Month: March 2026

Taylor and I got to talking last night about our family trips and how they have changed over the years, and we tried to remember where we went each year and how lucky we are- so here is a list of our trips as a family of 4.

May, 2021: Charlotte White Water Center

This was our very first trip as a family of 4; we were just coming out of the throes of Covid, didnt have much money, but wanted to get out of the house. We did a day a the Whitewater Center, and a day in downtown Charlotte. Mercy was pretty small, and Rosie wanted to try a ton of things- and we found a great balance. Blog post here.

December 2021: Washington D.C.

Sorry, we dont have a ton of family pics from that trip, so here is a picture of us with a dinosaur. But, still coming out of Covid that year, D.C. was fun, and cold. Pushing the stroller in the subways for Mercy was a challenge- but we were seeing as a family we really valued these times together. The rooms seemed very expensive for us at the time, but they were a great location and made the visit special. The blog post for this trip is here.

February 2022: Colorado

Im reluctant to include this one because Mercy didnt come- she was a bit too young for skiing- but I still valued this trip. Jake turned 40, so we dug deep in our pockets and went to go see him for his birthday. Skiing out west was so fun. Im hoping we can have another fun trip with this crowd one day. Blog post

June 2022: Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Going to the beach with Taylor’s family is a blast, and we were seeing that we (our family of 4) enjoyed our trips, and wanted to do some family time at the beach on our own- so we got a condo in North Myrtle for a few days. Again, no good family pics of the 4 of us, but Myrtle Beach is a special place for kids this age. Post here.

July, 2023: Asheville NC.

On a map, there are lots of great places within a few hour drives of our place in North Carolina. Having seen the beach the previous summer, we wanted to show the kids the mountains and made a fun time of it. Tay was awesome at planning almost all of our family trips so far, and family trips were becoming the highlight of my year each year. Blog post here.

August 2024: Disney World.

Tay had been dreaming of Disney for years- literally- for reasons I won’t get into here, but after thinking of it for so long, and trying hard to convince me, we finally made the trip. I admit I dragged my feet a lot looking at the price tag, but I am so thankful we did it. This was a long trip, but Im glad we did it that way- we didnt miss a single ride, took our time and had a blast, and now I have no desire to return (again, just because we got to stay and do everything!). So, so fun.Blog Post here.

July, 2025: Merriewold

Again, not a ton of pics of the 4 of us, but here is a shot of the girls and I on the steps of the gate house at the entrance of the park. If Taylor had to spend time convincing me to go to Disney, I had to do the same to get her to drive 10 hours to a small town in upstate New York to spend a week at a lake. Mercy was old enough to swim, and Rosie was young enough to not be a teenager with an attitude, and I admit: this was my favorite family vacation of them all. When I asked Rosie what her favorite family trip was, she said Merriewold- but I think that is just because it was the most recent. Blog post here

Ok, so what?

I’m just grateful that we have gotten to share all of these experiences together. Who knew that when we spent what seemed like a ton of money in 2021 to go to Washington D.C, we would get a chance to travel to all of these great place in the next 5 years? It’s not cheap, and I am not 100% confident that we are being very wise when spending money this way instead of investing it for retirement, but each of these memories has been special.

It takes work to make these things happen- there were a few disagreements between Taylor and I as we planned many of these trips- and I was in the wrong about most of those disagreements and I am glad Taylor learned to value family trips as a child, and fought to make them a value in our house as well.

Taylor taught me that it is good for your mental health to have something to look forward to, so we like to have something on the calendar. And, I think these things give our kids a since of identity: these trips with our family show our value of just being together and trying new things, getting out of our routine and comfort zones, having patience with each other (I have the most room to grow in this area), and laughing.

Next time, I’ll share about our 2025 family trip to Cancun: one more for the books!

This weekend the original plan was for Taylor to host a murder-mystery party, something she has been hoping for for years. However, she was asked to be a mentor to someone going through confirmation, and had to go on a weekend beach retreat.

What would you do all by yourself?

Well that’s an easy question. Ever since last year when the girls watched Jaws, they have been itching to watch another scary movie.

