Summer Vacation 2014 - There and Back Again

Introduction

9:30 on Monday, June 30, 2014. We're all showered, Quin is in bed, Jenny's powering through another bout with Facebook, I'm watching The Wolverine with Ethan... It's easy to forget about the events of the last 36 hours. It's taken me an hour to type up the summary on this page, so I can only imagine how long the actual account will take me. This will be an epic, to be sure. It will only cover about 36 hours of actual time, but I fear it may take me almost that much time to condense my thoughts into the written word. I can promise you intrigue, adventure, horror, romance - well, maybe not romance, but it is quite a story. It will be long. I feel like Tolkien sitting down and recounting Bilbo's trip back to The Shire. This could take a while, but hopefully it will not bore too much.

For those astute readers (dear reader - sorry, I've been listening to a lot of Steven King on the trip), you will have by now recognized that there is a gap in the retelling of our vacation. I found the first two entries of this year's trip to be limp and boring. I feel like today's offering has the right components of a good story, and as such, I wanted to ensure I put it to paper as soon as I could so I didn't forget what I wanted to represent here. I promise I will circle back and summarize the last day of camp for those that are keeping track and are interested. Consider this entry a more secular version of our vacation. OK, I'm going to start now, I promise. You might want to get new reading glasses and freshen up your drink.

Sunday Morning

It's Sunday morning. We have developed a bad habit of sleeping through the alarm and sleeping a full 9 hours on most of our vacations rather than doing the right thing and getting a run in at altitude. We finally come to around 8:00 AM Mountain Time to get our day started. The camp is not yet ended - there are the closing ceremonies and clean-up yet to occur. We've decided to forego these ceremonies and instead get a head start on our 15 hour drive.

Once the kids were finally up and showered, we finally took off by 9:00 and headed down to Denver proper to say goodbye to Maylee and Steve, our hosts from a few nights prior. After a quick breakfast at Einstein's Bagels, Jenny, Maylee, and Ethan went to Albertsons to procure snacks for our drive while Steve, Quinton, and I went to Lowry Liquors to fill the spot emptied in the car from the donation we made to the camp for the silent auction. Quinton was a big help. Walking into the store, he immediately went to get a cart. I want to think it is because he likes to push carts, but I think it's because he knows that I typically need a cart when I shop in a liquor store. Colorado has a wonderful selection of beer, many of which I can get in Wisconsin, but many I cannot. For those in the beer nerd crowd, Colorado has moved past the IPA craze and is now brewing and enjoying beers across many different styles! I intended to get 4-six packs, but ended up with 5 and a four pack to boot. Quinton was right. He pushed the cart along with Steve and I while I traded and re-traded selections several times and to the front of the store once I ultimately settled on my final selections. Once at the checkout, the proprietor packed my selections into a box that Quin offered to carry. The proprietor said he could not take that, but asked me if it was OK if Quin had a lollypop instead. Once I said yes, he set an entire bucket of lollypops in front of Quin and said, "here you go," surely expecting Quin to take one and move along. Quin, somewhat predictably, instead grabbed the entire bucket and started to walk out. He confidently smiled at the owner and thanked him before Steve and I convinced him that he only really needed one...

To go a little Tarantino for a second, Quin's behavior and confidence at the liquor store reminded me of something I've been noticing in Ethan of late. It's happened on several occasions lately, but it was quite pronounced on this vacation. There were several occasions where Ethan was hanging around with Jenny and I while we were talking with new people that we had just met. They were addressing Ethan directly, asking him questions, as is polite to do, though teenagers seem to dread it and often shy away from that sort of contact. Lately, however, Ethan has been showing a lot of confidence in these dealings, looking people directly in the eye, smiling confidently, and actually maintaining a solid, enthusiastic conversation with them. I've been very impressed by this of late. If I don't get to the topic in tomorrow's post about the last day of camp, Ethan was also very impressive in this camp by his ability to hook up with and meet new friends. He made a couple of solid acquaintances on this trip that I'm sure he will maintain contact with either through his various social networks or through Xbox live. Isn't the future great!??! OK, enough of the distraction...

By 10:30 Mountain, the closing ceremonies were most likely in full swing, but we were on the road, on our way through Eastern Colorado toward our home in Wisconsin, which we hoped to reach sometime early on the subsequent morning. Eastern Colorado, or the Colorado Desert is, in a word, boring. If it wasn't for the mountains, Colorado would be a painfully boring place. Good thing they have the mountains, I suppose! We powered through the 2 hours of 76 in short order, stopping at the end for subs and gasoline. Quin was pretty cranky by this point - having been off his schedule for almost an entire week by this point, but we ate our lunch and powered on through Nebraska - wonderful Nebraska!

The day portion of the trip went on without a hitch. Quin napped a considerable amount, which boded well for his mood later in the day. Nebraska during the day looks much like Nebraska during the night. In fact, there's little to distinguish between the two. It's LONG! Along the way we stopped at Hastings at perhaps the most glorious truck stop I have ever encountered. They had a couple of food places, an arcade with a full size replica of Predator, foot-long roller dogs, and actual ice cream shakes which were pretty good! They were even building a Quaker Steak and Lube there, which should be opening sometime this fall. I may actually want to go back there sometime!

We spent 6 solid hours in Nebraska before we finally got to Omaha, which marked the finish of the first half of our journey. Along the way I encountered what may have been, in retrospect, my first omen of what was to come. I've had a problem with my van in the past where the condenser drain backed up and started emptying in the car cabin. Sometime in central Nebraska I started to feel a cool drip of water on my bare feet. I knew at once what it was, and it only got worse as the day waned and the A/C ran... My second omen was, again in retrospect, encountered while listening to a book on tape by Michael Crighton called Pirate Latitudes. It was one book that I hadn't yet read from Crighton, and it proved to be pretty good, though Jenny wasn't wild about it. The ending was pretty terrible in my opinion, however - I suspect that Crighton either lost interest or died before he finished the book, but they published it anyway... Anyway, at one point during the eastern part of Nebraska, the protagonists encountered the Kraken, a bad omen for their journey. I thought tacitly to myself that this could be an omen for myself as well as for the crew, but I did so jokingly...

Anyway, we passed through Omaha and stopped just across the Iowa border in Council Bluffs where we enjoyed dinner at Perkins, a perennial favorite (and also one of the only places open at 8:00 on a Sunday evening). There was a feeling of relief in the air. There was a definite anticipation for the trip to be over and for life to normalize again - most of all, everybody was looking forward to sleeping in our own beds in 7-8 short hours! Mother Nature, as it seems, had a different plan for us.

Lightening scarred the sky while the crew of "El Trinidad" encountered the Kraken for the second time. Western Iowa was getting some weather, it was clear, though we didn't really see any significant rain. Des Moines proved to be quite the tease on this leg of the journey. The map said something like 125 miles, and we were averaging around 75 miles per hour, so we figured on getting there some time before 11:00 Central. Somehow, though, the miles kept lagging behind as though we were only averaging 60 miles per hour. Ultimately it took us 2 full hours to get there, though admittedly we did stop once to go to the rest room.

As we pass Des Moines, I begin to get hopeful that we might make it home by 4:00, thinking (wrongly) that we are only an hour from Cedar Rapids, then another 4 hours from home. Cedar Rapids, though, is nearly 2 hours from Des Moines... I was getting a little despondent as we stopped another time, this time to allow Jenny to get a towel to cover herself so I could continue to run the AC and to have its condensed water drip on my feet, keeping me alert and awake.

Monday Morning

The hours passed slowly, the lightening continues uninterrupted. We pass the Highway 151 exit and I briefly consider taking it instead of taking the more traveled interstate toward Cedar Rapids, but I quickly dismiss it. I was tired, the gas tank was getting to the point where I needed to fill it again, but the family wanted to get home! At 12:30, we finally reached I380 and turn north. A short 12 mile jaunt north and we turn off onto Highway 151 to start the last quarter of our journey, the most difficult quarter behind us. I put off gassing up until I'm on the 151 bypass of Cedar Rapids, looking forward to taking on a Red Bull and a water and staying plenty alert for the last 1/4 of the journey. That proved to be a fantasy, however...

Splashdown

I380 passes over Highway 151/30, so the exit winds down and to the east at a somewhat sharp curve. We took it at the suggested 30 MPH speed. By this point I am bleary eyed, but hopeful of making the next 10 miles go quickly so I can stop, gas up, and clear my head. As I round the curve toward 151 I notice that the road is covered in water. I didn't think much of it, but as I hit the water, it crashed violently over my windshield as the tires on our car stopped responding. I slammed on the brakes and the car stopped... We were obviously in deeper water than I had anticipated. The car was lilting toward the passenger side, where it came up above the floorboards. The driver's side wasn't quite as bad, perhaps only 12 inches deep there. There was mass hysteria. I calmed myself as quickly as I could and tried to calm Quin and Ethan (Jenny was going to have to fend for herself). I quickly got out of the car and coaxed the kids out as well. Quin wanted to make sure that his Furby was OK - we had won it in the silent auction at camp. Ethan yelled that the water was coming in the car! It took about 30 seconds for the reality of what had happened to sink in. We were stuck!

The whole family got out but the water was rising somewhat (I may have imagined that). We moved to higher ground and assessed the situation. My next thought was for our stuff, particularly my electronics (stupid westerner!). I went quickly back to the car and checked the situation with our luggage and was satisfied that it was safe and dry for the moment. A moment later, a car came speeding down at us from 380 which was the first reminder that we were standing on a freeway in the middle of the night, and that was scary! He saw our flashers and stopped, luckily. He was from Wisconsin as well, and managed to not get his car stuck, but stopped and asked if he could help us (a trend we would see throughout the evening). I took him up on his offer and between he, Ethan, Jenny, and myself, we managed to push the car out of the 18 or so inches of water toward the high side of the road.

Several other cars and semis came speeding around the curve. Many of them stopped and asked if we needed help. Not knowing what to do myself, we told them we were OK and they should continue on themselves. An eastern European couple came the closest to hitting us, and also had almost as bad a luck as we did. I tried briefly to converse with them as they stalled out about 50 feet in front of us, but quickly found it was pointless as they neither wanted nor were able to communicate effectively with me (nor I with them), so we left each other to our own devices.

On a couple of occasions I tried to start the car. The power was still working, but when I tried to turn the ignition it behaved as though I needed a jump. I didn't know if it was going to dry out at some point and I would be able to move on, or if we were in real trouble. As Jenny and I were arguing over whether we should walk to a gas station or some other place (there were none around), Jenny dropped her phone in 6 inches of standing water... The dollar signs were starting to add up for me in my head and I got despondent for a brief moment. Getting over it, I decided that the modern day savior, the cell phone, was our best course of action.

I first called the police, thinking that they might want to get somebody there to warn people from running into the same ordeal we had run into. For the first time in my life, I dialed 911 confidently and was answered in 30 or so seconds by a clearly frazzled dispatcher. I tried calmly to tell her where I was and that there was a lot of standing water that was dangerous to the public there. Of course my situation was the most dire in the area at this time!!! She excitedly explained to me that there was major flooding all over Cedar Rapids, and to please hold. She moved away from the phone and was talking to somebody else in the room who was trying to get a boat to perform a rescue at the HyVee. At that point I realized that we were very small potatoes in the grand scheme of this storm. Like a good dispatcher she got back on the phone and asked me to continue to hold, trying to reassure me that I was important, but I convinced her that I could handle it myself and she should attend to the real emergencies - I think she was ultimately pleased. I'm probably on the NSA's radar now, though, having called 911 for real...

My next attempt was to get a tow truck. I tried the first one that came up on Google only to be met with an answering machine. The second one got me to a dispatcher that informed me that the average wait time right now was 3-4 hours. Aw crap. I hung up and explained it to Jenny who was unimpressed...

During this time, no fewer than 5 cars and many people on foot had stopped to inquire as to our wellbeing and to see if they could do anything. I'm very impressed with the people of Cedar Rapids, for the record! As I tried to come up with another idea, Jenny started talking to four guys in an extended cab pickup truck who said they had a tow-truck they could go get and help us out. She came over to me and told me to go talk with them. As I started to negotiate the deal, a truck from the company that I had called came rolling by and was apparently impressed enough by our situation that he stopped to help us - this was 10 minutes after we were told it would be 3-4 hours! Our luck was improving! To boot, Jenny's phone was still working - maybe this wouldn't be all bad!!!

As Pat is assessing our situation, he is preparing us for the worst. I explain what is happening and he told us that we are likely looking at a new engine or new car entirely. First thing's first, though, he wants to get our car off of the freeway and get us somewhere we can stay the night. Since he had a long night in front of him, he squeezed us all into his cab and dropped us along with our car off at his parent company where they will hopefully be able to address our car in the morning. As we drove there, we had to drive through another section of 2 foot water before finally arriving at a desolate truck repair center near the ethanol plant in Cedar Rapids.

Pat convinced us that we should just call a cab and even wrote down the address for where they should pick us up. I agreed and he left to what was sure to be a long, long night for him - he had diverted from a call to get us to where we were at that point, which was better than drenched on the side of a soggy interstate! He even thought to call us back 10 minutes later to remind us to keep the keys in the car so the mechanics could assess the damage in the morning!

We called a cab, which showed up about 20 minutes later. I had found a hotel, which in my exhaustion I thought was the Comfort Inn, and asked him to take us there. He took us a very nearby cluster of hotels, but there was no Comfort Inn. For some reason it took about 3 minutes to figure out that any hotel will do, just drop us off at one!!! I said if they didn't have rooms we could just walk to another one. The cabbie would have nothing of it, however, as we were in a "bad part of town" and we "shouldn't be walking around there." He meant well, and we appreciated it, but that part of town didn't seem all that scary to me... Perhaps my central Iowa folks can contradict me...

We checked in and got 4 hours of death-like sleep. At 7:30, Jenny was ready to get on the road again, but we had no idea what we were going to have to do. Would we need to rent a car? Could they fix ours? If we rented one, when would we be able to drive 4 hours back to pick ours up? Or would we ever be able to? All questions that we couldn't answer until we talked to the mechanic, but first I needed to figure out the insurance thing. Acuity is NOT a good company when you are in a crisis. They are well setup to accept payments and file claims during business hours, but in an emergency, you are on your own. In the middle of the night, that's a little scary, especially with all of the Progressive commercials that were playing on the TV. By 8:00, however, I was finally able to get ahold of my agent who wasn't much more help anyway - telling me that we were covered for the tow, but didn't know what else... I thanked him and realized that we were on our own... Time to grow up, I guess!

By now the kids had awoken and the TV had come on where National Lampoons Vacation was on. Hmm... Another omen??? Perhaps it would have been if it hadn't happened after the fact, but certainly coincidental! I called the repair place who had just gotten around to looking at the car. I was annoyed, but I later found out that the shop had 3 inches of standing water in it when they arrived and they spent all morning and much of the afternoon cleaning up and making the place functional again!

By now the family was at a bit of a low point. Jenny desperately wanted to be home, or at least at a Starbucks (the nearest of which was 3 miles away). So the kids and I went out and got breakfast to pass the time until we could talk with the mechanic again.

30 minutes later, I called to ATC once again who informed me that they were able to start the car and we might have gotten lucky! Finally, good news!!! Of course, they wouldn't know for sure until they changed the oil and spark plugs and were able to test it some more. This raised the spirits considerably, but now we had to wait the prescribed 45 minutes before we called back. So we went for a walk!

There's not much to see along 33rd street on a humid Monday morning, but we walked nonetheless... When we got back an hour later, I called again, and they continued to be positive, thinking now that they would know for sure if we could drive the car in the next 15 minutes. Knowing Jenny and the kids were at their wits' end, I asked if he thought it would be OK if we just headed down there and waited for it. He said that would be fine, and if we could not ultimately drive it, he would give us a ride to the rental car place. Like I said, the folks in Cedar Rapids are quite friendly!

I tell the family that we're going to the car place, and there was much rejoicing. I called a cab and headed out to the lobby to check out. There I found out that we were REALLY small potatoes in this whole thing. There was apparently a hospital that had to evacuate one of their low-lying floors to another area, and the manager of the hotel awoke to find her truck submerged up to the windows! I started to feel a little badly, but got over it as the cabbie arrived to take us back to ATC.

After spending 90 minutes at the car repair place, outside, where they had setup their soaked lobby furniture while they mopped the whole place out, we paid our $400 bill (tow included) and were finally on our way again, delayed by almost exactly 12 hours! I discussed the situation with some of the employees of the auto repair place and they were very helpful in finding us a safe way back to Dubuque and the lands beyond. They mentioned that they were expecting more weather that afternoon, and quicker we got out of there the better. That turned out to be true as we were made aware of a tornado touchdown from one of our Facebook acquaintances that afternoon!!!

We drove straight through to Dubuque, about 70 minutes, where we got gas and lunch, and most importantly, Jenny got some Starbucks! The world looked normal again.

We made it back to the Oconomowoc area just in time to pickup our dog, who had apparently barked his fool head off the entire time we were gone. The boarding house lady was VERY pleased to see him leave... Not sure what to do with him. I was glad to see him!

Home

It's 6:00 - we are finally home! We had spent several days putting together a gazebo for our deck prior to leaving on vacation, and we were worried that bad weather might have affected it while we were gone. We were pleased to see that it was unaffected by any weather the entire 6 days we were gone! There proved to be some weather coming in, though, so we quickly unpacked the car into the garage to beat the rain.

Jenny had packed pretty efficiently, so the unpacking was going fairly quickly. Quin was working on connecting up to Netflix again, something he had missed on the vacation, and Ethan was busy evacuating his bowels, something he had not apparently done properly for the prior 6 days since he was never afforded the requisite 30 minutes to do so. Jenny and I busied ourselves unpacking and we put a couple of frozen pizzas in the oven so we could get a quick supper. That's when the thunderstorm hit. The lights flickered 3 times - each time we heard a "come on!" from the bathroom. On the 4th time, they went out "for good." It was at that time that we heard the gazebo get blown off the deck... I guess the Kraken had more for us after all!!!

The severe thunderstorm lasted about 10 minutes, but it did some damage, and our power was still not coming back on. Nobody had the chance yet to shower or eat, the pizzas had been in the oven for only 8 minutes, only about 2/3 the time required. As I busied myself looking for flashlights (all of which seem to end up in Quin's room), Jenny finished unpacking. Ethan finished his business in the bathroom, and Quin desperately tried to watch something on Netflix!!! Foiled by the power! Also, the wind had blown the gazebo apart and pieces of it were lying on the ground out back...

On a whim, we decide to call Jenny's sister who lives only 3 miles away to see if she has power. Oh, the power of the cellular telephone! They did have power, so we quickly brokered a deal to shower over there and hang out until our power was restored. When we got there, they had no idea of any of what had transpired over the last 18 hours. When they asked how our vacation was, Quin quickly exclaimed, "I won a Furby!!!"

After an hour of waiting, drinking their beer, and using their shower, my rudimentary sleuthing techniques informed me that our power was back on, only 2 hours from when it had gone out. We headed back home, thankful for the company and the accommodations, but yearning for HOME!!!

So that's where we sit now. I completed my shower once we got back, Quin quickly went to bed, Jenny started the prodigious job of catching up on the laundry, and Quin was able to finally download the Furby app and feed his now hungry little stuffed animal while he was finally able to watch Netflix!!! Life is back to normal - sure, we're 15 hours late, tired, have missed a day of school and a day of work (I wouldn't say I missed it), but we still have a roof over our heads and our power hungry appetites are satiated once more.

It was a nice vacation, but it's REALLY good to be home!

Summer Vacation 2014 - Day 4 - Friday

Friday started our first full day at camp. We had hoped to get a vacation run in this morning, but alas, it was not meant to be. We were able to get moving in time for our 8:30 breakfast meet-up for new families. New families were quite the thing this year with the camp doubling in size or so over the last couple of years.

After breakfast we dropped the kids off with their age appropriate groups, each color coded by shirt color. Quin's group, the first graders, were colored red, and Ethan's group, the middle schoolers, were colored tan. The separation ceremony was done in the gym along with some African dance being taught to us by a local troupe of African dancers. We, and most others, were predictably inept at dancing, though Quin made up for the rest of us. Ethan didn't care to have any of us around him for the separation ceremony, but we could see him from across the gym and he looked typically uncomfortable, though he was trying, it was clear.

