Month: August 2023

This is a picture of Taylor on her birthday back in 2012- throwback to our days in Virginia when we jumped over to a vineyard with some friends for a birthday.

This week was busy: Family birthday dinner with her family last weekend (Also to celebrate sister-in-law Mallory’s birthday too), birthday with friends at a local brewery on Thursday, then Logan family birthday dinner last night.

Unfortunately there were no family pictures with Taylor’s family last weekend to share. But the cousins sure are a lot of fun when they play together:

Similarly, there were no great group-shots of Taylor’s birthday dinner with Friends on Thursday.

But I did get this shot of Mercy and John (Houston’s middle child) playing on the free video games; both of them like the motorcycle game.

This moment seemed special, so for full context, I took a video as well. This stuff is gonna be worth while when these kiddos get bigger:

Then, what was really special was to do a family dinner at mom’s house last night. The summer was busy, and there has been a lot of transition, but this kind of thing is worth fighting for; the family got together for dinner, and it was great. These cousins are so special together. Lila is getting so big. Amelia and Mercy are really clicking as friends these days.

Mercy even smiled.

Everywhere I go I am surrounded by girls. As we were out back catching up on summer trips and whatnot, my mom noticed it was quiet. She went inside to find this: all the girls doing each others hair. Everywhere I go I am surrounded by girls, but this is really special. In 4 short years, Lila will go to college. With that in mind, each of these moments is really special.

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The real birthday gem this year

There are two things to point out here:

1. Our first year of marriage, Taylor kept a blog on blogspot. It was a great blog: witty, funny, charming. It was like a “public journal” (Taylor’s words describing it) just looking at some of the funny things about being married. In many ways, her boldness in keeping a blog is what inspired me to do this blog. Anyways, if you care to take a look, here is the link: http://cellardwellin.blogspot.com
2. It is hard to get an excellent, thoughtful gift for Taylor. She has set the bar so high. She is thoughtful at buying gifts for anyone. She will see something four months ahead of someone’s birthday while she is out of town somewhere, buy it, take it home, and remember to wrap it on her friend’s special day. Again, it is one of the things I love about Taylor.
   When I have to get a gift though, it doesn’t have the same level of “thoughtfulness”. This year though, I feel like I nailed it.
   That blog I listed above? I got it printed and turned into a book.

Over a 2 year period, the blog had so much content that printing it resulted in a. 3 volume set. However, we are excited to have this beauty to look on as a coffee table book for years to come.

There wasn’t a trip this week. Summer is winding down, and only a few more weeks until school starts up again. A few days ago, Rosie was not so excited about the idea; after going back-to-school shopping and picking out some pretty slick shoes, now she is pumped again.

It has just been a normal week. We got together with friends to celebrate their newest kid being born, Millie. Her story is a great one, and if you get a chance, ask Houston about it.

This group- Charles, Chad, Houston and I were roommates back in our App State days. The picture from below is from 2007.

Time with these friends is just special; we all are turning out ok. And, after a little bit of polish, we got a picture of all of our kiddos, including the newest edition:

Shortly afterwards, it descended into chaos with uncle Charles.

Why uncle? These guys have been around my life for at least 20 years; Houston for 30+ years (and we aren’t too old). So Rosie only knows them as “uncle”, and they only know me as “uncle pooks”.

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The other things

Rosie seems to have an abundance of friends everywhere, and they are sweet. They laugh. And they are getting a little older, and not having the same types of arguments as they did in kindergarten about sharing; you know what I mean, the kinds of arguments where parents have to intervene. Now, it is a little more hands off, and fun to watch the smiles.

Rosie did a dance camp last week. All the kids seem to know their moves, but the timing isn’t there. Isn’t there usually someone around snapping their fingers on tempo to keep the dancers in sync? I dunno, they have a “snapper” role like that in the dance scenes in movies.

Mercy has been a lot of fun the past several weeks too. We may be getting past the hardest time. Her personality is shining; she is learning to play by herself, and she is even smiling a bit more:

Also, at the pool, next year is gonna be great; what I mean is, Taylor and I might get back closer to the “kids can swim and they need less life-saving attention.” Mercy is on the right track, at 2, to really start swimming:

Remodel?

I’m a bit hesitant to write this as time is running short before the kids wake up, and I want to do it justice.

Our house is great. It was built in the mid 50’s, which means it is around 70 years old. Taylor wants to redo our kitchen. Again, I want to be as delicate as I can with each of these words; let’s take a step back and look at the big picture.

What I wrote about last week in our anniversary post was how the thing I love most about Taylor is how she is nice to people; this is very true. Taylor and I host well together, and it is something we enjoy. We both work towards something (A meal, good conversations, cleaning), and work as a team during those times.

