Month: January 2023

The Logan’s reading this post will know exactly what I am talking about. For everyone else, I’ll try and keep it short and sweet.

When I was little, my family would spend a week (or more) every summer at a place in upstate New York called “Merriewold”. It was a family place owned by my dad’s side of the family, and we would take the long drive, and spend the best week of the summer at the lake.

There was par 3 golf, ping-pong, a lopsided pool table, fishing, swimming, swim-races, tournaments, a rope-swing, salamanders, blueberries, cousins, brothers, Grammy, and a million other fun things.

I couldn’t easily find many pics just now to share. By middle school, we weren’t able to go as often, so most pics I have are from years and years ago, but the memories are locked in as simple, fun summer memories- the best I could have asked for.

This past weekend, our neighbors and friends, the Swaringens, invited us up to their mountain house just west of Boone. Their house was beautiful, we ate like kings. And the community was just perfect. Here is why.

There are tons of “communities” out there for vacations. I spend some of Saturday afternoon just browsing through them on my phone.

Both Communities shared a ton of things in common: a lake, swimming, fishing, trails, mountains and trees, community events, golf, and charm.

But the reason why Merriewold and the Land Harbor Community are different than most other vacation communities is not because of what they have, but because of what they DONT have: million dollar listings.

Looking back at Merriewold, one of the big reasons why it was so special was because there was a great community, and the community all felt like it was on equal footing. All of the houses were old. None of the houses were mansions that seemed out-of-place with the rest of us. And this made everyone more approachable.

The clubhouse at Merriewold (Just like the game-room at Land Harbor) was simple. It wasn’t a place of luxury with brand new, high quality entertainment. It was simple- meant for kids to enjoy.

The weekend was a blast. We had fun connecting with Clint and Margaret, and their kiddos as well. Here is a quick clip of Mercy and their son, Owen:.

This post is woefully incomplete, but like every Monday morning post, the kids are waking up, so I must cut this short.

The past several weeks have been challenging for me for several reasons I won’t go into here. But, here are a few fun highlights since Christmas (sorry for the delay!).

Christmas was fun. And Cold.

On the east coast, we had an extreme cold snap right around Christmas. Though everything held up well in our house, there were a few things that were out of our control: The electric grid.

As we were putting the final touches on the Christmas Eve brunch that we were hosting for the very first time, the lights went out. Taylor’s family, mostly coming from the Raleigh area, was about 15 minutes away. It was 22* outside. And we were just about to put the breakfast casserole in the oven.

Without thinking, I took the casserole over to Matt and Evan’s house, so we had a warm breakfast to enjoy.

Having a few people in the house really worked for us though. While the temperature outside was pretty cold, the body-heat of a few extra people, as well as our small gas fireplace helped us hold up well.

The power outage was said to last 30-60 minutes to help release strain on the power grid, it ended up being over 3 hours. As luck would have it, the power came on 15 minutes after people left.

More Christmases

We had a wonderful Christmas with the Registers. Ted made a prime rib that was unbelievable.

We did the Logan Christmas, which was awesome. Matt did a dramatic reading, and this year had a special costume for the occasion. Unfortunately, Mercy was crying so I had to go take her for a drive to fall asleep, and missed the context, so you will just have to use your imagination to figure it out.

Christmas morning at home with just our family was great. These girls are amazing. Both of them got scooters, and Taylor and I were both surprised to see Mercy just take off on hers.

C’mon 2023!

Between Christmas and New Year’s we spent a few days at Ocean Isle Beach with Taylor’s parents. It is always great to spend time there- and since Taylor had the week off, and my work was flexible, it worked out great.

What is a “shark drop”?

At Ocean Isle beach, specifically a place called Sharkys, instead of doing a ball drop at New Year’s, they do a “Shark Drop”. I’m not sure how long they have been doing this tradition, but we enjoyed it years ago (before covid). They would do a kids version earlier in the night that we took then baby-rosie to, at around 8 or 9 pm.

Also, can we take a moment to note how much better phone cameras have gotten here in the past 5 years?

Earlier in the day, they did another non-shark related kids event: The fire department split open a beach ball piñata high above the playground when the clock struck 12, NOON.

This might be a new tradition? Or maybe we have just never seen it, but it was awesome! The kids swarmed the field like animals when the candy reigned down. Thank you OIB Fire Dept for this fun event!

Finally, we did the Shark Drop with Taylor’s parents, at 8 pm.

Birthday Beginnings

Finally, this part gets intentionally inserted at the bottom of the page, but it is my birthday this week.

The goal was to go to “Bourbon Bowl”, a new-er place downtown with a few lanes, and bowl with the fam for a few games before crossing the street for dinner. The wait was about 2 hours (they don’t take reservations), so we ended up across the street at Boxcar and played games for a bit

Skee-ball is the only game that matters.

Taylor has beaten me the past 7 times we played. Tonight, I got the high score of the morning at 270!

Also, I just loved this video from earlier last week, so I am going to leave it here, though it is completely unrelated.