Author: Luke

Do you go to counseling? Would you ever consider it? I have been going to a counselor, and it has been helpful. Recently, there was a subtle suggestion that Taylor and I have been thinking on. It goes a little something like this.

When the kids start screaming, I can’t handle it. When there is an argument or a disagreement, my mind gets focused on it. Processing the issue slowly and objectively is skipped.

It was suggested that this is anxiety. I always considered myself to be the opposite of anxious; fairly laid back. The counselor put it this way: when the “alarm bells” go off in your brain that there is an issue of some kind, it needs to be addressed. This is normal and healthy. However, there can be times when the “alarm bells” are going off too often, or in a disproportionate manner. This is what might be my reality.

How and why does this happen? Sometimes, earlier in life, the body can “learn” this in the wrong way. Divorce, arguments with my brothers, and other things happening in my life as a child might have been the cause to learn how to navigate stress the wrong way.

I don’t know, and I am not fully convinced how far to run with this label; but it seemed to sound as though it is accurate to some degree in my life. Maybe it is impacting some friendships and relationships, I am not certain. That is my vulnerable moment for the week. Moving on…

Home Again.

Taylor went on a work trip this week. She doesn’t travel often for work, but she was gone the week before. And two weeks before that. Somehow, all the trips piled on in the month of October. In addition, some unexpected things came up and Tay had to spend a few nights away outside of her trips with work.

While she was gone, the kids were fed and taken care of, to some degree. We got a good chunk of our healthy food for the day from smoothies in the mornings, as seen above.

The mornings had some spare time, so Mercy and I did scooter time before she went to daycare. As a video, it is a little funnier. Mercy fell, but dont

Kids were picked up after school. When Tay is gone, the dog gets put outside so often as we come and go from the house, I decided to take her along with us this time for something different. Everyone enjoyed seeing Stormy in the car.

We even at a few healthy dinners. Also, we had mcDonalds one night when I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer. So, it all evens out, right?

We ate healthy dinners, in front of the tv.

At the end of the day, we even did bedtime stories. Mercy is getting really good these days (at memorizing the story she asked for 6 dozen times)

Before she came home, I took the afternoon off of work. What would I do with such free time? During the daylight hours, only 2 things:

1. Take a nap. It was glorious.
2. Clean up after the crazy hailstorm we had last week by spending 2-3 hours getting leaves in the yard:

When momma came back, both her and I were whipped. What is harder, 13 hour workdays on a trip, or single parenting for many days out of a month for kids this age?

The fun things of fall still await. We went to the pumpkin patch, and the fall harvest festival at our church. The travels are over for the foreseeable future.

Last week was Taylor’s 20 year high school reunion; this week was mine. Friday night we got together, both page and grimsley (our rival), at a place called “Terminal Tap”, a bar opened within the past year by one of our alumni, Ty Tysinger. It was a fun crowd.

The goal was to go to the football game after meeting up at the bar, but:

Saturday we got to walk the halls of the high school; For some reason I was only expecting 4 people to show up, but the crowd was great. The halls were well lit, it didn’t smell like urine, and it seemed less depressing than I remember in my years walking through those halls. Talking with a few people during the weekend, one of the overall feelings of walking those halls was fear; there were some crazy fights, and other things where keeping your head down was the best thing to do.

This is where we ate lunch. I remember seeing a chair get thrown out of the window on the right side of this image.

The gym still had that unique smell of teenage sweat.

It wa a fun crowd that walked through the halls. Then, off to Kau;

Ok, pause here. Why was this reunion so exciting for me? Here are a few things that came to mind:

1. I don’t use Facebook as much anymore. I have no idea what is going on in people’s lives.
2. I am a much better person now than I was in high school. Back then, there was a lot going on in life; I wasn’t involved in many things, but these are some great people I went to high school with.
3. I married up. Taylor is awesome, and I am glad to have her meet the part of my life she wasn’t too familiar with.

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This was the whole group at Kau; Man, it was fun. So many people had fun/entertaining/bizarre stories to share.

First off, THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED PLAN THIS EVENING! It was a blast.

