MOVE TO TEXAS?! Wait, what? How would we go from moving to Puerto Rico to now possibly making Texas our home? I mean shit, this is the same state where my brother was murdered just two years earlier. Why in the hell would I want to go to Texas?
🤷🏻♂️?🤷🏻♂️?🤷🏻♂️?🤷🏻♂️?
Well, because maybe that’s where the Universe was calling us to be.
Vera Sweeney @permissiontohustle
Moving to Puerto Rico seemed to be a dying idea. By this time we were opening up our minds to many different possibilities. We loved certain parts of Florida where we could be close to family in the north or south. We discussed Southern California where I had been offered a job 6 months earlier. And of course, we considered going back to the DC area.
It was late July and for basically the whole month we’d been blessed with the opportunity to house/dog sit for my wife’s good friend in the Frederick, MD area. We loved the change of pace and the fresh air up in Maryland farm country. The best part of the trip was snagging a deal on Groupon that took us to Adventure Park USA. This place rocks! Rollercoasters, water rides, arcade and food. We were straight chillin’. We were definitely enjoying our time in the first place our family called home that wasn’t our recently sold house.
The opportunity to save money from not having a mortgage anymore, but still being able to have a place to call home nearby, was just amazing. It gave us time to tie up loose ends and slowly say goodbye to friends and family.
It was just crazy to think about; less than a month earlier we were celebrating my wife’s 40th back in Rockville with neighbors, friends and extended family. Now, here we are, on the road, living in someone else’s house with no neighbors of our own and slowly coming to the realization: we are really leaving home.
It’s now July 15th and house sitting time was up. Let the family adventure continue! We wanted to kept things loose and had a few small local trips lined up until July 27th. That’s when we planned to attend my wife’s family reunion down in Fredericksburg, VA, perfectly located down I-95 South.
At one point we considered heading up north, the wrong direction, to visit very dear friends in Pittsburgh for the remainder of the time we had, but now, the extra travel was starting to seem like a horrible idea. It was slowly dawning on my wife and I (and probably my preteen) that this was about to be the longest trip of our lives. A minivan, one dog, three young kids, two crazy parents, 8 southern states in 10 days…we’re nuts!
THE FAMILY BOAT
You know, I now firmly believe what they say: “Man Plans, God Laughs.” This wasn’t a joking matter though. Just as we set out to visit nearby Downtown Frederick we got a call from a Pittsburgh number. Maybe it was our friends seeing if we were coming up? Nope.
We learned that my father-in-law, who happens to live 40 miles south of Pittsburgh, was starting to experience some issues with his heart. He had a scare and it was serious enough that my wife was alerted to what was happening. The thought of us moving away and something happening to him made the decision easy: we were definitely headed North to Pittsburgh!
This impromptu trip to Steeler country did us well, but for my wife’s father, it was everything. He was so energized by the presence of the kids! We gave him shit for still smoking here and there but did our best to let him know how much we cared for him. How much we would miss him. How much we loved him. And he most certainly received the message.
We love you Grandpa Bob
Our visit, and the doctors, had Grandpa ready for the big family reunion. We found time to go see our friends in Pittsburgh Proper and had a blast, even with the news of what was going down in Puerto Rico. To keep our minds off of some serious decisions we knew we would soon have to face, we took a trip to a zoo on the Ohio border that was phenomenal! Camel ride was definitely the highlight!
Click for Zoo info
After almost two weeks up north, it was time to head south. Fredericksburg, here come The Santiagos for the Dwyer family reunion! Wait, how long are we driving?! We stopped in Rockville one more time to pick up a few items and that stop would officially be the last time we’d all be together in our hometown, as a family. Felt like sad times but I knew there were many good times ahead. At least that was the plan.
Happy New Decade to you and yours! Been a couple days now since the wild celebrations and I hope yours was epic. If you still don’t know what day it is, then I’m sure yours was. How was mine? Well, quiet and just…different. That’s probably the best word: Different. I’m usually performing on New Years Eve as an MC/DJ but for the first time in 15 years, I was home.
And man I needed it. Around 10pm I found myself alone on the couch watching the Longhorns own the Alamo Bowl taking place down the street from where I now live in San Antonio. But really, the game was more background noise because for about an hour I had been deep in reflection on what was the wildest year I’ve ever lived. And this is Texas, so if your neighbors shoot off fireworks at midnight, which they ALL did, it’s most certainly a great New Years! So yeah, my night was pretty good. But damn, the more I though about it the more I realized, 2019 was the wildest fucking year…and it changed everything!
2019 started off perfectly for me and the family, with a planned trip in late January to Puerto Rico, my true home. In the back of my mind, this trip was more than a short Vacay to celebrate Fiestas Patronales, it was a reason to look further into an idea my wife and I were kicking around: Moving to Puerto Rico!
