Road trips and Sprinkling Color into your Day

About Forty years ago, my family would go on road trips to Syracuse, NY to visit our cousins. Actually about 40 miles north of Syracuse, right next to Lake Ontario. Also about 40 years ago, my family got our first and only dog, which we had for only about 30 days. Her name was Sandy - a cocker spaniel that ended up going back to the farm because my father and I were having allergy attacks.

We didn’t go on many road trips when I was a boy, but the ones to Syracuse were some of the best.

Today, my wife, two boys and I just went on our very first road trip in a long time - and I am writing this sitting in a hotel room in center of Syracuse. Tomorrow morning, we are driving about 30 miles north to pick up Bowie, our new Australian Labradoodle puppy. She is supposed to be hypo-allergenic, we’ll see what happens - but we’re keeping her no matter what.

The boys and my wife have been begging for a dog for years, always met with an adamant “No” from me. I’d even sing the Wild Rover song “No, Ney, Never” with the claps, whistles and all. Then, we all got hit with this pandemic. 

It was around May of 2020, I crawled into bed late one night, accidentally waking up my wife - and whispered to her “I think we should get a dog”. Almost a year later, and we’re about to sprinkle some joy, stress, teething, barking, chewing and lots and lots of walking into our lives. We have not even met her yet and we’re all already in love - here she is at 3 weeks:

She was born on the same day as David Bowie’s birthday, which is also, our son, Luke’s birthday. First choice was Bo, but it sounds too much like “No” which may confuse her - and since that’s a big word in our house, we decided to go with Bowie.

MY GRATITUDE JOURNAL FOR TODAY
Before the pandemic, if you told me I’d be going on a road trip, 30 miles north of Syracuse - I would have assumed my cousins’ moved closer to the city - but never would have guessed this. When I was a kid, all I wanted was more road trips and ice cream sundaes - and I hated green veggies. Funny side note, I packed a zip lock bag of raw snap peas and string beans to snack on.

With all this in mind, as I woke up this morning, this is what I went with for my daily gratitude journal:

- ROAD TRIPS
- COLORED SPRINKLES
- SNAP PEAS

Why colored sprinkles? -Because they make kids happy - they always have - and my kids are happy, at least for today.

FUNNY SIDE NOTE: Did you ever hear of Fairy Bread. It’s some sort of Australian dessert - it’s a piece of toast, slathered in butter and then covered in colored sprinkles, but the Australians don’t call them sprinkles, they say “hundreds and thousands”.