2024

Sarah and the kids got me a drum set for my birthday. Something I’ve talked about for years!

Sarah and I went to an AJR concert in Indianapolis with Ben and Jacee. Sarah said it was her favorite concert – it was super creative and unlike anything I’ve ever been to.

We took a weekend to see the green river for St. Patty’s day in Chicago.

Elly had her volleyball tournament in Florida. She played super well and her team played really hard. Not everyone showed up and one of the players got injured right away so they had to be scrappy!

During Elly’s tournament we took at day to go to the Space Museum with Parker.

We all went to visit Ben and Susannah and Whit over the summer. This was a park they took us to that everyone walked through. I was super scared to go down so instead I went up and almost got stuck it was so skinny!

This is a picture of Jackson driving up to drop off our car after he took the kids to Mariano’s while Sarah and I had gone on a date and they left their keys in the car. So they had to jog down to meet us at the restaurant then Jackson drove my car home to get an extra set of keys then drove back to us to drop off the car then jogged back to Marianos. Haha!

When we went to Europe we did this canyoning activity where we traversed down the Alps in the water. It seemed to be everyone’s favorite activity!

Jackson said Billy Joel was the only artist he listened to that was still alive so we took him and the family to a concert at Soldier Field.

Sarah and I started going out for Coffee on Sunday mornings. This is Parker’s band teacher who randomly was playing at a coffee shop one Sunday morning.

Parker was in the marching band this year playing keyboard.

Jackson went on a handful of college visits this year. This is the mammoth statute at UIUC.

2024 – Books I Read

Non-Fiction

Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, Peter Attia

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout, Cal Newport

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everone, Heather McGhee

No Time Like the Future, Michael J. Fox

The Tools, Phil Stutz

The Second Mountain, David Brooks

The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt

Fiction

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

The Testaments, Margaret Atwood

The Fifth . Season, N.K. Jemisin

The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin

The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver

Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman

Spirituality

Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Bobby Henderson

God in Search of Man, Abraham Heschel

The Monastic Heart, Joan Chittister

What I Know For Sure, Oprah Winfrey

Build the Life You Want, Arthur Brooks

2024 – TV and Movies

Shitts Creek

Paul vs. Tyson

The Gentlemen

All the Light We Cannot See

Better Call Saul

2024 – Podcasts

The Ezra Klein Show

What Now? With Trevor Noah

Decoder by The Verge

The Vergecast by The Verge

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