One alumni was on drunk history. One person ride a motorcycle to Alaska last year. One person works locally with people with HIV. One person became a millionaire.

Corey Higgins and I did middle school and high school together. He hated me. It was so much fun to reconnect. His view was “Luke was always in his own bubble over here, and everyone else was over here”. Maybe not much has changed?

All the way back to elementary school, and haven’t seen Taylor Lineberry since graduation.

The Page reunion ended around 10 pm; Taylor could only make it for about an hour due to some child care issues, but I soaked the night in and went across the street to the Grimsley reunion.

Josh Aunspaugh went to App State with us, and was a great friend Freshman year. I don’t know what happened, but we didn’t see him much afterwards. Also, Haley Parrish was fun to see all weekend. Also a dear friend since high school.

Other Page high school kids showed up, and I ended up in a free Grimsley Whirlies shirt. Here are the ladies formerly known as Katie Jones and Abbey wood (their maiden names).

What a great time.

This week is also special: Taylor had her 20 year high school reunion, from Northwest High School here in Guilford County.

It was a fun night- way more fun for her to catch up with some old friends. Around 60 people showed up, at a local bar called Oden. It was really laid back.

There were a few fun conversations. Many of the people I got a chance to connect with are still living in the same general area as their parents did, and raising families in the same way.

One of the biggest changes since our class graduated (Taylor and I graduated the same year), was that a new high school opened two years after us, and really changed the districting maps for the county. Northern High School is the newest and best in the county.

Since the kids were out for the night at Taylor’s moms house, we even went to the after party downtown. Be proud of us- we stayed out past 11pm!

Anniversary

Uncle Steve and Aunt Chris celebrated their 40th year wedding anniversary this weekend. Though my cousin Brenna reached out about the event in Greenville, I wasn’t unable to attend.

HUGE congrats to them. As an adult, this pair has just become more and more fun. Aunt Chris, you always make me laugh. Uncle Steve, as a kid I thought you were intimidating. As an adult, I think you are an amazing person. Your wit from years as an English Teacher serves you well. Love you guys, and wish that the years didn’t see us apart as much as they do now. Though there aren’t a ton of pics I can readily find, this is a solid one from around 1991:

The Children’s Museum

Rosie, Hunter, Mercy and I took the 26 minute drive to the High Point Children’s museum this past rainy Saturday. But I am a nerd, and what was really cool was learning afterwards that there is a feature on iPhones to automatically create a mashup video of a bunch of images/video clips, and I was real excited about how it turned out:

Many of you might already be familiar with how to do that. If not, here is a quick clip explaining it:

Its fall. Taylor is on a work trip to Philadelphia for work, and I can’t sleep, so adding another blog post is the obvious best thing to do.

In our neighborhood, one thing we look forward to is the “scary house” that goes all-in for halloween decorations. They are a few blocks away so we haven’t had a chance to trick-or-treat at their house, but the setup is pretty extreme. Have you ever seen anything like this?

The new teacher fake-out

On Wednesday of last week, we got an email/voicemail/letter home from school informing us that Rosie’s teacher would be leaving. This was really sad. She really likes Mr. Robertson, her third grade teacher. He is new to the school, and has made a very big impact.

When I got home from running a few errands, this was how Rosie greeted me:

It was devastating for a third grader to lose her favorite teacher!
Why was he leaving? He was leaving because of a state law that stipulates how many teachers are needed for each class/grade. The letter/voicemail sent to us said that due to a miscalculation on student enrollment for the year, there were too many teachers for the third grade, and Mr. Robertson (the newest) would be re-assigned to another school.

The letter stated that the following day, Rosie would spend 1/2 a day with her current teacher, and then transition to 1/2 a day with her new teacher. Effective Friday, she would be with her new teacher.

This was not ok. Rosie was sobbing about this. Who made the decision to trade teachers 1/2 way through October, and in what universe is this in the student’s best interest?

