I gift-wrapped the booty wall in a tarp to make sure the wind wouldn’t hurt any of the little leaves.
2026-10-03
The end result
This was the rig I saw while I was getting work done at my local shop. It’s not back out in Hurricane, Utah where it lives. Fun to see it come to fruition.
Julie finished her short ribs in the oven
When she pulled them out, she found thy were ready. The meat had spontaneously fallen off the bones. It was sooooo yummy!
I got the booty board all ready to ship
I set it up then tested the bootie density and a couple mounting methods.
I realized it was gonna need some kind of carrier so we didn’t crush the greenery when storing or transporting it. So I made a couple frames to stack it with some space between each portion.
2026-10-02
On the way to dinner with Andy…
…I managed to grab this cool shot of the rising moon. Straight off the camera, no editing. 
Meanwhile, Julie’s been working on THESE!
She smoked short ribs for us last weekend! Watch for a bit and you may see some of the smoke :)
I contributed tools, advice and a little hauling service
John and I spend an hour or so last Saturday to trim the low hanging limbs off their big tree. We cleaned up their view quite a lot.
Andy and I hanging out before dinner
I got to see some of the skills he’s practicing at the skatepark
2026-10-01
People aren’t left to wondering…
…if I take my Jeep out for legit off-roading, haha. Brutus comes by the dust and dirt honestly.
It’s fun to share this kind of stuff with Andy
He sends me the occasional “tooling” video. In this one, the blacksmith visited a cooper to try his hand at cask making. It’s crazy to watch how they manually shave and hammer them into a properly spec’d container!
Bootie wall all built
Next it just needs a coat of paint. It was a beautiful weekend to work in the garage. Lots of sun, but still just the right temperature and breeze. It’s nice being able to pull the cars out and have this much room to work.
A fun stubby little pencil
Not super practical for marking things, but still bun. I like the fat, brass barrel and the weight it gives. I also like that you can unscrew the right end and use it as a lead sharpener.
2026-09-30
Of course, I had my helper girls…
Chloe’s ears are long enough they pick up sawdust when she (always) puts her nose to the ground hahahahaha.
Helping Susan and Larry this past weekend
I volunteered to help our with their Hope Rising Gala a little. They needed this wall built to hold the over 700 booties that represent lives saved. It took a lot of my red tools and most of my garage haha. My Jeep was kind of locked in for a while there. Good motivations to keep at it and get the job done :)
Relaxing on the porch with my favorite cuppa tea
This is the apple cinnamon spice that Laura introduced me to on our trip to Michigan with Mom. Also in my favorite tea cup (left over from Steve and Janice’s things ❤️
2026-09-29
Zoe might consider this a betrayal?
It’s one of my buddy’s frenchy. I guess Daisy could tell I was a dog guy now? Haha.
Hitching a ride to the mailbox…!
The kids always wanted me to do this for them, now it’s their turn… hahahaha
It’s giving good advice…
I think Andy’s review mirror camera system is telling me I might want to reconsider?! 🤪 I also just noticed the little rubber rocket ship jet airplane thing on his dash??
Chris showed me around his new job last week
I got to see all kinds of UAS, from tiny to human-carrying size. You can tell he’s in his element. I liked the infrastructure inspection systems and the flying pavilion. It was cool to see what all he’s doing. It was fun to pull into the same parking lot where I used to meet up when he was a student there. It brought back good memories.
2026-09-28
I snapped a fun pic…
…of Julie’s filter feeding bambo shrimp catching an Uber to get from one side of the tank to another. I’m not sure the snail appreciated the extra effort required…
Julie’s shrimp gonig for ride!
Her “fan boy” bamboo shrimp decided he wanted a mobile perch for his filter feeding. I’m not sure the snail appreciates the extra cargo…?!
It’s always interesting when my worlds intersect…
The combo of jeeps and self-protection is common among my friends and club members. It’s just funny to me when I’m randomly watching one hobby (a Jeep YouTube) and it suddenly crosses over into a discussion on another hobby like shooting sports and CCW. Turns out this guy has started a whole ‘nother side channel just for such topics.
When I first ran across him, I figured he wasn’t “one of us”. I guess my biases were wrong :)
This is memory gold❣️
I just happened to notice this when putting away the stuff Julie had sorted from her mom and dad’s. It was a letter she’d sent back in 1990. It’s really fun to see her talk about her life then and dating me. She rated me pretty well. Hopefully I measured up after all these years. Moral of the story: with prayer, and effort, strive to be the guy your girl thinks you are!
