to honor dads.

Since 2012, groups of fathers have gathered formally or informally in public or private spaces to swap parenting stories, offer support to each other and help foster a positive fathering environment. John Francis, a co-organizer of our Twin Cities Dads Group in Minnesota, began the tradition by inviting several dad friends to his house for beers, billiards and swapping stories about fatherhood. Fathers Eve is now recognized as an official “national day” by the National Day Archives.

Over the years, scores of celebrations have been held annually in backyards and businesses across the United States and a few international locations. The organization has also helped raise thousands of dollars for parenting and children’s organizations.

Where to celebrate Fathers Eve 2024

Several City Dads chapters will be among those hosting Fathers Eve 2024 events (click city to find event listing and RSVP) :

• Charlotte, N.C.
• Chicago
• Cincinnati
• Columbus, Ohio
• Denver
• Fresno, Calif.
• Los Angeles
• Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn. – Twin Cities
• New York City – Port Washington
• Phoenix

(DISCLOSURE: City Dads Group has been a longtime sponsor for Fathers Eve, donating money and helping organize events through our chapters. Fathering Together is also a sponsor.)

A complete listing of Fathers Eve 2024 events can be found on its website.

Virtual celebration available online

If you can’t attend a Fathers Eve 2024 event in person, don’t despair. A virtual online live-streaming of celebrations will again be held this year. A live stream replaced in-person events in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has supplemented organized celebrations since.

The online event starts at 7 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on June 15. The countdowns to the annual celebratory toast start shortly before the start of 8 p.m. local time in each U.S. time zone. You can sign up for the live stream to share at your event or watch individually.

This time of year people are focused on making and keeping their New Year’s resolutions.  Some like quitting bad habits or making good habits are pretty straightforward. If you want to quit smoking, exercise more, read more, or eat healthily; there are very clear ways to start and places to get help. For others, like finding a community or group that will help you in your goal to be a better father, getting started on the right foot can be tricky.

That’s what the City Dads Group is all about. At its core, the group wants to form diverse communities for fathers who are looking to socialize and interact with other guys who enjoy spending quality time with their children.

We are all in here at the Chicago Dads Group. We love the chance to meet other dads who love being dads.  This year our group made it past the 1000 member mark, and we’d love to have even more!  We have seen first-hand the positive effects of creating a network of friendships and resources to help our members become the dads they want to be.  Whether it is activities like a play date in Maggie Daley Park or a Dad’s Night Out playing whirly ball, we are strengthened by every new father that joins our tribe.

We do a lot together here are some of our member’s favorite memories and activities:

I play competitive, energetic basketball every week with Dads from our group!

– Sean W.

It’s a brotherhood of guys who have great advice on childcare and are just fun to be around. I love Dad’s Night Out. I like getting away from the kids for a little adult time.

– Al W.

It’s nice to feel like there are others out there who share what I’m going through. We have a great group of guys…as fathers but also just as people who are fun to be around. My kids still talk about going fishing with the group, even though they were bored and didn’t catch anything. The experience was everything!

– Kyle E.

Join a Dads Group

Great dads don’t happen overnight it takes time, effort, and commitment.  That doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch though.  We’d love to add your perspective and experience to our own.

If you’ve been looking for a way to connect with other active and engaged fathers here in the Chicagoland area check out some of our upcoming events… We’d love to have you!

Now that we are firmly into 2018 we can’t help but want to take a quick look back on one of our favorite meetups of the past year.  Along with  11 other City Dads Group chapters, we participated in Giving Tuesday by helping local charities that help feed hungry children in our communities with the help of our partner, Plum Organics.

Here is a little video the City Dads Group made to showcase how it went:

Plum Organics, the nation’s leading organic baby food brand, donated more than 41,000 pouches of their tasty meals to help children in need.  For our part, the Chicago Dads Group teamed up with the Palatine Township Food Pantry to collect food and deliver the generous donation from Plum Organics.

Giving back is one of our favorite ways to get together here in the Chicagoland area.  There is a lot of need here and we are lucky to make such great connections with brands, like Plum Organics, who help encourage and support our initiatives.

Giving Tuesday, the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, is a global day of outreach dedicated to helping others. It’s meant to kick-off the holiday season by inspiring people to collaborate in improving their local communities. Since its 2012 inception, tens of thousands of organizations worldwide annually participate in the day. This was the fourth year in-a-row that we have joined with other City Dads groups around the country and participated in this day of giving back through service, and we’re looking forward to doing even more!

