Dana Burland

Yesterday was Cam's 6th birthday. SIX! Unimaginable, unless of course you're in the near orbit of this beautiful, brilliant, curious, kind, Pokemon card collecting, deep pool diving, soccer loving guy. Then you'd just be too enthralled by him constantly to be shocked by a number.  I took the day off work and kept him home from summer camp so we could have a Day of Cam. Whatever he says, goes. Here's what you pick when you are six: Morning cartoon with your brother Sprinkle and chocolate chip pancakes with sausage for breakfast Building Pokemon Legos Movie on the couch--a favorite: Sing 2 Nintendo Switch time (Sonic and Crash Bandicoot Racing) Pizza lunch--Mom introduced me to bacon cheese pizza. OMG! And yeah, I'll want this later for dinner, too, AJ's Family Fun Center (mini golf, go karting, bumper boating, arcade play) More Nintendo Switch Biking with Mom to pick up Adrian from daycare--all on my own, not in the trailer!  Multiple suckers, a Lemon Head (new! ...

Sure, why not another tri? About a week ago my brother was convinced to sign up for the Tri del Sol Super Sprint Tri, and thus convinced me. (It didn’t take much convincing.) I figured the Super Sprint would be more of a fun workout vs an uber competitive, fall-down-at-the-finish-line event. Lol pre-race me. This was my first Tri del Sol. It was a much smaller race at the YMCA’s Camp Manitou-Lin in Middleville. If I had a gripe, which I’d never, I’d add for factual reference: I woke up at 4:45 for a 8am start time. The drive there plus required a 7am lakefront meeting for an 8am race start made for a lot of sit and wait. The swim was 200m, and man that water was clear and lovely. I was in and out in 3 & ½ minutes. It felt… harder than I wished it would? Probably because when it comes to a race in water I’ve only got one mindset and speed. I snapped into my new transition mindset: this is meant to be fast, but if you don’t calm down and compose yourself you’ll take longer....

The boys are having the summer of their lives this year. We’ve gone to festivals, baseball games, ice cream runs, kayak adventures, concerts, pool dates, and the list goes on. “Family days” (as we call weekend days) are souped up and special. Often weekday summer nights are too, so much that A routinely asks if events like a Monday, 7pm outdoor concert at the park is a Family Day. So now we have a new term: “Family night”. Extra special, beyond routine, feels-like-a-weekend summer weeknight together. You know what else is a summer special? B’s birthday! This don’t-make-a-scene-of-my-birthday guy is the world’s best dad and supportive husband. So fine, I won’t make a scene of your birthday, but I will make you an extra special birthday cake and write a blog post about it. I think I’m coming juuusttt under the radar here. 🙂 As coincidence would have it, a Bon Appetit recipe for chocolate sheet cake with broken butter frosting popped up on my Instagram feed. That screams adult AND ki...

This is the second in a series of stories I’m telling on pivotal family members . I learned so much about family I knew and never got to meet while working on a family tree project. These stories inspire me and stand out the most. Papa (my mom’s dad) was born Nicholas Plaskon on December 12, 1913 in small town Benld, Illinois. His dad Samuel was a rough and tough coal miner, an immigrant from Austria; his mom Anna was a Benld-born, one of seven kids, feisty and cranky woman. Childhood was tough for Nick. The family had little money and his dad was a physically abusive alcoholic, often beating his children with a wood 2x4 and insisting on eating before the children were fed. Nick had an older brother and two younger sisters. He shared a pair of socks with his brother, John. Nick became a young vagabond, running around town hitching rides on trains in order to make money to support the family. He would tell us grandkids about growing up foraging dandelion greens for dinner during the...