After dancing, the kids were off and we went to the auditorium for the adult program. The morning program involved "heritage camp speed dating." The room was split into four sections and each section was assigned a topic. If the topic applied to you, you went to that area. Jenny and I made a point of splitting up and took part in topics like "kids in middle school," "kids that have spent time in the foster system," and "kids that have spent time in orphanages." It was interesting to talk with people that were in similar situations to us. We found out pretty quickly that there was a very large contingent of people here that had adopted from Ethiopia. We also quickly established ourselves as some kind of minor celebrities. For one thing we had adopted domestically - that was pretty common. But very few had adopted domestically and were also in the process of adopting internationally. But what really set us apart was that we managed to drive 15 hours from Wisconsin to attend... In other words, we learned that most people at this conference were "locals."

Jenny and my programs were quite interesting, and I'd love to blog at length about them, but the topics are likely pretty dry for the rest of the considerable leadership, so I'll skip the gory details. Lunch on Friday was catered from a local Ethiopian restaurant, which was delicious. Quin had a meat and cheese sandwich while Ethan got to got white water rafting with the other middle and high schoolers. All on-camp meals were served on an open field on the campus, and there was never a time when there wasn't at least 10 kids playing soccer. There also was never a time when Quin wasn't one of those at least 10 kids!

After lunch was much of the same as the morning. Quin went back to his programming, we went back to ours. The afternoon programs ended up at 4:00 at which time we collected Quin and waited around for Ethan. The rafters didn't end up coming back until close to 4:30. Apparently Ethan had a great time rafting and wants us all to do it again sometime. Quin met some good friends throughout the day as well, but it was time to get away from camp and do something else for awhile.

After camp, we went back to the hotel to swim a bit. I used some of my newly learned child psychology to have some fun with Quin in the pool while Jenny and Ethan rested in the room. After swimming we got ready and met my cousin, Caitlin, and her fiancé at the Bull and Bush, pretty much my favorite place on earth. Bull and Bush is an English style pub that brews their own beer and has better than average pub food. Caitlin and Paxton moved out here only a month ago after Caitlin got a job at a nearby museum. It was nice to see them. The most interesting part of the dinner, though, was how Quin literally slept through the entire meal and then some. The week's activities and messed up schedule had him completely wiped out, and he caught up on 3 hours worth in the car and on my lap around dinner time.

After dinner we met Maylee and Steve again at their floor hockey game in Parker, just south of the city. After a couple of drinks and appetizers afterwards we finally went back to the room but didn't get there until 11:00, late once again! Looks like Quin is going to continue to be off schedule at least another day!

Summer Vacation 2014 - Days 1-3 - Tuednesday and Thursday

This year's edition of summer vacation is to the Mile High City where we are attending an African and Caribbean Heritage Camp. It's been a few years since we've been in Denver in the summer, so we were pretty excited to get things started.

The plan was to make the 15 hour drive from Tuesday through Wednesday morning. After 2/3 day of work, we packed up the car and... waited for Target to deliver some new patio furniture. That could have probably been planned better. They gave us a window from 2-6 on Tuesday. Luckily they turned up at 5:00. It seemed a little sketchy - they showed up in a Penske rental truck and had the back full of stuff. I don't recall if they had uniforms on. Very strange.

We got on the road by 5:30 PM and started the trek, but first we had to drop Heinz off at his resort for the week, Nature's Touch Pet Boarding near Watertown. They were very excited to find out that Heinz would be spending the week with them (insert sarcastic look here). When I called them to make the reservation, they took my information and finally asked for my name. When I said "Grady," the woman said, "Oh great, Heinz." He is notorious for barking the entire time he stays there, so they will have had their fill of his annoying, high-pitched bark by next Monday! The road to the boarding house is a bit out of the way and on gravel roads. After the 25 minute drive we turned off on the last gravel road to deliver him, only to find that there was a bridge out right before the drop off. Ethan suggested that the owners might have destroyed the bridge instead of taking Heinz on as a tenant for the week. He might be right...

After about a 6 mile detour to get back to drop Heinz off, the kids were getting hungry, so we stopped immediately at one of our favorite Culver's in Johnson Creek and had supper. Short story long, we were finally on the road for real by around 6:30 on Tuesday evening. No problem - we were planning to drive through the night anyway.

And that's just what we did. We split the trip up into quarters. Quarter 1 was to Cedar Rapids - we arrived there around 10:00. That one wasn't too bad - everybody was awake for all of that. the next quarter was to Omaha which we arrived at around 2:00, and most everybody was sleeping by then, including the driver. The third quarter was the roughest. I pulled over around 3:00 to let Jenny drive for a spell. After 2 hours, she had had enough, so we pulled over at a beautiful Nebraska rest stop and did just that, rested. After an hour break, the car windows were sufficiently steamed and we continued our journey, ending the third quarter near North Platte, NB around 7:00 in the morning.

After some Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks we hit the road for the final quarter of the trip, the final drive into Denver, where we arrived around 11:00.

Tuednesday - felt like a single day, even though it was two, technically. Quin and Ethan got a decent amount of sleep on the trip, but Jenny and I were pretty cached. Our friends Maylee and Steve offered to let us stay with them for the first night of the trip, which was awesome. The first order of business, their awesome apartment pool, where we spent a couple of hours, after which we got some lunch and relaxed for the afternoon while taking in the World Cup.

The evening went by in a blur. We walked to get some dinner at the Lowry Beer Garden, then walked back, and Quin and I fell instantly to sleep. I had heard the phrase "as soon as my head hit the pillow," but this was the first time I experienced it myself. I agreed to "put Quin to sleep" that night, but I think it turned out the other way around. I'm not sure how Quin fell asleep that night, but Jenny assures me that he was sleeping when she got up there. 10 hours later I'm feeling mostly OK, but it's still hard to believe that 3 days occurred - it only felt like 2!

Thursday was a mostly lazy day as well. Some more pool time, some lunch, then check into our hotel in Westminster, CO, near where our camp was taking place at Regis University, Denver, CO. The camp started at 4:30 where we checked in and took in the opening bar-b-que and social hour. It's always fun to go to these things and see other families that "look like us." Quin took off and played soccer for 90 minutes or so with a bunch of other kids while the rest of us mingled. We met some interesting people, most of which were from the Denver area. One couple we met was from Kansas, and turned out that the father does voice work for cartoons, and even voices some of my favorite characters! Always fun to get out and meet people!

Anyway, the evening ended at Dave and Busters with some video games. Tomorrow the camp starts in earnest - Ethan gets to go whitewater rafting with the high schoolers. Jenny and I will be in different talks throughout the day. Quin will be doing some age appropriate games and other stuff. I'm sure there will be more interesting things to blog about tomorrow, but for now, it's sleepy time. I'm guessing it's going to take a few days to recover from that 2 hour sleep night that was Tuednesday.

Spring Break 2014 - Home!

Raining again this morning. As we were packing our room, I was thinking on my post from last night and how I had forgotten to put some important color on it. After the mall, the three boys (Ethan, Quin, and Loudon) and I went swimming in the pool. After we had swum for awhile, a couple of young girls came in - I would estimate they were around 10 or 11 years old. At one point they went to sit in the hot tub, where Quin followed them. I didn't even notice he was gone... I was hanging with my nepphew, trying to show him how to float. A couple of minutes later, Quin comes jumping into the regular pool and asks me, quiely, "dad, where do we live?" I told him Oconomowoc, and he got out of the pool and went back to the hot tub. A couple of minutes later he did the same thing, this time asking what state we lived in... Then went back... It was kind of spooky how natural he was at working these two girls - I was at once impressed and taking notes.

This morning we got up, packed up, then went to Al and Araceli's house for breakfast with them and my parents. It was a wonderful breakfast and nice to spend time with the family before we headed home. The funniest part of the morning by far was when Quin asked Araceli, "Are you a Mexican?" She responded that she was, indeed, Mexican. He then asked her, "how did you get here?" I was somewhat mortified, but at the same time wanted to see where it went. She patiently explained to him that Mexico was just south of the US and even tried to show him on the globe that was handy. I think he lost interest... Still, it was pretty funny.

Fast forward 5 hours and we're home. We've been making a tradition out of saving the last day of vacation for when we get home. It's just more comfortable here and sometimes it's nice to pretend that you don't have a bunch of stuff to do but still be comfortable. So that's what we're doing now. No laundry, no cooking, just relaxing with our own stuff. We even went to a movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which I found quite entertaining. Might have been a bit much for Quin...

So that's it for this year's spring break. Tomorrow we're back to almost normal. We have some work on the house to do, need to pick up the dog, and then it's on to a weekend full of soccer, the first of MANY weekends like that. It's been fun, but now life must go on.

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Spring Break 2014 - Mall of America

The day started REALLY late this morning. The plan was to meet Uncle Bryce and Loudon at the Mall of America (MOA) at 10:00 to do rides and other fun stuff. When 9:00 rolled around and we were still having difficulty getting Quin out of bed, we knew we were going to have to delay a bit. It seems that vacation finally caught up to the 6 year old, who went to bed at midnight the night previous and hadn't slept much to date. He sure made up for it last night!

After a shower and a quick breakfast in the atrium (our hotel is pretty nice), we headed out of the room to travel to the mall. Not before we stopped in the lobby for some Starbucks, a vacation staple. While Jenny was procuring the sweet caffeinated beverages for us, the boys and I sat at leather chairs in the lobby having a quick business meeting where I insulted, fired, rehired, and ultimately praised them for their parts in our bunny business. It was a weird morning.

We got to the mall a few minutes early, so Ethan shopped for and purchased a new Jerry Garcia tie (he's obsessed), then the four of us hung out at the Microsoft store and played some XBox ONE. The hope was that we would ultimately convince Jenny that it was time to buy one of our own. Not to spoil the surprise, but we still do not own one...

At 10:30 we met up with Bryce and Loudon and took in the rides at Nickelodeon World. Loudon is a natural and loves rides, and it turns out Quin is as well! He's now tall enough (50 inches) to go on all the rides himself. Ethan was a very good big brother and older cousin today and went on all of the rides with his younger proteges.

A bit of lunch and more rides later, we were thinking of leaving. The kids convinced us that it was a good idea to go on the log ride one more time. We had gone on earlier and Quin and I had gotten REALLY wet - well, Quin got completely soaked, and I got really wet. Since I had gotten so wet the last time, I gave my phone to Jenny to watch while I rode this time around, which was good since we went on it twice in a row (it was a very slow day at the park). Jenny took some video of us on the ride, and once we were done, I found that my phone had completely discharged again. Luckily there was an Apple store only about 100 feet away, so I went there to find out what was wrong with my phone, only to find that I needed a new battery (I really need a new phone, the iPhone 5 is NOT one of Apple's best products, unfortunately).

