You had me at otters!

We enjoyed Majestic Meadows in the middle of last week.  We got to pet lots of animals on the self guided tour and also bought a few “experiences”. We started with the otters.  We would have been happy if we’d had to go home after 30 mins with these four cuties!  We got to feed them, play with them, pet the, and snuggle them! Amazing!

My mom sent these great memories

We can celebrate 50 years of Lakeside.  1976 was our first year there.  We enjoyed the cottage, baby pool, islands, fishing at the dock, swimming lessons, and apparently an elephant ride?! Great memories❣️

Julie and I headed to pet the animals.

It was a long day.  We caught the sunrise AND the sunset.  Interestingly, they were pretty much the same.  This was from us heading east in the morning.  The rays were awesome.  

Does Deaton really want THIS again?!

Day one back on the job at Deaton.  He’s working out of Waynesville which is awesome.  Even better, they call the old firehouse their new home.  Lower left is back when Andy first started there.  Upper right is day one the second time around. It’s fun having him in the neighborhood every day again too.

Wow, if they started doing this…

It would spin out of control.  They’d have to do all the dog species, then cats, then lizards, hahaha.  But I guess if they can do names, why not start something like this.  It was just an AI thing on socials, but Julie and I thought it looked pretty fun.

Deaton bought the old firehouse!

Just in time for Andy to help him build it out to suit their purposes!  Should be fun.  I can’t wait to see it and what they do with it.  

Enjoying exploring new fish stores!

Julie discovered Finspiration (we like to call it FinTastic) down in Sharonville.  They have a LOT of cool and pretty fish. I particularly liked the discus tank (upper pic) and the shot I got of it.  I also thought the cichlid (lower pic) was particularly beautiful too.

I got a sample of “pan carmel”

It’s probably not good that I now know such a thing exists…

Nothing is in focus…

I didn’t get the depth of field quite right in this pic, but I wanted to be able to read the text on both the mug in the foreground and the and that of the wall in the background.  Regardless, I was relaxing to a cup of coffee and getting caught up on admin in my favorite bank vault❤️

Two Hundred and Thirty-Three Bible translations❣️

Barton Photo Journal (19 Jul 2026).  This is from my cousin, the “other” David Barton.  We’ve been blessed to be able to be a part of their ministry financially for so many years…

“This bookshelf holds copies of the 233 New Testament translations that Wycliffe and SIL have completed in Papua New Guinea. Thank you for partnering with us in this work. While it's easy to share a photo of books on a shelf, the real story is found beyond these pages. The lasting fruit of Bible translation is lives changed, churches strengthened, and communities transformed as people encounter God's Word in their own language.”

A birthday present

Julie told me I could use some of my birthday gift funds get some of my vintage watches serviced.  So I’m getting estimates on both grandparents and Steve’s.  Good news is I have a highly recommended and good place if you need watch work done.  I felt like I was being buzzed into Fort Knox… There were stacks and stacks of watches in process…

The estimates came back reasonable on Steve’s so I will probably start there.  The grandpa watches are going to be a bit of an investment…

Wrong shirt dude…

House warming?

I bequeathed John and Savannah the first thing I made when we bought a house. This little roll-around cart is nice in the garage or basement to store stuff, sit on, work on brakes/wheels, or whatever. Even doubles as a nice dolly for moving boxes/crates around. They said, “out garage will LOVE that!” ❤️

Janice had a Reed & Barton silverware set…

It was just plated, so I kept one of the knives with my name stamped in it for posterity. Hahaha.

Way to go Ian❣️

Proud to see you in your first practice!!! :) He’s official now!

In other news, Andy is back at Daton Plumbing :)

I think we are all happy about that.  

In these pics, I was helping him clean out his old truck and get it all into my trailer.  It barely fit, and that only because we played a serous game of Tetris will all his packout!  Afterwards, we celebrated with coneys at Skyline while watching the sunset. 

Andy got reposted by Milwaukee❣️

He called me late at night last weekend when he realized they’d posted the clip he’d made of him using his threader. I went on the Facebook marketplace adventure trip to Indiana with him to get it.  I remember it was one of his first large purchases in this kind of deal and we were both a little nervous.  But it all checked out and has served him well.  Now he’s even “famous” with it 🤪

It’s a sweet setup too with the tripod and everything.  

