Tim Chan's Blog, page 14

The Biggest Myth About Sex in Marriage

“Good sex = good marriage.” That’s a commonly accepted line of thinking in our culture. You see it in movies all the time. Recently, Tim and I watched “Hope Springs” with Meryl Streep. The general plot line went like this: A couple sits in a counselor’s office on opposite ends of the couch and admit they can’t remember the last time they had sex. Over the course of the movie they reconcile their relationship and at the end, they fall into bed in ecstasy.

Well, “Good sex = good marriage” is onl...

What I Learned: The Financial Implications of Common Law Relationships

“What I Learned”is a guest post series oflessons learned in relationships that matter the most (you cansend us your storytoo). This guest post is by our friend Vincent Ng. [Note:Although Olive and I have never considered a common law relationship for ourselves, we know more people are choosing this option (the 2011 census shows 17% of Canadian families are common-law couples). We decided to publish this post because we value and seek to learn from other perspectives about marriage and relatio...

Facing The Disappointment That Was Our Book Launch

How do you face disappointment? When a relationship falls apart, or a friend lets you down, or something you were looking forward to (like getting pregnant or clinching the next promotion) doesn’t happen, how do you respond?I don’t handle it very well. My instinct is to run from the pain, to numb myself with distractions and to avoid that awful feeling at all cost. It’s too uncomfortable, unpleasant and painful for my liking. So I scroll through my Facebook feed for the tenth time in four min...

6 Hilarious Pranks on Video

Happy April Fool’s Day! Last year I played a prank on my wife on April 1. I recorded it on video, just in case it turned out to be a super funny clip that would go viral. The prank backfired, and she got mad at me. Really mad. And I had no clue why. Needless to say, that clip never made it to YouTube.Fortunately, not all my pranks have backfired like this.

This year, instead of sharing about my sometimes-hit, sometimes-miss pranking, I thought I’d share the funniest pranks I’ve seen on video....

The Inside Scoop on Self-Publishing a Book

With the release of our second book this week, I’ve gotten many questions about what it is like to self-publish a book. This blog post is a preview of a guest post with Salt+Light and interviews with The Bucket List and Daddy Blogger TV about self-publishing.

According to the New York Times, 81% of Americans say they have a book in them to write, yet only 0.1% of the world’s population are authors (according to Seed Magazine). With traditional publishers only selecting a small percentage of bo...

6 Things that Shocked Me about New Fatherhood

[This is a preview of a guest post I wrote for ESL Marriage]

Before I became a first-time father, I prepared. I took a pre-natal class with my wife, asked other parents what their experience was like, and read numerous blog posts and books about the subject. But even with all that preparation, there were many things about being a new father that surprised and shocked me. No one warned me about these things (or maybe they did and I wasn’t paying attention).

Here are a few:

1) The Massive Amount o...

3 Reasons to Buy Our New Book Now

Today we are launching our new book, Then Came The Baby: The Wonder, Mayhem, and Hilarity of Our First Year As Parents. To celebrate, we are giving away three bonus gifts worth $23 to everyone who buys a copy this week and emails me the receipt. I’ll share the details in a moment.

Watch this video on YouTube.

I won’t spend time in this post telling you about the book. We have created an entire page for that purpose. In addition, more than 15 people have posted reviews on Amazon. All of them (so...

How I Proposed with a Goat (instead of a Diamond Ring)

Exactly 5 years ago I asked Olive to marry me. Rather than popping the question with a diamond ring, I planned to propose to her with a goat. It wasn’t a pet goat for her to keep in the yard and take for walks in the park, it was a goat to give away to a family in need. It was what she wanted, and it was one of the reasons I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this particular girl.

Olive and I met on a missions trip to Japan as college students. Her captivating smile, beautiful voice, and...

When Half A Night’s Sleep Is Still Enough

[This is a preview of a guest post I wrote for SheLoves Magazine]

“Why do you keep thinking you don’t have enough energy?”my husband asked me one night. “You made it through today. You made it through this year of being a new mom. Why do you insist that you’re in deficit?”

He had me pegged. Why, indeed.

I really didn’t think I could cope with the demands of being a mom. And yet, somehow Ihadmade it through one whole year.Interestingly, when it came to our finances, I never worried about not havi...

What My Baby Teaches Me About Being Human

One of the best gifts of becoming a mother is that I have the privilege of watching the process of human development unfold before my eyes. As I’ve observed Allie, I’ve come to (re)learn some basic truths about what it means to be human. As an adult, I find it easy to lose sight of the fundamental qualities of my humanness so I’m grateful that my baby, in her unfiltered and uninhibited way, shows me and reminds me of these things.

We Are Created to Wonder

My daughter models to me what it’s like...