After Rosie had a minute to calm herself, she said “I have to go make Mr. Robertson a card.” Rosie is a gem; what a sweet kid to have that be her first instinct:

I wrote emails. I was hot; I don’t usually write emails about these kinds of issues, but because of the impact it had on Rosie, I wanted the people in charge to know the fallout from their decisions. In the big picture, I know Rosie would be ok; she has plenty of friends, and her home life is stable. But someone, somewhere had to see the ring video that I captured of this sweet little third grader just devastated to know that her teacher was leaving.

The teacher, principal, School board representative, and the superintendent were copied on this rather hot email. What did the email say? In short, we are with you through all the things that are beyond your control (and I listed a few things like Covid, a lockdown, etc), but this is not beyond your control. And whoever made this decision should see the impact that it has on THIRD GRADERS. For older students, this would not be a big deal. For eight year old kids, this is a bond that is being broken from a new teacher that they have grown to trust; and it disrupts the learning process for her class, and all of the other classes that they are dispersed into.

The other parents were pissed too. With only 1/2 day warning, there wasn’t much time, but the parents of Rosie’s class got an email thread going of 37 people providing the names of who to contact at every level of the school system, and I am left to believe that there was a very high percentage of people that took it upon themselves to reach out to voice their concerns.

That’s when we learned that it would be on the radio. It turns out one of the parents from Rosies class is also a morning anchor on a local radio station. She brought this issue up and it must have received near 20 minutes of airtime about how bonkers this decision is. The school board must have been pretty pissed about this exposure. Here is the bit, as a link to watch it on Facebook:

https://fb.watch/nDnf3K52ql/

When Rosie got back from school the next day, I asked her how her day was. She said “all we did was cry all morning. One kid cried so hard she had to go see the nurse.” Again, this adds fuel to my fire. Who makes these kinds of decisions for third graders?

On Friday at noon, a day-and-a-half after we received the first notice of the teacher leaving, we got a an automated call at around noon saying that, “after carefully reviewing enrollment numbers, it has been determined that they WILL KEEP all third grade teachers.” The voicemail was tone-deaf to say the least.

So, next week I will be attending my first school board meeting to address this issue.

UNC Dominates Syracuse on the gridiron

On Monday, I got a call from my buddy Charlie Hiser asking if I could make it to the football game that weekend. Charlie has been my buddy since sixth grade, and though it is probably for the best that I cannot find any solid pictures from the early years, here is a good early, appropriate picture of Charlie and Taylor from 2007:

Yes, I could make the game! Just like old times, going with Charlie and his set-dad Jerry, we made the 1 hr drive to Chapel Hill, capitalized on Jerry’s long-time donor status with great parking, and were at the game. UNC basically dominated, but Charlie and I got some great laughs in. It was great to catch up with him. He lives in Chapel Hill now, and though it is close, we haven’t gotten to see each other too often. Maybe more games in the future is the best answer? Anyways, here are some pics:

We saw the basketball team coming in before the game:

Here is a completely unrelated video I wanted to share: Rosie reading to her sister the day before her birthday. Nevermind Rosie’s face: it had facepaint from the Greek festival we attended earlier that day:

And Mercy crushing it on her scooter on a Saturday morning:

Yesterday was Mercy’s third birthday. While thinking about the birthday, Taylor got this notification from a video three years ago that I wanted to share. This is Rosie, the day before she became a big sister.

So what do we do for such a special kid’s third birthday? One thing I admire about Taylor is her ability to not give in to pressure, and keep things simple and manageable. This party was no exception.

She often says, “just do one thing”, and the one thing we did was a balloon-twister for the kids, at a local park.

Instead of inviting our own friends, and Rosie’s friends that we have gotten close with over the years, Mercy’s friends were invited, including her friend Maren that we have heard so much about. Basically, Mercy ignored everyone else and played on the slide with her friend:

They also had their cupcakes together

Thank you to everyone that came. Even though Mercy knocked the cupcakes off the counter 10 minutes before we left the house, the cupcakes were smeared, but remained in the containers. The result was a messy, but still edible, cupcake.

The balloon twister was a lot of fun.

A lot of family and longtime-friends were able to make it. Including Matt, who I have seen once since Christmas.

