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This is a post about everything. This is a post about nothing. It is hard to say really- things move FAST during December.

Rosie had a birthday. Its true. Every year, right after thanksgiving, and Taylor does an awesome job planning everything. And then December starts getting busy, and we are tired after doing all the things for Rosies birthday.

BUT the birthday was fun.

Cmon, doesn’t that look like fun? It was an 80s themed party at the skating rink. In case you were wondering what the skating rink is like these days- the answer is, the exact same. Nothing has changed in the world of skating rinks in the past 30 years. It even smelled the same, whatever that might mean.

Who is the weird person posing with these children? That’s me:

In fact, the week after the party, I volunteered at Rosies school for the December teacher luncheon, and a few children came up and confirmed my new nickname: 80s dad.

Rosie crushed it. Everyone had fun. Its amazon how these kids show up and only a few of them can skate; two hours later, everyone is making it around the rink having a blast.

The leaves are finished. This is a big deal. We have an insane amount of leaves from 3 oak trees, a cypress tree, a dogwood tree, a Japanese maple, a few other things, and leaves from the neighbors yards. Anyways, Rosie made a fun video to share:

I don’t know how many bags were the grand total, but I went out with a bang. Pictures never do this kind of thing justice, but as a manly dad, I am fulfilling my manly dad duties:

The Registers had a fun night out. We painted the town red. and white. And green. And purple.

ANd by town, I mean one specific, child-friendly and winter-themed location. The winter wonderlights were a lot of fun.

Also, in the spirit of Christmas, Mercy’s class sends home Mary and Joseph to each kid’s home leading up to Christmas. Mercy, who is new to the whole “smile for a picture” thing, was having a blast playing and smiling, until I asked her to smile for a picture:

She did smile at the idea of giving the holy chosen couple a few potato chips though:

This weekend Mercy was invited to a party as well. Rosie’s social life is more dominant than most anyone I know, but Mercy’s reaction when we told her she was going to a party for a kid in her class was precious: “My friends my friends m friends!” she said in glee. It was a “glitter magic sparkle princess party.” And Taylor was out of town. So I went. 7 out of 10.

BUT, the face paint lady was amazing.

Running of the balls? Well, I needed something that started with “R”. We didn’t really run the balls this year. We did crash a party where Rosie knew someone. And as soon as we got there, mercy fell DEEP into a puddle of mud, and got chunky mud all over her shoes. We make a great first impression.

The end of the party was to walk around the neighborhood and see the balls. Pictures at night aren’t the best, but the event is amazing. and here it is in the local news: Running of the balls

Finally, last weekend I got to attend the “Be Great Foundation” gala. It is a local non profit that teaches IT skills to people that might not otherwise get exposed to it. Here is the link if you want to learn more: https://thebegreatfoundation.org

It is an awesome event, and these two kids are being recognized for helping to create an app that can help out their peers who are struggling with food issues at home. The app connects restaurants, volunteer delivery drivers, and families, to ensure that anyone can request a meal, anonymously, if needed. The picture isn’t great, but it was inspiring to hear of these great things happening in Greensboro.

Also, since you made it to the bottom of this post, you must not be a in a rush to do something else, so here are a few more pictures from the past couple weeks that were hard to place above:

When Rosie came home from dance on Tuesday, she put her book bag down, and walked right past me. Instead of stopping to share how her day was, she sat on the ground beside Mercy, and Rosie asked Mercy how her day was. These kinds of things happen all the time.

This post is to highlight the special relationship between Mercy and Rosie.

This picture is not very recent, but Rosie loves spending time with Mercy. Mercy gets a bath about every other day. Yes, we do miss a bath every now and then, but we aim to not have Mercy be the stinky kid in class. When we start talking about putting her in the bath, Rosie will come in at the last minute and say “I want to take a bath with Mercy.” Rosie is too big to bathe with her now, but I don’t want to be the one to tell her she is too big. They just chit-chat in the bath: Rosie was asking Mercy what she was going to do when her friend came over this weekend. Rosie is just so kind the way she asks, treating her much younger sister as an equal.

Any one of these baths could be their last one together, but they are special moments that will be gone soon.

This past Saturday, Mercy was the first one up (per usual). She runs out, so excited that the automated light (to tell her when to come out of her room in the morning) turned green. Her first words for the day? “I want to sit here and watch a show and wait for sissy.”

When they are getting ready for school in the morning, Rosie pops out of bed and by the time she is eating her bowl of fruit loops, she has 1,000 things to say. So much so, that often the cereal gets soggy and she has to rush out the door. However, during that moment of talking a million miles an hour to Taylor about what happened on the playground yesterday, Mercy will pipe up and just talk jibber jabber (seriously, words and phrases that don’t make sense). I am guess it is because she wants to be like sissy and share about her day, but can’t get a word in edgewise, so she will just add to the noise in the house in the meantime.

