Daniel J Isom

Christine and I get to celebrate a second anniversary this week. Two days ago, I wrote about our  One Year Housiversary , and today is our 10 year wedding anniversary. Getting a new house for our nine year anniversary was pretty great, but really it was just how the closing date worked out. For this anniversary we were planning on taking our first vacation without the kids, but then COVID-19 derailed those plans. Originally, we were going to eat our way around New Orleans. I think we'll still do that next year, unless we come up with some other place we'd really like to go. Enough about future plans, let's get back to the last 10 years. We got married June 12th of 2010 at St. Rose of Lima Church in North Syracuse, New York. As I wrote in a brief post entitled,  8 Years of My Shit , we: sold our house in New York, moved to Delaware, bought another house, adopted two cats, and brought three children into the world. Since then, we adopted another cat, sold our townhouse, and b

Today marks the one year anniversary of our family moving into our current house. I can't believe it has already been one year. If you read my most read post,  Buying and Selling: A Real Estate Story , you know that I was hesitant to leave our townhouse and wanted to wait until right about now to start house hunting. I'm glad Christine pushed me into going to look at new houses. It's not just because we wouldn't have been able to buy this one, more importantly, it's because it helped set us up to be in the best financial spot we've ever been in as a couple. By buying a house that had a space for my Dad to move in, he was able to step in and provide daycare for us. That opened up most of my net salary and allows him to be in our kids' lives everyday (despite them driving everyone mad).  Living in a new home comes with its ups and downs, but it's mostly been a blessing to have this new space. We have had a few minor home repairs that have come

If you know me personally or follow me on social media, you know that I have struggled with my weight and the will to exercise. I've written about my trials and tribulations many times on this site. This post will be similar to others because it's highlighting a new tool that has really helped me, as well as being an update on where I stand health wise. Let's get the update out of the way first. I weighed 177 pounds in July of 2019. From there it was a slow creep upwards as the weather got cooler. By November I basically stopped doing any exercise, including my daily walk, which didn't yield much in the way of weight loss. What I didn't realize was that daily walk was doing just enough to keep me from gaining weight. My daily steps plunged, but I was using our stationary bike periodically so I thought it would sort of balance things out. I wasn't using it daily, so I wasn't burning the same number of calories each week. I saw this everyday as I entered my c

If April was chaotic, May was absolute anarchy. The month flew by as time has seem to have lost all meaning. I spent a lot of time doing yard work and playing outside with the kids. I also started working out more than I have previously, but that's a post for another day. It was an okay month overall, but I'd like to get all three goals running on all cylinders at the same time. 1)  Write at least 2 blog posts each month Highlighted a new show that I really enjoyed called  Dispatches from Elsewhere . Shared the exciting die cast racing channel from  3DBotMaker . 2)  Complete the 10 x 2 Board Game Challenge I was hopeful for May knowing we'd be stuck home every weekend, but the kids just don't make gaming easy for us. I did get to play in person with a couple of friends who spent the night on their way down for vacation. Waiting for the kids to be asleep was key to making that work. Christine and I did play some games online with friends, but the kids spent the