After dropping off my phone, we took Loudon back to the hotel with us to take in some swimming, then we headed back to uncle Blaine's house for some home-made supper made by Grandma and Grandpa, who we haven't seen for quite some time (a correction from yesterday, we have seen them since November, in fact we saw them in January at Vince's baptism). It was quite a nice dinner and good to see the grandparents and Araceli again.

So, how here we sit again. A pretty low key evening. Quin's still up at 10:00, probably because he got 12 hours of sleep the night prior. Ethan and I are watching Friends while Jenny is watching something while "encouraging" Quin to sleep in the other room. Tomorrow is the last day in MN for us - we will be heading back home to WI for the final days of our vacation. Friday will be a vacation day despite the fact that we'll be home.

 

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Spring Break 2014 - The Museum

Ethan and I knocked one of our meager goals for this vacation off this morning, we had breakfast at Taco Bell! Yeah, we have lofty goals. We piled down a couple of waffle tacos and breakfast burritos each and headed into St. Paul to take in the Minnesota Museum of Science.

The MMS is one of the better science museums I've been to, quite honestly. We easily spent 3.5 hours there without even doing a movie! This included the dinosaur exhibit, which was very cool. I learned some interesting new things, in fact. I had no idea what a rennaissance of dinosaur discoveries we were in lately! I don't think I recognized a single dino in the exhibit, they were all new discoveries in the last 10 years or so. My favorite was an entire new class of dinosaurs, the "titanosaurs." Very cool name.

We spent the better part of the day there. Around 1:00 or so we decided we should eat something. Since it was nice outside (well, sunny at least), we walked around downtown St. Paul in desparate search of something to eat. I suggested we take on one of the hotdog vendors in the square, but Jenny insisted we find something else. After strikingo out at Paluzza (or something named similarly), we finally ended up at The American Burger Bar. After a quick round of drinks, a vacation necessity, conversation switched to more esoteric topics. One such topic was that of ninjas (of course). Quin stated that he was, in fact, a ninja. Ethan said that ninjas don't talk, so there was no way he could be one. I stated that there could be some such thing as a "verbose ninja." Ethan asked what that was, and without hesitation Quin told him, "A ninja that talks but just doesn't tell his secrets." I wrote that one down because, dang, what a great and accurate description!

Our original plan was to go to the zoo after lunch, but after eating, we decided we'd rather drive around a bit and hopefully get Quin to take a quick nap - he had gone to sleep at midnight the night before! So we tooled around Minneapolis for a bit, looked at all of the new sports arenas, saw the hole in the ground where the Metrodome used to be, and generally just farted around.

After an hour or so of that, we finally headed back south and checked into our hotel. Well, we first went to the wrong hotel, then checked into the proper hotel. Dinner plans were with the Johnson's, one of the girls we grew up with and her family, at a Brew Pub like place in Apple Valley. Though the service was slow, the beer and the food were good.

We transitioned back to our hotel for an hour or swimming, which brings us up to the present. Now, Ethan, Jenny and I are watching TV in one room while Quin finally sleeps in the other half of the suite (yeah, we went all out). Tomorrow promises rain and cold, so our plans have us inside most of the day at the mall. Hopefully Ethan and I fulfill the remainder of our meager goals, to see Captain America. Then it's off to see Grandpa and Grandma Grady for the first time since November as they stop off on their migration back to Neillsville for the summer.

 

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Spring Break 2014 - Minnesota

We departed Neillsville sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 AM, right on schedule. Jenny's plans didn't have us overtaxing ourselves today. The plan was to hit a couple of tourist stops south of the Twin Cities, then drive up to spend the late afternoon/evening at Blaine's in Inver Grove Heights.

Our first stop was at LARK Toys in Kellogg Minnesota. This was not our typical drive for a vacation as it involved ZERO interstate time. Highway 10 to Mondovi, then meandered south to the river, across the river, you get the picture. It was picturesque, or would have been if there had been any leaves on the trees. We stopped in Mondovi for a soda as we were parched, and were surprised at how WARM it was outside! I think it's been so long since we've felt warm air that we didn't know how to respond, but the day was beautiful!!

We pulled into Lark Toys around 11:15, parked, then went into the building. Quin still hadn't quite recovered from the prior evening's festivities, what with the tick and all, so he was cranky to say the least. What we found, however, was a nice toy store with a bunch of non-typical toys - things you can't find at WalMart! There were also a fair number of antique toys behind protective glass that was pretty neat. I had read the reviews the night prior to see what we were getting into, and the reviewer couldn't say enough about the carousel and how much fun they had having a "tea party" after riding the carousel. Well, I promised the boys that we would have an epic Tea Party, and Quin and I had that indeed. He was disappointed that there was no real tea, which he doesn't like anyway, but he was disappointed nonetheless. The reviewer said they spent 5 hours there and planned to come back 4 times a year. It was fun, but I guess if you don't have girls that appreciate the British afternoon custom for playtime, it might not be quite the same.

After "tea time" and purchasing some novelties that we didn't think we could find anywhere else, we got some lunch and officially started "spring break" with some umbrella drinks (as seen below). Ethan and Quin also got to ride the carousel, which was actually pretty cool, all of the animals were hand carved at the toy shop, and they were quite impressive!

We left Lark toys around 12:45, just shy of the 5 hours the Google reviewer promised, and headed north to Wabasha for the National Eagle Preserve on the river there. After paying our admission price, we were told that we could still get in on the 1:00 "show" where they told us all about their eagles and even fed one of them. We got in there just in time to see Angel, a 10 pound female Bald Eagle with a 7 foot wingspan, power her way through a raw rabbit carcass. Pretty cool.

Quin was pretty cranky by now, and we had seen enough eagle stuff - including a huge nest on the bridge crossing the Mississippi on the way over. So we decided to head north to Minneapolis, our ultimate destination for the evening. We arrived around 3:00 and had some time to burn, so we just drove around, a time honored tradition in our family. By 5:00 we called Blaine and hooked up with him and had some dinner at Ruby Tuesday, a fine establishment indeed. Blaine then bonded with his nephews while I took Jenny to a planned workout with a friend up here in the area - yeah, Jenny plans out workouts with friends in distant cities... While she was there, I headed up and visited with Bryce and the family - his boys are getting pretty big! In fact, Vincy is already 17 pounds!

Right now we're huddled around the TV in Blaine's living room watching Rush Hour (Quin is still up, Jenny's asleep, Blaine is in bed). Tomorrow we go to our hotel where our "real vacation" begins according to Quin. We're also looking to hit the Science Museum, the zoo, and a brewpub before we get the kids into the pool to burn off some much needed energy.

 

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Vacation - "The Emergency"

Vacation just isn't vacation until there's a trip to the E.R. So today officially started our vacation!

This afternoon was pretty nice outside. It was around 60 degrees, not too much wind, so the kids went outside and played baseball. They were chasing the balls all around the property, including through some longer brush and what-not.

After a long day of playing, and a long night the night before, Quin was pretty tired. So around 7:30 we decided it was time to start what we thought would be a quick descent into sleepy time, starting with a bath. It was your typical bath, even though it was in a strange tub. Once he got out and was drying off, Quin was feeling around and discovered something strange on the underside of his "special purpose." He showed it to me, and I confirmed - a tick!

I gave it a couple of quick tries, not knowing what the protocol was for a dad to be messing around with his 6 year old's nether regions, but giving it an honest try. It wasn't long before I admitted defeat, however, and called up his more nimble fingered mother. Jenny worked at it for a bit before she, too, admitted defeat, and resorted to using tools instead, so she employed a tweezers. That's when things started to go downhill!

She managed to get the main portion of the tick removed with the tweezers, but this little guy was in there pretty good! There were a LOT of waterworks, a lot of screaming, and a lot of convincing him that we needed to try to get the head out of this. It was a mess! We tried pretty much everything, but after all was said and done, Quin looked at us and said, "listen to me! You're hurting my skin, and you're hurting me! Please stop!"

So we started talking through what we should do next. Should we call the doctor? What did the internet say? Was it a deer tick? Was the head really in there (it was)? Quin didn't much like listening to all of this - he didn't want to go to the Doctor! Of course, after a bit of digging around, and telling him that it wouldn't hurt to go to the doctor, he WANTED to go to the DOCTOR, PLEASE!!!

We gave up. We got him in his jammies and I fetched my cell phone and called the number I remember so well from my youth - 715.743.3101. I asked for the nurse on call, then I'll admit, I through my name out there expecting some special treatment (I didn't get any). The nurse informed me that she thought we should bring him in so the doctor could look at him.

Being Neillsville, we weren't expecting this to be too big a deal. It is only about a 10 minute ride to the hospital from pretty much anywhere in the zip code. Once we got there around 8:45, the parking lot was a bit fuller than would be expected. We checked in and were informed that it would probably be awhile - things were kind of busy. The waiting room had 2 other groups of people sitting already. We were lucky to have a television and remote to keep us company, and there was a baseball game on, so that worked out OK.

About 45 minutes later, we were the only ones left in the waiting area. I mentioned to Jenny that, unless there was an ambulance, we should be in shortly. It was quiet there, so we could hear the page coming in that the ambulance was inbound, something about shortness of breath, etc... Yep - bad luck!

Despite the ambulance's arrival, we got in around 9:45 and they started taking vitals, height, and weight. Quin is 50 inches tall (something the tech was unable to figure out, unfortunately) and weighed 60 pounds! After a couple of minutes, Dr. Stanga came in and was able to confirm the existence of a tick head on the underside of Quin's penis.

The doctor gave some orders and left the room. After numbing up the area, we were left alone with our little boy who had lots of questions. "Is it biting me? Why's it in there? Is it moving around?" At one point during our attempts, I explained to him that ticks had teeth that bit so hard that they wouldn't let go, to which Quin informed us that we should just "knock out it's teeth." "That would only hurt the tick, not me!" He continued on that line of thought at the doctor's office as well.

By 10:30, tick head, along with just a little bit of Quinton's tender bits gone, and with antibiotics in hand (they treat for Lyme's in all cases, I guess), we were on our way back to the Tibbett's. Quin took his medicine and he and I went up to finally go to sleep - he did manage to sleep for an hour while we waited to get into the E.R. Of course, he was a little charged up now, so we had some interesting conversation while he tried to fall off to sleep:

"Why is my penis so special?" he asked me, referring back to when I was explaining to him why we had to go to the doctor's. I told him that every part of us is special. Conversation averted, or so I thought. "What do we use our penises for, just peeing?" "A few other things," I said. "How many?" he asked. "Oh, I don't know, six-or-seven." "Well, which is it, six or seven?" This went on for a while...

"Why did they say that's a bad place to get a tick?" he asked me? I explained that there are a lot of nerves in that area, and that it typically hurt especially bad. That got us into a whole discussion about nerves and what function they served to the body.

After many more gripping questions (I'll include more if I remember them), he finally asked me, "can I mess around with my penis?" I told him maybe not tonight. Tomorrow would be OK, probably. "Well, tomorrow's kind of busy," he said. Never too busy to mess around with your penis... Maybe I shouldn't have said that to him, but I like to make a point of not lying to my children...

 

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Spring Break 2014 - Happy Easter!

Welcome to Grady Spring Break, 2014! The itenerary is quite extensive, to be sure, and the destinations exotic!

The trip started yesterday where we left the house in the van around 9:00 AM, heading north! Yes, you read that correctly, we headed NORTH for spring break. Didn't say we were all that bright! The first stop was probably just off of MTV's list of destinations for this year's spring break, Neillsville, WI.

OK, so we're sort of mailing in Spring Break this year. Rather than doing something exotic with lots of driving or flying, we're going to hang out with family near places that we know and enjoy. This weekend we'll be staying with Jenny's family. In fact we just got back from Easter Mass this morning, and got to spend several hours with Jenny's siblings last night where we ate too much and got some outside time (it's above 50 degrees, which means outside time in Wisconsin!).

Today promises to be a nice lazy day. It will be just the Grady's and Tom and Shirley, something that rarely happens. Tomorrow we head to Minneapolis by way of Waubasha, MN, where some gigantic toy store and some eagle place are beconing us. Tomorrow night we'll be staying with my brother, Blaine, and then heading to the real highlight, Embassy Suites near the Mall of America. Should be a hoot.

Ethan and I have two goals for this vacation. First, we want to eat breakfast at Taco Bell. Second, we want to see the new Captain America movie. Yeah, pretty ambitious. I hope we are able to pull it off!

Until then, I'll share pictures as I get them. I'm sure we'll be putting something together for more mass sharing as we get back and synchronize up from our big, non-internet connected camera. Below is a sample of what we're doing today - playing on our devices... That's kind of what we do these days...

 

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6 years ago today...

It was Saturday. I don't remember many of the details of the day, unfortunately, but what I do remember is that we got the call that the birth mother had finally completed the harrowing experience of giving birth to who would come to be our child through the institution of domestic adoption. Over the years we've found that we've been given the gift of a wonderful, healthy, smart, and strong boy with whom we get to spend time with, learn from, be perplexed and frustrated by, and love on a day to day basis. It's been a wild ride and I can't wait to find out what's next!

Today we will celebrate his birth, a delivery story that matched Ethan's almost to the detail save for the fact that he had a different birth mother! We'll start out by going out to breakfast - a buffet at the local brewpub. Quin would have rather gone to Noodles, his favorite, but we convinced him that their breakfast wasn't very good... After breakfast we'll go to the Lego Movie, then home for some sledding as the weather is continuing to cooperate with the winter outdoor enthusiast this year! Finally we'll retire to the home for some spaghetti and "mozzallalla sticks" with some friends. It should be a rollicking good time, to be sure.

Beyond birthdays, Quin continues to keep us on our toes. I've told the story of how he frequently tells us about getting a new mom whenever he sees a lady that he finds attractive (I still can't believe that's a thing for a 5, well 6 year old). Lately he's switched this up by simply saying something like, "Ooh, there's a sexy lady!" He also likes to tell us that he knows how "sexy ladies dress," after which he will lift his shirt and show us his midriff. And if I haven't blogged about the "big long boobs" story yet, remind me to tell you the next time I see you. I think I did write about it, but it deserves multiple mentions... All of this may be an indication that he's starting to have some empathy, however. The other morning he started saying that he wanted a new dad, but caught himself mid sentence and amended his statement to say, "Dad, I don't want a new dad, but I wish God had made you so you didn't fart so much." See? Empathy...

It's not all about the ladies, though, he's also quite curious and thoughtful. I believe I've discussed his deep questions about how remote controls and light switches work. His latest query was asking how puddles disappear. That's one benefit to having children that I never would have thought of - they actually force you to relearn and understand the things that you had cursory knowledge of in the past. I'm actually embarrassed how little I knew the first time through school, but am happy for the opportunity to go through it again through my kids' experiences.

Quin certainly appears to have an interesting inner dialog going on at all times. He's very much enjoying playing sports video games (FIFA 14 is his favorite right now - thanks uncles Blaine and Bryce), his 3DS, and Floppy Bird (sadly he was able to download it before the developer took it down). Yesterday when he was playing Floppy Bird and trying to beat his record, he kept chanting "Believe in yourself, Quinton!"

I'm also fairly convinced that Quin may be the black Bart Simpson sometimes. Last week he was doing some homework while Ethan and I were tossing a ball back and forth (yeah, I'm a good roll model - tossing a ball around in the house). Jenny helped him get started on the assignment which was to copy four new sight words which were provided on the left into a space on the right. Then below those words he was supposed to write out four sight words that he had learned in the past. As an aside, it constantly amazes me what Kindergarteners are doing now versus when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure the most complex thing I did in kindergarten was to cover a pinecone with peanut butter and roll it in bird seed. But anyway, Jenny left for a couple of minutes and came back to check up on Quinton's progress when she exclaimed, "Butt!!?" I looked over at the page and all he had accomplished to write in the provided spaces was "butt," a word that one of his buddies had just taught him to spell the day before. Being the good father I am, I managed to almost make it out of earshot prior to cracking up so Jenny could dole out an appropriate response.

Lastly, this one just cracks me up so I need to put it in here somewhere. I get a kick out of people that mess up the lyrics to songs. One of my favorite ones was from Tim Z's brother who used to sing "Big Ole Jed Left the Light On" instead of "Big Old Jet Airliner." Quin has his own version of Maroon Five's "Move Like Jagger" where he sings "Move My Pajamas."

Well, he's up now, so I must close this out. More updates on "big meathead" and on our continuing attempt to get Mireille to the states in my next installment. Peace.

Quinny Quickies

Welcome to the new year! With a new year comes a renewed hope that I will actually keep this thing up to date. Here goes this week's attempt!

Quin continues to grow up fast. Despite that, he still has the occasional accident at night where he wets his bed - and when he does, he wets it epically (his word). So we typically put him in a pull-up in the evening, which he takes like a good sport. A couple of mornings ago, I had just gotten done going for a run and was getting ready to take a shower. In our house, modesty is laughed at, so I was trekking from my bedroom to the bathroom, where Quin was using the toilet, without any clothing on. Since I had just gotten done running, I had the imprint of my elastic band shorts around my waist. Quin took a look at me, unfazed by the fact that I was completely nude, and gave me a concerned look. He pointed and said, "that hurts, doesn't it!" I didn't know what he was talking about, so I pressed him for details. He pointed at the imprint of my elastic band shorts and said, "there, where your pullup was. That hurts. I know!"

We're also trying to do our best to provide Quin with some positive black role models. It's no small feat living in an area where the school system boasts a 99% white population and 1% "other." But Jenny is quite determined, so she found a class that taught Hip-Hop Dance that had an African-American male teacher named Paul. We kept asking Quin if he wanted to try it out, but he continually said no. Finally, being the good parents we are, we tricked him and took him there anyway. Upon arrival at the studio, Quin finally asked where we were. We responded that we were at the dance class. To his credit, he didn't lose his cool - he just stated plainly that "I don't want to show off all my moves here..."

For those wondering, we're still working on our adoption of Mireille, our daughter in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We have completed most hurdles, but the final ones are eluding us due to various circumstances. I will blog at length about them in coming weeks, particularly if the logjam clears somehow. Just know that we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our daughter on US soil, and are starting to feel the need to learn French.

Peace.

Couple of Quick Updates

We just got back from a vacation in our nation's capital. This post is not about that, however, but I wanted to warn you that an update's coming about that in the coming days/weeks.

A couple of quick ones, though. First, Ethan has had a couple of milestones in the last few weeks. As a seventh grader, Ethan decided he was going to run for his school's student council as the vice president. At first he was quite excited as he thought he was running unopposed. In the days after deciding to run, however, he found out that he would have an opponent after all - and worse yet, he was running against an eighth grade girl. Undeterred he crafted a speech and started a social media campaign (OK, I'm exaggerating about the social media campaign, but that would have been cool) and ended up winning the post.

Ethan's other big accomplishment is that he has finally won the costume contest at his school's harvest dance. He's always had a thing for dressing in costumes. Typically he starts planning his Halloween costume on November 1. This year he went as a convincing Napoleon Dynamite and was finally awarded best costume. Personally I didn't think it was quite as good as his Weird Al costume last year, but he does have many of Napoleon's tendencies... Just now he asked me for some chapstick because his "lips hurt real bad!"

Lastly, a continuation of the updates on Quin's obsession with the fairer sex, and yet another indication of how nurture might play a big part in a child's upbringing (I'm getting in trouble for this one I think). Quin's main female influence is Jenny, his mom. He also has a good eye for pretty girls. So many times when he sees a pretty girl he says that he wants her to be his mom... We've explained that he already has two moms, but he just insists that he'd now like three moms... Anyway, the other night Ethan was watching Saturday Night Live (yes, the bad parenting continues) where Katie Parry was the musical guest. Quin was enamored, staring at the screen for the entire performance. Afterwards when Jenny was putting him to bed he told her that he wanted another mom, a really "beautiful one with big, long boobs." I have no idea where he might have gotten that, I swear!

Too funny to pass up...

I haven't blogged in awhile. Part of it is sheer laziness. That compounds on itself in that there are just too many things to blog about so I just can't find the time to get it done. I'm in that situation right now. But something happened a couple of weeks ago that was too funny not to document - so here goes.

