The 10 Best Posts in Decoding Dadhood History

In almost two weeks, our 10-year anniversary celebration here on Decoding Dadhood will come to a close. It's been a busy, post-filled year. After this post I'll have just 8 to go to reach my goal of 366 in 2020. (I can see the finish line!) But today, I'm going to take a step back and talk about my 10 favorite posts from the blog's nearly 11-year history. With more than 1,700 to choose from, it was no easy task, but I'm going to try anyway.

10. Augie the Ring Bearer

Augie got a lot of miles out of his cute smile at a young age. He was a ring bearer in three weddings before the age of 8, but I think my favorite one was still the first. It's probably because he was the youngest then and even the smallest tux they had was still too big. At one point during the photo shoot, he was even giving the groom advice. It doesn't get much cuter than that.

9. Baby Watch 2014: Baby Gracie

This post has a lot of great pics from the day Gracie was born, but this is one of my favorites (and probably one of Gretchen's least favorites) because of what else I was doing that day. I was live tweeting #BabyWatch2014, so everyone at home could follow along with Gretchen's progress. I tweeted when we left for the hospital. I tweeted when Gretchen was all hooked up to her machines. I tweeted when Gracie was born. And I tweeted to announce her name.

8. Blast From the Past: Part 2

Looking back, my Blast From the Past posts were a precursor to my later Throwback Thursday and In the Archives posts. I've always enjoyed going through old family photos and paperwork. They're just so neat to look at. My second Blast From the Past post makes it because I like the pictures I found for it more than the first Blast From the Past post. They included the 1940 family reunion, pictures of the OG August Steinke, the Ox Bow Band and the barn raising.

7. This Is: A Deck

A couple of my This Is posts made the top 10, both because of how much work went into the project. This spring, Gretchen and I finally tackled the back deck. I hated the one we had from the day we moved in. The cheap plastic lattice was ugly, and all of the framing was made from used wood the previous owners cobbled together and painted white (some of it anyway). It was on the to-do list for a long time, but the pandemic finally pushed me over the edge. And with how much we used the new deck this summer, it was money well spent.

6. Mom Teaches Science (And It's Delicious)

I don't get around to posting too many videos on the blog, but this post includes one, and it's not even of the kids. As Gretchen was teaching her students from home this spring, she needed to shoot videos for science class, which meant she needed someone to hold the camera for her. That's me, the cameraman. Well, this science experiment included cupcakes. And who can resist a cupcake? Start watching around the 3:30 mark and you'll see why her students were watching and rewatching this video.

5. In the Archives: Family Reunions

When I started digging through the digitized newspaper archives this year, I found some neat things about the Steinke clan. One being the annual Steinke family reunion, and just how big it was. Two to three hundred people was not uncommon. Not only that, they were some of the biggest shindigs in Berrien County. They were such a big deal that one time the governor even came.

4. This Is: My Firepit

This is my biggest home project to date. It took a lot of planning and a lot of scouring the internet to find just the right pieces I would need to build my firepit and patio. I had wanted one for awhile. When Gretchen finally agreed to let me build one, I worked as fast as I could to start buying stuff before she could change her mind. I'm not sure I'd ever try to do one again. Everything was so heavy, and I'm not sure my old man body could handle it again.

3. The Night of the Cookie

Only once in the blog's history have I dived into poetry. But it was Christmastime, so it was justified. We had just finished making our Christmas cookies that year, and Augie wasn't quite one yet, so he was experiencing the cookies for the first time. He loved them. So I wrote a little fiction about the experience based on 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Don't worry, no one got sick during the making of this post.

2. In the Archives: Alfred the Athlete

When I was doing research on W.F. Steinke (another great post if you have the time), I came across a small tidbit about his son, Alfred. The story said Alfred was a football star at the University of Michigan. Being a Michigan fan, I had to learn more. And boy, did I learn more. The old newspaper archives offered a lot of great stories, but the internet had a lot of great photos of him too -- from his days at Michigan to later in life when he was hunting and breeding hunting dogs. It nearly took the top spot, but it couldn't quite overcome ...

1. When Mom Is Away ...

The top post from my Top 5 post in 2015 remains No. 1 on the list in 2020. Looking back on it again, the writing is terrible, but the idea of the post is still golden. It plays right into my narrative of "I could be a good cook (or in this case baker) if I wanted to be, but I screw up occasionally so Gretchen won't give me more kitchen responsibilities." In this one, Augie and I made a batch of brownies for mom, and "accidentally left some eggshells" in the batter. Or did we? Sometimes the secret ingredients are there, and sometimes they're not.