So we went to the elementary school’s ice cream social, then grabbed Whataburger from the newest location here in town, and set up camp for a movie night. It was great, but I forgot how scary the movie was since seeing it in theaters. The crew of skeletons was too scary for Mercy, but Rosie and I had a good time- in the room with the loud subwoofer to really experience the whole thing.

Volunteer, obviously

Above is a picture of Rosie at a volunteer day in 2016- she has been doing them almost her whole life. Today was no exception- Rosie volunteered to help paint the building for kids, and I was asked to help lead a team in restoring the bee hives we will be using for bees over the coming weeks. Mice had taken up residence, so we had to scrape all the old stuff out, burn it with a torch to sterilize it, reassemble them, cut bottoms and tops for them, and this team of teens did an excellent job. And rosie eded up being quite the mess after painting- something I didnt think through before immediately dropping her off at Zippy’s house afterwards.

Obviously there was more to do. The girls spent the night at Grandmas house, and with the day alone, there were a million different options. If you had to take a guess about what came next, and you guessed “cleaning out the garage”, then you are exactly right!

In a perfect world, this would happen twice a year: moving summer stuff to the front, and winter stuff to the back and vice-versa, in spring and fall. That doesnt always happen, and Taylor, who appreciates order, is about to jump out of her skin because of the chaos. Anyways, here is a before and after:

In the midst of it, I put hands on the charcoal grill that has been sitting idle for a while, and got the itch to put it to work again- and since this weekend I answer to no one, this was the weekend to use it again.

The motion-activated flood light that went bust last year also needed some fixing, so that was replaced too. Climbing on a ladder to fix some electrical items when no one is home isnt THAT dumb of an idea, is it? Anyways, fixed it.

The cast iron skillets, some of which we got as wedding gifts, and others we acquired over the years also needed some seasoning, so took care of that too. In our 15 years of marriage, I must have used one of these pans each day we have been in town- but they say not to use it with tomato sauce. I do anyways, and this rust is the result.

Later buddy Leo came over with his kid, and we grilled some steaks, watched some games, and had a grand old time eating like kings: twice baked potatoes, ribeyes, and some grilled peppers.

Stephen and I went to Beekeeper Bootcamp this past weekend, and it was a good time. Allow me to explain.

What is beekeeper bootcamp?

It’s pretty much like what you expect- take a bunch of people, and teach them the basics in a crash course over a weekend at his home in middle Tennessee.

What we learned is that there are two ways to keep bees. The traditional method involves putting bee hive boxes one on top of the other, ordering some bees, keeping them in your hive and feeding them sugar water throughout the year to give them the energy they need. This can also mean inspecting the hives many, many times a year for the parasitic bugs called Varroa mites. Plastic honey comb, spraying to kill varroa mites, and generally pissing the bees off so they try and “swarm” (which means “run away”). The success rate of this approach by lasting through the winter is about 50%.

This bootcamp teaches another approach: beekeeping the natural way. This means catching a bee swarm locally instead of buying them online, not feeding them sugar water, not treating for verroa mites, and generally not messing with them nearly as much in horizontal beehive boxes instead of vertical boxes. There are no plastic honey combs for the bees to use. By using local bees, they are more evolved to survive the winter, already immune to verroa mites, and strong enough to not rely on being fed sugar water. In short, the goal is to reproduce the way bees live in the wild: they have good instincts that can be built upon. The success rate of this approach is 85%.

This natural approach has come with some serious drama in the beekeeping world that I won’t get into here, but the class is taught by Adam Martin, and he has written books on the topic.

This course taught us how to go through a bee hive and inspect it for a few things: if they are growing properly, if they have food, a queen, and it taught us about the different types of beehives.

The picture above is Adam, without the bee suit. You might think he has balls of steel for doing this, and maybe he does. But if the bees are treated kindly and you dont move fast, dont wear red, and dont kill any bees, they are generally pretty happy, and wont try and sting you. I picked up a bee frame with bare hands and didnt get stung.

We each got a chance to be hands-on. Adam was an awesome teacher on this- it is something he really cares about.

I don’t really know how to preface these pictures, but here are a few more of us in the class doing the hands-on part:

Adam built this niche world in apiary and sells beehives and focuses on the education aspect. He sells his honey for $40/quart, and champions the healthy aspects of local honey: he hasnt had a cold in 5 years.