DISCLOSURE: Plum Organics partnered with City Dads Group for the mentioned above through a donation of goods and financial compensation.

Disclosure: We proudly partnered with WaterWipes for this event and post.

One of the best things about being a part of the Chicago Dads Group is getting together with other fathers and their kids to watch them play and make new friends.  Whether you call them playdates, outings or adventures, we love them.

Our good friends WaterWipes, makers of the world’s purest baby wipes, treated our dads and their families to a fun breakfast and morning of play at one of our favorite local spots, The Little Beans Cafe. With cafe amenities for the parents and older siblings, imaginative play spaces for the tiny tots, and some sports and gymnastic-style play for the not-so-tiny tots, Little Beans is perfect for the whole family.

We had some epic make-believe going on in the “Tiny Tots Town” with all the dress-ups and play buildings. It is always a blast when kids get their dads in on the play. We also had some creative tabletop tennis, and an impromptu ultimate ninja competition go down with some of our bigger kids (sometimes even our dads fit that category). Everyone was having a blast.

Lucky for us, we never had to stop play for too long for a diaper change. With WaterWipes on hand, our dads could flag their toddler down and get them changed and back into action with the efficiency of a race car pit crew. WaterWipes gave us the confidence of knowing not only are we there to help our kids when they need us, but that we are taking care of their skin as we do. WaterWipes are made with 99.9% water and a drop of fruit extract so they are soft to the touch and gentle on sensitive baby skin. Additionally, WaterWipes have been awarded the National Eczema Association Seal of Acceptance — so you know the whole family can use them with skincare confidence.

“We love WaterWipes! They are soft on her skin and that makes my job so much easier,” said James Currie, a Chicago Dads Group father of a 2-year-old. “They give me peace of mind knowing I’m keeping her new skin clean with gentle and pure elements.”

Another one of our fathers, Rich Espinal, said, “It is great to be in community with fellow fathers and their families. It serves as a reminder that we have the same desires for more sleep, fumbling through the best way to manage tantrums, etc. Little Beans Cafe was an ideal venue with toys, activities, and places for parents to relax. It was also great to have WaterWipes on hand to wipe down faces buttered with breakfast and make diaper changes a breeze.”

WaterWipes are available throughout the U.S. online and at many major retailers. For more information, visit www.WaterWipes.com/us.

The Chicago flag is celebrating its 100th anniversary today. Its iconic design is rich in meaning and is one of the few things almost all Chicagoans agree upon. The flag is one of the most recognized symbols for a municipality in the United States.  It is a simple design that  begins with a white background separated into three sections by two broad horizontal blue stripes.  In the center section there are four six-pointed stars. The whole flag is rich with meaning representing the geography and many of the city’s important historical events.

The flag was designed by Wallace Rice in 1915 after Chicago’s Mayor Carter Harrison Jr. sent out a call for an official flag. Mr. Rice was a lecturer and vexillographer (someone who studies and designs flags) at the Art Institute of Chicago.  There were only two stars on the original design and they were offset to the left (to make room for new stars if they were ever needed). The stars represented Chicago Fire and the Colombian Exposition.  During the 1930s two more stars were added to the flag to commemorate Fort Dearborn and the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition.  Since 1939 the flag has remained unchanged.

The flag is a source of pride for the city of Chicago. Not only does the flag fly all across the city, it is used in designs for everything from clothes to tattoos. Are you a fan of our flag?  Let us know down in the comments.

So it isn’t a typical winter here in Chicago this year…  We haven’t seen a lot of snow, if any, and temperatures are regularly in the 50’s. None-the-less the Groundhog saw his shadow, so it seems we are in for a few more weeks of winter.  So with this weird winter we are having how can you find winter fun for kids?  No fear we have done some looking around and we have activities that should keep you fully stocked with ideas for the next six weeks:

Winter Fun for Kids

1. Ice skating –  We don’t let a lack of snow stop us from enjoying some outdoor ice time.  A few iconic place you can lace up and skate are, The Maggie Daley Park Ice Ribbon,  The Millenium Park Ice Skating Rink, or The Linclon Park Farmhouse Ice Rink. Admission is free-$5 at these places if you don’t have skates though you’ll have to rent them.
2. Skiing and Snowboarding – Yes you can Ski and Snowboard within an hour from the city center,  They aren’t giant mountains but they are a great way to introduce your kids to these fun winter sports… and yes they make their own snow so you can even ski/board this year.  Check out: Villa Olivia,  Raging Buffalo Ski and Snowboard Park, or Four Lakes Alpine Snowsports.
3. Museums – Outdoor winter sports not your thing? We have world-class museums you should visit especially on one of their many free days for IL residents here are the places we love: The Art Institute of Chicago, The Field Museum, The Shedd Aquarium, The Adler Planetarium, and The Museum of Science and Industry.  You may want to check out one of their sleep over events.