We went to Noah's Ark - America's Largest Waterpark - last week for a last ditch summer celebration. To set the tone (since I can't tell a short story), I am building a deck, and had the guy coming out to auger the holes for the footings in the morning. My assumption was that he was going to be there for about an hour, from 8:00 until 9:00 or so, then we would leave after that. Well, that didn't exactly happen as planned. He was there for almost 2.5 hours, and the fun vacation day to the Dells started out with one very angry wife.

No matter - we got to the park just in time to meet our friends and consume our picnic lunch that we had packed to save on money inside the park. As we were setting up our feast, Quinton and I went to the gate to purchase our tickets. As I was waiting in line to pay for and retrieve the tickets, Quin was watching all of the people walk by. At one point he said, almost under his breath, but loud enough for me to hear, "wow, there are a lot of pretty girls here." Later in the day he lost the shyness and started addressing people directly by saying, "Hello pretty girl!" to whoever he deemed worthy as they passed him in the park. Yes, funny and cute now... I'm not sure at what point it turns creepy, though. I told Ethan that he had most definitely crossed that line.

Sweet Vacation - Alabama

Home at last!

Strange way to start a blog about our vacation to Alabama, but I ended up not really writing during the vacation - something I'm sure I'll regret in the end as I'm sure there is some level of excruciating detail that I will miss out on by not doing this in real time, but in the end I'm sure it will save you, dear reader, from the droning on that would undoubtedly result from a real-time, blow-by-blow that I would have otherwise forced you to endure.

We returned from our vacation on Friday night, April 5, at around 9:30 PM, after having driven almost 9 hours that day. We stopped leisurely from time to time, hung out at a cave for awhile - well, I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself. I can cover that when we get to it chronologically. Unofficially I'm titling this vacation, the Broken Glass Vacation for reasons that I'll get to shortly.

For those looking for the Cliff's Notes version, we went to Orange Beach Alabama, stopping at Indianapolis, IN, Nashville, TN, and Birmingham, AL along the way. We celebrated Easter with some southern Catholics, enjoyed 4 days in a condo with 3 other families with whom we are familiar, then traveled back. There were two days of sun, some rainy, chilly days, and lots of relaxation along the way.

OK, if you're still in - here's the unabridged version... For the abridged version, please visit my Google+ Photo Album at this link.

Thursday, March 28, 2013 - Home to Indianapolis, IN

This day actually started like any other for me, at work. Our plan was to start our travel after work and school, but since school was only a half day affair today, I bolted out of work a little early. I hurriedly dropped Heinz off at his vacation destination, Tender Touch Pet Grooming and Boarding, then raced back to pack up the last of our vacation luggage along with the family to start our great adventure.

As I said, the plan was to leave after work. The thought being that we could put a few hours, and Chicago, behind us, get some rest, then take our sweet time on our way to Nashville the next day. As plans go, it was a pretty good one, and it worked out as expected. We got out of the house around 4:30, in time for Milwaukee rush hour traffic, but luckily it wasn't (nor ever is) very bad. We reached Kenosha around 5:30 in time for our first vacation meal, the exotic restaurant known as Wendy's.

A few more hours in the car and a timezone later we reached south Indianapolis and found a decent Best Western hotel to hunker down for the night. It was 11:30 local time when we stopped, 10:30 home time. We were tired, but the room was very nice. When I inquired about availability and rates I was told that they did not have any double queens, but did have a double king! "Normally it was $79, but for you, Mr. Grady, I can give it to you for $71." Sold. Jenny had ingeniously packed a smaller suitcase just for the voyage portion of the vacation, so we grabbed that, the toiletries, and the kids, and rushed into the hotel so we could quickly sleep. While grabbing the stuff, however, we suffered our first fight of the voyage, I had apparently forgotten to plug up the drain of the cooler, so now we had a huge wet spot on the floor of the van that is still there today (10 days later), which also managed to wet my computer bag and our toiletries. Luckily, nothing was permanently damaged, and our stuff mostly dried over the next two evenings on the hotel heaters.

Friday, March 29, 2013 - The Road to Nashville, TN

As a general rule, we never set an alarm throughout the entirety of the vacation, so we didn't even stir until around 8:30 local time. After stirring and collecting our things, we checked out of the Best Western and walked over to Bob Evans for some breakfast. We all ordered, getting the mandatory breakfast meat staple, bacon, with each meal. Ethan realized too late, however, that it was a Friday during Lent, so he graciously donated his bacon to Quin who had gotten sausage (or as he pronounces it, shaushage) with his meal. Jenny and I powered through it hoping God would forgive us this one minor transgression... I guess Ethan has more to worry about than us!

After gassing up, we left Indianapolis and headed south. One of our group was traveling slightly in front of us and contacted us to mention that we should visit a place at Exit 0 in Indiana where they have a state park called the Falls of the Ohio. We stopped around noon, got out of the car, walked around a bit, and took in the "falls." Perhaps I didn't read enough about the place, but these falls looked entirely manmade. No matter, it was nice to get out in the sun, something we still hadn't seen much of, and stretch our legs.

Right over the bridge of the Falls is Louisville, KY, home of Kentucky Fried Chicken and UPS. Though our trip through there was brief, it seemed like a place we'd like to come back to visit sometime in the future. For one it's only about a 7-8 hour drive from home, making it achievable in the "long weekend" category. For another, there seems a lot to do there, from the Louisville Slugger museum to the horse racing track. There were also plenty of caves in the area and distilleries slightly south of there. Mental note, head back to Louisville someday.

The plan of the day was to only drive about 5 hours, as Nashville was our destination for the evening. Even with the late start, a 5 hour drive to Nashville would have left us too much time to waste there, so we opted to take in Mammoth Caves National Park in southern Kentucky that afternoon. Again being contacted by our travel companion who was a couple hours ahead of us, we were alerted that Mammoth Caves was particularly busy despite the cold, rainy conditions. We decided to try it out anyway, and arrived there around 1:30 local time.

Jenny quickly made her way to reserve tickets on the guided "Discovery" tour while the boys and I found a place to park the van. It wasn't particularly nice out - it was raining and in the low 50s, but we were on vacation in the south, so we were in shorts, dammit!

Our tickets gave us access to the 3:00 tour, which gave us a little while to get some food and walk around a bit. Despite that fact that this was allegedly one of their busiest days of the year, there was only a single, 10 table cafe open to get food. It didn't matter, though - we were seated after a short wait and opted this time to follow the example of our much more disciplined 11 year old and ordered fish and grilled cheese sandwiches.

After lunch we walked briefly around the area to find some hiking trails and other cave entrances around the property. Quin asked if we were going to see any bats in the cave. Jenny said we might, but he said he didn't really want to see any - he was afraid because bats turn into Vampires! Hard to argue with that logic!

After going through a nice museum area, it was finally time for us to take our 75 minute guided tour of some of the larger areas of the cave. Apparently Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave in the world. As of February of this year, man has discovered 400 miles of cave. Our guide informed us that experts estimate there are more than 200 miles that have yet to be charted! Our tour was through the historical entrance, the largest natural entrance of the cave system.

In truth, the tour was kind of boring. The cave was impressive, no doubt, but we didn't really get to go anywhere that any aging, overweight midwesterner couldn't go with their rascal scooter - except for the 60+ steps that we had to traverse to get to the entrance. Regardless, we did find out some interesting stories about the cave. Like at one point a doctor believed the cave air to have healing qualities, so he would take people with consumption (turbuculosis) down there where they would live for months at a time. While they were there, other people would continue to tour the caves, and often times would report seeing ghosts, which they believe were nothing more than the consumption patients being seen from a distance, their pallid, white skin from spending months without sun and the dark circles around their eyes from a lack of sleep giving them the distinct look of a ghost. If and when we go back, we hope to do one of the more adventurous tours that take more time to some of the more interesting areas of the cave. The spots we saw were completely dry and very large.

We left the cave thinking we had another 2-3 hours of driving before we reached our destination for the night, Brentwood, TN, just south of Nashville. Jenny's company is headquartered there, so her connections gave us the scoop on the best places to stay while in Nashville. Unfortunately we were met with bad traffic south of the caves. REALLY bad traffic, and it didn't abate for the rest of the day. Apparently there were more people than us traveling south for the Easter holiday. It took us another 5 hours past the caves to finally reach our destination!

Tired, sore, and ornery, we finally arrived at the Courtyard in Brentwood. I dropped the family off and we argued briefly about what we should do for dinner. We finally decided on pizza. I engaged my trusty iPhone to find a proper pizza place as well as somewhere to buy beer to officially start the vacation off with something locally brewed.

I ordered a pizza from Sal's, a place that promised to be only 1.5 miles from the hotel, and also located a liquor store. Since the pizza was 30 minutes until complete, I meandered to the liquor store first. If you don't already know, I am a bit of a beer snob. I like to try lots of different beers, and my favorite one is whatever is local. Whatever the case, I like variety. This liquor store was huge, but had only a single cooler full of mostly BMC (Bud, Miller, Coors) in it. I eventually located something that looked OK and was locally brewed, but was unable to find anything for my wife, whose pallet is a bit more particular. No matter, I was sure I'd run across something else.

Off to get the pizza, I found out it was an actual restaurant, not a carry-out place, so there was little in the line of carry out plastic ware or drinks for the kids. So after getting the pizza, I had to hit the road again to find a grocery store to score those items as well as, hopefully, some beer for Jenny.

After 90 minutes, I finally made it back to the hotel, devoid of anything for my wife to drink, so I abstained myself - vacation would have to wait to start for another night. After scarfing down pizza, garlic bread, and salad, we put our swimming suits on and headed out in search of the pool that was promised on the website. Quin was crawling out of his skin waiting to get active! Alas, we didn't read the fine print well enough, as the pool was outdoor, and it was cold and rainy outside. Disappointed, we went back to the room and settled for watching TV for an hour before turning out the lights and going to sleep.

Saturday, March 30, 2013 - Taking in Nashville, TN

Saturday morning seemed much nicer. It wasn't a lot warmer, probably low 50s, but it wasn't raining! I plotted a course and took a quick run in the morning while Jenny and the kids got ready. After a shower, we checked out and got some breakfast at McDonalds before heading into Nashville for the day. We didn't really have anything planned, but after the disappointment of the pool from the night before, we figured it better to do something the kids would enjoy and sacrifice our own interests of local history and brewing. So we located the Nashville Adventure Science Center. The entry fee was high, but we ended up spending almost 3 hours in the different areas from the human body exhibit to the solar system.