His wife, Leslie, went to elementary school with my friend Steven back in California before they began their homesteading/beekeeping operation- which was a beautiful site to be see. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more, but time was short.

Besides Adam, there is another person in Missouri that also champions the natural approach to bees: Dr. Leo Sharashkin, a true Russian, who has been successful in his own rite. His focus was on horizontal hives (as opposed to vertical) because they are easier to handle than vertical hives, which can weight 85 pounds, and each need to be moved and rearranged several times a year. Bees are often killed in this process, which pisses them off, and they swarm and sting whenever this work is performed. The natural way (as seen in the pictures), means there is a good chance the bees wont get bothered at all.

But why did you do bee camp?

This, too, is a very good question to ask. Our church, an Anglican Church here in town, has a farm and several other ministries on site. The farm had bees a few years ago, but I hadn’t seen them in a while so I asked Steven, the farm director about them.

If you know Steven, you know he has a great deal of joy- so when asked about the bees, he responded with an immediate invitation to beekeeping bootcamp- and who says no to that? So, we registered, got a small airBnB, and went.

Where did you stay, and now what?

No, it didn’t make sense to do a drive like this- it was madness, but I really enjoyed spending time with Steven. We talked about every topic under the sun and are kindred spirits when talking politics, theology, parenting, and a whole lot of other stuff I wont get into here.

We stayed in a place a few minutes away- and I kid you not, out of all the places I have been in Costa Rica, upstate New York and Italy, no area had worse cell phone service for our Verizon phones than this area of Tennessee.

The little town just north, Columbia, was awesome- seems like it is the new town growing on the heels of Nashville’s success.

We made it home safe and sound after a unique weekend.

Now that Steven and I have done the course, the next goal is to catch a swarm over the next 10 days or so- which means putting a “trap” in a tree about 15-20 feet off the ground- which is great for a person who is still mildly afraid of bees and heights. Stay tuned!

The past several years Rosie’s school has done its regular talent show around this time. The night was always HOT- in a crowded cafeteria (her school didnt have an auditorium) with poor audio and about 20% longer than what we thought it should have been.

This year, they have an auditorium, and good sound system, but it was still about 20% longer than it should have been. Some of the acts included a pogo stick, a recorder, an electric guitar, several kids singing “Ophelia” by Taylor Swift, and more.

In years past, Rosie went as a good friend to support others- but this year, Rosie’s 5th grade year- she decided to do something. And you guessed it: a dance!

She took it pretty serious: had her friends over a few times to practice, her friend made a music mix, and they made some outfits that worked. So right after a nice little boy played “The Hokey Pokey”, Rosie shot back with this:

I don’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed of her song choice, but if the school allowed it, then I am ok with it.

Ice Skating for Gold

Rosie is in the midst of dance season- which means LONG days at dance competitions. Though we want to support her as a fam, it ain’t really fair to Mercy to spend so many Saturdays just waiting around watching her sister.

So we went ice skating. Also, we were very inspired Alysa Liu’s gold medal skating performance at the Olympics. She is a little punk rock, cussed a bit after she won, and smiled a lot. She kinda marches to the beat of her own drum, and it reminded me of Mercy.

We met up with one of Mercy’s BFFs, and after a few minutes, mercy was doing great. She went down pretty good a few times, but I am very proud of how quickly she jumps up and wants to keep going.

It was a blast, and I am curious if she should try Ice Skating as her thing next year instead of dance? She might be pretty good at it.

The Dog House

No, Im not in trouble with Tay. I just gave up my usual 4 or 5 drinks a week for Lent this year, and filled the time in a creative and practical way by building a dog house.

Rosie, Mercy and I scoured Pinterest for about 6 minutes before they lost attention, and I tried to find the best option that would be fairly simple for a newbie to build. I found this link on Pinterest- this link will take a minute to load because the site is from the internet archive, and doesnt exist anymore

This house, complete with a little bit of styrofoam insulation, is our way to fix the problem of those summertime thunderstorms when we leave the dog out, and realize there is no overhang in our yard for the dog to go to get out of the elements.