Rosies school is closer to our house than Mercy’s daycare. I like to mix it up on the days I pick them up: sometimes get Mercy first, sometimes get Rosie first. And sometimes, not all the time, Mercy will want Rosie to sit next to her. Meaning, unbuckle yourself, and instead of sitting in the back seat near the window, sit in the middle seat. And hold my hand while you are at it (I am paraphrasing for Mercy on this one). So, I look in my rearview mirror, and will just see them, sitting in silence, holding hands in the backseat.

Hugs. It is hard to say who is the bigger “hugger” of the two. But often it will play out like this: Rosie will try and hug Mercy, and Mercy will be grumpy and ignore her or push her away (It is a game to her, Mercy loves the attention). Then, Rosie is old enough to pretend to be sad, and Mercy will then jump onto Rosie with open arms. OR, Mercy will go in for a hug, and Rosie will be busy watching one of her tween shows or doing some beads on a bracelet, and just ignore Mercy while she is trying to give her a hug.

Usually this plays out at night time. Mercy will give everyone a hug before bed. Sometimes she will insist on going out into the living room and hugging everyone a couple of times. Or, right when she is settled in bed, Mercy will say “I want to give sissy one more hug.” My impulse to be strict, but my heart melts: I can’t say no to that request. So my “no” turns into a “Absolutely. You go out there and give that sister a hug.” These moments will be gone soon.

Taylors mom says that when they stay at her house, Mercy will cuddle up close to Rosie on the couch, “like she is a security blanket.” Zippy went on to say that “Rosie makes Mercy feel safe.”

Rosie is into her outfits. Always has been (something she gets from Taylor’s side of the family- the fashionable side). So, she wants to share that joy with Mercy too by dressing the same. Rosie gets so, so excited about. It wasn’t until the past couple of months that Mercy would even smile for a picture, but somehow Rosie can bring that joy out of her.

Whatever Mercy is into, whether it is at the children’s museum, playground, or taking a picture, Rosie will come along side and join her right where she is without time to blink. She won’t let mercy have a good time alone. Rosie wants to be there for every second of it.

The bottom left picture is from last Christmas, when Mercy got a play house. Mercy wasn’t sure about it, but Rosie wanted to make sure that her sister saw how cool this playhouse (That Rosie was far too big for), was an exciting gift.

Or the happy meal toys in the picture in the upper right. Mercy probably wouldn’t care about the thing. But Rosie wanted to make sure Mercy knew how to get all of the joy and happiness out of the twenty-five cent piece of plastic.

The picture on the bottom right is the same thing: from the children’s museum, Mercy wasn’t too keen on some of the things there, but Rosie was going to prove that it was fun. And Rosie doesn’t need prompting on this. Rosie has always done this.

Rosie is not, for one second, gonna let the age difference stop her from trying to bond with Mercy.

I don’t know if all sisters are like this. I like to think it is because it took us a long time to have Mercy. During that time, Rosie was old enough, and prayed nightly for a baby sister, so Rosie’s heart was just wired a little different to even meet her little sister. There was so much built up joy and expectation from day 1 that is still visible on a daily basis.

Ok now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. They do scream. They don’t scream at each other. Mercy used to pull hair. Mercy will try and go in Rosies room when Rosie has a friend over. Ultimately, whatever Rosie has, Mercy will want the same. Mercy will take things of Rosies because she is too young to know better. Rosie will take them back to teach her a lesson. Rosie will call her sister “Annoying” sometimes. And often, as a family, we have to slow down to Mercy’s pace, which keeps Rosie from doing some of the things she wants to do. But for the most part, Rosie doesn’t seem to mind.

All of this will change over the next few years. But for today, I wanted to pause, and just think about all of these sweet little moments between them.

At night when Taylor and I put them to bed, something inside of me just says that this is the most important moment of the day. And we pray. Each night. Often times, the prayer includes “Please protect the special relationship between them, that they will always love each other.”

Things will always change, but for now they are really sweet. Looking up pictures for this post, there is a trend: Rosie is smiling, ear to ear, in almost all of them. Even the first couple weeks Mercy was alive, the smile has had the same energy.

It was a blast. We ate a ton. The dressing was great (it is called “dressing” if it is not stuffed inside the bird, and “stuffing” if it is actually inside the turkey, according to my MIL). The decorations were beautiful. And the Tarheels lost terribly against NC State in Football.

Amelias Birthday was just a few days before thanksgiving (on Tuesday this year), and though we didn’t get any pictures, I wanted to acknowledge how special of a kid she is, and how proud of an uncle I am.

We hosted my side of the family, and there are several weeks worth of postings of things to say, but I will leave it as: we made it through the meal together.

Thanksgiving at the Registers house was great. This year was just entirely different than years past because Mercy was able to entertain herself for a bit. For the past 5+ years, she was trying to kill herself by jumping down stairs, finding sharp objects, finding poisonous objects, throwing shoes, and every other thing you can imagine.

This year, she didn’t. What did I do with this new sense of freedom? I avoided all pictures as you can see, but after that was accomplished, I fell asleep on the couch for a few minutes after the meal. It was delightful.