Three hours was about enough, too. By then it was time to meet up with the Zieglers who had been traveling since 3:00 that morning to reach Nashville by lunch. We selected a nearby brewpub and finally got the vacation started with a much deserved beer and lunch.

After lunch, Laura had scoped out a park called the Fannie Mae Dees Park that featured a large mosaic dragon as its centerpiece, which turned out to be right next door to Vanderbilt University. We spent the better part of 2 hours just running around the park before we finally departed for Birmingham, our final stop before making the final push to Orange Beach.

Our trip was relatively short today, only 3 hours from Nashville to Birmingham. Everything seems so close together in the south! For the most part it went without incident - that is until we were struck in the windshield by something hard. Expecting to see a chip in the windshield we were at first disappointed. About an hour later, however, we noticed a 4 inch crack along with the chip we had anticipated near the left edge of the driver's side. Looks like we're going to need a new windshield!
We made it to Birmingham with relative ease, getting lost only briefly due to Google's inability to find the Hoover Courtyard. After finally locating it, Ethan and I went out to get the family Mexican food for supper. Along the way I was searching for a radio station to listen to, finding only sports talk radio and Christian rock - I was delighted to finally locate a classic hip-hop station. Stuff from my youth - apparently I'm old enough to have listened to classics now! Ethan was less than impressed with the raps - they didn't sample any other song or have a catchy chorus, they just rapped...

Mexican dinner in our bellies and a couple of beers and we were out for the count for yet another night. Tomorrow was Easter!

Sunday, March 31, 2013 - Happy Easter!

Before going to bed, we located a nearby Catholic Church and determined that the 8:30 mass was our best bet, the next one being at 11:00. Our goal was to get to Orange Beach by 5:00, so we'd have to leave town by 11:30 at the latest.

For the first time we set an alarm for 7:00. The kids slowly awoke and found their Easter baskets along with a couple of Easter eggs that the Easter Bunny had hid for them. Quin was delighted to get a movie, the Rise of the Guardians, and also found Ethan's basket by accident. There are only so many places to hide things in a double queen hotel room!

We got to church pretty early, a little past 8:00, to find the previous 7:00 mass was just letting out. That bode well for us - we were expecting a mass of reasonable duration. As we walked in, a younger Korean priest greeted us in the entry way. Seemed friendly enough. We had high expectations for this mass having had a wonderful Easter mass in Branson, MO a few years prior. Apparently those expectations were a little off.

First, the southerners were nice enough, but we were hoping for a little more diversity. We did identify one black family, and another family that looked of Asian decent, but the rest all looked like they were on the same branch of the Alabama white family tree. About 5 minutes before mass was to start, an elderly priest planted himself at the throne on the altar and appeared to fall asleep. For the next 90 minutes we were tortured by this old codger as he performed the mass, mostly from his chair. He got up to give his sermon, which rambled for awhile and followed about 6 different trains of thought, ranging from Hitler to some British Easter song he learned as a boy (he appeared to have an Irish accent). He got lost in several places during the mass, my guess is because they changed it on him again in the past 12 months! And with your spirit, indeed! A few times he repeated entire sections of the mass. Sometimes he would study his mass aid for what seemed like minutes on end trying to find his spot. In all, the mass lasted about an hour and 40 minutes, not significantly longer than what we are used to, but many times more torturous.

We found ourselves with less time than we had anticipated after church, so we decided we'd just get some food for the road after a quick grocery run to Target. Unfortunately, Target was closed, so we settled for groceries and donuts from Wal Mart, then south we headed!

We were informed by Jenny's coworkers that Birmingham was the last decent place to stay before we got to Orange Beach. Along the way we encountered Clansville (seriously the name) as well as a monument to the Sons of the South proudly flying a Confederate Flag. We also found out that day that we had narrowly missed a Klan rally in Memphis, sure, in Tennessee, but the south seems like one big place.

After what seemed like an eternity, particularly the last hour, we finally arrived at our home for the next few days, the Caribe resort in Orange Beach, Alabama. Tim Z. had arrived before us and informed us that the place was so nice he felt like a drug dealer! When we got into our room about 5:00 PM, we were not disappointed. The room was gigantic. I think I read 1400 square feet. We had a massive master bedroom suite with a king size bed, a second bedroom with 2 twin beds and a bathroom, and a large, open Kitchen and living area, complete with modern appliances and ice maker! We had a feeling we were going to get spoiled. The boys were thrilled that they had a TV in their room! With HBO!!!
It was cool there, a little better than 60 degrees, but it was warm enough for us! We quickly got into swimming gear and got to swimming. The resort had 3 large outdoor pool areas as well as three heated indoor pools. We took on the outdoor lazy river for a bit before we retired to the indoor pool for the remainder of the evening. As we were walking around in our suits scoping out the pool situation, Quin couldn't help but jump into every pool we passed. He really likes swimming pools, and after the disappointment of outdoor, cold pools on the way down, he couldn't wait even a second longer!

We settled in for the evening - Quin didn't really want to go to sleep yet, and Ethan didn't want him in their room for some reason, so he lay down in the king size bed watching something on TV while Ethan watched something in their room. Jenny and I relaxed to a beer and discussed what we would do the next day.

That night, Ethan and I put a plan in place for a good April Fool's joke on mom the next day. The idea was that he would wake up, come into our room, and tell Jenny that Quin wasn't in there and ask very calmly where he was. He was in, so the plan was set...

Monday, April 1, 2013 - April Fools!

To my dismay, but completely expectedly, Quin woke up first - our April Fool's plans were dashed! No matter, Jenny and I decided we would go for a quick run and let the boys hang out in the room under Ethan's supervision. That set the stage - new plan! While Jenny dressed, Ethan, Quin, and I made final arrangements.

After a nice beach run, Jenny and I returned to the room about 50 minutes later. Jenny didn't know, but I texted Ethan who had Jenny's phone just as we were walking in. Prior to us leaving, Ethan asked us if they could go to the arcade which was just outside our room. We said no... When we got back to the room, though, he (trying to be straight faced) told Jenny that he didn't think anything would happen, so they went to the arcade anyway. Somewhere along the way, Quin slipped off, and he couldn't find him. Jenny didn't believe him - he had a smirk on his face the whole time despite his best efforts. The kids played it up well enough that Jenny freaked out, just a little bit, at which time the three of us exclaimed, "April Fools!" Worked about as well as we could have hoped...

We opted for an unscheduled day, so we hit the beach, a short, 5 minute walk from our resort. The beaches in this area are beautiful! The sand is completely white and very fine. It wasn't really hot, about 78 degrees, so the sand never really got too hot to walk on either, though I imagine in the summer it might get that way. The kids did a little swimming in the gulf, but mostly we played in the sand.
After lunch, we took in the pools of the area again, hitting the lazy river once again. Later in the afternoon we met the Zieglers for a seafood dinner at Flippers, which was near where their Dolphin Cruise had embarked. The food was pretty decent and reasonably priced...

That evening, our dirty boys needed to bathe! It's never an easy task to get Ethan to bathe, for some reason, though he requires washing daily. Quin is a little easier, usually, but on this trip he wanted to take a bath every day once I introduced him to the whirlpool tub! One bath in there and he was hooked. On Tuesday he actually requested that he be able to take a bath in the "Super Tub!"

Monday was a good vacation day. There wasn't too much to write about... We drifted off to sleep in much the same way we did the night before.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013 - Vacation...

Tuesday promised to be nice again. Jenny was thrilled as she had been fretting about the weather the entire week leading up to vacation. It was sunny and warming again, so Jenny and I took advantage of our older child once again and went for a beach and bridge run. After our run, the day turned out much the same as the day prior, except this time we picked a new location on the beach, closer to the gulf. There we were able to collect copious amounts of seashells, build sandcastles, bury Ethan and Quin in the sand up to their heads, do some body surfing, and eat a simple beach lunch.

After lunch we again went back to the lazy river, but retired early to the room to get some rest before a planned group dinner later that evening. While in the room, Quin had taken to taking my iPad and watching Netflix movies on it. He was doing the same thing with his wind-down period this afternoon. At one point, though, he wanted a snack, so he traveled from his perch in his bed to the kitchen over the tiled floor. He also tried the trip with the iPad. On his way there, I heard a crash... The iPad had met with a rather noisy collision with the tiled floor. He continued in to the living room area and acted as though nothing had happened. I asked him if he dropped the iPad - he casually said Yes. I took it from him, examined it, and noted that there appeared to only be a small dent in the upper left corner of the metal casing. Looks like we dodged a bullet - that was until I examined it again later to find a fairly serious crack in the glass on the bottom of the unit. The second broken glass incident of the trip...

That evening we met up with the rest of the group for dinner at Tacky Jacks, a seafood restaurant in town. We got there about 5:45 and were told we would have to wait about 45 minutes for a table. While waiting for our table, the Zieglers told us that Logan had informed him that he "loved Quin." "Quin likes to do all the same stuff I do, like run around, throw stuff, play in the sand, etc." Apparently he was ecstatic to play with another boy having only his sister to do stuff with most of the time...

We finally got our table by nearly 7:00. We ordered drinks and appetizers and eventually ordered our food when we were told that food was taking about an hour to get out once you ordered... The Chovanecs were traveling with a diabetic, so that wasn't going to work - they asked nicely to get some food early for him, which they were granted, but the rest of us waited until well after 8:00 when they finally delivered 1/3 of our food! Somehow they had forgotten or lost the remaining 8 meals!!! Somebody came out and tried to sort it out, taking all of our orders again, and this time, miraculously, it took only 15 more minutes for our food to get there... The server apologized and even promised that the manager would come over to talk with us - we never met with that manager and were delivered the bill with an automatic 18% gratuity added...

What promised to be a nice early night back in turned into a late one in a hurry, so we were back in the room and sleeping in short order...

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - Rain

Wednesday turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It was raining fairly hard when we woke up, so we skipped the run, and instead started planning for rainy days in South Alabama. Ethan was happy for a break from the sun having suffered a minor sunburn in the previous two days' excursions. We ended up finding the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, FL, home base for the Blue Angels. Plan in hand, we did a little indoor swimming in a pool that Quin had identified as one that he wanted to swim in - it had a Fishy slide.

