Month: January 2026

After Christmas there is always a bit of a “lull” in the year. The joy of Christmas is gone, but the short days and cold weather remain. I always say it is good to look forward to things, and at this point, we have a few traditions that I look forward to each year after Christmas:

• The Oyster roast at Robert Core’s house
• A UNC game with Patrick Lineberry and all of our kids
• The Father Daughter dance
• My Birthday

The Oyster Roast was also this past weekend, but I didn’t get any pictures and its not a great blog post. But I did get pictures of our annual trip to a UNC game. This was a picture of our first year, in 2022 after COVID. We watched UNC vs Syracuse, and I tried my best to explain why they were called the “Orange” and nothing more, when they do not grow oranges in their area:

We have been every year since, but we did miss last year because there was a lot going on. This year, Mercy (5) got to join us for the first time and she had a blast. She held on to Rosies hand almost the entire night, and Rosie was so excited to share everything with her, tell her how the game works, and get Mercy excited and focused on the game, with moderate success.

This year went a lot better for this simple reason: I researched where to park before going to the game. Oh man did that save us some time.

We had a quick dinner beforehand. Though Taylor and I have been eating the Mediterranean diet at home as a new year’s resolution, that burger went down mighty easy.

Rosie did have the flu the day before. However, the doc said that if her fever broke for 24 hours, she would no longer be contagious. This warning was shared with Patrick, and he was still ok with his kids being in the car for the 1 hr drive to the game.

Rosie and Mercy wanted Dipping Dots for their special concession, so we waited in line for a bit, and came back to our seats in triumph. For some reason, both Mercy and Rosie dropped their spoons on the floor, and ended up eating their desserts by licking, which was unsuccessful, so they switched to EATING THE ICE CREAM WITH THEIR FINGERS. I was disgusted, but they are only kids once, right?

The Lineberry boys were great, and we all had a ton of fun.

Extreme Weather for January Birthdays

The whole country has been talking about this massive storm that was set to bring absolute ruin on everyone it encountered. The weather models were absolutely out of their minds saying there would be over 20″ of snow in our area of North Carolina, and these models kept it up for most of the week.

Our local weather people kept reiterating the high chances of large amounts of power outages for us, possibly for days. Also, quite cold temperatures after the weather was to stop. We knew that the school systems would cancel school at the drop of a hat, and didnt want to be stuck at home, when Taylor and I both had to work, possibly without power.

We looked at our options: what if we went up to the mountains and got an AirBnb and just skiied and enjoyed the weather? What if we drove to Charleston? What if we flew to Orlando for a few days? The forecast was ice for the mountains (not snow), Charleston still wouldnt have childcare, and Orlando would end up being quite an expensive trip.

Taylor’s parents did have the beach house this week (they have it 1 out of 3 weeks during the off season), and opened their doors to us. The day before the weather was to start, the forecast was still quite extreme, so we took Hazy to the kennel, and headed east, 3.5 hours out of harms way.

Rosie was a bit sad to miss the chance to sled with her friends, and we knew that if the power went out, we would be justified in our decision. I watched from our Ring camera as the weather came in, thinking out neighbor’s magnolia tree would be the first to come down:

We watched in anticipation. It was fine here at the beach in North Carolina. As the hours went on, I didn’t watch the weather forecast, I watched the power outage map because of how widespread images of the utility companies were preparing for the storm:

After all of the weather was passed, this was the updated power outage:

During all of this, it happened to be my birthday- a very unimportant milestone this year. About every 5 years there is some funky weather around my birthday, and it has made it really hard at times to plan too far ahead of time for anything fun because it can always be cancelled.

But, birthdays are important to Taylor, and she really wanted to honor me, so we made the best of our day while it was quite cold at the beach:

After some fun at home, we had more moderate fun at Planet Fun:

This was a special milestone because Rosie was as good as me, or a bit better, at every single game we played. Except air hockey, where I dominated 8 to 1.

Somehow I was convinced to do this for about 15 minutes:

We made it home after killing some time, and the major plot twist: Papa Pack (Taylor’s dad’s self given grandfather name), asked Rosie if she was too chicken to go do a polar plunge while it was 40 degrees outside. He knows how she will not turn down something if it sounds like a challenge, so before there was a chance to say no to this idea, they hopped in the golf cart and drove the 150 yards to the sand.

For dinner, Ted made his famous steaks, I got to pick out dessert from the store, and we watched the last 2 NFL playoff games to end the day.

It may have been my birthday, but hats off to Ted yesterday: doing a dance party game and doing a polar plunge with his granddaughter really sets the bar pretty high. Thanks for all the ways you love on my kids, keep it up!

Ever since we moved into our house 6 years ago, our books have been in a “temporary” storage condition. Meaning, they were in my closet. Or Taylors closet. Or a basket. Or this old thing that was falling apart and in danger of falling over.

We need a place to put them. We need bookshelves, and this decision was kicked down the road a bit. The ideal solution would be to get som custom built-ins in the upstairs part of our house (Sorry, this is one of the only pictures I could find:

Built-ins are expensive. Like, very expensive. Is there any other solution? Taylor looks around Greensboro a bit for something nice that could match (She is really good at styling and making things look good). But, to no avail. I pushed for Ikea- an hour and fifteen minutes away in Charlotte. They should have any sort of option to help fit that space. With many, many measurements ready and an empty agenda for Saturday, we all got in the car and went.
Sad to say for the blog that I didnt get any pictures of Ikea- I didnt think of it at the time. But we did get the perfect set.

It took 6 boxes. Each box weighs about 60 pounds- and the quality was far better than what I was expecting. No particle board here, this was 3/4″ high quality wood from what I could tell.

Also, putting together the first piece (the tv stand) was much, much harder than expected. Sure, Ikea furniture does have a reputation for being difficult to assemble, but I like to think I am pretty good at that kind of thing. The difference between assembling toys before Christmas and assembling Ikea furniture is that the Ikea furniture has absolutely no markings of any kind on any of the 100 pieces. The best I can figure is that because their furniture is shipped all around the works, there is not even a common alphabet to use in order to label the parts. So, all of the instructions, with very unusual fasteners and self assembly pieces, are done via diagram, pointing out very, very small things like a pinhole in the wood in order to identify the correct piece.

After the first part was assembled, it got a lot easier. Most of the time was spent trying to identify exactly what it was that needed to be used, but each piece of furniture uses similar fasteners and screws, so it became much quicker.

In fact, this is how long it took to assemble each piece:

• TV stand (the first item): 1:41
• Base 1: 1:00
• Base 2 (the same thing): :42
• Top Shelf 1: :40
• Top shelf 2: :17

Now, the books are off the floor of my office, out of my closet, and it looks a lot better:

How popular are new years resolutions? Sometimes it is hard to tell if everyone does some kind of resolution based on the number of opinion type of news articles that I see, or if it is just a small group of dedicated people who make absurd attempts each year.

This year, I made two resolutions:

• run a half marathon.
• eat “The mediterranean diet”.

The first one I actually started back in December because I wanted to get a head start. Using my garmin watch, it can create a custom plan, so I just do what it tells me to do each day and try not to think or rationalize it- otherwise it is too easy to just not run each day.

Instead of thinking about how fast I am going, or how many miles I need to run, I am doing it just based on TIME, thinking “I just have to run 30 minutes today, it doesnt matter how fast.” Somehow, I am now running faster and farther than I have before. This running plan says to walk/run a few minutes at first to warm up, and a few minutes at the end to cool-down. Since I am not as young as I once was, this I can easily do, along with anything else that will prevent an injury. Right now I am up to 10 mile runs, and feeling pretty good about it!

Taylor and I are also doing the mediterranean diet. What is it? A pretty flexible diet where fruits and veggies are the bulk of the meal, and carbs and protein become a smaller portion. It doesnt call for no dairy, but we have cut in goat cheese, and a bit of mozzarella. For proteins, it calls for less beef and chicken, and more fish. Its only been 2 weeks, but last night we had an amazing shrimp, tomato, and spinach meal:

Between the running and the change in the diet, I feel great! Some pounds are down (thats not the major motivator for me, but it is neat to see), blood pressure is down (an issue in my family), sleeping way better, and the biggest part: my mind feels more clear. It would be easy to go down the road of my armchair based opinions about why, but I will spare you that talk for now…

Mercy

Can I just take a moment to share how fun this kid has been? The moments during a normal week have been so, so special:

1. When she wakes up, she runs out of her room, and find the first parent, and gives a gigantic hug.
2. At church, she loves to be held when we sing the songs. She is getting a tad heavy (or I need to workout), but this can slide for as long as possible.
3. Rosie was at a sleepover, and I asked: “Mercy, when Rosie is gone, do you miss her?” Mercy replied, “Daddy, I miss her so, so, so much everytime she is gone.”
4. When I carried out the garbage, she wanted to “surprise” me by putting a new trash bag in the can before I got back inside.
5. When I was cleaning the house, it got quiet and she disappeared. I found her cleaning her room to surprise me.
6. Even though she annoys Rosie often, she simply will not go to bed without a hug from Rosie first. She will get out of her bed and find Rosie, and take a hug from her before her day is complete.
7. She cried the other day because her hair isnt as long as Rosies. I just picked her up, and asked her about her baby dolls in an effort to change the topic.

This year, Mercy is big enough to join Rosie for two of our favorite January traditions: the daddy-daughter dance, AND our annual trip to a UNC game in Chapel Hill with the Lineberrys (we missed last year, but have a good streak going besides that!)

I cut my finger

One of the first of the healthy meals this year ended up with some particularly nasty results- my first really good cooking accident. I was making a healthy meal and it called for putting some greens in a food processor to make a sauce. We dont have a food processor, so I was using our “immersion blender”. Some of the thick sauce was on the blade, so I was getting it out with my finger, and my palm hit the sensitive power button. Taylor likes some things that make me squeamish, so I am going to share:

It doesnt look like much, but as far as I can tell, the blade went 1/4 through my finger 6 times. When taking the princess bandage off the next morning,the pain was incredibly intense. I saw an urgent care doc the next day who cleaned it well, and told me to keep it clean and change the bandages regularly for a week to keep it from getting infected.