Rosie and I have a long history of picking trees out together. And if you look in the bottom-left picture above, one of her favorite traditions is topping the tree each year with the star that goes on top. Year after year I would lift her up, sometimes it was stressful and she didn’t quite understand or even want to cooperate. This year, she started talking about it hours in advance- she was so excited for the important duty of putting the star on top.

Mercy spent time focusing on three branches on the bottom, ensuring they had 6 ornaments a piece. It looks ridiculous, but we were sure to leave those ornaments just as they were placed.

I like to think our ornaments and decorations are not a shrine to the North Pole, but lean 70% towards the birth of Jesus, and 30% towards kids crafts, Santa, etc.

There has been a post about Mercy, sharing her story. There has been a post about Rosie, sharing her story.

The 9 people who read my blog have spoken: they want to hear Stormy’s story. So, turn on the the wayback machine, step into the Delorean, warm up the flux capacitor, we are going back in time!

We bought this house in January, 2013. We weren’t married even 3 years yet; our first year of marriage we lived in a basement. The second year we lived in a townhouse. Taylor did not like the townhouse. She probably had merit in those thoughts. The carpeting was terrible.

I am not sure if it was from the new house, or from still being kinda newly married, or just because I am pretty stubborn about things, but we were bickering a bit. Small disagreements. We both wanted things a certain way in our new house, and men and women think a little differently on these things.

And that’s the power a dog can have: We stopped bickering. We focused on the dog a bit more than we focused on our own needs/wants. And there were many.

We both worked. The dog had to go on walks. We didn’t have a fence. The dog had to be let outside during our lunch breaks. There were thunderstorms. The dog had to be let inside.

And there were snowstorms. What do you do with the dog and the work and the snow shoveling then? I remember this day: stormy sat outside on that pile of snow for about 4 hours.

But back to Stormy’s adoption story. Taylor and I talked about a dog. Our friend Anna Lehnen knew all about dogs- I think her parents were breeders? But wither way, we went down to the Staunton pound, “just to look”. The website had a dog named Charlie that looked like a sweet dog, so Taylor and I went down to see him.

Charlie was gone. Of all the critters in that noisy kennel, there was one that was quiet. She stood on her back legs, and watched Taylor walk all around.

So we went home. Without the dog. But Taylor kept saying “I can’t stop thinking about that dog Shira”. You see, that was her pound-name. Shira.

So, we got her. it was October of 2013, and Stormy was 1 year old.

We stayed in that house less than 2 years. It was a great couple years- the federal government said that our income at the time was below the poverty line- but I didn’t feel like much was missing.

But something was missing. We were actually pretty sad during that time, trying for a couple unsuccessful years to get pregnant with Rosie. And Stormy was a delightful addition.

Ted and Deborah (Taylor’s parents) opened their doors for us to live there while Taylor was pregnant, with Stormy, while we looked for our first place in Greensboro.

Stormy made best friends with Jager. They were really an inseparable pair. In fact, to this day, the Register’s house is stormy’s happy place.

They were besties for 5 or 6 years, until Jager passed away. Even today, if Stormy hears the name, her ears perk up. Dogs are the best.

We got our first house in Greensboro.

We had a house; we had a dog; we had a kid. Stormy was living in her 4th place at this time:

• She was a puppy in the kennel. Maybe born there? Adopted by a family with small kids.
• Lived in a house with her first family. They named her Shira. Shame on them. She is obviously a stormy.
• The family surrendered Stormy back to the kennel. Shame on them. Never surrender!

Stormy had a best friend named Jager. And Rosie had a critter named Stormy to make her own.

There are dozens of these pictures.

Dogs are the best. Stormy is the best for what can be seen in this pic:

She loves to be AROUND people, but will always hang off to the side.

Anyways, time is running short here. We moved to our new house (the current one), putting stormy in yet ANOTHER place to call home.

Stormy was there to greet Mercy when she came home from the hospital too:

Ok, she isn’t 100% awesome. Stormy does have a flaw. This part isn’t in the pics, so you will have to take my word for it.

Stormy loves trash. Loves it. When we were walking in Harrisonburg, she would find any scraps on the side of the road. For some reason, there was always a chicken bone around and Stormy would find it.

I spanked her for getting in the trash in the kitchen. You know what her response was? Nothing. She did it again. For 5 years, then tay finally said “I don’t think it’s working.” Tay was right. It didn’t work. So we just had to get a garbage can that could lock.

There are so many pictures, it is hard to choose which ones tell the story the best. She is a good dog and has been great for the girls.

My only peeve is that she seems to ignore them. She won’t run and greet them, or kiss them (that may be a perk, that stormy doesn’t lick). Maybe this is because we had her before we had kids?

Stormy has a few more gray hairs than she did before. She doesn’t chase the squirrels as often as she once did. She is a great dog and I think the one thing that really absolutely makes her the happiest is a fall afternoon, when the weather is nice, and I am doing yard work. Stormy will just sit nearby, and move to be close enough, but not in the way. She will watch the people pass by on the street, and enjoy every moment “working” with me in the yard. Love her.