Andy is wearing off on me…

Somehow this red stuff seems to multiply under the bench in my garage…

I did find out that Home Depot was running a 19% sale on Milwaukee Packout stuff.  I made a little rolly cart/stool thingy (top pic) that doubles as a place to clip in all my wrenches (front left stack in the lower pic).  So now most of my stuff is on wheels and pretty easy to get to under the bench and in front of my car in the garage.

Here we go again…

No need to wonder why I might get frustrated and want to sell the thing, huh…?! Brandon offered to help me get my Jeep back to the shop (of course I had to sneak some cash into his truck for his time and fuel).  

I lost a tooth in the rear end pinion gear this time (was the ring gear last time).  The good points: I had a spare set of gears, I was able to figure out what was wrong with it myself, it’s something simple and fixable, and the current set is under warranty.  The bad points, mo money for the labor to get it down there and get it fixed.  

I found Larry’s time card…!

My dad was the church treasurer for many years when we were kids.  Larry was the Janitor there for his first job out of high school.  At one point I had several boxes full of all the time cards from the church staff, I saved Larry’s just for fun.  While recently purging things, I decided keeping one would be sufficient at this point, in a picture.  

I like seeing the way he tallied the hours and the minutes separately, converted the hours to minutes to add them all up, then back to hours.  For example on Wednesday, 45 mins to get you to 10 o’clock.  Two hours (shown in minutes, 120) to get you to noon, then 39 more mins until he clocked out.  So 3.4 hours for the day.  Funny, that’s the same way he showed me to add time when I was filling out my first time cards as a teenager.

Another method I learned (at Environment Control, the janitorial services company where I first worked) was to round to the nearest 6 minutes.  Each six mins was a tenth of an hour.  So if I worked 3 hrs and 10 mins, it would round to 3.2 hours (3 hours and twelve mins).

It’s fun to think about Larry and Dad having this relationship back before Larry was any more a part of our lives then just a guy in the youth group at church. 🤪 He’s been a great, fun addition to the family in so many ways!

Here’s to the good ole days…

Cool clouds to the South during a rainy sunset a few days back

Andy fixing me up…

I had these orange scales for one of my balisongs, but they needed side jimping to match the handles.  Andy thought we could figure out a way to do it on the drill press.  He ended up doing it free hand and they turned out great.  I liked watching the concentration and attention to detail as he did it.  

Silhouette of a black cat…

All the detail and color in Julie’s snail is amazing❣️

 She took this really cool pic.

Just a cool setting for a pic as I was cleaning it up

The dogs “helping” me wash my jeep

We were all getting choked off by the smoke from the Canadian wildfires… You can see it hanging in the air in the background of this pic. 

The dog seem to really enjoy being out in the yard with me while I’m puttering around. I guess it’s something different for them. They never know quite what to expect, but always seem happy to experience it.

Redneck engine starter…

For some reason, my inherited pressure washer was giving me fits the last time I needed to use it.  It normally starts right up and runs fine. I think it had gotten a little damp in all the humidity in my portable garages. In the process of trying to get it started, the pull rope broke too.  I wanted to see if it would start before i spent a bunch of time fixing the rope.  I noticed a hex nut on the engines shaft, so I thought I would try this approach. It pretty much worked like a champ. I just had to be careful to commit to spinning it fast enough and pull off as it started.  It worked every time except once when the socket stayed on, I quickly cut the engine before it could fly off and hurt something or somebody… I got it all running, got the rope fixed, and proceeded to use it.

A great Bassett pic!

Chloe had the perfect pose and I managed to capture it too❤️

My four generation collection is complete!

I found one of the watches the kids wore when they were young.  Perfect.  Now I have my grandparents on both sides, dad’s on both sides, several of mine, and even the ones my boys wore (this one and one of my dad’s).  Pretty cool :)

Weed eating the pond at camp Jabez again

The summer camps are winding down, but the work still needs done.  It’s nice to be able to serve there, outdoors, and pray for the kids, the counselors, and the workers while I do.

Meanwhile back home…

Shadow is trying on socks in the background of this pic of Savannah’s attentive dogs… And Andy is finding out that our idea to store his monster wrenches on the inside of his van door works nicely!

A great night out with my family

My mom hosted birthday dinner for Laura.  We played Bananagrams, laughed and had had cake and ice cream.  We secretly picked the worst tiles for Susan and Larry and they didn’t even complain since they’d just received news that Chris was getting a new job working in the AES program (drones) at Sinclair.  

