G's team played ok, not to the level they did in the spring, but here they are the youngest team in the league... I texted Dylan and let him know if he was done with his tasks he could ride his bike to the park. He did. L was working the concession stand. G's team won an we all headed home, passing D on the way home. Home and watched what was left of the OSU football game, not very impressive... Ran some errands with D&J. We brought home pizza and movies for dinner. Better ending to the day than the start...20130831 - Obvious Fail
20130831 - Up in the am, doing things around the house getting ready to go to G's baseball game. The boys fighting like crazy, nothing stops them or even diverts their constant stream of hatred towards each other... Reaching my breaking point I physically separate them... Now there is silence and compliance. D is left at home with strict orders of mowing our yard and then checking with Doc to see If he needs any help. LJG&I to G's baseball game. I am very upset about what just happened at home and John even asks if I am ok... I really can't take the fighting between the boys at this level...
G's team played ok, not to the level they did in the spring, but here they are the youngest team in the league... I texted Dylan and let him know if he was done with his tasks he could ride his bike to the park. He did. L was working the concession stand. G's team won an we all headed home, passing D on the way home. Home and watched what was left of the OSU football game, not very impressive... Ran some errands with D&J. We brought home pizza and movies for dinner. Better ending to the day than the start...
G's team played ok, not to the level they did in the spring, but here they are the youngest team in the league... I texted Dylan and let him know if he was done with his tasks he could ride his bike to the park. He did. L was working the concession stand. G's team won an we all headed home, passing D on the way home. Home and watched what was left of the OSU football game, not very impressive... Ran some errands with D&J. We brought home pizza and movies for dinner. Better ending to the day than the start...20130830 - Vampire Family
20130830 - Up and in to work. Typical day, went to lunch with Steven. Finished the day a bit early, ran home and grabbed the fam. Ran to the Scout Store to get all the patches from summer camp. Then to pick up a buddy's phone I tried to get fixed or him (fail). Stopped to check out a putt-putt place then back across town. Dropped off the shattered phone and hem to dinner. We started off outside, but my vampire family couldn't take the bright sun so we retreated indoors to eat... In a couple weeks there will be snow and we will regret not eating outside :-( Home to watch G ride his bike around the school path and some movies. Up late with D watching an extra one.
20130829 - HE RIDES!!!!
20130829 - Up and into work. We got a new hierarchy today... responsible for more with 1 more boss now, think that makes 5 bosses :-s Left work a bit late, L&boys at an 8th grade football game, I went straight home and got ready for a meeting later tonight that didn't happen... Everyone home and we had dinner and ice cream. I was working on the mower, keeping an eye on G as he was trying to ride his bike, and PRESTO!!!! HE GOT IT!!! He didn't think anyone was looking, dropped his bike and turned around with the biggest smile in the world on his face. I screamed YOU DID IT!!!! I grabbed the camera and captured his second go of it for the world to see. This was his last big boy milestone for the summer and he nailed it! Over to Doc's to check his dryer, program the remote for his garage door opener, have a couple beers and sit and chat for a few. Home and getting some things done.
20130828 + Publicly Speaking
20130828 + Up and in to work. Communicating throughout the day with folks at City Hall about tonight's meeting on reviewing apartments that may be built in our town. Super busy with work trying to stay ahead of the wave. Mgr stopped and gave me more accountability, no more authority :-s went straight to D's game to watch a bit of it and see the fam, then to City Hall for the Planning Commission meeting. I got up and said my piece and got to meet a bunch of the other concerned residents. The build was put on hold :-) Finally home and got some food. Shipped some eBay items, got a couple more things done and of to a restless nights sleep.
20130827 - Baseball and email
20130827 - Up and in to work. Fast full day. Had a nice lunch with Jared. Left early to take CG to the airport and then finished the day from home. Got caught up on Boy Scout advancement paperwork, then changed to goto G's baseball game. G got to pitch again, got 2 strikeouts. They finally won one!!! We drove through a car lot on the way home, then home and all cleaned up and had a late snack. All boys to bed, up late doing email.
20130826 - 14, 4 for 4, 3 for 4, Game Ball
20130826 - Up in the am and D is officially 14. We had bfast and he opened his presents with little excitement. I ran off to work, they ran off I school. At work sometime I go outside to take phone calls if he weather is nice; today I did this and on my way back in, on the floor of our lobby was a single feather... Finished up my day a bit early, ran home and looked at D's presents: super cool knife, manual for his Mercedes, a 3 color LED night hike flashlight and Bluetooth headphones. Everything was a success except the Bluetooth headset which actually had a wire :-( Changed and off to baseball. It was a great game. D got to catch for 3 innings, was up 4 time and got 4 hits! and he scored 3 of the 4 times. He caught a huge hit deep to center and turned the game winning double play!