We’d discussed it for years but it never seemed like the right time. But now that I was home full time with the kids as a #SAHD since stepping down from my Marketing Directorship in 2018 and the fact that my wife was feeling unfulfilled by her full-time teaching position, the idea was quickly turning into a plan. A plan that would include securing MUCH cheaper living than the DC area afforded us, trips to beaches in all directions, having the kids (and me) learn the Spanish language, having deep culture immersion (my wife is a Spanish Teacher/Tutor so this makes sense) and a million other amazing wonderful reasons to call my beautiful island country home. Press play on this video and tell me this isn’t paradise!
Once we landed on the island with this new idea, this new mindset, firmly set in place, the idea was absolutely a plan in motion.
“WE ARE MOVING TO PUERTO RICO!”
We wasted zero time and scheduled to see a few houses, told our family still on the island post Hurricane Maria (not many) and began to “feel” the island in a way we never had before.
My wife knew the feeling though. She went to college on the island years before to study Spanish and fell in love with everything about the place. Lucky for me, she waited to find her Puerto Rican man in the states. But now, the idea of going back, it energized and motivated her in a way I had never seen and I loved it. We even set our date of departure to jet to the Caribbean, 9/19/19!
Papi Preschool at this time was just starting to transform into the platform it is today; a place to highlight positive parents. I was starting to connect with other dads online and finding my “tribe” so to speak. A couple of guys in particular stood out to me and both ended up influencing and assisting me in taking Papi Preschool to the next level.
First was Mr. Brock Lusch, creator of @nomadad on IG and host of the Not On My Ass Dad Podcast on http://www.thenomadad.com. He hit me in my DM and said, “Hey man. Have you heard of this? You should go!” I thought to myself, “No, I hadn’t heard of it! What is it? Why should I be there?” I reached out to a fellow Puerto Rican Papi that I started following on IG, Mr. James López of @Fatherhoodislit & Cool 4 Dads and asked him about it. “Yeah bro. It’s a big event. Not many Dads like us there though. You should come and represent.” Between his podcast, IG page and blog, his content was pretty much the first I came across online when I wanted to find dads “like me”.
Follow James at @fatherhoodislit
Anyone of color knows what he meant by “Like us”. I sure did. All my life I had felt that I had to represent for my people. To show others that stereotypes are bullshit. Just being a Dad who stays home with the kids is isolating enough. But being a dad of color doing it, I had to showcase my WHY. I had to share it with all who would listen. Because if I didn’t, people would just keep thinking I lost my job or something. Maybe this Dad 2.0 taking place the end of February was where I could get things really going.
I reached back out to Brock to talk more about the summit. A few days later, this man got me a FREE TICKET! It had at least a $200 value by that point since the summit was just a couple weeks away in San Antonio. I mean, who does that? He doesn’t know me, never met me and yet, he made it happen. Wow man, I will forever be grateful for that Brock!
Click to visit his site
I’d visited San Antonio a year earlier for the first time to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends who had just moved to South Texas from my hometown of Rockville, MD. I fell in love with the city back then, so I knew it was destiny that I was going back to be a part of something this amazing. After I thanked Brock a million times, I purchased my plane ticket and got ready to meet other passionate fathers in Texas.
To keep a long story from getting longer, I’ll say this, this trip changed my life. From the moment I began to connect with other Dads at the welcome reception happy hour, I knew I was meeting brothers. I was able to give Brock a big hug and shake hands with so may Dads I had been following on social media. And of course, within an hour, it was me and a few other Dads of color just kicking it like Kings at the round table. It wasn’t intentional, just energy finding energy. There I finally had a chance to meet James of #Fatherhoodislit and he introduced me other kings in attendance.
I finally found men I could learn from. The men that wouldn’t judge me, but support me. The men that looked and talked like me. The #Papitribe had officially started! The rest of the summit was simply magic! Big shoutout to DOVE MEN CARE for being the title sponsor and hooking it up with some dope swag! They even had a custom built barbershop so fathers could get a fresh cut. This gave me the chance to meet Jelani, San Antonio’s best barber and owner of Kings Barber Shop. He took care of me!
Jelani – King’s Barbershop
Connecting with so much positivity was absolutely exhilarating! Being surrounded by people who’s main focus in that moment in time was being the best parent possible, was a gift. It filled me up with hope. It motivated me to do bigger things. It opened my eyes to the fact that there are many more Dads than I could ever have imagined, just like me, just doing their best, willing to share their WHY & HOW with other parents. Priceless.
Author JO @jonathan_jo_oliverBlogger/Podcaster/Youtuber @verasweeneyFitness Celebrity Shaun T @shauntBlogger / Entrepreneur Danny @swaggerdadBlogger / Youtuber Jason @DadunivEverything was Awesome – Thx LEGOLAND SATX!
