Author: Luke

Ian roared through last weekend. Fort Myers was obliterated, but that doesnt mean that storm ran out of energy by the time it got to our part of the state.

The weather report made it seem like it could have beena pretty bad situation- Rosie’s school was cancelled, and Mercy’s daycare was closed early at 12 as a precaution. The storm didnt gain strength until that later part of Friday, and through the hours before midnight. I’ll be honest- I’ve never heard winds like that in the three years we have been this house, and those 4 big oaks and a cypress in our front yard looked like they could become a liability.

So what did we do?

We invited our good friends the Peascoes over to watch Hocus Pocus! We had pizza (take and bake), I made my amazing popcorn, and the kids loved watching the new Disney release. Only the oldest kid (8 years old) seemed to be slightly concerned about the wind outside- and I admit, I was too.

The trees held up fine. The next day, there were hardly any trees down: and it looks like the street in front of us, and the street behind us lost their light, but we were ok.

There was a lot to clean up, and we aren’t done cleaning yet. I got 13 bags of leaves, and still haven’t touched the back yard yet (I’ll get that soon, I promise!)

Renos and sweet debuts

Have you ever lived through a big remodel? It seems tough- and add in some smaller kids, and a busy life, and then add in that the renovation is the most important room in the house (the kitchen), AND it is during the current supply chain crises- and this 7 month renovation is very close to being tied up in a bow and complete. To clarify, this isnt our house- but our good friends Chad and Rachel Lynam. It started with a few leaks from the bathroom AND the dishwasher, and after insurance, this beautiful kitchen got its debut. We were honored to be one of their first guests.

Though I didn’t get many good pics of the new kitchen, it was top-notch. The kids had a blast, the charcuterie was on-point, and this video captured the live-action entertainment pretty well.

And How Much?

Online grocery store is amazing. Rosie has long-since known which sweet brands to ask for when we go to the grocery store (Oreos, Lucky Charms, Skittles, etc). Mercy is getting there. And one of the things I hate the most about being a parent is saying “no”- so if we can just avoid situations where I have to say “no” a whole lot, I win, right?

The problem with buying things online is that it abstracts away the true cost of groceries.

After going in to the store, I did notice something. Look at that image above. Though the ice cream was amazing, the price?

$6.99

(It was buy-one get-one free). I think I remember Breyers being $3.80 or something?

AND, if that wasnt bad enough: look at the bottom left corner of that image. It is only 1.5 quarts: a half gallon of ice cream is no longer a half gallon of ice cream. It’s like someone took two scoops of my ice cream before I even got back to the house.

I didn’t say anything when inflation came for my cat food, because I dont have a cat. I didn’t say anything inflation came for new house prices, because I’m not buying a new house. But now inflation is coming for my ice cream, and that just makes me sad.

Our sweet girl turned two this weekend.

Taylor likes to make it fun for the girls when they wake up by decorating their rooms and surprising them- so here we are waking up the birthday girl on Saturday morning:

It was a team effort: though there aren’t any pictures of it, Ted helped out by bringing the food, and it was amazing. His barbecue, and ribs were up there with the best I ever had.

Taylor and I stumbled on a picture of Rosie having some breakfast from Biscuitville on her second birthday, so we got a sausage biscuit for Mercy to ring in her big day. Here they are side by side:

We did a few presents, and mostly just hung out and got ready for the party.

It was Rosie’s idea to have a birthday theme of “hAPPy Birthday!” to celebrate with an Appalachian State themed party. Though they lost the game, the party was a blast.

Everly came over a bit early to hang out. Though sometimes Mercy is a whining little kiddo, when she is with her big cuz, that all goes out the window and they have a blast together.

The whole night was a blast. The pictures tell the story best, so I’ll just leave a bunch of them here:

After the party, we cleaned up. It was a great success. We all got along, the kids behaved mostly awesome. We found some weird trash in weird places.

Then, we got to have a nice quiet dinner to round out the weekend:

The first year of our marriage, Taylor and I lived in a big college house in Virginia that was a mix of graduate students/young professionals. Taylor lived in the house the year before, and rent would be dirt-cheap (to match our income at the time), for the complete basement of the house- with its own kitchen, bath, etc.

