Dad Gaming-Time and Money

Bear with me here. I'm not the best writer when it comes to blogs. I've never written one so that should at least give you my qualifications but nothing says I can't give it a shot.
I have been part of Destructoid for a little over a year but not really an active member until last fall. During the past few months I've come to know a few of they people on the site (mainly Chillybilly and Andy Dixon), either through the forums or on Friday Night Fights, that, like me, have a full time job as well as a family. Now, I don't know what their situation is like for the most part (hell, Chillybilly seems to have an endless supply of funds to spend on non-official Mario figures-ha!) but for the most part, I have to have a delicate balance between work, family time and games. I'm writing this blog not so much as to vent but just put it out there what some of you younger gamers might have to deal with in a few years or something older gamers with kids might be able to relate to. Every now and then I'll pick a topic to write about that would relate to gaming as a dad that I think would make a good article. I'm also open to suggestions or conversation in the comments, if anyone is interested.
For today-it's time and money. As I write this I have to leave in about twenty-five minutes to pick up my four year old from school. People with kids know that they take almost all the time in the day up, leaving very little to games, movies or just to sit and stare at a wall. My son goes to bed around 8 PM and I have to go to bed about an hour and a half later just to get enough sleep to get up at 4:45 AM the following day. So that leaves little time to play games on the days I work. My weekends are better but only when I don't have to work extra duty on my days off. The time I do get to play games I tend to drift more towards multiplayer games (At over 70 hours Battlefield 3 is probably the longest I've spent on a game...ever) due to the social aspect of it.
Now, have you ever heard the saying, "Time is money?" Sure you have. I try to spread my $60 game investment over a long period of time. An eight hour FPS will last me about two months while Mass Effect 1 and 2 took me about a year to push all the way through. I get some of the people's argument about spending the money on a game and getting through a 70 hour RPG in less than a week. Obviously you have a lot of time on your hand and feel you need a game that is 300 hours long to justify $60. Great. I can't do that. As I've grown up and time has become more and more rare I've taken to quality games that may be shorter but I still get enough of the game out of it that it justifies my purchase. I personally don't care whether the game I have will last me until I'm 60 years old, as is the case with games like Skyrim, I just want to finish a game and get something out of it. Case in point: Red Dead Redemption. I think I finished that in about 20 hours. To some people they may have felt scammed out of that time compared to previous Rockstar games but from the characters or the story I feel my $60 was more than justified. That 20 hour game play took me about two months to beat.
Now, I could go on and on about it but I'm trying to keep it brief. That and I have to leave 5 minutes ago. My future blogs, if anyone is interested in this one, will be a little more concise as I learn how to write a better blog and give myself a little more time to do it in. I'm open to suggestions, comments and CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. Thanks for reading!