And This Guy…yeah, Dax married a Princess
Thank you to Mr. Doug French for all he does to make Dad 2.0 what it is. You are definitely a Chief in the Tribe!
Mr. Dad 2.0 aka Doug French
Needless to say, the summit changed everything for me personally. For one, I fell deeper in love with the city of San Antonio, and for good reason. The southern charm of the people, the historic sites, the amazing Riverwalk and the food…omg, the food! Such a beautiful place to visit but never would I think it would be home just 6 months later!
Kings at The Alamo
It was now April, time to get the house ready to sell back home in Maryland and take our planning for Puerto Rico to another level. One month, hundreds of headaches and Thousands of dollars later, it was sold! Took only 5 days on the market to sell my house of ten years. We loved it so much and now it belonged to someone else, crazy. My little piece of the DMV was sold and now it was time to enjoy the southern states for a few more months until we land in Puerto Rico in October.
Thanks Kimberly on selling in 5 Days! Click image.
The next part of the plan was taking the family on a road trip down south to visit family and friends. We’ve driven to Florida before but this was different. We mapped out a route from DC to San Antonio that would take us to amazing parts of the country we had never visited before. This was such a special opportunity for our family and we took advantage of it.
We were able to stay with friends in many places we visited and utilized Booking.com when we needed. Their FREE CANCELLATION feature was everything!
So here we were. A family of 6 (with Dog) in a minivan loaned to us by friends we were to visit in Austin (Yeah, those are real friends). I’ll expand on the specifics of the trip on a later post, but I can tell you this, by the end of the trip, Puerto Rico also seemed to be in the rear view mirror.
Anyone who pays attention to the news might remember the shit show that was the Puerto Rican Governor in early-mid summer. I won’t mention his name, but this asshole basically took money from Hurricane Maria survivors, and helped others do the same. His ousting from office on July 19th felt like a hammer coming down on our dream of moving to Puerto Rico.
The instability on the island was now cemented in place and thousands continued to leave la isla bonita, including my second niece. Where did she move to? Yep, Texas. She moved in with her sister who was already in Austin and awaiting our visit in August. What she didn’t realize was that our visit would be one of many, because now, a new idea was sprouting up: what if we moved to Texas?!
For those of you who follow any of my other pages on IG, especially @moved2alamocity, you know what happens next. If you don’t, go follow them and I’ll be back with part 2 of this entry to let you know how it all went down!
First and foremost, thank you for reading. Up until now, I only shared my experiences as a Work-from-home Dad through the lens of Youtube or Social Media (#papipreschool). Many friends and family commented on these precious moments and enjoyed what I was able to share. But now, through this Papi Preschool blog, I’m thrilled to be able share so much more insight and detail of this wonderful time in my life That truly feels like a dream come true.
I hope to shine a little light on what #PapiPreschool stands for and why you should care. I mean, there’s a good chance you’re thinking that with all of the crap being shared out there, what makes this blog or conversation any different? Well, for starters, it’s written by a passionate parent who gives a pretty big fuck about his kick ass family. and decided they come first. More on that decision in my next post but that decision changed all of our lives for the better and the journey has been pretty damn amazing. My posts might relfect on past events that will offer insightful advice or at least details that might help you as a parent or future parent in this unpredictable world we all live in. These stories will always be filled with memorable characters who are bound to reappear and situations I couldn’t even dream up. I hope you and everyone else reading, watching or sharing, gets to not only envision #PapiPreschool but you find a way to feel it, to hear it and maybe sometimes smell it (Diapers or Dinner, maybe both).
As a Puerto Rican American Father, my parenting tactics and style might seem unconventional. But my goal and the true reason for this blog is to not boast or advise, even if I will throw some knowledge at you, the true reason, the one only objective of Papi Preschool, is to spread love. Don’t laugh. I’m 100% serious! I made a decision two years ago that I will #livewithove. It’s simple. If you #livewithlove, hate can’t find a way in. It will try but if you #livewithlove, decisions on what’s important are very easy to make. That is a message I hope people, and by people I mean YOU, will discuss and share with others. If just ONE Dad out there connects to a story I share here and begins to think to himself, “Shit, I can do that?” Or “How can I also be with my kids more?” we all win! What if Fathers decided that maybe their own career wasn’t the highest achievement of their lifetime and that raising kids was undoubtedly the most important responsibility anyone can have. Now what if that is a generation of Men?! Well I have a secret for you, that generation has arrived. The DAD 2.0, so to speak. Shoutout Dad 2.0 Summit! (Get your tix for DC!)
So exited to bring you the positive parenting content we could all use these days. Hope to connect again real soon. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to learn a little more about what this blog is all about.
Vera Sweeney @permissiontohustle
THE FAMILY BOAT
Click for Zoo info
For those of you who follow any of my other pages on IG, especially 
Papi Preschool 