Author: Jake Reindl

Ahh, winter time. The season for hot chocolate and crackling fires. The season of snowflakes on your tongue, snow angels, and snowmen and snowball fights.

Unless you live in S.C.  Then you get none of those nice things. Except hot chocolate. You can still have that. You’re welcome.

So here is the thing to do. Jump on a train, and ride up to Wisconsin where your cousin lives, and have him take you ice fishing!  That’s what I did, and it only cost me nearly two pinky fingers! Small price to pay (pun) for such a good time!  Just check out these fish!

You only thought it was fun pulling fish out of the warm water, wait till you waddle out onto a frozen piece of the largest freshwater lake in the world, cut a hole in it, and drop some bait through it! If that doesn’t sound like a good time, you are probably an adrenaline junky and we can’t be friends anyway.

Well I just got back, and we are gonna be frying the fish up that we caught. It was the best vacation I had in a very long time, and I am pretty sure I will be going back next year! And just as the angel of the Lord stopped the knife in Abraham’s hand before he sacrificed Isaac, so also my sacrificial pinky fingers recovered and are back to making my hands look proportionate once again.

A great big thank you to my cuz, Nick, for putting me up for the week, and getting everything together for the fishing trips, and teaching me how to fillet the White Fish (they have some weird bone row near the spine), and for all the hospitality!

Happy to have the vacation,and happy to be back home! It’s a good life!

“I love you.” Everyone says it.  Not everyone says it the same.

As a father, I say it often. So often that the phrase may border on cliché. That isn’t to say that I don’t mean it, because I do. It also does not mean that I shouldn’t say it, or that I should say it less often.  Because I do love my children. And I love my wife. But if I called one of my siblings up, or even my parents, talked for a bit, and ended the conversation with “I love you”, they would probably hang up and start wondering how long the doctors had given me to live.   None of us grew up saying it or hearing it. That doesn’t mean we grew up unloved. None of us grew up feeling unloved either.  Now that I have a family of my own, I love my family. And I say that I love them, and they tell me they love me too. It’s a big difference from when we grew up, since we never said it. But that’s the only difference. Love isn’t what you say, or even what you feel. Words are what you say, and emotions are what you feel.

Love is what you do.

Love is filling a lunch box that you’re not going to eat.

Love is starting a fire before you go to work when you won’t be there to enjoy it.

Love is getting a glass of water, when you aren’t the one that’s going to drink it.

Love is teaching love to those who will love others.

I think my children are beginning to understand what love is. Although the words may be more of a filler. Something to say to fill the quiet, or a phrase they say when they don’t know what else to say. But that’s okay. That’s what words are for.  Dale Carnegie once said that your name is the sweetest and most important sound in any language. So imagine a daddy’s heart when his children choose to use the name “Daddy” instead of Mickey mouse or Lightning McQueen, followed by “I love you” instead of “Can I have candy”, or “Isaiah pushed me!”.

My quest towards spiritual enlightenment compels me to compare my own relationship with my children, and my own relationship with God, since I am His child. I end this entry wondering to myself, as much as it may please Him to hear it, is saying “I love you Father” just something I say to fill the silence? Do I say it because I am going to follow-up with “I want candy”? Or do I have any action to support it. I feel emotion. I use my words. I must do. So that when I say “I love you, it is the sweetest sound He can hear from me, and let it pair like a sweet wine with the deeds that I do.

Love,

-Jake

It has now been almost 6 years since we moved back into the old family farmhouse. I think what I love the most about it is that no matter how many improvements, how many changes, it never stops being nostalgically “home”.  What I mean is, no matter how many modern improvements or additions that we perform, it never feels any different than that same place I grew up.

This is the beginning of a new year, and with it comes new plans, new goals, new clichés about “new year, new me”, complete with insincere resolutions. Ariel and I have a twist on it though. For some years now, we have come together on our everything anniversary and not only set a major goal for ourselves for the upcoming year, but we also set a goal for each other. So starting the year off, we end up with two major goals to complete, one that we really want to accomplish, and one that the other really wants accomplished. Typically, the self made goal is some adjustment to routine or habit, or personality-wise.

This year, my personal goal was to clean out the basement 100%. It has, without doubt, been the most neglected area of the entire house. I have moved things around as I repaired plumbing, electrical or networking, but never gave it a real shot at getting it taken care of. But, this is the year! And if my personal resolution wasn’t enough, I have now penned it here as a declaration of determination!

Here is what I am up against:

I am, however, armed with the motivation of a new year, and a dumpster, so it’s gonna happen!

In the right hand corner of the picture is the table where the food preservation station will be, and in the bottom right is the old sink which is not plumbed. So those two I would like to tackle first.

In spite of my years of procrastination, I am really looking forward to doing it this year. And not just getting it done, but actually doing it. Seeing the progress as I go.

Wish me luck!