At home, Rosie read Mercy a special story before we went to bed the night before. The book is “Birthday Monsters” by Sandra Boynton:

Then, as is custom in our house, there were balloons to wake up to:

Finally, the big present, and something we got for free from a neighbor down the street, our own bouncy-house.

So, this is a short post this week. Taylor made it all happen and the way she can put these things together with such grace is pretty cool. Thank you Tay for being such an awesome party-planner/mom/wife, as well as a good employee where you work.

Cobe and Rachael got married in Raleigh this weekend. It was a great wedding, and a wonderful weekend all around.

Rachael looked great, and it was special to hear more about their relationship and lives together.

Cobe is Taylor’s younger cousin, and he just passed the bar this past summer. The Bride, Rachael, is crushing it in data analytics wherever she is working these days (somewhere in Raleigh, I am uncertain where).

We got dressed fancy for the occasion- it had been a while since dressing up in a suit. It seemed like before Covid, so it was hard to tell. Were skinny pants still in style? I wasn’t really sure, but old-reliable gray suit got to make another appearance: this was the free suit I got at my own wedding 13 years ago, and still fits. But, it is getting a little worse-for wear, and might not be completely in style anymore.

Back to the wedding though…

We all clean up pretty nice.

From left: Me, Taylor, Mallory and Dereck (Taylors brother), Grandma Becky, Deborah, and Ted (Taylor’s parents).

What really stood out at the wedding?

Everyone’s answer to this is going to be different.

For me, Cobe is just Taylor little cousin, and one of the “kids” at the beach house every summer for family beach week. This means it is in context of going to and from the sand, ensuring food is available for everyone at the house, etc. Cobe is just a polite, somewhat quiet little cousin.

That’s what made the wedding so special. Hearing from their friends, and listening to the stories about his relationships with his family, and his relationship with Rachael added some meat to the story. We got to hear who Cobe really is: a kind, polite, and it seems above all, humble guy who really is thoughtful about the people that surround him.

Ok, Let’s just look at pictures from the wedding.

The shared iCloud album has several hundred (thousand?) images in it, here are a few that seemed special:

Dereck dancing with his grandmother:

Here is the venue: on the 12th floor of a building in downtown Raleigh:

Kiyoe, I hope you are getting all this- you know more about weddings than anyone else reading this blog.

Cutting the cake:

I got to meet a fan of the blog: Taylor’s cousin, who reads every week.

They did some fun dancing at the end. This video kinda had me laughing as Deborah worked her way through the steps in the electric slide:

Then Ted and Deborah sharing a dance:

Other parts of the weekend

Where the heck are Rosie and Mercy?

The bride and groom had a kid-free weekend for us. Taylor is a VIP for putting everything together for the kids to be taken care of while we were out.

First, they spent time with Grandma (above).

Then, they did a sleepover with their older cousins.

Then, the babysitter came and hung out the last several hours until we got home from the Sunday reception, at around 8:30.

While they were well taken care of, there were the “other” parts of the weekend as well.

The reception was on Sunday, so on Saturday, we did a lunch at the Raleigh Times:

Then, on to watch some Saturday afternoon football games as App State played Eastern Carolina University. We went to Woodys:

The next day ( we went to bed early) Taylor and I did a quick run of 3 miles around downtown:

We stayed at the Downtown Marriot while the Latin Festival was going on:

One thing we learned about the Marriot is that they do offer complimentary toothpaste if you forgot yours. A 0.17 oz container:

The quiet weekend away from kids was 100%; highly recommend.

Dara and Ken, thanks for the awesome weekend. Cobe and Rachael, congrats! Enjoy your honeymoon in Italy! Kenna, woohoo! You made it to the blog!

We got to go to Ocean Isle Beach for Labor Day weekend, the Folk Festival was back in Greensboro, and we got a new roof.

This is the view of Ocean Isle Beach when crossing the bridge onto the island. There is only 1 way onto the island, and this is it. The girls got to leave school a bit early to beat the traffic, and we made it in time for dinner and the Friday afternoon music in the park. This time around, our family was to tired on Friday afternoon, we could barely put one foot in front of the other, so there wasn’t much dancing, but we still had a good time.