After a couple hours of indoor swimming and a little lunch, we headed down the coast first to Yogurt+, a little shop with 24 different flavors of yogurt and 100+ toppings to put on it - you paid by the ounce! We escaped with spending only $14 while the Zieglers suffered a $25 bill for their sweet tooths!
Yogurt in our bellies, we did the 30 minute drive to Pensacola and visited the museum, a wonderful exhibit on Florida's panhandle. It had many full size planes and jets, historical instruction, flight simulators, food, shows - and it was all free! Well, admission was free, but you had to pay for things like the simulator. We cheaped out and denied our children any for-pay activities, but ended up spending about 2 hours at the museum. The most impressive thing to me was the space exhibit. Also, the fact that they had no plane in there that was designed after 1970, and they were pretty cool, meaning that the things that we have out there today must be pretty damn impressive!

The flight museum behind us, we went back to our room early and rested. It was wonderful - we just chilled, nothing to do, and were quiet for about 2 hours. Quin watched the now broken iPad which still functions (I'm writing this entry on it) while Ethan, Jenny, and I watched a George Clooney show on HBO that we got sucked into.

We had the group over for pizza and fresh shrimp that evening. The Zieglers also bought some boiled peanuts, something we'd seen all over the place down there and wanted to try - they weren't good... But the shrimp they bought was wonderful!

People had been vacationed out by then, so everybody left by 10:00 and we settled down for our last rest in our drug dealer condo. Through the course of the evening, Tim, Dan, and I invented several new sayings including an Alabama Cruise Missile (crude) and "Drunk as an Alabama Kindergarten Teacher."

Thursday, April 4, 2013 - Heading Home

Thursday - check-out day. It wasn't raining, but it was overcast and kind of cool, so we decided we would forego any Orange Beach activities for the day and get a head start on our drive. But first, we had one last stop planned at Alligator Alley, an alligator farm on the way. We spent about 90 minutes at the farm, during which time we saw hundreds of alligators of different ages. At 11:00 AM they fed the alligators, although it was relatively cool, and alligators don't need to eat very much anyway, so we were only able to see three that took up the offer of some fresh wild pork. The rest of the time we spent going through the swamp and feeding what looked and smelled like dog food to more alligators back there. Quin and Ethan were also able to hold an alligator - Ethan even kissed one, though he destroyed the picture evidence that we had taken...

After that, the long haul home. Traffic was minimal, so we made good time. To pass the time, they boys traded turns picking a movie for the van's entertainment system while Jenny and I listened to audio books that we borrowed from the library. We tried one called "The Last Centurion" by John Ringo. After about 4 hours of it, neither of us could take it any longer. It started as a promising end of world, contagion type of fiction, but devolved quickly into a liberal bashing vehicle... It's rare anymore that I give up on a book, but we just couldn't do it any more...

We finally made it to Nashville later in the evening, about 8:30. We wanted to stay north of the city so as not to encounter rush hour traffic in the morning. It must be a hopping place to do business, however, as the first three hotels we tried were full. I take it back, one had a double queen smoking room, which we declined. The last place we tried directed us to the Magnuson Hotel about a mile away which used to be the Baymont Suites. They had just faxed that they had 12 non-smoking rooms available. Score!

We drove in, and it didn't look like it used to be a Baymont Inn. My unofficial rule for the trip was no hotels without interior hallways. This had exterior hallways, but we were tired, we had to get personal with the bathroom, and we were out of options, so we bit the bullet and checked in.

At $90 a night, I guess I expected more. First, the door keycard did not work. The hotel attendant let us in with the master key and said the manager would be by later to fix the lock (they never fixed it). Next, the room smelled like they had just declared it non-smoking the week prior. There were stains on the carpet, the curtains were ripped, and the smell was almost unbearable! But, we were out of options - it had 2 beds and a working toilet - at least we thought it was working! After a thorough working over, I attempted to flush it, and it filled up to the top, and then some! It was pretty gross... I found the manager who gave me a plunger and some rags - I cleaned up the mess the best I could and passed out amidst the loud complaints of Jenny and Ethan that it smelled too bad to sleep!!!

Friday, April 5, 2013 - The Final Stretch

Having survived the room, and sleeping in until almost 8:00 to boot (I have no idea how I'm going to get back into a regular sleeping schedule - I'm used to 9+ hours a night at this point), we eagerly packed up and got out of the Magnuson Hotel and took our breakfast at the Waffle House, our last bucket list item of southern cuisine. I compare it to a George Webbs, but it hit the spot.

We had a little over 8 hours to go to get home, so we decided a stop at a different cave in southern Kentucky wouldn't be altogether bad. We had heard about Lost River Cave in Bowling Green, KY, so decided to stop there. Once there we had about an hour before our tour started, so we walked the grounds to find several "holes," or places where the underground river surfaced. It was nice to stretch our legs. The tour was very interesting as well. This cave was, at times, used by both the Confederate and Union armys, was used as a mill, a night club, a garbage dump, and was finally rescued by a group of liberal tree huggers (sorry, flashbacks from yesterday's audio-book) in 1998 where they cleaned it up and started doing tours. It reminded me a lot of Spook Cave near where my parents grew up in eastern Iowa, and was a nice diversion for the rest of the trip.

The rest of the day went by uneventfully. Our stop in Kentucky enabled us to miss rush hour traffic in Chicago, though we had to endure it in Indianapolis, a fair trade. We passed the time by listening to our last book, Silverfin, a young James Bond book intended for 10-14 year olds, but Jenny and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

We finally arrived home around 9:30, seeing our only traffic of the return voyage barely 20 miles away in Milwaukee! The whole family was excited to sleep in our own beds, though we missed Heinz - he didn't make it back from his vacation until the next morning.

Posted with Blogsy

Late February Update

"He's On Fire!"

When I was in college, one of my favorite games on the Sega Genesis was NBA Jam. It was great. You could crank out a game in 15 minutes, everybody could play, and best of all, most of the time, I would win. A couple of weekends ago I got nostalgic. Ethan has all sorts of time to play all these complicated games. I want nothing more than to do that, but have other priorities than an 11 year old boy does (getting old sucks). I figured, though, that I could still play NBA Jam - it fits into my schedule, it's family friendly, and it is cheap.

http://www.ea.com/nba-jam-on-fire/videos/exclusive-nba-jam-on-fire-edition-1st-look

So I bought it - for the family. I have a hard time determining whether it was a good decision or a bad one. On the bright side, Quin and I play at least 2 games a day. He is all over it! He loves the San Antonio Spurs, has a number of special moves that I only marvel at, and really gets into it. I like to think it's teaching him to read large numbers as well. Often times when he's playing himself, he will call out and ask if he's winning. I'll ask what the scores are, and he'll say "I have a four and a two and they have a three and a seven." He also loves to get "on fire" - whenever he does so, he implores me to "feed him all the rock." On the dark side, however, he is a little too attached to it sometimes. Whenever he and Ethan play, fighting ensues. Also, if he wants to play and we make him stop, there is a meltdown of epic proportions. In the end, it's something that the boys and I can do together, even if it is rotting all of our brains...

Getting Older

Jenny and I had a cold dose of reality about a week or two ago when we realized that we were no longer the ones with the best sense of pop-culture in the house. In fact, we have become squares (I think it's probably square to say that, even)! It really hit home when we were in the car going to the grocery store. Jenny was in the store getting something and the kids and I were sitting in the car waiting for her, listening to the radio. A song I had not heard came on, and after listening to a few seconds Ethan told me to crank it - which I did. It's a new, somewhat inappropriate song by a guy called Macklemore called Thrift Shop.

It's a song that's been out for a long time, and I had never heard of it. Ethan found out about it from a guy at school. I have to say, I think it's pretty catchy. We all sing it now, even though I'm sure it's already run its course on the "cool scene."

Another thing the kids have shown me that is cool is our new family friendly obsession, The Aquabats Supershow. This is one just for the boys and I. It's a Saturday morning cartoon style show about a rock band that goes around saving the world, but they do it somewhat poorly and often by mistake. Ethan and Quin found it on Netflix and proceeded to watch all 13 episodes at least twice, many of them three or more times! It touched my heart when both Ethan and Quin got really excited when Weird Al Yankovic made a cameo appearance in two of the episodes!

Naughty Word Cold

Lastly, I'm going to try to coin a new phrase. It's really Quin's phrase, but I'm going to try to socialize it around and see if it catches on, because it's a good phrase. The other night we were leaving the YMCA after swimming lessons and it was windy and cold. I shivered and stated, "wow, it's stupid cold out here, isn't it?" Well, Quin likes nothing better than when Jenny or I say something deemed as a naughty word, and generally repeats it incessantly for awhile. This was no different, but he quickly went through the progression of, "yeah, it is stupid cold. It's idiot cold! It's all the naughty words cold, isn't it dad!!!"

Four Eyes!

Check out four eyes!!!

Ethan has finally succumb to the fates of his genes, or I suppose since we're (yes, that was intentional) learning about heredity in science right now, the alleles that he's been gifted from Jenny and I, and has gotten glasses. His prescription is very mild - he only needs them for class, pretty much, not for sports or basically anything else. But it has begun. Later this year we will probably be putting him in braces (for his teeth, not his legs). Get in line, ladies!!!

Actually, all in all I think he's pretty lucky. I was 6 when I got glasses, and I needed them all the time. He's almost 12 and has just a mild prescription, so it looks like he will be lucky and have Jenny's weak eyes rather than mine (thanks, mom). Of course, that comes with Jenny's bad teeth, too (not my good ones - thanks, mom!).

'Cause I like to party...

I have a running joke with the boys. Any time they ask me a question that begs me to define reasons for behavior, I like to answer, "'cause I like to party." It's a brilliant quote from Talladega Nights - if you're not familiar, check it out here:

Anyway, like most things I'd prefer they didn't, both boys have started using it in daily conversations, with improving timing.

Last week, Quin was in the bathroom at school when a bunch of 8th grade boys walked in. In their conversation with Quin, one of them asked him why he was so cute. He calmly and immediately replied, "'cause I like to party!" Like I said, the timing is improving...

Yesterday was my 40th birthday. While I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions, I do sort of believe in birthday resolutions. If you were to ask me why, I would of course respond, "'cause I like to party." Anyway, I have some more things to post, and I will, and more often, I hope.

Very quickly, I wanted to shout out to my brothers who convened on chilly Oconomowoc from parts throughout the midwest to celebrate my passage into the final year of my 4th decade. It was nice to see all of the friends and neighbors that were able to celebrate with me on the celebration of the day of my birth, but it was especially special to have my siblings there with me. Thanks boys, and your partners in crime as well!