Upstairs were 7 ladies during that year. Taylor has kept up with these ladies, and they called themselves and the house that they lived in “Big Love”.

They get together every year or so (not all of them every year, but close). This year, their destination of Cape Charles in Virginia, was not fully prepared in time. With friends coming from Texas, Washington DC, Atlanta, and elsewhere- Greensboro NC was the central location- so Taylor offered our house for the weekend (Her and I talked about it first).

The ladies had fun, and went to see the Broadway production of “Mean Girls” that was at the new performing arts center in town. One part of the movie is “on Wednesdays we wear pink”, so the group dressed accordingly:

And they were kind enough to leave one of Weezie Black’s cookies afterwards. It was unusually good:

My mom was gracious enough to take in me and the two girls while our house was filled with 9 ladies for the weekend. Here is a picture from Kirkwood park, when Rosie shouted out “Mercy is my Uber driver.” Her creativity cracks me up every single day.

It was fun- I didn’t get to take as many pictures as I would have wanted, but it was a fun weekend. We ate well, Mercy got her nap in, Rosie did her dance performance, and she made it to her sleepover on time. Cici and I did a great job balancing all of the things.

The weekend was fun, but it was good to get everyone back together again on Sunday afternoon, when Rosie got back from her sleepover.

In defense of the messy desk.

This is a new section- more of an opinion piece of something that has been on my mind; the only parameter for these opinion pieces is to not venture in the world of politics.

Where do you stand on the scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being “super clean” and 1 being “pretty filthy” for your desk?

I would put myself as a 6 or 7, depending on the day, and there are many reasons for this.

My job is to write computer code- I am a software engineer writing computer code- and there is a “creative” aspect to it. There are problems that the computer code needs to solve, and my desk is where that creative “magic” happens.

Growing up, I got to watch Cici be creative in her art- with a studio that turns out original art at a rate that would make your head spin. Her studio is her creative space, where she gets “in the zone” turning out beautiful, colorful pieces.

I too can be in such a rush to get “in the zone” that other things can be left incomplete. From the image above there is:

• Two coffee cups. Neither are from today.
• A water cup. Stay hydrated!
• Hair gel that never made its ways to the bathroom.
• Glasses I don’t wear while looking at a computer screen.
• My middle school yearbooks- which havent made it to a bookshelf yet.
• A black, computer backpack that needs to be put away.
• An old HP laptop that needs to be taken to our e-waste location.
• Two macbooks- as I switch between work and personal tasks.
• A green “Decoding the technical interview” book
• An unused computer dongle
• a “Port” that connects all of the things to the laptop

There is a lot going on in this picture. This is my captain’s chair throughout the day and I put my head down and love what I do. Its a bit messy- and a bit active. I think that is like a microcosm of our lives right now.

If you had to share, how would you rate your setup?

There is this pile of wood that has been sitting in the back of our yard since we moved in. One of our requests when buying the house was to remove this very large, dead tree that was in the back of our property, but the seller’s response was that the tree could be chopped up, but to have it removed would be an extra several thousand dollars.

So, we agreed, and this pile of wood was put in the back of our yard, hidden behind the garage, where it just sat.

There may be snakes in the pile, though I have never seen one. Rosie has been told just to avoid that corner of the yard, and she has.

It is hard to capture just how big this pile is- but there is a problem: I cannot remove it. I dont have a truck, and in order to rent a truck, it would take a whole day just to go back and forth to the dump- time I don’t have.

So, Taylor’s idea was to put an ad on the Nextdoor app. Post a few pictures of the wood, and offer $300 for anyone to come remove it.

The first person to respond was a nice man in his fifties who has done this kind of thing for a long time. He was very kind, and took a look at it and said:

No way. There is no way I can remove that wood for that price. Those larger logs on the bottom, I’ll need special equipment to move them”.

– Experienced handyman.

Ok, this wood was huge. It was an old oak tree that was 3 feet wide. So, I called the second guy who responded on Nextdoor: a “college kid” who “heard from his mom that there was wood that needed to be removed”. You can tell where this is going, right?

In my mind, this is a college kid just like me: a string bean. And if an experienced guy couldn’t do it, there was no way a “college kid” could. I posted extra pictures, with a cinder-block for scale, just to ensure he knew what he was getting into.