This time around, Rosie was really into something:

If you are viewing this from a phone, you might not be able to tell with great clarity, but that is Rosie on a boogie board. She did this for almost 7 hours on Saturday, and the same on Sunday. The waves were awesome, and Rosie was fearless. There were groups to the left and the right of slightly older kids, but Rosie still wanted her Dad out there to “tell her which waves to get.” I was happy to oblige, and give her that big push on the board to catch the perfect wave in. It was all smiles.

Mercy was almost all smiles this weekend.

I love this picture. Rosie is so happy and proud for an audience to watch her on the boogie board.

Though there interests are different, one place where the smiles are shared (almost every time), is the golf cart:

One evening I got to spend a little 1:1 time with Rosie and hop over to the ice cream place. It is hard to get that time with her now because when she gets home, Mercy always escalates and screams and demands attention, and Rosie is so busy with dance and friends, it seems like there are less moments with her. So, I jumped at the chance to take her for ice cream, and we saw this:

It wasn’t just 1 deer. We counted 9 of them:

Not too far away, we saw this little fox. It looked a few pounds bigger than a cat:

Finally, after a long, long drive home, when it seemed there were way too many potty breaks, and way too many “Are we there yet”, we got home. You know what these kids did when we pulled in the driveway?

They stayed in the car and played together. Whatever. They were smiling and laughing. Often these moments are the same: Rosie will be trying SO HARD to play with her little sister by getting her to do something, and Mercy will “play” by absolutely messing with her sister, and refusing to do what she says; Mercy smiles while doing the opposite. A bit mischievous, but I see what’s going on here.

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Folky

The Folk Festival came to town this weekend. It has been in Greensboro for several years now. This is something we tried to figure out but couldn’t: how many years HAS this event been happening? 5? 7? We didn’t really know.

But, we got the chance to go downtown on Saturday night and meet up with our friends the Cores and the Lynams. Now that I look at it, I don’t think we got any good pictures of us together. Maybe I am running out of excitement to catch these moments for the blog as they happen?

It seemed like a good turnout.

We ran into Amelia and Matt.

Rosie got to meet up with a friend, Hunter, who is also our neighbor. It was fun, but there isn’t much to share about this. The music was ho-hum, but a fun atmosphere, and unfortunately, I didn’t get any of it on video.

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A new roof

Our house is almost 70 years old. We have been in this house about 4 years, and one of the things that has been in need of work is the roof. We have these trees that allow mildew up there, and it was just showing its age. I was afraid it would spring a leak with any passing storm, and by then, the price would have ballooned quite a bit.

Like most things, pictures don’t do it justice. We tried twice to see if there was any hail damage, but our homeowners insurance denied it both times. The roof was around 20 years old, surely there was SOME hail damage during that time, right? I am not sure exactly how insurance makes their determinations about that kind of thing, but they didn’t see it that way.

Ugh, that image above looks terrible.

But, knowing that it had to be done because we plan on being in this house for a while, we researched a couple of roofing companies. The range of pricing was wild. However, we went with the company that had been around for a long time. They were a bit more expensive, but they said that if they found any damaged wood underneath, they would replace it was part of the price. Since I overanalyze everything and was confident they would find utter ruin, that spoke nicely to my concerns.

The weather was brutal on those workers, but they got it done in 1 day.

They worked hard for that money. It was tough to work from home that day, so I spent most of the day at the coffee shop. Unfortunately, Taylor had trainings all day, and had to endure the sound of hammers, and a barking dog all day.

The finished product looked great though. One less thing to worry about.

Rosie started another school year, and she is pumped. It doesn’t take much to get her excited though.

In addition to being excited about a new school year, mom and dad are excited for the fall and a little bit more routine mixed in with everything.

We started the walk to school “parent train” again; a group of 3-4 families meet at the corner and cycle through taking the kids the last 1/4 mile to the front door of the school. Honestly, this is the best. I never thought walking to school would be a highlight, but I really enjoy this time in the mornings.

