Category: Journal

This weekend Sarah and I went to the city for our anniversary. We ate at an amazing pizza place and went to the Aire bathhouse. I think that’s a fun new tradition that we started doing that’s super relaxing – staying at our favorite Hyatt Regency hotel on the river, having a great dinner, then…

Sarah and I spent a night in Chicago for our 20 year anniversary. The hotel was a dump, but the steak restaurant (RPM Steak) was great and in the morning we took our paddleboards on the river downtown and then walked to see the airshow. I am so lucky to have such an amazing wife.…

When sitting at the fireworks on Thursday night I realized, with a bit of emotion, that July 4 in Petoskey may be our family’s most consistent traditions. I remember early in our marriage when Sarah said she wanted to always come to Petoskey for the 4th of July fireworks. We’ve mostly done that, coming over…

The last few weeks have been full of fun celebrations for our kids. – Jackson’s Robotics team qualified for state…then qualified for worlds; – Parker is winning his track races and bringing home medals for Science Olympiad and had a fun choir concert; – Elly’s volleyball team is winning their brackets at volleyball tournaments. It…

Yesterday we took the kids to Nub’s Nob to go skiing…but Sarah and I didn’t ski. Not once. The kids were all by themselves. I joked with the family that this was the official scoring of our success as parents, that our kids knew how to ski and didn’t need our help to do it…

Today I really enjoyed our family council. We started with a simple lesson on gratitude, and that was supposed to lead us to have a conversation about donations and serving others and Christmas… At one point I somehow asked the kids if they thought I should get a drum set for Christmas (the kids all…