We went to BWs with some of the team after the game to celebrate the win and the bday! Home and we measured D, he is only 1 inch shorter than L, and has grown about 9" in the last year. Happy bday my big boy!
20130825 + D Bday Party
20130825 + Up and got a couple of things done. D's friends showed up and I took them to see 'White House Down'. I got their tickets and bought them a bunch of junk to eat and then sat a couple of rows back. It was a really good movie. The boys walked down to the pet shop and then I took them to Dublin's field of the World's Largest Corn to let them run around a bit and burn some energy. On to a Chinese buffet so the boys could eat as much as they wanted. I made them all eat with chop sticks. They are a pretty mischievous group and were putting soy sauce in each others drinks... I drove them back home as they hung out the windows dancing and yelling out to people. I didn't restrict them too much, don't want to be a complete funsucker... Home and the boys played in the backyard while I ran to get a new dryer. Home to sing happy bday an have some cake. Gma&paW and Jennifer were here too. Gma&paW got him a really nice bike and his buddies gave h cash. After the cake I had the boys carry the dryer into the house for me. They played a little more and then headed home. This is for sure a different kind of party than we have had for D in the past; I guess that happens when they get big... :-( L helped me install the new dryer, so she is good to go. All boys cleaned up and ready for a new week.
20130824 - 72 Holes 6 in 1
20130824 - Shaken awake by G, "Come on Dad get up! It's Our Dad and Me Day!!!" Up and out we go. First stop the USPS to ship a package.
Then some bfast at Waffle House. G got like the biggest meal on the menu. He did pretty good putting it down too.
Then I told him we had to stop at a store; he was bummed. That is until he saw it was the sport store where he got himself an awesome new bat!
On to Magic Mountain to play some skee-ball and other games while they finished the morning checks on the batting cages. Then we went out and G did a good job breaking in the new bat.
Home for a quick change and up to G's baseball game. G had a good game and was the first kid pitcher of the game. This was his first official pitching appearance and he didn't do too bad :-) The boys got beat 15-0, but they still did well.
Home to change again and then up to Westerville for 18 holes of putt-putt. Then 90 more balls in the batting cages. G did good in the 'Baseball Very Slow', but the 'Baseball Slow' just zipped by him. 18 more holes of golf, including a hole in one for each of us, and 90 more base balls latter, we were ready to move on. Back to Magic Mountain!
We got 120 tokens that resulted in 553 tickets that got him a cool baseball cup, 2 laffy taffy and 2 sugar sticks. He said, 'Can you believe we got all this for free, just for playing games!?".
Back out on the course for 2 more rounds of putt-putt. Quite the players we are, each getting 2 more holes in one!!! Golfed out we tried our hand at the go-karts.
This was G's first solo drive in a go-kart. He did great! Smiling from ear to ear and zipping all around. "Daddy can we do it again? PLEASE?!?!" But of course! So we raced again! 
We then bumped our brains out on the bumper cars. It was a blast!
Time to go to the chocolate fountain place and eat a ton of mashed potatoes, lemons, chocolate covered everything and cotton candy! Sufficiently stuffed we headed to the theater to catch 'Pacific Rim'. We had to park a mile away, but found a shopping kart we rode to the door. The movie was really good, I only had to nudge him awake once 'during the boring talking part'... Movie over and heading out of the theater G says "what else can we do?" (11:54pm). I said let's get home and then we'll see. He made it about 20 feet down the road before he lost consciousness :-)
Arrived home at 12:09am. Boy ready for bed and we look at the picture of all the fun, cool stuff we did today. Still excited he said 'I can't wait to show mommy the pictures in the morning'. I hugged him tight and told him I wished we could do this everyday. My littlest man is getting big too fast. I'm up in J's bed now (J's sleeping in the basement with a buddy of his) because he didn't want to sleep alone. Typing this so I will be able to relive the fabulous day again and again. What a wonderful little boy he is. I am so so lucky.
