To our dearest Katie,

You are the most amazing wife, friend, partner, confidant, and mother these two otherwise hopeless boys could ask for. We love you with all our collective hearts (and then some). We’re not perfect, but we hope you can love us all the same.

Hey all! Just a quick note wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah (ending tomorrow), Happy Kwanzaa (starting tomorrow), and a Happy New Year!

I love when you get to that critical mass of Christmas cards received that you can start to see the people who are using the same card templates.

It's my Torii Hunter Day!

I just realized I never shared a picture of us in our family Halloween costumes! We decided to play off Nathan’s C2E2 costume and went as DC Comics villains.

This one cracked me up to no end.

We do a fairly simple, yet fun, setup in front of our house for Halloween. Some pumpkins, a spinning light display, fake spider webbing that we added this year, a Frankenstein's monster painted decorative pumpkin on top of our tall arbor vitae, and a large inflated and internally lit Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Hey, Katie! Can you believe that today is our 21st anniversary? You’ve been married to me (translation: put up with but have not yet mortally wounded) for a legal drinker’s worth of years!

It’s a special Double-Post Monday (TM pending… not really). Why the special occasion? Because today is Nathan’s 10th birthday!!!

‘Tis the season!

We’re going on vacation soon and, in preparation, have been checking out the weather in the immediate future to try to gauge what to expect.

It’s so effing hot in Arizona. Gorgeous, but hot.

Spend this Friday the 13th with someone special.

To the world, you are a mother.
To our family, you are the world.

Light ‘em if you got ‘em!

We just booked our second trip of the year... well, it's mostly booked. 

It would seem that Nathan is going to have a dual visit tonight from the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

This was our first of two true days of all Seattle and nothing but Seattle. Total tourist stuff. Seattle Aquarium, the Great Wheel, harbor and locks boat tour, Chihuly Gardens and Museum, and the Space Needle.

Day 3 from the Emerald City, yo! Actually, this was our driving trip outside Seattle and down into Oregon. We’ve got Mt. Rainier, Alder Dam, Mt. St. Helens, and sites from Twilight, The Goonies, and 10 Things I Hate About You.

Some shots from day two of our Seattle family vacation at Funko HQ in Everett, the Bruce and Brandon Lee gravesites, and the Jimi Hendrix Memorial…

Some shots from our drive into the Olympic Peninsula, the Bainbridge Island > Seattle Ferry, and around Pike Place Market.

I would like to take a brief respite from the normal drivel I post here to wish a very happy birthday to my beautiful wife. Nathan and I truly love you, hon, and couldn’t navigate our way out of the garage of this crazy ride known as life without you.

Katie sent me this. It made me laugh.

December 24… Chicagoland… and it’s 48° F out right now. We’ve had no discernible snowfall at all this season and it’s certainly not gonna be a white Christmas. We’ve had more rain in December than snow.

Over the river and cross the bridge
to the Home Alone house we go.
Apple Maps knows the way to guide our Hyundai
on our annual pilgrimage, yo!

I'm up to my John Lynch year...

Everyone… literally everyone… is out of the gift we want to get for a certain someone. And they won’t have it in stock until mid-January at the earliest.

Aw man, I totally forgot to mention that this past Monday marked the 20 year anniversary of Katie and I deciding to move to Geneva, IL, and live in sin in our first apartment.

Happy Friday the 13th, y’all! The holiday that can happen several times a year or… never! But it’s the inconsistency that I love.

As a LEGO fan for a veeeerrrrryyyy long time, I really look forward to new product announcements and discoveries. Not that I buy them all. Often, I don't buy any. But it's still fun to take a look. 

I don't have nearly as many photos for you today. It was a slow, relaxing day and I tried to stay off my phone as much as possible save for driving directions.

I can’t believe we’ve already hit the final full day of our vacation. Where did the time go?? Well, enjoy these photos. I may have more tomorrow from our departure. We shall see. 

Here are some photos from day 4 of our trip. Enjoy!

I'm really not sure what to title this post. I chose “LA01/03” because it’s my first generic post about days 1 and 3 of our trip to the Los Angeles area (Disney was day 2).