The Logan Family

Month: September 2024

  • Four years old, and 94 years old (almost)

    Four years old, and 94 years old (almost)

    Aunt Pep passed away. She was 91 years old, and lived a remarkable life. Her daughter, Kathy, put together a touching obituary you can read by following that link, but even that doesnt quite capture enough of Aunt Pep’s life. She leaves behind a husband of 70 years, uncle Jim, who is 93 years old.

    Who was aunt Pep?

    It all started with these 5 brothers; the one on the left is my grandfather as a child, Gordon; his brother, Jim, is pictured on the right in the first picture, and Aunt Pep was Jim’s wife; my dad’s aunt.

    All of the families of these 5 boys grew up together in New Jersey, and their bond as cousins was special.

    The funeral was held at Johns Island Presbyterian Church, where Aunt Pep volunteered in a number of positions during the 30+ years of her time there. The service was special, and her husband, children, and grandchildren painted a strong image of a life well-lived by an incredibly strong, industrious, loving woman. She was intentional with her time, and loved others well through her service in countless ways, through countless organizations over her years.

    The part that stood out to me was how the goodness of a family rises to the top. Sometimes I am not amazing with my choice of words, so bear with me on this one because I want to convey it properly.

    There are hiccups in our family. I think there are hiccups in every family. Hiccups like strained relationships, divorce, financial challenges, disease, death, and heartache. The list can go on, but that is not the point. The point is that those things are only in passing, and in the end the strong relationships that honor one another, support one another, and live a life to bless others are the ones that out shine all of the other “hiccups” that inevitably arise. I know I fall short in this area often in a lot of ways.

    The stories that were shared about Aunt Pep and Uncle Jim showed how they were a lighthouse to their family over the years: loving their two children well at all points in their lives, and loving and welcoming their grandchildren in the same way, all through college and beyond. Jim, who is the last of the five brothers, became a patriarch of all of the families, and his family was as welcoming to the extended family (all of his brother’s families) as they were to their own. This was something different. This was something special. This is something rare, and something I think all of us can aspire to. Uncle Jim and Aunt Pep set the bar pretty high.

    After the service, we went back to the hotel, and hung with the family until almost midnight. I know, its crazy to stay up that late. We told stories. We laughed. We reminisced.

    Not all of the pictures are available, but Brenna caught me in this pic, as we were arranging for the family photo. It was in this moment that I missed my cousin Ken- his zingers would have been special during these few minutes while we organized everyone to get the perfect shot of the group.

    Lot’s of great pictures were taken by the group, and I wish that I had taken more to share.

    I will share this though: here is a picture of my great-great grandfather. He is the one that came over from Scotland many years ago. Also, a picture of me with my uncle Steve- who (in my opinion) is the spitting image of Dickie-Bird Papa (thats my great-grandfather’s name):

    It’s hard to do this weekend justice in a blog post. There was so much to share, great conversations. It was fun to connect with Tyler and Ashley and Ellie and Erin. We missed the cousins that couldn’t make it.

    The next morning, my dad and I hopped back in the car and did the 5 hour marathon drive back to Greensboro: unfortunately, I didn’t get any pics during his visit on my phone, but it was a pretty great drive. I’m used to driving with a small kid, so it was rather great to drive without having to stop for potty breaks every 40 minutes.

    Mercy is four.

    Mercy had a birthday party this weekend. Each year on her birthday, I remember the journey it took to meet her. I wrote about it before and you can read about it if you are interested, but the short of it is that she is a special kid we prayed for over many years, and it is special to celebrate this unique, wild girl:

    The picture above is great, but she has a lot more spunk than you would think by going off of that image. She is fearless, tough, sad, and happy. She loves her sister. She loves her cousins, and uncles and aunts and grand parents. She loves to read books at night before bed. She dances (like her big sister), sings, smiles, laughs, and is just a wonderful kid.

    The princess party was fun- thanks to everyone who was able to make it. The face painter was awesome, so were the try-on princess dresses. The bounce house.

    Once again, I didn’t get any good pics of my dad: driving 10 hours in 2 days left me with the jitters, but it was totally worth it. A special time to honor Aunt Pep with the family, special to share some time with my dad, and special to share my world here in Greensboro with him.

  • Fescue, Festival, and Foul Ball

    Fescue, Festival, and Foul Ball

    “What do we have going on?”

    “Not much, today we don’t have anything planned until 5pm or so.”

    These phrases are rare; not having much to do for a Saturday is about as common as a Dodo bird around here. The weather was perfect, getting a bit cooler, which meant, it was time for the hardest part of my glorious plans to have a green, green lawn for 2025: time to aerate. And this yard has a lot of room for improvement:

    The lawn after many dry weeks

    To this point, I had already geeked out quite a bit about it. Taylor can tell you, love it or hate it, I tend to obsess over things, and this was another excellent example. I don’t want to just throw some grass seed out there and see what’s gonna happen; this is something I have never done before, so I dug deep into the subject by reading the Turf Files from the NC State website.

    The site describes how the state of North Carolina offers free soil testing during the off season, so of course I took advantage of my tax-payer dollars for this very in demand service:

    THe analysis makes a recommendation of the type of soil to use based on the N-P-K proportions. In my case, they recommended just the K (potassium). If you want to do the same, here is the link to test your soil.

    The Turf-files also go deep into the various types of grass in North Carolina. For a noob such as myself, this was all news: what kind of grass to go with? I always assumed all grass was the same? It is not all the same. In the Piedmont, you can go with some types of warm-climate grasses, or cool season grasses. The NC State Turf Files recommends doing a blend of grass seed, and Kentucy 31 and Tall Fescue seemed like the perfect mix:

    After aerating on Saturday with a 300 pound machine (the Home Depot website says 255 pounds, but surely that number isn’t accurate), Sunday was a chance to do the final, fun stuff of the yard: do a couple passes with the potassium rich fertilizer, as recommended from my soil report; Then, since they didn’t have the recommended seed blend, I took the liberty of mixing my own blend of tall fescue and Kentucy 31 bluegrass:

    A grass seed blend
    Spreader for a small yard

    A couple of passes of the seed, and at this point, in my amateur confidence with no one around to tell me otherwise, I was doing a great job!

    But, not through with it yet: the final part, and most people argue as the most important, you gotta keep that stuff WET. And, since I over engineer everything (See last weeks post about the ring workout setup as an example), I had to do the same here and automate the watering.

    This is a whole ecosystem of gardening specialty tools. How much, or how little do you want to spend in order to keep your precious turf wet? For me, the answer was very little. And no thank you, please do not connect my watering system to my internet: I do not need to water my lawn while I am away from the house. Amazon, give me the cheap garden-hose automation tool that can help do a better job of watering the lawn than I ever will; and since no sprinkler can hit the whole lawn with the low-water pressure issue we have in our old house, better make 2 timers, and 2 sprinklers in the front yard:

    As of the writing of this post, the first watering is underway! We are off to the races, and lord willing, I’m finally gonna be living where the green grass grows in 8-12 weeks! Please, please don’t jump to 90 degrees in the next few weeks!

    Festival

    Years ago (maybe 8 or 9?), Greensboro became host to the National Folk Festival. Downtown transformed into an awesome, 10 stage music venue with all the fun things, and porta-potties needed to support such an event. Some time after that, the National part of the festival moved on, and was seamlessly replaced by the North Carolina folk festival. Still, many stages and music over three days in downtown greensboro.

    We had poor memories from last year’s festival where the music we heard just wasn’t that good. This year, on Friday night, we met up with our neighbors the McCrackens (our Disney Planner) and Rosie got to spend a lot of the night with some of her besties.

    In front of the stage
    Poor Mercy

    This was probably the highlight of the night: Getting to see Elias Alexander, an EDM, Celtic musician (did I get that right?). EDM=”Electronic Dance Music”. What does that mean? It means bagpipes and a Celtic flute with the intense beat of techno. Sounds wild, and it is wild, and it was surprisingly fun:

    Dancing with Mercy

    This music was so good that it made a man who was wheelchair bound get up and do a jig. This fella pushed his way, with his walker, through the crowd so he could get to the front row and show us how it’s done. How can this not tickle your soul with joy?

    Finally, at the end of the night on Saturday, I was able to stay up late enough to go to the 11pm after party at The Flat Iron. My friend Hence went the year before and said it was awesome. Though I could only make it to see 45 minutes of the show, it was awesome and gave me Nashville vibes for this small venue in Greensboro. Totally worth the $15 admission to hear Sam Fribush and Friends do their Organ music jam:

    Also, I haven’t been out that late in a while, but you get to see some things at that hour you wouldn’t see normally. Our group spent about an hour sitting behind this fella, who was a couple heartbeats away from his night ending poorly, but everyone who walked past did smile pretty big at the sight:

    Foul Ball

    Ok, I am running out of time before the kids wake up, but, we went to the final baseball game of the season with some good friends and it was fun. Sorry Andy and Laura, you left before I was able to get a pic, but it was fun hanging with your crowd as well:

    Until next year, grasshoppers!
    Sarah and the girls
    Mercy never smiles

  • What a structure! And, the last bowl.

