A friend recently asked about the blog saying that he enjoyed reading it, and I thought how I enjoy writing blog posts, so I will keep writing from time to time.

For Father’s Day, Taylor planned a daytime adventure for the family and I off to Saxapahaw, North Carolina. If you haven’t heard of it (of course you haven’t heard of it, who in the world is familiar with Saxapahaw?), it’s a 45 minute drive away in some direction that the GPS took us.

Once there, there is a great little mill-type building that has been re-finished into a brewery/event space/coffee house/place for shops.

For a Sunday after church, we went to the brewery. It was a great little spot right on the river. The place was slammed for the occasion, and even though it took a while to get our meal, it was delicious.

We keep telling Mercy she is going to regret it one day when she gets older and there aren’t any pictures of her because she either a) runs away, or b) frowns for a picture.

After lunch, we crossed the bridge to the small state park on the island in the river. It has a few trails that go in different directions. I’m not gonna lie- my “watch out for snakes” alarms were going off in my head. We didn’t see any though.

We got to play around in the river, just like the words of a country song about living in the south. And, the playground was pretty great: shaded, and simple, and it looked almost like Jonah and the whale.

Also for Father’s Day, Taylor got me a shirt for our upcoming trip to Disney World. The back story is, all my life, but especially when I was in middle/high school, when meeting people and introducing myself, people would respond with something like “Luke? Does anyone ever say ‘I am your father’?” in reference to Darth Vader’s famous line in Star Wars.

So, since Star Wars is now a part of Disney World, I am pretty excited to see Darth Vader, and Tay got me this special shirt as part of the occasion:

Summertime

Summer for us is a lot of pool, swim team (also at the pool), and whatever this is:

We had some friends over for a cook out last week, and it was great. It is hot as fire outside, but it didn’t matter much. Between these three families (we miss the fourth family of the group, Hernan and Cathy, as they moved up North to Rhode Island). These kids have known each other since the beginning, so when they get together, they just pick up where they left off, and it is awesome to see.

One day I was taking Mercy home from school, and she randomly pointed to a street and said “I want to go home that way”, so we took another route home. We weren’t in a rush, and even though I often feel like I am the “no” parent saying no to everything, I said “yes” to Mercy’s little request that day. We ended up at this park near our house and just played under the trees. It just reminds me how beautiful Greensboro really is.

Scrub the deck

Are you a “handy” kind of person? Like, would you consider yourself pretty capable of fixing things around the house when you need to?

I’m not. I’m not really a handy person. I work on a computer all day, and mow the lawn, but I am not really a fixer-upper kind of person.

But, my deck is looking terrible. A few boards are rotting, and it just felt a little embarrassing when people came over.

So, before the dinner party above, and using that as a motivating deadline, I went to town, doing an hour or so of work every day, plus a full day on Wednesday in honor of Juneteenth, and it turned out pretty good.

A few boards had to be replaced. I listened to a book on tape about Elvis Presley and it was kinda nice to get down and dirty and work with my soft office hands to create something that looks pretty good.