20130823 + Caine's & Cut
20130823 + Up and in to work. At the desk with the door shut all day knocking thing down. Headed home and picked up the fam. The boys choose Cane's for dinner. Then they dropped me off to get a hair cut while they got a movie. Home and D&G playing in backyard, J&I went looking for cars... ($191k price tag :-) Home, got cleaned up and watched 'Wreck it Ralph'. I worked in the PC, then L&I watched another movie.
20130822 - Zip Away
20130821 - Full Dress
20130821 - Up and grumpily in to work. At the desk and another Wednesday meeting day... Got through the meetings and headed home a few min early to get home, scarf down some food while changing and get my new Dodgers shirt out of the mail. I was coaching 1st base tonight in Coach Bob's absence after he was ejected from Monday's game. I like coaching 1st. I knew a lot of the other teams players from previous seasons and chatted with them during the game. It was a great game, very few errors and we won 10-3. D had 2 doubles and we had the boys stealing on every pitch. Home and we had some more food, chatted about school, got cleaned up and little boys off o bed. D up doing homework, L planing D's bday party and I am posting eBay and blog entries.
20130820 - Big Boy Ball
20130819 - First & Worst
20130819 - Up in the am and stayed home to take first day of school pictures and walk the boys to school. Each year is different, this year G without hesitation vanished into the school almost before L&I could say goodbye. In to work for a busy day of catching up. L, home alone, did more dog shaving and flea treating. Home, changed and to the ball field. This was the first game D attended for Fall ball and he did very well, the whole team did. That is until the bad, and I mean the worse officiating I have ever seen, started to interfere with the game. One horrible call and we were mad. The second horrible call and our head coach protesting got thrown out... We were robed, but the boys fought back and ultimately lost due to the 2 hr time limit... All home and I heard all about the new classes and friends an back to school stuff. I read a book to J&G and then all boys to bed. Up late shipping.
20130818 - Lil' Fish 4 A Big Boy
20130818 - Up SORE from the climbing and put our photos on the TV for the family to see. Lilly has fleas... L trimmed her, poor dog. J&I tried to help G learn how to ride his bike. D finally got up so we cleaned out the car. Then we all loaded up, picked up lunch at Subway and went to Hanna park for picnic, playground , baseball and fishing. No luck there so we headed to another park with a quick stop to get more flea stuff for Lilly. We got to Woodside Green Park and the fishing was much better. G caught his first fish!!!! The boys played, not listening, think they are nervous about school tomorrow... Back in the car and dinner at DQ. Home and getting ready for tomorrow. Up late posing things on ebay.20130817 - Droooop Off
20130817 - Up in am and sore from the huge hike to the natural bridge from the day before. D had been up for a while and was playing his obsession iPad game. We had a couple Cliff Bars for bfast and then headed to Torrent Falls Climbing Adventure for some excitement. We received, what I felt for the proportion of the risk we were about to take, a very short lesson on staying alive on the face of a cliff.... Then we started up, and up, and up... At the top there was a short hike to the rappelling site. We ended up at the top of a 125' vertical drop :-o I went first, lowering myself over the edge of the rock face and repelling a few feet before i was hanging below the overhang I was just standing on. WOW it was AMAZING to be that high up dangling from a string... I went down slowly, stopping a few times to look around. I went first first to give D some courage, if this old guy can do it... and also to make sure I didn't chicken out. I made it down and next it was D's turn. He came over the edge slow at first, but then let loose and zipped right down. It was SO COOL!!! This pic is of him about 1/3 of the way down.
We took a short break and then headed back up the rock face for one more reppel.
On the hike to the rappel site there was a feather... so I knew everything was going to be ok o:-) This time it was a bit easier and we came down faster. Still taking time to look around at the awesome sights. Next was the Via Feratta course. There are 6 sections of it and they get progressively harder. We started at level one and it took us about 1 hour to make our way across the rock face about 80' up. It was pretty amazing and D just scooted right along like a lizard. I kept up as best I could...
After the first course we took a break and ran to the gas station and got a couple more of the huge sandwiches we had last night (YUM) and had a picnic at our campsite and talked about how cool and scary it was. Refreshed and ready for more we headed back and headed up to the second course. It was higher and had some places where you were pretty much on your own to figure out how to get to the next safety zone :-s D got to rest more as I was not as fast on this leg... After we finished leg 2 I couldn't go on, at least without a sizable break so I headed down the exit route and D headed into leg 3. Soon the workers called out to him and said he had to come down if I was not with him. He came down and I offered to give it a shot. He said he was fine with being on solid ground and was really tired. i think he was just being nice... So we turned in our gear and heard a scream... One of the climbers on course 6 fell, his safety harness caught him and in a flash this little girl crawled up the cliff like a spider with a huge backpack on and got him back on course... Certainly that would have been me on leg 3 had we continued :-oWe headed back to our campsite and D was ready to head home. We were planning on staying another night, but we were both sore and EXHAUSTED. We packed up camp and headed North. On the way we stopped at a Boonesville, one of the first settlements in KY to have a look around. It was a cool fort / settlement that Daniel Boone started. We explored a bit but neither of us wanted to do too much walking... OUCH!
