Gungahlin Bowser as an establishment, as a business.

Civil war started in November of last year, and I'm coming up to my third one year anniversary.

My father was an artist and he had written Gungahlin Bowser, which is actually a story that his father told him, and he adapted it, illustrated it.

My mother did the calligraphy.

My wife, who was an artist and worked in this town for a long time, worked in the university for a long time, was very influential on exactly where things were.

And she's clearly got a great sense of style.

The only thing that really when we originally designed it and I can show you some photos actually if you look through the Instagram, you can see some of the earlier shots was empty and that was pretty much where we started.

After that.

We just transferred over the house.

I mean, everything you see here, all the toys or things that we have in our house.

There's a sense of whimsy that's in our house.

And I wanted to kind of take that and say, here, enjoy.

That's have a sort of a moment with it, to be honest with you.

Initially, the books were something that meant something to me.

That was my primary goal.

I wanted to have books that I would have walked into a store and acquired.

I walked, I looked at everything and said, That looks cool.

That looks cool.

I like that story.

I like that story.

I never really took into consideration would this sell?

And there's a lot of titles in here that I really when I do sell them, it's like a shock to my system.

It's like, really?

You want those two?

Are it cool?

A lot of the books that we'd hear are by people that have that same affinity for certain titles, for certain illustrators, certain authors.

I mean, there are certain titles I look at and I go, okay, I see that as a little bit pandering to an audience, but that's okay, too.

I make a point of not acquiring stuff that I think they can get at a Walmart.

I keep telling people, you know, whenever they see like, he's your competition, Amazon or anything like that, a Walmart is like, no.

People that are looking for a specific book have already acquired it online.

They've already used their phone and said, I want this, that's already shipped me.

This is the place for browsers.

I want people to come in.

I want people to have fun.

This is a place for families.

I want to foster that love of the experience.

I want to provide something that this community didn't have.

And initially I thought it was a bookstore, but in the end it was just this moment.

That's kind of what I was trying to get out there.

And Dad, this was Dad, two daughters.

Mom came in and Dad desperately wanted to have a conversation with me, just really wanted to make those connections with They need this.

Did not want to be here any way, shape or form.

He picked the wrong guy.

I was not connecting to it.

Literally anything he was talking about.

He took a step back and and he looked up there and all the Fisher-Price stuff, and he looked at one particular item and he stopped and said, Can I see that?

And he looks at this and he wins that and starts telling me about this toy that his mother had and that he had these these experiences.

And he wound up he was listening to it and he was suddenly in a whole different place.

And he goes over to one daughter and he starts to tell her about this.

Now, there's one diaries, maybe two feet, three feet away from the other one is looking at the other show and he tells her this whole thing about this toy and how much it meant to him and everything.

And then when he's done telling the one daughter, he takes the three steps over to the daughter, goes to the off script again.

And that was just such a great moment.

And all the while the books weren't meaning as much to him.

I still found something in here that meant something to him.

And and that was a that was a great takeaway.

It just made me feel really good about I'm able to connect somehow to most the people that walk in here.

And that's pretty darn cool when they think of this store.

I want them to have a good memory.

I want them to have.

I want them to think of a time that meant something to them.

I want them to think of this as sort of an extension of a potential library store, family comfort, comfort food.

My wife use that term all the time, comfort food.

And I really like that idea of coming in.

I mean, this is a now, not initially.

It is a moment to decompress after my weight.

I mean, a lot of people wouldn't think that there really is a a way sort of to distance myself from my day to day job.

And that's really nice.

A one of my favorite things to do and always I'm not sure why bothers them, but when I have a parent that is desperately trying to control a kid in here, they're just terrified they're going to tear the place up.

And I say, don't worry about it.

I mean, there's nothing to break everything that's breakable.

The one thing that is seriously breakable are those in easy boxes case.

But it's really nice to watch a parent or indeed to decompress a little bit the same as I am.

It's like, Oh, so my kid can just lie on the floor in the middle and we can go shout, Yeah, call into what you need to do.

I'm not worried about it.

I'm helping create core memories and that's really sweet.

I love that I am part of that.

I really want you to have that family moment for once.

You sit at the end of your bed and read to your kid until they tell you you be dead and can't come into my room anymore.

You know, I really want that to happen.

This means this can extend you can have that love of the child and your spouse and these books and they all kind of come together.

And this habit, even if you don't stay together, you're still going to have those moments forever.

And I want to foster that more than anything.

Our normal hours right now have been, and I'm probably going to stick with them.

Are in about 4 to 6 months and Fridays, which is normally when I do most of my stock.

But that's neither here nor there.

I'm open and on Saturdays we open from 9 to 3.

9:00 is normally one of the readers our readers are in.

The farmers market is open.

I try to keep their hours.

I also, if you reach out to me with an email address, your that or a social media, whether on Instagram or Facebook or anything else that we that's it.

And say, Hey, can you open up in an evening.

I have done that a number of so that all families I just couldn't make it otherwise when they were here and spend as much time as they want.

I'm quite happy from a time.