My Life-Long War Against Flies

I woke up Thursday morning with an overwhelming feeling of shame.

I asked my wife if she would prefer that I was a frog. She answered “no,” but she hesitated. Read More

Why Do I Let My Nephews Hit Home Runs in Wiffle Ball But Crush Them in Mario Kart?

Any time adults are playing a game at one of my family parties, a niece or nephew inevitably wants to join. When this happens with Wiffle Ball, we let them get a free at bat in between innings.

Toddlers have an amazing batting average in my family wiffle ball games. Read More

You Don’t Really Know a Person Until You’ve Played Cards with Them

A deck of playing cards is an amazing thing. It is an entirely unnecessary item that is found in nearly every home.

It’s been said that if you spent your whole life shuffling cards, you’d never deal the same deck twice. I don’t know if that’s true, but I know that the number of possible card combinations pales in comparison to the priceless bonds that playing cards help create.

Never trust a family that doesn’t own a well-worn deck of cards. Read More

A Decade of Dates: Celebrating Ten Years of Dating

One of my favorite tricks to raise my wife Jenny’s mood is to ask her to pick a favorite date from all of the dates we’ve ever been on together.

Depending on her mood, the answer is often different and it’s hard not to smile once you rattle a few off. Read More

The Family that Plays Together, Stays Together

I love playing competitive yard games, even though I’m not particularly good at them; being bad at them is part of the fun. Nobody likes to lose, but if you ever find yourself angry while holding a bean bag in one hand and a beer in another, it’s time to re-evaluate your life decisions. Read More

The Comforting Joy of Repeat Vacation Destinations

One of my favorite things to do is to return somewhere I’ve been before and mention all the ways that things have changed. I’m usually not upset about the change, I just like mentioning how things hadn’t always been that way, then, I comment on the change as if some meaning could be derived from the change itself. Read More

Birthday Silhouette

Today would have been Mom’s seventieth birthday; sadly, she never saw her sixty-sixth. Today’s date, December third, 12/3, remains etched into my soul, even now that she has passed.

I wanted to share something special for Mom’s seventieth birthday, so I modified a speech I first gave two years into a video titled “Choosing Hospice.”

Each time I’ve given this speech, it has helped someone who has gone (or is going) through a similar situation. Read More