It’s been a while, but you know how this goes. Here are a bunch of memories I have from the past year in no particular order other than the way I remembered them:
- Buzzing my hair and then going back to cutting my own hair all year (with some clean up from Megan sometimes)
- Sledding with Lachlan and Rosie behind the Plainview park
- Sledding with Lachlan on the giant hill when we were out of town for his swim meet
- Buying the Woodland Hills jungle gym as treasurer and seeing it get installed
- Buying cameras for the Woodland Hills park as the treasurer
- Meeting Dave and Alexis at the park and then meeting up with them multiple times throughout the year including at the roller skating rink
- Buying the brown denim jacket, my first color addition in my wardrobe since 2020
- Sitting in McDonald’s working on TheSecurityBusiness.com on Juneteenth, exactly one year after registering the LLC
- Touring the Angel’s Envy distillery with Megan for our 10th wedding anniversary (trying the fluffy stuff out of the big tank up top and trying the hand sanitizer stuff)
- Eating at the Mexican restaurant after Angel’s Envy with Megan (and finding a stolen ambulance parked the wrong way outside as we were leaving)
- Eating at El Mundo with Megan while our younger kids stayed at the church in December
- Driving down to Tennessee and dropping off Lachlan at the summer camp with the Fords
- Finding out a few weeks later about the floods that killed a number of young girls at a summer camp
- Eating at Las Margaritas with Mayor Sean and everyone with Woodland Hills, bringing Lachlan and Rosie with me, and meeting the couple who sat across from us at the table
- Attending Summerfest in Woodland Hills and listening to the band that Commissioner Horan recommended
- Putting stamps on all the property tax checks for Woodland Hills
- Going to the doctor twice when I was sick early in the year, the longest I’d ever taken off work for being sick
- Trying to find a TV show to watch while I was sick
- Touring WKU with Gage
- Finding out that Gage would mostly get a full ride if he went to UofL (and him eventually deciding to go there and stay at home instead of living on campus at WKU)
- Staining and hanging the board in our living room, splitting the top of the wall with wallpaper and the bottom of the wall that’s painted
- Attending the Independence Bank Christmas party, trying that cider drink with Weller and talking with the woman who recommended it, and then talking with the two networking guys at the end of evening
- Attending to the Sonitrol Christmas party after inviting some of our contractors and PyeBarker folks (but none of them joining us)
- Walking American Printing House for the first time
- Meeting with Craig at APH and trying to figure out what we need for each door and camera location
- Going to the laundry mat after our power quit working in our house in March
- Taking clothes to Poppy and Momma’s to get things dried in a pinch
- Going to the Vineyard Men’s Retreat and talking with Brian on the drive out
- Finding out that our power was messed up right before leaving for the conference
- Getting quotes to repair our electrical in our house and choosing one company
- Setting up a special one-time-use credit card number to help pay for the electrical work
- Talking with the electrician on the first night of the Vineyard conference and finding out we had more problems than we thought with the electrical (but him thankfully getting it working temporarily that night)
- Leading worship at the Vineyard Men’s Retreat
- Finding out the costs for the different options of electrical repairs on our house and deciding that we couldn’t afford to get any of them done right now
- Buying some electrical cords and connectors off Amazon to get a cable that we could connect to our dryer across our kitchen floor so we could use our dryer or our oven, just not at the same time
- Attending Kameron’s wedding but having to leave before the reception to go to work
- Attending the celebration of life for Grandma Giles
- Setting up RepliQ
- Sending cold emails to security alarm companies in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota
- Setting up the camping trip for Rock Men
- Leading the Rock Men’s devotion at the camp site
- Giving Gage a car for his birthday at Texas Roadhouse
- Getting a text from Gage that his car wasn’t working and eventually getting it traded out for a Kia Forte
- Fixing the mower by just realizing that it had a flat tire and that’s why the mower deck wasn’t level
- Helping Rosie learn to ride a bike on two wheels on Lachlan’s red bike
- Learning about Gracebound from Brian and wanting to get more involved in it
- Listening to the Alex Hormozi podcast episode on Modern Wisdom on a road trip
- Getting my office repainted with an accent wall
- Asking for help from our church to pay for our car repair on the Dodge Caliber
- Finding out the repair didn’t fix the Dodge and we’d have to junk it
- Talking about what happened with the Dodge at Rock Men’s group
- Playing Hnefatafl and Settlers of Catan with Tory and Dan
- Donating $350 to Grace Bound
- Paying off $19,000 on our credit card
- Playing drums at the Vineyard worship night in Richmond
- Practicing the drum parts with the tracks on my electronic kit at the house for the Vineyard worship night
- Agreeing to help Kelsey with leading worship at the Vineyard worship night only to find out it was playing guitar with a large band of people, not just a couple of us
- Going to the Middletown Easter festival and seeing the bubble man making bubbles
- Attending Gage’s high school graduation