The guy shows up at 6:30 pm that same day, and I was laughing with Taylor all day thinking there was no way this guy could do it. He texts me and says he is here, and on my front porch is the strongest man I have ever seen. He was the hulk. And very, very polite.

I showed him the pile, and he said he could do it. He knew a place to dump some of it (his grandma’s house), and the rest he would split and use to heat his own mother’s house.

After 2 truckloads, I saw there was a third row of logs, and they were some monster pieces of wood, we felt bad about how much wood it actually was, and upped our price a bit.

Lumberjack Luke brought his wedge, axe, and sledge, and split all of that wood in our backyard. We were out of town in the mountains that weekend, but the security system was set, and so were the outside cameras. And when we returned, this is what we saw:

This is a small brag about Rosie.

Our afternoon routine usually involves Taylor picking up Rosie from “Kid’s ahead”, the after-school program Rosie LOVES, and picking up Mercy from Daycare (Usually I am able to drop off in the morning). When they get home, usually Mercy just immediately cries until she is fed (unfortunately, this has put us in the super-early dinner time pattern of eating around 5:15 or 5:30).

So, it works best if the girls play outside for a bit so that Mercy can be a bit entertained and distracted from her whining.

Rosie is just a gem. Mercy is almost 2, and I can count on one hand the number of times Rosie has complained about her little sister. Her patience and genuine joy when she plays with her little sister always blows me away.

I wish I could freeze these moments. It is something I don’t deserve.

On the opposite side of the workday, chatting with Rosie and meeting our neighbor on our walk to school, is also special every time. During this brief moment, I have no cell phone, no distractions, and Rosie just opens and shares about her day. I treasure that time.

App State

Also, Taylor and I got to watch APP State beat #6 Texas A&M this weekend. It was amazing, and the biggest win for App State since they beat Michigan 15 years ago. Rosie was out of town at a sleep over, and Mercy was asleep- so Taylor and I got to enjoy the game. It was so much fun, and I am thankful that Taylor and I both went to App State to have such fun together watching it.

Rosie is off to second grade! Summer was great in so many ways- we really had fun. However, I love routine (I never thought I would say that?), and getting Rosie back to school with our morning walk to school has been wonderful. She is at a little elementary school just a few blocks away, and we meet her little friend Sydney half way there, and they kick off their morning with a small buzz of excited conversation. Its pretty awesome.

Sweet Sadie

Taylor’s younger brother, Dereck, and his wife Mallory, welcomed their second daughter, Sadie Register last week. SHe is small and adorable, and Rosie (and Mercy) are excited to be big cousins.

Seclusion

When was the last time that you spent some time away? I mean, away from the internet? For me, it is embarrassing to say, but even on vacation, the internet is available. Except for this past weekend. We were quite secluded- which was a lot of fun to not have a phone nearby. Even though Verizon boasts of having coverage everywhere, it doesnt reach this mountain valley property that backs up to a national forest. Except for missing the App State-UNC game on Saturday, it was great to be “unplugged”.

We spent the long weekend with two other families- the Steinwedells and the Peascoes- 15 of us in total. This is a fun group- Joe, Taylor, and Laura worked together at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro (Taylor is no longer at CCL), and the friendships have been around since the beginning. Joe and his wife came to Greensboro from Colorado, and Andy and Laura are both greensboro natives. However, it was the Torres family- Hernan, Catherine, Simon and Sebastien that brought us together. We missed them for sure this weekend.

Two (or three?) years ago, we did a trip together and there were only 5 kids between our families- now there are 9. I can’t readily find pictures from that last trip, but a weekend in a cabin in the mountains together worked great for the kids. This time, the cabin was far more swanky, with a creek out front.

On a rainy Sunday, we took a trip into town to go see some Caverns.

Scott (Jonathan) Phillips finally got married, and Taylor and I were so excited to celebrate his big day. The wedding was in the middle of August, so we also decided to turn it into an extra anniversary trip, and stay an extra day in Boston on Sunday night after the wedding.

The wedding

Taylor and I have so many fun memories with Scott, we were really excited to think of fun things to share to highlight our childhood with him. We haven’t been as close to Scott over the past 10 years, so it is hard to figure out who he kept up with, and who we could look forward to seeing at his big day.

