If you’re here, I imagine you might want to know about my personal life. I have two boys who are perfect little clones of me, named DJ (7) and Duke (5). We also have two dogs – Lil B (Jack Russell/Border Terrier mix), and Winchester (a 3 year old silver lab). We spend our summers playing in the pool, going out on the boat, playing at our property, and just generally trying to be active outdoors as much as the heat will allow us to. Fall and Winter are the best times at the property and when I do the most work, clearing trees and brush, trying to reclaim some of the land that has been taken back by Mother Nature for so many years. The last few years our Winters haven’t been too bad, we really only get a couple days where snow sticks to the ground. Most of the days are above freezing, so it’s extended our outdoor season to almost be year-round now. We like to travel in our motorhome in Summer and Fall, visiting places out West most of the time. Beach vacations are also a semi-regular thing, we have a little town near Destin Florida that we like to visit. Ocean City, NJ and the Boardwalk is another favorite; I’d love to take the boys there. It’s a very neat place for kids – there are tons of shops, restaurants, a theme park, movie theater, etc all along the boardwalk and of course the beach is right there too. You ride bicycles everywhere or just walk. It’s a very nostalgic place.
DJ is our first-born, he was born right before Christmas in 2014. We actually brought him home on Christmas Eve. He is a very mature boy for his age, and apparently has a really deep voice for his age. We didn’t notice but other people have commented on it. He’s a big kid with a great personality, he just wants to make people laugh. Duke is our baby, he was born in June 2017 and has been a sweetheart from day one. He is also big for his age, but his most noticeable trait is that he is very interactive and happy. He is very funny too, but in a different way – he’s more of a stinker, for instance he will do something to test you and then if you tell him “no,” he will do it again and laugh. He likes to wrestle with DJ and usually wins. DJ spends his down time playing on his Oculus or iPad, Duke likes to play with toys or pretend he is running a food truck in our living room. The menu is pretty diverse; he has burgers, dog-dogs, ass fries, and ice cream. He only accepts cash (we have play money) and he always thanks you for your business. They both have really big personalities and love to laugh; they also enjoy playing pranks on people – no idea where they got that from. 🙂
I grew up with divorced parents, in a household where they had to work all the time to provide for the family. So it’s been a focal point for me to make sure my kids have it better than I did, not that our childhoods were bad, but we just want more for our own children.
DJ went to a really well-loved lady in town who ran a daycare out of her house for as long as anybody can remember, and Duke went to a really great daycare as well. He is in pre-K now, and DJ is finishing up 1st grade at the time of this writing.
I spend my days running our manufacturing businesses and occasionally working at the family property. We have a really nice life that we try not to take for granted. I honestly don’t know how my parents did it, especially Mom. She was a single mother for most of my life, and even when she was married to Dad, he was working or fishing all the time so it was really on her to take care of everything else. She had a lot of help from her parents, Mema and Papa, which is one advantage she had over me. Mom died when I was 19; Dad when I was 12. Thankfully Mema lives close by and is still a very spritely 80 year old, she helps out when she can. Not having the full gamut of grandparents to help out makes it tough but we’re fortunate to have jobs that allow flexibility where our kids aren’t being handed off to strangers or left at houses all the time.
I’m not real sure what else to put here right now, I just wanted to make something quickly because I realized the “Family” link on the main page wasn’t going to anything and I could already hear all of the people saying “ohhh he spent all this time making a page about his vehicles but he can’t even make a page about his family!” Now they’ll just have to find something else to bitch about. I’m proud of my boys and the family we have, and I’m very thankful for it.