Mercy doesn’t smile much- but she was smiling just BEFORE this picture was taken.

Speaking of Mercy…

Sleep regression is terrible. A few weeks ago, Taylor was out with some friends and a storm rolled in over our house. This would normally be no big deal, but the storm came in right at about Mercy’s bedtime, and it was a little unusual. Instead of the storm lasting about 15 minutes and passing by, the storm just stalled, and sat right over our house, for about 90 minutes.

Every time I said “it’s going to stop real soon”, I proved to be a liar. It didn’t stop, and Mercy got scared. I got frustrated- bedtime ended up being close to a 2 hour routine that night.

Ever since then, Mercy has been freaking out at bedtime. Instead of going nicely to her bed, she insists that the door stay open. She has a million reasons NOT to stay in her bed (I need water, I need a hug, I need to go potty). She screams and screams, and if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she will scream and scream unless you stay in the room with her. And she will just come out of her room and scream and wake the whole house up. Rosie is struggling too, because her sleep is interrupted throughout the night.

Taylor and I are exhausted. This has been terrible. Yet, not enough time has passed to where this will be a long-term habit, but we do not want it to go on much longer. What should be done?

Personally, after 90 minutes, my patience is usually around 0. If she cannot fall asleep after 90 minutes, I am tempted to give her a sleep aid of some kind, but that isn’t the best solution.

What does the internet say we should do?

• Read before bed.
• Create a nighttime routine
• Give her a blankie to keep her “safe”
• Spend time in her room to normalize it.
• Talk calmly and gentle to her about bedtime.

Done and done- now what? None of this addresses her issue- a calm kid, until bed time.

We went to the beach last weekend, partially with the hope that a change of scenery would help. It did- sort of. But, we talked it over, and decided one of the main issues is that she keeps coming out of her room. She would still be sleeping in a crib (not her current big-kid bed), except she kept getting out of it. At the same time, she is begging for the door to stay open. The challenge is that her room is right beside the living room, so if her door is open, the family is “held hostage” by this action, knowing that the slightest sneeze could put us into a 30 minute spiral.

So I had an idea: We need to keep her in her room, and she needs to learn to comfort herself when she is worked up like that. Our house (and doors and doorknobs) are close to 70 years old, so the normal child proof doorknobs won’t work. But this did: a simple, lock from the outside for children.

We tried it last night, and per usual, she freaked out at bedtime. For 15 minutes I did what the internet said: speak calmly, put her back in her bed, and do not match her level of screaming or stress. Then, I just locked it, and something amazing happened: she fell asleep.

This may seem insignificant depending on when the last time was you were around small kids, but this was huge for us. After dragging trough life like a living dream for 2 weeks, we may be getting to the other side.

The expensive parts

Life is expensive sometimes, and we are entering into one of those seasons. We have several trees in the front yard, and because of them, our roof is showing its age and needs to be replaced. We have been working with insurance about it, but they will not budge, so we need to pay out-of-pocket for it, and paying for a roof is like paying for new tires: it is expensive, and you don’t have much to show for it. After that expense, everything still functions just like it did before.

In addition to the roof, we have slowly been putting the pieces together for the outdoor garage, and how the electricity out there is not working properly. And electrician pointed out that there are two lines feeding the garage, and one of them was cut; the other line was 90% cut, and created some “arcing”, which is similar to “sparking”, where the current turns on and off repeatedly.

This had the impact of frying everything out there: Tv, stereo, AC unit. And, the only way to fix it is by re-trenching a new line out there, which is also thousands of dollars.

But that’s not all. Before going the beach last weekend, the car needed to be inspected and have the oil changed.

“You need new tires and axles.” Axles? Since when do cars go through axles? When getting the car back, all sorts of other lights were on on the dash; what the heck is a VBA system in a car? Ours has an issue now, it seems. Luckily, the mechanic will fix all the lights. Unfortunately, it was after my father in law had to drive the car and saw a colorful dash filled with errors.

Ugh. Life is expensive, but we will make it through. I think Taylor and I are both getting close to looking into a new car the next time our bill is a couple thousand dollars.

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.