The rehearsal dinner- I haven’t laughed so hard in a few years. Ren Phillips was so, so great to see. It has been 15 years since we were roommates together in Boone, and I have only seen him a few times since he moved to Amsterdam shortly after college. Yet, we picked up and laughed together in a way that my soul truly needed. He is back from Amsterdam for just these few days, and he was ready to pick up right where he left off, and all of us were better off from a night with the Ren that we love.

Ren delivered on a miracle for us. What does that mean? Well, we (Chad, Houston, Taylor, Rachel, Sara Core and I) knew that speeches had to happen. Yet, the wedding was about 75% “new” friends from Ivy League professional connections, and only about 25% “old” friends- the ones that knew him as “Scott” instead of “Jonathan”. Specifically, us “old” friends know about how Scott’s speech at my rehearsal told a story, but left the ending open-ended. His speech 12 years ago was a disaster, and now that his great day was upon us, it was time to get him back- but how could I do so while not being mean, and still honoring his bride? Taylor coached me through it, and, well, just watch for yourself.

The ceremony

Whaleback is a small, “community” ski mountain. “Community” means that it is a non-profit that helps kids learn to ski, and it is visible from the highway just before taking the exit to Dartmouth. Its beautiful, and when Scott moved to Dartmouth, Katie knew that she wanted to make this her ski-mountain. And now that it was time for them to exchange vows, the community-nature of the mountain, and the community-driven nature of both Scott and Katie, made this a special place to have a ceremony. It was really fitting- it matched Scott perfectly. It was simple, outdoors, fun, and brought together the many parts of “community” in the same way that Scott has done his entire life.

It was great to see Robin, and Valerie gave SUCH a beautiful speech. There was also dancing, featuring Rachel Lynam:

It was just so much fun. here is another:

And a few pictures from the wedding reception:

The Boston

We tacked on another day to our trip, and did Sunday night in Boston. We met up with our Greensboro friends that moved to Boston just a few months ago (Cathy is from Boston, and moved back home to be closer to her family). We did some walking on the freedom trail, I had my first Lobster Roll (warm and buttered), had the best raw oysters in my life (good gracious, they were delicious), and went on a date-night to an italian restaurant.

Hey-o, while we were in Boston, there was the feast of Madonna (Of course!) celebrating the saint and also asking for protection for the fisherman for the year. It was unexpectedly busy in little Italy in Boston on a Sunday evening.

Taylor and I took Rosie to Carowinds this week.

This trip was a flying success; thanks Taylor for the awesome idea.

We surprised Rosie, and left Mercy behind with Grandma Zippy and Papa Pack (Thanks again for the help!), and had a whole day to have fun. Taylor reached out to her cousin who lived nearby, and we were able to spend the day with Brantley, Brenden, and Aunt Luann.

They are season ticket holders, and this was awesome for couple reasons:

• We didn’t know which rides Rosie was tall enough for. It would be terrible to walk all around the park, and be disappointed to learn that 4’2″ Rosie couldnt do the rides she wanted to do.
• Cousins make everything better.
• Taylor and I didn’t have to make any decisions
• Taylor and I didn’t have to navigate the park via map on a tiny phone screen.

The last time I went was in high school, and sadly, the math says that was about 20 years ago. Back then, there were about 3 or 4 major roller coasters, and I remember having to wait in huge lines to ride any of them, especially the Wayne’s World Hurler, a huge wooden coaster.

Taylor and I really showed our age because though the ride is still there, it lost the “Wayne’s World” branding related to the movie 16 years ago.

The day was so much fun, and we paid dearly for it the day after. I felt like I got in a fight when I woke up Saturday morning. My fitbit said I did 20,000 steps, but it was the rattling around on roller coaster’s that made me feel my age.

12 year anniversary

Happy Anniversary!

It’s been 12 (mostly) amazing years- there have definitely been some hard years during that time, and I just want to keep it real about that.

Though the calendar says it was our anniversary, our plan to celebrate is our upcoming trip to New Hampshire and Boston to see a friend’s wedding in 2 weeks. I have never been that far north before, and am looking forward to seeing that area of the country. If you have any recommendations for what to see or do (or eat) in Boston, pass it on!

Since there isn’t a grand anniversary to really expand on, here are a few more pictures from the past 2 weeks: