Month: November 2022

Heyyyyoooooo!
I know I havent been on here much recently, but I will try and keep it going.

As mentioned in last week’s post, there was just TOO MUCH going on, that it was hard to get it all into one blog post. So this is part II.

Cici’s 70th bash

We had a ton of fun celebrating my mom’s 70th birthday. Taylor and Evan did the bulk of the work, and somehow, Taylor and I always do much better working towards something: and this was no exception.

We tried to figure out the best way to honor her (by “we” I mean mostly Taylor and Evan). She loves to dance, loves a good party, and it is hard to figure out how to do this without dropping thousands of dollars and still including all of the important people in her life (we missed a few folks, but life is busy and it is hard to get everyone together).

We hired a personal chef to come cook for us, and it did not disappoint. Chef J and his wife were recommended by neighbors of ours, and they did an amazing job. Sorry, I dont have any pictures of him, but they have a list of items to pick: appetizers, entrees, and desserts, and he came over and just went to work. Besides the initial “weirdness” of handing my kitchen over to someone else, it went smooth as butter.

CHef J prepared some apps, and steaks (My mom’s favorite), and Matt got the wine for the crowd, and we had a blast.

By far though, the best part was the girls putting together the dance for her.

Rosie got together with her cousins, who dance at the same dance company, and put together this dance all by themselves. It was amazing: Cici was loved, and the dance itself was impressive.

What about those dresses?

Good question. While my mom was on her trip to Europe last month, we broke into her house and stole her fancy dancing gowns from over the years. And the wigs, that really tied it all together.

Another big Becky Milestone

Happy birthday Grandma Becky!

We got to celebrate Taylor’s grandmother’s birthday the very same week. It was great to get together on a weeknight (again, everyone is busy) and have such a great steak at Ruth’s Chris with Taylor’s cousins, Aunt Dara, Uncle Ken, Deborah, and Ted.

Also, can we talk about how great Grandma Becky looks? Because, that too is something great to talk about.

Thanks for the awesome dinner, and we look forward to seeing the rest of the crowd for thanksgiving.

What about facebook?

You may have read in one of my earlier posts about why I am leveraging a blog instead of just using Facebook/Instagram like everyone else.

Caution: techinical mumbo jumbo coming up

For this blog, a link is posted on Facebook just to let people know to take a look.

Facebook Servers are hitting this blog 700-800 times each week”

This blog was getting 700-800 “hits”, or “views” with each posting. That number seemed a bit high, so I kept digging. Who were these people looking at my blog?

So I added analytics to the site: a way to tell how many PEOPLE were looking at this blog (not bots). The only difference was that this would measure how many people view the site in the browser, not how the site was getting traffic through any other means.

The number of humans reading the site was a more reasonable 25-55 people per week, meaning Facebook Bots were hitting my blog 600-700 times each week. Why? What are those bots searching for? If people click on the link through Facebook, do they really need to hit my blog that many times? It just seems really suspicious to me.

It has been busy around here- so busy, that this post needs to be broken into two- there just isnt enough space to include CiCi’s birthday, so that will have to come next week.

Mercy was Baptized on Oct 30th.

It was a very special day. Mercy recently turned two, and as Taylor said, this is the exact wrong age to attempt a baptism. Why? A year earlier, and Mercy would be too young to really care. A year later, and she would likely understand what is going on, and be a little calmer. At two though, she can really let you know what she thinks. And since we didnt know if they would fully submerge, or just sprinkle the water on her head (I know there is a lot of theology about these two approaches, but I don’t have the time at the moment to go deep on those issues).

Luckily they gave us the choice while we were waiting in line- and we chose “sprinkle”.

We wanted to wait until this day so that our “family” would be complete- and that means that Jimmy Renslow had to be a part of this big day as well.

Thanks to Jimmy and Gayla, “team mercy” was complete: we had almost three rows including mom, Taylor’s parents Deborah and Ted, Evan and her girls, Robert Core, Houston and Sara and their kids, Jimmy and Gayla, Mallory and Everly. We missed Matt, but he couldnt make it due to other prior commitments.

The first few songs were a bit overwhelming- I am so thankful for this team that has supported me through good, and not-so-good times, and having them all present for such a big day had me holding back tears. I am so proud of my girls, and we felt so loved by this group that we call our family.

Jimmy baptized me, and Rosie, and married Taylor and I; Robert Core has stepped in to check on me a few times a year, and always been an advocate for me. Houston is the most faithful friend anyone could ever ask for, and our family isnt perfect, but they are great. /

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being present!

After the baptism, we got to enjoy doughnuts out on the playground, and that was fun too- we got to just relax and let the kiddos hang around.

Happy Halloween!

ok, ok: Maybe this should be the first “blurb”, but I disagree: Baptisms are far more important!

Rosie was “Rey” from star wars. Over Covid, we watched ALL of the movies, and it was really a blast to bond with Rosie while watching those movies. I hadn’t seen them in years, and they really are fun.

And, it is so awesome to know that the newest her, Rey, is a female (this is important to a #girldad). So we did what we did every year: and went to the thrift store and got some items to put together to make the best “Rey” that we could make, and I think it turned out pretty good. And DIY costumes are way less itchy than those store bought ones.

This is the first year we didnt all dress in the same theme: Taylor and I had an “Adults only” party the night before, and making two costumes would have been a bit hard, so Taylor and I were skeleton’s instead. Sadly, they were store bought instead of home made, but they worked:

We had a blast going around the neighborhood: a few streets up, the road is closed and it gets WILD with trick or treaters, so we didnt stay together the whole night, but this is the whole group before we got started: