Yup, tonight was pretty awesome! Becky is out with some friends and I’m chillin’ with the boys, playing games and watching Harry Potter. The best part so far – besides hanging out with my boys – was supper.
Last night Dominic offered to make us supper based on what he’d learned in school that day. Becky hit the grocery store for supplies and this was the sight in the kitchen earlier tonight…
How awesome is that??? Not only did he cook, but he and Gavin did dishes too!
I always love the time with the kiddos, but spending time with them after they cooked and cleaned was even more awesome!!!
The past month and change has been pretty amazing! Every single day at about lunchtime my phone buzzes due to a specific Facebook post. It is the daily reminder of what I posted on this day in past years.
As I pull up the notification I’m now happy to see TWO blog posts… one from last year, and one from two years ago. It’s like this amazing trail of bread crumbs leading to many happy memories, many of which I would have not remembered. I read them and I smile, still thankful for what I was thankful for in the past.
Normally I would wrap up the blog, but today was a special day for another reason. In the spirit of this post I’m going to leave a little seed to remember next year and in future years. This a little cryptic, but I want to have to pause to really think and remember what today meant, the news I received, and another reason why I’m so thankful today.
For a great tree death comes as a gradual transformation. Its vitality ebbs slowly. Even when life has abandoned it entirely it remains a majestic thing. On some hilltop a dead tree may dominate the landscape for miles around. Alone among living things it retains its character and dignity after death. Plants wither; animals disintegrate. But a dead tree may be as arresting, as filled with personality, in death as it is in life. Even in its final moments, when the massive trunk lies prone and it has moldering into a ridge covered with mosses and fungi, it arrives at a fitting and noble end. It enriches and refreshes the earth. And later, as part of other green and growing things, it rises again.
It might not have been the most epic family game night ever, but it was a lot of fun and it was pretty much out of the blue. When I got home from work I was initially planning on heading out to Menards to pick up the one last sheet of foam insulation I need and put it up in the garage. As I pulled in the driveway I realized that I hadn’t spent much time with the boys over the past few days and I had a Weblos meeting to plan. After a quick moment of hesitation I knew what I should be focused on, so I did.
The four of us fired up a handful of our family favorites – at least the ones that were relatively short and quickly playable. Fun was had by all, everyone won a game or two, and we even invented some new words. Dominic got confused on a play while playing Do Over and uttered a sound that immediately became a new family favorite… “Err, but, der, but…” It is pronounced Er’ buh der but and it was said many times as the night went on and was usually followed by the sound of laughter.
At first I gave the boys the choice of playing games or TV and I’m happy that they chose games, it turned out to be a very fun night!
After resting up and getting well over 8 hour of sleep last night I had a pretty awesome day today! Funny how getting a great night of sleep can really help me have a more successful day. Work was non-stop, but all good and very productive, but what I am most thankful for today is connecting and re-connecting with friends.
Over lunch I met an old friend, a teammate of mine from about 17 years ago. She and I had bumped into each other at a presentation I gave a couple of weeks ago and set up a time to meet for lunch to re-connect. It was a blast! An hour and change blew by in no time as we shared what we’ve been up to in the 16+ years since we’d last talked. While it was a long time ago it was so funny to see how much it felt like just yesterday we’d worked together. We’ll definitely have to get together again in the future, there were too many funny kid stories to through all of them today! As an interesting side note, after lunch I chuckled to myself as I thought about the whole situation and am pretty sure there’s an article or future blog somewhere… If you have gone 15+ years without talking with someone, what would you talk about in your first hour? What does that say about you and your life? Does it mirror the things that are most important to you? It was pretty wild!
After work we headed out to meet up with some friends to let all of our kids trick or treat together. While the boys were all out loading up bags of candy the adults sat around the fire, ate, drank, and shot the bull. Many laughs, jokes, memories, and smiles were shared. I love hanging out with that crew of friends, they’re all great people that we have so much in common with and just enough differences with to keep life interesting! Special thanks to Adam and Kelsey for hosting and cooking, it was awesome!!!
Today was another great day, so many positives to look back on and be grateful for. At the end of it though, I’m so thankful to have time to connect with friends. Our lives get busy and we run from one thing to the next. In those moments when we choose to slow down and reconnect with our friends there’s a peace and calm that is so greatly appreciated.
I guess maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks!
After the past couple of weeks of go go go I’ve finally started to hit that point. There’s been so much fun, so much has been accomplished. That said, there’s a list of things that I want to do and it’s really tempting to hammer down tonight to get a few of them checked off the list… but I’m not going to do that. Instead I will be in bed and asleep well before 9pm, possibly even before 8:30.
Usually I’d buckle down, push myself harder for a little longer, start to feel my left eye tingle, and then hit the wall hard… shattering into many pieces. It would then take a while to get this Humpty Dumpty put back together again.
Today, I put my hand out to see how far away the wall was and I touched it. Just lightly, not hitting it or crashing headlong into it. Just a light touch. Resisting the urge to double down, I’m going to chill. If I take the night to get 8+ hours of sleep I will be refreshed and a long ways away from the wall. I’ll be able to go hard at it a gain for the next sprint without worries about crashing. For the long haul I know I just need to chill, and that’s just what I am going to do.
Days like today just leave me smiling. They are the days that remind me of why I write this blog. When I started this a couple of years back one of the biggest reasons was because I wasn’t grateful for all of the awesomeness in my life. Today I kept looking for the awesomeness to blog about and I found so much that my brain pretty much short circuited!
Really, I’ve been watching out all day for what I am going to blog about. As I notice something I pause, smile, and immediately start writing a blog in my head. Just as I’m getting started with that, my brain leap frogs to something else and the process starts anew. Once that gets rolling I notice something else that I’m thankful for and I move on to that. While this may sound tiring, my smile grows wider and wider every single time. How fortunate am I to have so many blessings in my life???
The only downside to this is that my brain feels like a cork board with notes, memos, and pictures pinned up everywhere. A chaotic mix of seemingly random sparks of inspiration. I’ve even started doing the FBI tv show thing and run string from one pin to another hoping to find a common thread, the blog’s topic. As I take time reflect and step back my mind is overwhelmed by the massive amount of data covering the board. I can see myself sitting back in a chair, feet up on my desk, arms behind my head, shaking my head while staring at the board, smiling, and then laughing to myself as I realize the impossibility of what I want to accomplish.
Some of the memos posted on the board are:
Great weekend with the guys creating a time we’ll never forget
Looking forward to meeting up with one of my other best friends next weekend
Becky being okay with me getting some guy time in
A note from a past high school teacher that left me smiling and brought back warm memories
Surprising Becky by cleaning the boat and getting it ready
Making the time to work on the workshop for a little bit
Tacos for lunch
Going for an afternoon run with Becky
The boys being responsible enough for them to be left home alone once in a while
Random memories of another high school teacher who was a huge influence on me and the trajectory of my career
Getting my planning for the next week of work
Going to a delicious meal with Becky’s coworkers, hosted by an amazing cook!
Spending time with people I don’t often spend time with and finding many similarities and having excellent conversation
Vacations – Becky and I both enjoying them, focusing on them, and living our life around them
And many, many others…
While I tried to write about each of these individually, I started to miss the big picture. There wasn’t one of them to be thankful for, it is the overloading of so many things to be thankful for that needed to be the main point tonight.
So that helped with the blog, but I was stumped on what picture to use… do I choose on of the things I’m thankful for, a pic from today, one online that fits the theme??? Interestingly enough, I changed the wallpaper on my phone today and when I looked at my phone to start typing, it just felt right to use it. Enjoy!
Tonight we had a pretty awesome event for our teams, we headed out on a boat for dinner and drinks and are now off to a comedy show. So much to write about all the fun that was had, but the shows about to start!
Thanks to everyone who made this an awesome night!!!
Today was pretty damn awesome. Seriously, from start to end there were so many things to be thankful for it was amazing! Here’s a rundown of the awesomeness today:
The new franchisee and his teammate that are training in our office this week have been crushing it!!! They’ve been so much fun to have in our office, we can’t wait to see them grow the Appleton office to one of Express’ greatest.
With a couple of weekends with my best friends looming and one of their birthday’s today the texts were hot and heavy all morning and it left me laughing out loud often.
Spending time with a couple of my teammates to just talk with them felt great.
We surprised one of our best recruiters with a $1,000 check that he had won through a referral contest with our team.
A teammate thanked me for some advice I offered up yesterday and had already taken action on it.
