About Us A Living Memoir
When our eggs were in Brookhaven, they sent a videographer out to our farm to produce a short video (above) for their customers. He spent the day filming, asking questions, and getting to know our story. How cancer and and idea sparked this crazy adventure we find ourselves on. By the end of it, he wasnât talking about Brookhaven anymore, he was talking about a film.
The way he framed it was: "We Bought a Zoo⌠but for a farm."
We even had a few follow up meetings about it, but then life happened (him and his wife had a baby!) and the idea sort of drifted. Still, that conversation stuck with me. Because when someone else reflects your story back to you, when they ask the right questions, it surfaces all these details youâve lived through, but almost forgotten.
Why Document the Journey?
The truth is, this journey has been full of little momentsâsetbacks, pivots, wins, losses, and some downright horrible experiences Iâd rather forget. But even the hardest parts have shaped Kakadoodle into what it is today. Each twist and turn left its mark, and as much as I sometimes wish I could skip over them, theyâre part of the story. And I donât want to lose them.
The good news? A lot of it has been captured, especially in the first two years of Kakadoodle, through our YouTube channel. I was pretty diligent back then about posting updates. I honestly hate watching myself on camera, but Iâm grateful those videos exist. Theyâre a memory bank, a reminder of how far weâve come.
A Living Memoir
So hereâs what Iâm thinking: this page will become a kind of living memoir. Not a polished book. Not a film. But a series of stories, told as they happen, that capture the heart of our journey.
Maybe one day someone will pick it up and turn it into a book or a documentary.
For now, it's simply about remembering. Documenting. Sharing the lessons weâve learned along the way, so you can see the whole picture of what weâre building, and so we donât forget either.
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Invincible, Until I Wasnât
MariKate was the first to notice the lump on my neck. I had seen it too but didnât think much of it. I was young, healthy, and figured nothing could keep me down. So, I brushed it off. Still, MariKate pushed me to see a doctor, so I wentâreluctantly. The doctor agreed with me, said it was probably nothing and even joked, âHappy wife, happy life.â That was all I needed to hear. I came home, told MariKate not to worry, and went back to work.
But a month later, she insisted again. I went for a second opinion. The very next day the hospital called and told us to come in immediately. Iâll never forget that call. I was sitting in a Panera, and I remember the exact table, the exact chair. The world shifted in that moment.
We rushed to the hospital, left the kids with MariKateâs parents, and suddenly I was lying on a biopsy table.
Half sedated, waiting for the needle, it hit me: 95% of my life was consumed by work. And none of it really mattered.
What mattered was faithâand family.
Family: I felt grateful, even in the middle of fear, to have MariKate and our kids.
Faith: That was harder. Itâs always been something Iâve wrestled with. On that table, I wished I had a stronger faith. Wished I had something deeper to lean on when the possibility of death was staring back at me.
The evening I was officially diagnosed with cancer was one of the heaviest nights of my life. I remember coming home, collapsing onto the couch, and just sobbingâwith my mom and mother-in-law there. Crying doesnât come naturally to me, but this was different. The weight was too much to hold in.
At the time, our oldest daughter Emma was only three. My mom tucked her into bed that night, and out of nowhere Emma shared a Bible verse she remembered: âWith God all things are possibleâ (Matthew 19:26). My mom was stunned, especially because that verse wasnât even part of her Sunday school curriculum yet. On her way out of the room, she told MariKate, âAsk Emma about her memory verse.â Sure enough, Emma recited it again.
It might sound small, but to us it was huge. That verse became the first of many weâve come to call our familyâs âWith Godâ momentsâthese little reminders that we werenât walking this alone. That night, as I lay in bed, I felt prayers surrounding me in a way I had never experienced before, even as my mind raced with fear about what was coming next.
What came next, was the red devil. I donât know how to fully put words to it. It wasnât necessarily overwhelming, though it should have been. The nurses and staff became like family. The first step was having a port placed in my chest so the chemo could go straight into my heart. Every other week Iâd show up, the nurses would gown up from head to toe, and theyâd bring out the chemo in a massive syringe of what they called the âred devil.â It would drip slowly through my port, I sat with my laptop, trying to get a little work doneâuntil the Benadryl knocked me out.
After the first couple of treatments, my hair started falling out, so instead of watching it come out in clumps, the kids helped me shave it all off. That was its own momentâstrange and oddly lighthearted in the middle of something so heavy.
The hardest part was always the week after treatment. It rocked my body completely, and mentally it was tough to stay positive when I felt that sick. But usually by the following week, Iâd bounce back enough to feel somewhat normal again, and with that came a better mental outlook. I remember one Sunday, in one of those âgood weeks,â sitting in church while the pastor preached about valleys and tough times. My mind went straight to the chaos at homeâfour kids in diapers, Amazon boxes of diapers stacked so high on our porch they blocked the door. That felt like my valley. Then I caught myself. No, the valley was cancer.
But that perspective mattered. I realized how fortunate I was to even get those weeks of reprieve, because a lot of people going through chemo never did.
Months later came my first PET scan. MariKate and I used the chance as a rare date, sneaking away for lunch after the scan. We were sitting in a nearly empty restaurant when the phone rang.
The nurse was crying. She told us there was no cancer.
Stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphomaâthe kind thatâs âincurableââwas gone.
We cried right there at the table. Tears, relief, disbelief. The nurse cried with us on the phone. A miracle? A misdiagnosis? I donât know. But my life was changed.
That season redefined success for me. It wasnât just about building software, or freedom, or even survival. It was about living with purpose.
Kakadoodle didnât exist yet. But the seeds were planted hereâwhen I realized life is fragile, family is everything, and food, faith, and health are more than just afterthoughts.
This is why Kakadoodle exists today. Itâs not just a business. Itâs a fight for something real.