I brought along some local craft ice cream from Jubie’s that I got at Dot’s Market.  Yum!

We sold John’s car in 23 minutes…

You can also see him shopping for a new one, and a celebratory dinner out in it after.  Also, I highly recommend the cheese curds at Double Day’s!

Well, my clone shipped…

I’ll let you decide which one is mine and which one is real… It’s been an interesting and long process.  It will be fun to see how it measures up.  I still have a week or two while it gets a boat ride towards its final destination…

A rare moment of empty garage…

…and nothing in the driveway.  John was borrowing my car, Julie was shopping and my Jeep was nowhere to be found… haha.

It’s gotta be good, right?!

When the restaurant is nestled between a water fountain and chocolate syrup, you know they’re gonna have good food.  Especially is something like fried mush is on the menu!  Laura and I ended up trying this place in the back of Dot’s Market for her birthday.  A good choice for sure!

I thought this shot gave a cool aesthetic

John & Savannah had SO MANY blackberries this year❣️

But wow, do blackberries fight back when you try and steal their babies!  I was picking thorns out of my hands and arms for days after I gathered a pint.  It’s almost like they wrap around you and pull you in when you try and pick a berry, haha!

Moo-Shoo, glue-shoo project update!

Savannah finally finished her stain glass project of her sister’s dog Moo-Shoo.  They took to calling the artwork “glue-shoo” since it was a bunch of pieces of the dog glued together, haha.  Final touches being worked on in the left pic and final version in the right.  It’s crazy she’s picked this up so quickly in only four projects.  Really cool.  We’re looking forward to seeing it hanging in the sun!

Cool bug shot and colors.

This little guy was on my car window sill.  He was less than a quarter inch long.  Compare his size to the grains of the upholstery he’s standing on…!

OG Pound cake recipe?

We keep finding older and older versions of the pond cake recipe that Julie’s mom used to make Julie for her birthday.  This one was handwritten in the back of a mid-1900’s cookbook that was probably Julie’s grandma’s. 

A little dose of Zoe

In case there hasn’t been enough of her on my blog already…

The boys were laughing at my “cute” weight setup

We repurposed Andy’s old weight bench and found some plates and bars on Facebook Marketplace. 

Julie and I have time to work on keeping sarcopenia at bay these days.  It’s nice to be back at it.  Been a couple decades since I was lifting weights.  Of course, my daily work and stuff around the house kept me in decent enough shape.  Now I can focus on it a little more intentionally. 

Take your parents to work day…

We were picking John up from work to go car shopping and he offered to give us a quick tour. It was fun having him sign us in, seeing so many samples of his work (especially Chocolate milk!), and even taking home some free samples of coffee!! We were glad we got a little window into his day.  Looks like a great place to work and he’s really enjoying the creative side of it too.

Julie’s feeder is really popular with the marauders too!

It’s just as fun to watch the squirrels helping themselves.  This guy treats it like a Ponderosa buffet! 

Pretty cool Timex offerings these days….

My dad and I were always Timex guys at heart.  He might have found it interesting how they’ve upped their game! I found this little gem in their newer offerings.  Pretty sharp! Lines right up with some of the fanciest brands out there and holds its own against them for a fraction of the price.  It’s a GMT style, which is a whole other wormhole haha.  It shows a couple time zones (red hand with the triangle) and shows 24 hour time (which I prefer anyhow).  It’s a fitting relaxed way to tell time. i.e. “a little past 10”, “almost 10:30” instead of fretting about the minutes.    

And yes, I may be ill with my collection…🤪

A low carb diet, suuuuure… 🤪



We get the sodas to lure the boys over more often.  It works! Hahaha.

We also keep bite size chocolate around for little desserts on occasion. It seems we had just run out of all of them at the same time coincidentally. 

And what’s with the creepy, scary soda box?! Some kind of video game collab I guess?

Don’t worry about my stickers, patches and badges

I moved a lot of them, the best ones, to my office ❤️

Just a nice view of of the sunset

This time of year, the sun sets so far to the north west that it is on the other end of the house from where it normally is the rest of the year.

This was the species of bird that visited us yesterday.

Julie found this cool pic of one on-line.  We hope to see our little red-headed woodpecker friend again soon! It’s the first one we’ve seen around here. We see several other species frequently, so…🤞🏻