Full and satisfied with our adventure we hit OHIO and headed for home. We had one last stop in Gahanna before heading home; the theater where we watched Elysium, GREAT MOVIE, getting us in the door a little after midnight. We got cleaned up with what little energy we had left and off to bed to recuperate. Another FANTASTIC ADVENTURE with one of my favorite people! D is growing into a fine young man, and other than the usual teenager smack, he is a GREAT BOY! how lucky am I?!
Other news from today: D's team got beat in their first game, J caught the largest fish at a Cub Scout outing, the ice cream didn't work, G's team lost their first game.
20130816 - Traveling Partner
20130816 - Up before the sun and D&I on the road to Kentucky. Our first stop was McD's and then the highway. We had the sun to our backs and our adventure ahead! The travel was good and we made good time down through Cincinnati and into KY. Only one mishap when I spilled coffee all over my pants :-( But we had some extra time so I searched for some places to dry off. One of the stops was an old gas station where the office was the World's Largest Metal Teepee!!! D was SO EXCITED!!! A bit further into KY and we came to the Kentucky Horse Park. Here we got to see the graves of Man Of War and Secretariat. One cool display had a starting post and then markers showing how long one stride of the horse was. It was amazing how far these animals move in one leap.
A bit further down the road and we made it to Lexington and found our way to the Lexmark world headquarters. I had a QBR here at 10am and D came right in with me. Kurt the guy I had the meeting with brought us in, got D situated at his cube and we got down to business, while D listened to what life is like in a cube farm and played on his iPad. The meeting went well and D was offered some doughnuts, he fit right in. After the meeting Kurt took us to a local place where we all tried deep fried parmesan crusted corn on the cob, YUM!!!
We sampled the local beverages and had a fantastic home cooked meal and great conversation! Kurt is a gun guy so D and him had a lot to talk about. After lunch Kurt suggested we check out the Natural Bridge. D&I were on the road again... but not for long before tragedy struck at work... I had to find a hotel along the road and get to the internet quick to fix a file we had to send to a customer. No worries a Hampton Inn was close and we were up and running in no time. Problem solved and on toward adventure. We found the natural bridge and it was only a 3/4 mile hike so we decided to have a look. No one bothered to tell us the 3/4 mile was narrow and STRAIGHT UP!!! We hiked for what seemed forever to reach this natural wonder, and it was worth it. The view was spectacular!
I was a bit nervous walking across the top of it, but D was looking down over the edge. If L was here she would have fainted... I did get as close to the edge as I was comfortable to get this pic taken with D, my 13yr old boy that is a great kid and a lot of fun.Legs sufficiently rubberized we though going down would be a breeze and we would go another route to see the balancing rock. It was only another 674,291 steps... Well we didn't have a choice but to keep going or die there on the trail, so we kept at it... After what felt like hours of decline we finally came to the balancing rock. It was pretty cool and D tried to push over :-o
Eventually we did make it to the car where we each drank a 32oz bottle of Gatorade... Back on the road and we found the place where we are going to climb tomorrow. A bit further we found a stand that sold beer and Ale8, the local pop, not too bad, but not our style. We got directions to a food place and went there to get some sandwiches. These sandwiches were 4 inches thick on regular slices of bread packed with meat. With dinner in hand we found the camp site at the Land of the Arches campground. We got our site set up quickly and met one of the locals that took us on a hike to the edge of a 200' cliff with a small waterfall. Why is everything here so high up???
After our exploration our guide, James, sat by the fire with us and we told jokes, talked and had a good time by the fire eating our huge sandwiches and relaxing. Right before bed we explored the hanger on the campsite and it was huge and cool and had ping pong and air hockey and wheelchairs to race and recliners and internet and bathrooms and a barrel stove all put together in some sort of chaos that just worked... D&I decided GpaW would love this place... Off to bed with already sore legs... How are we going to make it through tomorrow?
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