Daniel J Isom

June is one of my favorite months of the year, despite the temperatures rising to uncomfortable levels. It marks the end of another school year and enters us into a time of vacations and a laid back schedule. To start the month there are always a few end of the year ceremonies for the kids, which for this year included two "Fly Away" ceremonies for the boys since they'll be in new schools next year. Both received awards and we couldn't be more proud of them. June is also our wedding anniversary month, bringing us to 16 years married this year. We didn't plan a big trip for this one but we did spend the night in Baltimore to have dinner and see Daniel Tosh perform. There was also Father's Day which, if you know me, I don't care about because it's a made up holiday. However, the kids an I went disc golfing together so that was a nice way to spend a few hours together.  If all of that wasn't enough, it's also Ben's birthday month so we celebr...

  April was...something. There were some really high highs and at least one very low low. Getting the depressing part out of the way, my birthday was...not great. One could argue quite terrible and possibly the worst birthday yet. It has nothing to do with getting older because that doesn't bother me, something I've often written about on here. There were just a series of events that ruined it and the fact that one is "supposed" to have a "good" birthday made it worse. Aside from that, I had a lot going on in all aspects of my life in April and had some really great experiences that made up for how poorly "my" day went. We started the month with a nice trip back to Syracuse for Easter to visit family. The day after we got back was the bad day, but then a couple days later Christine and I saw Alton Brown's live show at The Grand in Wilmington after going back to Farmer & the Cow for dinner. It was an amazing night that I could just go on a...

June was by far the busiest month in years. We had something going on every single weekend, the school year ended, and there was so much going on at work. The end of my guys' weekend at  the Castle House  started the month, proceeded by a solo trip back to Syracuse for a friend's wedding, then Christine and I spent a nice weekend in Lancaster, PA, we went to Captain Kidd's Pirate Day at the Kalmar Nyckel Museum, then spent a week at the beach in Rehoboth, and finished the month at the Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Festival with the kids, my mom, my brother, and his girlfriend. I'm only back to work three days this week before going to NY for the 4th, but we'll save that for next month's post. There were multiple work conferences in June, one being our Rural Health Conference that saw a record number of attendees. Summer is supposed to be a little bit slower all around but this one is shaping up to be the busiest yet. Blah Blog Log Just the single wrap-up post in June,...

  Christine and I decided to do a mini-getaway recently to get a break from our normal adult/parent responsibilities. As nice as our trip to the Virgin Islands was a couple of summers ago, leaving three kids for a week isn't the easiest thing to do for a variety of reasons. However, we learned from that trip that we definitely need to take more vacations as a couple to decompress. We were itching to spend a few nights away and wanted to find something that wasn't too far from where we live in Delaware. Christine suggested the Poconos, so we started looking in northeastern Pennsylvania for an Airbnb that would provide us with a quiet space. We've used Airbnb a handful of time to find other places, like the  tiny house  and the Fairwinds Cottage we stayed in for our 7 and 10 year anniversaries, respectively. I eventually found a fairly new listing that has only been on the site for about a year in Reading, PA. Reading isn't as far north as the Poconos, but it's still...

This blog has always been a hodge-podge of opinion pieces, reviews, personal updates, and other posts that typically fall in the food and board gaming spaces. It's also been somewhat of a diary at times over the last almost 7 years. I've previously written in posts that I really enjoy sharing what's going on in my life. Writing yesterday's post really reminded me how much I miss spending time creating new content for the blog. I've been flirting with starting a regular posting schedule, but couldn't quite settle on what I thought would be realistic. It's not so much for a lack of ideas or things to write about, it's really more about time and my reluctance to commit to something because I'll eventually find it to feel like work. With that all being said, this post is to announce and preview my new Monthly Wrap-Ups. During the first week of each new month, I'm going to post a wrap-up of everything that happened the month before. I don't think...

July was the month I've been hoping for all along. I did some blogging, we played some games, and there were plenty of tasty baked goods. I don't expect the rest of the year to go this way, but it was a great month overall. 1)  Write at least 2 blog posts each month Christine and I took a trip to  Chesapeake City and the Fairwinds Cottage . I shared one of my favorite YouTube channels,  You Suck At Cooking . 2)  Complete the 10 x 2 Board Game Challenge Thanks to our trip to Chesapeake City, Christine and I had some time to play some games for our challenge. We started off by playing our second game of Warsaw: City of Ruins. I really like how fast the game plays and how fast it ramps up in the later rounds. Split over two days, we played both of our games of Potion Explosion. Christine kicked my ass both times. The first game was closer than I thought, but the second was a bloodbath. We also got in one play of World's Fair 1893 and I pulled out a close victory. I like...

As I wrote in my 10 Years of Marriage post, Christine and I were supposed to take a trip this year. Obviously that couldn't really happen because of all the Covid-related quarantines and travel restrictions. We decided we did still want to get away for a couple days, so we were looking for places down by the beaches here in Delaware. Then more restrictions were put in place down there due to an increase of new cases. The fact that a ton of people would still be down there made me look elsewhere. So I hopped on Airbnb and started looking for smaller towns on the coastlines, that's when I stumbled across the Fairwinds Cottage in Chesapeake City. Chesapeake City only takes 45 minute to get to through the back roads of Delaware and Maryland from our house in Clayton. It was a beautiful drive that didn't feel very long at all because we'd never been down many of the roads that we took. As you can see in the picture above, the town is broken up into two parts by the canal. ...

June was another mixed bag of results. Baking seems to be the real stronghold of the things I want accomplish. There's always seems to be time for baking. I did do one more blog post in June compared to May, but we didn't play any of our challenge games. Finding balance across these three things continues to allude me. 1)  Write at least 2 blog posts each month Shared a bit about Darebee , the fitness website I've been using to get in shape. Celebrated our One Year Housiversary . Also celebrated 10 Years of Marriage . 2)  Complete the 10 x 2 Board Game Challenge The school year is now over and yet not a single game one of our challenge games got played. Maybe July will be the month where we hit our stride and start knocking plays out. Right now we have to average 2.5 plays for the remaining 6 months of the year.  3)  Bake at least 2 different baked goods each month June was a pretty good month for baking. It had some high highs and one train wreck. I started the mont...

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...

Watching the World Cup less than an hour after getting married...best husband ever. Today is my 8th wedding anniversary. Christine has been putting up with my shit for nearly 14 years, but at every major anniversary we start the day by saying the number of years followed by "of your shit" to one another. I couldn't be happier to be married to such beautiful and caring woman. I count my blessings every day that I haven't sent her running for the hills. In the eight years that we've been married: we sold our house in New York, moved to Delaware, bought another house, adopted two cats, and brought three children into the world. I'm a very lucky man to have Christine by my side every day. She's an unbelievable mother, friend, and partner. I look forward to the life we're continuing to build together and can't wait to see where time takes us. I'm so lucky. Happy Anniversary Christine. I love you.