Diary Of A Full-Time Father

 At the beginning of September, we moved into our very first house. We were tired of paying rent, especially when our rent was more than mortgages that friends and family have. After going through the roller coaster of looking at houses, we found our home.  My parents were able to come down for a week and help us move from apartment to house. While they were here, we talked about different landscaping ideas for the home and things that we could do to the yard. My dad loves working in the yard. Every house that I lived in with them, he had a great yard and landscaping.  After we moved into our home, my dad would get up before anyone and go into my front yard and pull weeds. One morning my dad was telling me about different things I would need to do to my yard. He told me how often I should probably water, showed me different types of weeds, and other yard things.  He took me to find a good landscaping company near us to talk about fertilizer and pre-emergent, when I s...

Welcome to Part 2 of Advice From The 80s. For those that might have missed part 1, you can find it here .  Just a quick reminder of how Advice From The 80s started: We recently bought a house, and w hen I was unpacking some boxes in our bedroom, I came across one of my keepsakes boxes. In the box was a  red bag with a blue border and white polka dots. Written on the front of the bag is the words: Mom's Bag Of Tricks. Inside the pouch are big index cards with advice and tricks my mom's friends and family wanted her to have. The cards all have dates on them, and they were given to her right after she had me, her first kid.  I thought it would be fun to go through these cards and post the advice on my blog to see if we follow any of the advice and tricks today, over 30 years later. Without further ado: Mom's Bag Of Tricks - Advice From The 80s - Part 2 (Note: I am not going to edit what the people say. I will type it how they wrote it.) Card 5: Ignore everyone else's advic...

I'm sorry that I have been so quiet lately. We closed on our first house on August 20, and since then, we were getting ready to move. We were only moving 40 minutes up the road, so we took boxes of stuff over to our new house almost every day.  When I was unpacking some boxes in our bedroom, I came across one of my keepsakes boxes. I decided to take a small break from unpacking and go through the box to see what was inside. I found a baseball I got signed by John Smoltz after the Atlanta Braves won the World Series, the program from my first Jacksonville Jaguars game, senior pictures, a flag flown over the capital in honor of me receiving the rank of Eagle Scout, and much more.  I then found a red bag with a blue border and white polka dots. Written on the front of the bag were the words: Mom's Bag Of Tricks. Inside the bag were big index cards with advice and tricks that her friends and family wanted her to have. The cards all had dates on them, and they were given to her rig...

The love of reading is something that we want to instill in Asher. Reading is something that Abby and I both love.  To help jumpstart Asher's book collection, for his baby shower, we asked people to bring a baby book instead of a card.  My parents have a bookstore near their house called 2nd & Charles, a store that sells new and used books.  Unfortunately, we do not have one near us, so I always like to make a trip to that store whenever I visit my parents. When Asher was about a month old, we decided to take him to visit his only great-grandparent that was still alive. We stayed with my parents during this trip, you know I had to check out 2nd & Charles. I don't remember much about this trip to 2nd & Charles, except for one book,  Mustache Baby . How did I find  Mustache Baby ? I was in their baby section going through the books, and I decided to head over to the clearance tables. When going around the tables, I saw a stack of books next to the tabl...

Normal. According to Merriam-Webster, normal is conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern. Unlike most relationships, Abby and I had a long-distance relationship for four years. The closest we lived to each other while dating was one hour. We didn't even live in the same town until a year before we got married. Not normal. One year before we got married, I ended up renting a room from my soon to be brother-in-law and his family. Abby and I now only lived ten minutes from each other. Today, it seems normal for people to live with each other before they get married. We never did that, even when we lived in the same town. Not normal. Abby had known since she was little that she wanted to be a pharmacist when she grew up. After she graduated high school, that became her focus.  For me, math has always been a subject that I liked. I even got my associate degree in accounting, but I didn't want to be a CPA. Accounting, for me, makes sense. Numbers have to add up and can'...