    What a structure! And, the last bowl.

    Have you ever heard of “the ring” workout? “The Ring” doesnt refer to the Japanese horror novel turned into a film; “The Ring” is what they do in men’s gymnastics at the Olympics. There are a lot of different workouts and exercises that can be done with this simple setup, and it works your stabilizer muscles really well. The first time using “rings” to do, let’s say, some push ups- you will find yourself shaking like a leaf. It is pretty intense, and can leave a person wiped out in 10-15 minutes.

    PARIS, FRANCE – JULY 29: Brody Malone of Team United States competes on the rings during the Artistic Gymnastics Men’s Team Final on day three of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Bercy Arena on July 29, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

    Some friends of mine have done this workout for a while and really enjoyed the results, so I got a pair of rings; but, there is nowhere to hang them. We have a kids swings that is about 6′ off the ground, and that worked for just a few of the exercises, but was far from the best setup. If a man wants to get strong in his own yard, it has to be the best setup, right?

    If the swing set wasn’t high enough for a proper ring setup, surely a tree branch would do? Also no. There is not a single branch from our 6 gigantic trees with a proper branch to hang something from.

    I had to build my own ring setup. This would be easy. This would be fun. Surely my amazing wife would love and support the idea, right? Obviously this is the right thing to do to save money on a gym membership.

    The challenge was the support beams needed are too long to fit into the car: 8, 10, or 12 feet long. Usually my mom’s cargo can used to haul paintings would be a good resource, but she was out of town. The next best bet is Robert Core’s 1988 V8 Chevy Custom pickup truck. It’s army green:

    And it’s a stick shift. My friend Houston and I used to drive around town and mow yards in this very same truck 25 years ago. And it still runs.

    With Taylor’s blessing about a vague, but simple thing I wanted to build, and the truck to go get the 4 x 4s from Lowe’s, I got the saw out, drill, etc. and went to work. The plan changed: instead of dropping the wood beams into the ground as a permanent structure, Taylor’ requested it be above ground. You know, just in case I don’t continue using it for more than 3 months (a very reasonable position to have).

    On a daily basis, I work on a computer writing computer code; I am not a “handy” kinda person, but I can get things done. Over-analyzing makes me good at my job, but not-so-great at other things. So, for this simple project of building a pull-up bar, I needed to make sure it wouldn’t fall over in ANY direction. Also, these small, amazing, but curious and troublesome kids would also end up pushing the limits, I wanted to make sure these 4x4s could support it.

    And I accidentally went too large by using 12′ poles; however, these can be trimmed back, OR I can drop it into the ground at some point in the future. However, I present to you an over-engineered structure that my supportive, but embarrassed wife, hopes will keep my attention for more than 3 months:

    It’s hard to stay healthy. Taylor works. I work. We have to get groceries, but it is hard to go to great lengths to make sure we have super healthy meals. I run a bit, but get bored after reaching a distance of about 10 miles; the gym is expensive, and for some reason I am not motivated to lift weights. I started riding my bike for exercise, and that is fun so far (I am not great at it). If I can do 4 cardio workouts a week, that’s good- at about 20-40 minutes a piece.

    Also, this month is Sober-september to take a step in the right direction. Too many IPAs over the summer put me at +7 pounds since June- I am so lucky that my bathroom scale keeps track of that for me.

    Wish me luck!

    The last bowl.

    Part of our wedding registry was at a store called Anthropologie. It is hard to adequately describe the store, I will just fall flat on this, so I will not even try.

    However, we got lots of things from there. They are pretty neat, a little more artsy and colorful than what you may get at a boring department store. They fit Taylor’s style pretty well, and she still shops at this store to this day.

    We got a set of rice bowls from there; the set had either 4, 6, or 8 bowls, hard to say, but they are the perfect size. Good for ice cream; rice, sides for dinner.

    As a side note, we eat at home a lot. And, we never use paper plates (unless feeding a large crowd). So our dinner set gets used pretty often; 5x a week. If you include breakfasts and lunches, maybe much, much more.

    We have been married 14 years now. Thats 5130 days, or 732 weeks. If that bowl set was used a conservative, 4x per week- that puts us at 2,928 times that bowl was used.

    This week, finally, after putting away another load of clean dishes from the dishwasher, it’s lone matching bowl slipped and broke on the marble (or granite, I am not sure what our counters are made out of) counter. It had a good run. RIP to your brothers and sisters, little bowl.

    Maybe I can find some antique versions to replenish the set as some sort of really good, thoughtful husband gift; or maybe it’s just time to get some new bowls.