An extension of that is to have a great place to host. Currently, (I think) our kitchen is fine; good lighting, large enough, good appliances, etc. It isn’t the original kitchen from the 1950s.

Taylor wants an island to make the kitchen better for hosting; and in order to add an island, a load-bearing wall needs to come down, the dining room would need to be removed, and who knows what else.

Without getting too far in the details, we both think on this differently, and that’s (mostly) fine.

What will it take to get you excited about a kitchen?

-Taylor

Since our house is 70 years old, what is the smartest way to approach it? My response was As soon as all of the other needs of the house are addressed, and we have enough in savings in case a car dies, the AC dies, the water heater goes, or anything else needs fixing. What is that amount? I don’t know. However, we have a few cracks in the plaster in the house. What causes those? Are they a big issue? Something that can be ignored? I am not a house-guy, I have no idea.

What we both agree on is that a new roof is the first need. So, this week, after a few unsuccessful attempts to claim hail damage through insurance, we are taking the steps to get a new roof.

Stay tuned.

In case you were wondering if this is a “life is perfect, marriage is so awesome all the time” post, it’s not. Yesterday was our anniversary, and neither of us woke up madly in love with each other. But we know how to connect, and talk through things. I’m just being real here.

There are 2,852 images of us together in our Amazon photos account. These are four images that are the highlights. However, there are plenty of lowlights between the images as well, and I am going to point out some of the big ones here.

We met the summer after 10th grade. Taylor was outgoing, and one of the things I liked most about her was the way she was nice to people, and had the unique ability to rally people to play a game, go to a party, etc. She still has this trait, and it’s attractive.

After this image, there was college, other boyfriends/girlfriends, etc. She moved to Elon to do Intervarsity, and after I graduated college, I moved to the Dominican Republic to teach English. This all took place over about 8 years. 8 years in the friend zone.

One Thanksgiving phone call, she said she liked me. And that was all it took.

Shortly after, I moved to where she was- in Harrisonburg, VA- with only $600 to my name. No car, no phone, and only a summer internship to go on. There was absolutely no backup plan. And no finances to rely on as a parachute.

We got married at Grace Community Church. A small part of our wedding video went viral- but I won’t go into that here.

After the wedding, we lived in Virginia for the next 3 years or so.

Taylor is so cute, and she has no idea she could do much, much better than me.

Virginia was great. We got our first house, and had lots of fun with friends. But there were definitely some low lights during that time.

I was fired from my job. I was let go of another job. This was terrifying, and I still think we both carry some PTSD from how that impacted us.

We had trouble getting pregnant with Rosie during those years. It was sad, y’all. Again, I won’t go into the details here, but the images posted are by far the highlights; but there were plenty of low-lights to tell the story between the images.

Taylor VERY shortly after having a c-section. She might kill me for posting this image up here.

We finally got to meet Rosie. At this point, we moved to NC several months before. Taylor was pregnant when we moved, and her parents let us move in for a few months while we looked for our next house.

Rosie was born, and we were house-poor. It was great though- because we really prayed and waited to meet this little girl. Again, how we got pregnant with Rosie is a long story I won’t go into now.

I was selling print advertising at the time. To this day, I can’t tell if it was because the Greensboro economy is terrible, or if I was just really bad at it, but I did not hit my “numbers” and was let go. Another lowlight.

This time, I went to see a career coach. After a barrage of personality tests, skills and interests tests, etc, she said “sales is a terrible idea for you. You should probably do IT”. So I did. And haven’t looked back: it has been very rewarding for me.

We found a church we liked. We wanted Rosie to be a big sister. There were some pregnancies that didn’t work out. There was an adoption where the mom changed her mind. We prayed a lot during that time. There were some lowlights for sure.

Mercy Ren was born in the same hospital I was. It was during Covid, so no guests were allowed. But Rosie was a big sister.

Guys, I love Taylor. I really do. But life is messy. There are plenty of hard things. So far, what I have learned is that waiting has been a theme: wait 9 years to date tay, 3 years to have Rosie, 5 years to have Mercy; 9 years to find the right career path.

We have prayed through lot’s of junk over the years. There is no other way. And l am no Prince Charming- I am grumpy without enough sleep, and need to do better about that.

At this point, I have known Taylor 23 years: this is WELL over 1/2 my life. And I know I could never marry better than her. She is a saint. She is a much better mom than I ever could have imagined. She works hard. She reads her Bible. And, just like when we were 16, she is nice to people, and I love that about her.

Though our 13th anniversary was on a Monday this year, Friday night will be date night- and both of us will wake up a little more “madly in love” than we were on Monday.