With all the Nature Preserves and Park Districts around we are absolutely missing some of the other fun activities. So by all means tell us what we have missed.  Drop a comment below and let us know what ways you are discovering winter fun for the kids this year! Who knows… we may just add it to the list.

Success often comes at the tail end of hard work and overcoming setbacks.  Have you ever heard someone say:

If at first you don’t succeed…

When I was younger I studied/taught martial arts.  When I was discouraged my teacher would use a metaphor to illustrate that my failures were part of the path to success. He did this by illustrating how a samurai’s sword was formed. You see steel becomes stronger as you fold it with other materials to create layers that build strength and flexibility in the blade. Folded, fired, and hammered up to 16 times a samurai’s blade was formed through a difficult and stressful process by a master craftsman. Ultimately what is formed is a strong blade able to meet any challenge and conquer them successfully.  When I began to teach (and when I had kids) I often like sharing this metaphor because it is a great object lesson about how to use life’s difficult moments to make us stronger.

Those who are willing and accepting of their mistakes are better equipped to learn from them.

As a father that is my job to make my kids stronger for the world that is out there waiting for them. This is my chance to help them understand the value of this forging process. It starts with knowing that you are not perfect, you will fail, and you can’t avoid it. Like the blade in the metaphor the first pass is not enough.  You need to try again, be folded, fired, and reformed again and again. Until you are strong and flexible and ready to face the challenges that await.

So let’s take a look at  7 ways we can be a stronger person:

1.  Make Mistakes – I can’t emphasize this enough.  Be willing to make mistakes, whether you are willing to or not you will make them.  Those who are willing and accepting of their mistakes are better equipped to learn from them.  They will treat them accordingly and will likely succeed sooner.
2. Comparisons Lack Real Value – Too often we compare ourselves to others. That is wasting time that we could be putting in, to develop ourselves.  We don’t know all the factors and all the steps they took to be as good as they are.  Whether it is natural skill or hours of practice, the time we spend on the comparison steals time we could be developing our skills.
3. Believe in Yourself – Be willing to stand up for yourself and what you believe in.  This is easy when there is a large group that is with you, but it is more important when you are unpopular.  Confidence can only be won in these challenging scenarios.  When you have to stand up for your child against a school administration, a hospital, an insurance company, or many other challenging adversaries you’ll be glad you learned how to fight tough battles.
4. Embrace Your Weaknesses – You have weaknesses, embrace them.  You can’t minimize the effect of your weaknesses if you don’t know that you have them.  So you need to understand them, be open about them, and treat them as much a part of you as your strengths.
5. Look for Solutions – With rare exceptions, you are not the first person to deal with problems like yours.  Which is good news! It means that someone else has been in your shoes. Someone else has figured out a solution to the problem you face.  So instead of wallowing in self pity, look around to others you know.  Ask for help, find the solutions, move on to new successes.
6. Build a Network of Support – You need people.  Nobody is an island, people that are the most successful have a group of people around them that want to help them succeed.  These are people who will encourage you when times get tough, but will give you critique and correct you when you veer away from reaching your potential.  It is important to have these people in your corner, it is also important to be this type of person for others as well.
7. Learn From Your Past – You have lived a lot of life, your experiences have taught you lessons, don’t let them go to waste.  Treat your past like a user manual for the future.  Don’t remake mistakes from your past, you have figured those out. Go make new mistakes as you strive for your success.

Don’t remake mistakes from your past, you have figured those out. Go make new mistakes as you strive for your success.

Building the strength and flexibility necessary to be strong enough to face the world’s challenges is no easy task.  You must be dedicated to yourself and your success.  Don’t let the moment of struggle you are in prevent you from becoming the person you want to be.  You must bravely be the steel in the hand of a master craftsman. Be ready and willing to be formed into a powerful blade beautiful strong and true.