I wrote a thank you or two to some people that I’ve been meaning to thank for a while, it felt wonderful putting my thanks into writing for them.
In planning for 2018 I took some time to review where we’ve grown from over the past couple of years and it was staggering. In one of the most important metrics I can point to as a business owner we had an increase of 249%!
A couple of times I felt a twinge of guilt knowing that I’ve been focusing more on work than I would normally like to, but then thought about the upcoming vacations we have planned and the time I’ll have with my family during those times, and I smiled and got right back to work. Work hard, play hard… and I have plans to play very hard!
While driving home from work I had an unexpected, but very uplifting, super deep existential conversation with my brother. It was pretty awesome to trade thoughts and ideas, ad crazy to see how we both are connecting some of the same dots. I’d give almost anything to have Dad back, but I’m thankful for all of the insights I’ve had since his passing. It seems odd to say, but I am more joyful and happy thanks to those insights.
Cub scouts was a pretty cool experience. As my den continues to get older I’m trying to get them to take on more and more responsibility. Tonight they created, set up, and then led the other scouts through an obstacle course in the gym. They all did a great job of cheering the other scouts on, of leading them, and keeping things running. There were many times that I wanted to jump in, but I held back and it awesome to see just how much they’ve grown over the past year. It was one of those proud moments that also reminds me to pull back and let people grow sometimes… more than I have done over the past couple of years.
Now I’m snuggled up next to Becky as I type this. Soon it’ll be bedtime, sleep, wake up early, repeat. and I’m okay with this level of craziness. Not only because I know that I only get one spin on this merry go round, but also because I get to have a seat on it next to my best friend!
Today was a pretty awesome day. So many wonderful things to be happy for. Coaching, learning, listening, growing, thinking, and spending time with friends, new and old. It’s been an awesome day all around. That said, there’s a specific moment that really sticks out to me.
When we headed out for our early morning run it was fairly brisk outside – about 38, but felt like 34 or so. As I normally do, I stopped and walked for a little bit while Becky ran to the normal turnaround point. That couple of minutes of time alone in the dark feels good, it gives me the opportunity to pause and be alone for a moment in nature and the dark.
This morning as Becky and the girls ran ahead I started thinking about all of the things I have to be grateful for. As I kept thinking and remembering all of those things something just hit me… This was trapping weather.
To be clear – I know this is not a picture of me trapping with my dad. I can’t seem to find any of those, but I figured this was pretty close and from about the same timeframe… and it makes me smile seeing it 🙂
When I was younger I used to go trapping for mink and muskrat with my dad. We’d head out early, well before dawn, and paddle the canoe around Solberg Lake checking his trap line. The mornings were sometimes cold enough that we could see our breath. At that time of the day there was no noise, no light except the moon, no one else awake, nothing disturbing the water except our canoe and our paddles. Often times we wouldn’t even talk, we’d just enjoy the quiet and take in the beauty. It was so peaceful and serene. Nothing else in the world mattered, it was just us being present in the moment with nature.
I’m not sure why, but I still vividly remember putting our canoe in early on a Saturday morning, the morning after my first middle school dance. The song Kokomo by the Beach Boys was stuck in my head. We put the canoe in and started paddling in the cool fall air. To be honest, I don’t even remember what, if anything, we caught that day, I just remember the feeling of enjoying being outside with my dad, paddling in a lake so still that the only movement was our wake, the only sound was our canoe moving through water. It was awesome.
This morning felt like that same kind of morning, especially as we ran past the river in a relatively quiet and unlit area. As Becky and the girls caught up back up to me I shared some of those memories with me. I think she thought I was sad, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. It felt great to think back on those memories, remember that feeling of being out in the quiet morning, spending time with Dad. The memories made me smile, warmed me, and brought me joy.
When we were getting close to the end of our run Becky squealed with joy and pointed out a raccoon that was sitting on the side of the road watching us in the dark. It didn’t move, it didn’t hiss… It just watched us. I smiled and immediately had memories of a raccoon that Dad had some fun with while trapping once, a story that I’ll never, ever forget. Again I smiled at the memories. How fortunate am i to have so many filed away in the back of my brain?
Today was awesome all around, but I’m most thankful for this cool and dark weather, trapping weather. It may have been cold, but it warmed my soul.
Today was a great example. Last year on this date I was 
Thankful for Forty 