Some tiny little watches added to my collection
I found these when putting away Janice’s remaining stuff. I found them to be interesting. They’re different from the others I have. Especially the Anne Klein with it’s quick date set in such a small case. Just nice pieces to remember her by…❤️
2026-09-27
Fourth generation of Barton’s working here!
This is why I was creeping on Andy. He’s been part of the push to get the Hammel house open in time for the Sauerkraut Festival. My dad was contracted to help rework the apartments (which were on the left side of the building in the top pic). It was a lot of work over a year or so. I helped out many nights and weekends and learned a lot. At one point, my grandpa also came down (he was a home builder). So, Andy marks the fourth in our line of Barton men to put his mark on it.
You can see some of the vents he made that are sticking out of the wall in the lower left. His truck was seen in front of the building in the lower left pic which is a screen shot from Katie Deaton’s post about their progress.
Finding gold
You might want to look through your old jewelry? I found these old chains among Janice’s things. It doesn’t look like much. It added up to 25g. That’s about the weight of a single page letter in an envelope. It was worth $550 at the local jeweler. I added it to Julie’s “inheritance”.
“Big” hair David…
The kids couldn’t remember what I looked like when I wore my hair longer (and Julie prefers it) so I decided to see what it looked like if I skipped a haircut. One month lather, here it is. The reviews are mixed 🤪
2026-09-26
He came back!
George Milo was missing from the farm for several days. He showed back up about the time I arrived on Wednesday. He was muddy and hungry but went right back to his usual antics. My co-worker topped him back up with a few cat food packets and he was good to go!
Imagine my surprise…
I found this while I was mowing the yard! I carried up to show Julie and when she saw me coming she had a moment where she thought I might be carrying my severed finger! The only reason she didn’t freak out was because I wasn’t freaking out so it must not have been true… It smelled really weird!
The recent storms…
…netted me two wagon loads of sticks to pick up. We were lucky. All around us lots of huge trees were down. I counted more than twenty along Wilmington pike from Bill Yeck park area to Ferry Church!
This morning, I got to save a hummingbird that had gotten stuck on the feeder❣️
I untangled his foot then held him until he got his wits back and flew off❤️
I think this is what was going on… Crazy, he was gonna be cat food for sure!
These are the great jerseys Julie found us
I like the Ohio themed logo, the res white and blue colors, the cannon patch, the stars on the sleeve and the fancy NHL logo on the collar. Laine was a player that ran hot and cold as a fan favorite so it’s fun to have one with his name on it given the history of the team from a few years back.
2026-09-25
A nice pic from my misty walk with Laura this week
She got the best shot though. These mushrooms stopped her in her tracks while Zoe was distracting me with a bathroom break, hahahah.
The view from our pre-season seats
Our normal seats are one section to the right from this. Nice view and cool CBJ colors for the whole arena. :)
It pays to wait…
When we started going to the pro hockey games last year, we realized their SWAG prices were outragous. Hoodies were $150 for example… Well, we waited until their clearance sale this year and we Julie found that they had authentic game jerseys on sale complete with player names and numbers! These are normally $300 or so (see the stickers on the right). But they were on sale for $60. Even better, a snafu and trip back to the register meant the cashier felt sorry for us and gave us a two for one deal. So we got exactly the jerseys we wudda wanted from last years season, at $30 each for two of them! I’m glad Julie’s eagle eye and bargain prowess were sharp this week!
2026-09-24
A gift in progress
It was fun to find this among Julie’s dad’s things. Andy’s grampy made him a chess table and set years ago. The pieces were made from standard nut and bolt hardware. Here’s a glimpse of the process it took to gather the pieces and get them assembled. I made sure to keep these notes with the set.
“Your cat’s all flat and junk”
Pepper loves to flop on this box. Sometimes about half of her falls in. 🤪
Before she sat on my leg…
…she tried to cast a spell on me. Haha, I was playing around with the new iOS 27 image generator.
A rare kitty moment for me…
Itty Bitty decided to grace me with her presence. She must have been hungry, but I’ll take it however I can get it 🐈⬛
The most photographed kids…?!
My father in-law always said my two were gonna be the most photographed kids in the world…. He might have been right…? My phone says there are 3,100 of Andy and 3,300 of Johnny… hahahaha. Funny that I got that notice from OneDrive while having a pic of the came kid on my lock screen. :)
2026-09-23
The end of an era…
Isaac had taken a board and some paracord and fashioned a swing many years ago at my mom’s house. Eventually it wore out, one of the strings broke, and the kids grew up. We decided it was time to take the other half down. I tried putting all my weight on it…but it still held! I ended up having to get a ladder and cut it.
Fun memories from the good ole days❤️
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