- Hanging out with the Grennans when they were in town, especially at the party we threw for Gage
- Finding Rosalie under the inflatable after they were playing on top of it and it collapsed
- Going to the Louisville Slugger Museum with the Grennans and trying the batting cages with them
- Bringing Rosie, Lachlan, and Gage over to the hotel where the Grennans we’re staying to swim in their hotel pool together while we ate pizza
- Downloading and starting to use the Strong app for tracking my workouts after Bryce recommended it
- Selling the Nissan to the junkyard and the tow truck driver letting Lachlan raise the lever for the winch to pull the car onto the truck
- Selling the Dodge Caliber to the junkyard
- Fixing our oven by changing the power cord on it after we thought it might have killed the power in our house (or at least fried the oven)
- Taking Lachlan and Rosalie to the La Grange skatepark
- Taking Lachlan and Rosie back to the skatepark because they had so much fun
- Taking Lachlan and Rosie to the skate part under the bridge in Indiana and hanging out with Ryan there
- Recording the song and video with Ryan and Parrish at Ryan’s house
- Helping Megan coach Lachlan’s football team
- Traveling for Lachlan’s swim meets, including staying overnight out of town
- Learning how to do the different swim strokes from Lachlan in the hotel pool
- Helping be a timer at one of Lachlan’s swim meets
- Changing the belt on our dryer and getting it working again
- Spraying water into the beam of light streaming into our living room
- Losing my second ring for a while and then Lachlan finding it in the floorboard of the car when we were cleaning it out
- Taking photos with the operations people at work for the 90s themed photo album for Ken
- Going to the bougie Goodwill with Megan, Lachlan, and Rosie
- Canceling our YMCA membership, signing up for Crunch Fitness, and learning the different machines and weights I liked to use and could lift at Crunch
- Eating lunch at Poppy and Momma’s house on Sundays after Aunt Christine moved to Louisville
- Giving William wrist straps for weightlifting
- Watching Lachlan and Gage (and Rosie on the lowest level) do the ropes course at the zoo
- Delivering pizza to that couple who came back from the airport at midnight and tipped me really well
- Talking on the phone with the man who was mad about his pizza delivery taking an hour and then calling him back five minutes later when I realized I was his driver and would be delivering to him
- Finding a new pair of gray pants at the Goodwill to replace my two pairs that were falling apart
- Meeting Vex (Rob) from New Zealand and talking with him for a bit on our back porch
- Building a snowman in our yard after the snow early in December
- Sledding with Megan, Lachlan, and Rosie at Springdale
- Walking the valley of the giants and watching the kids wade in the creek afterward
- Texting Zack with Domino’s to ask if they were hiring
- Hearing about Michael Tait
- Buying protein powder from Aldi and staying consistent with taking it most of the year
- Getting texts from Megan about our neighbor and the fire department, talking with Shannon later that night, and finding out the neighbor killed himself on purpose
- Writing part of a novel with ChatGPT
- Hiking and exploring in Brown County for the first time with Megan
- Taking meal prepped meals to work with me after Megan put them together on Sunday
- Scouting out the security setup at the three Wright Implement locations
- Going to the gaslight festival with Eric and his family and buying the eyeball ring for Lachlan
- Staying late working to set up the mobile camera trailer with Eric for the first time
- Getting my passport renewed
- Practicing parallel parking with Gage at the driver’s test center
- Waiting outside the driving test while Gage took his test
- Hearing that Gage passed his driver’s test
- Getting the call from Gage when he got into a car accident at Waffle House
- Talking with the lady and taking photos of her car after Gage hit her car but not seeing any damages
- Finding out I was going to get flown in a private jet (and later finding out it was canceled)
- Helping Megan set up some of the Elf on the Shelf adventures with Rosie getting up super early to find him and Lachlan loving it too
- Painting the tops of six mason jars for the Thriftmas present for Megan
- Going to the Christmas Eve service in the afternoon at Southeast
- Doing the trunk or treat event at Boys and Girls Heaven and meeting that roofer who had a rough childhood, went to prison, and then has started trying to help our troubled children
- Getting the pool from our friends (neighbors down the street) and brining it back to our house
- Racing Lachlan on his new bike while I ran on Christmas day and losing to him for the first time
- Finding out that Gage tested positive for COVID right before Christmas and then calling the Grennans to let them know
- Dropping off presents at the Hyatt for the family, Christmas gift exchange because Gage tested positive for COVID
- Getting a new bison watch band from Zach for Christmas
- Opening the bottle of Old Forrester with Uncle Marty and drinking with them on Christmas evening
- Meeting with Bryce for coffee at Heini Bros.
- Meeting with Bryce at Crunch to workout together
- Hearing that my new niece, CeCe, was born
- Taking the nieces and nephews to Top Golf and the Slime Kitchen for a day at the mall
- Putting up the shelf in the living room for Megan on New Year’s Eve
- Building the cyborg arm with Lachlan on New Year’s Eve
- Staying up until midnight with Lachlan and Rosie for the first time on New Year’s Eve
Happy New Year!
