crawdad ranch & cheese cake
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: General

Joe got a few aquariums from grandma Susan. He put his guppies in one of them and the biggest one he is catching crawdads and placing inside. He wants to begin raising them. The roundups should be interesting, don't know how you would go about branding them...

Chelsea got some recipe's out of magazines she got from grandma Freedmans. One experiment was a cake she brought for after the viewing. I called it a lava cake. She made a hole in middle for some sort of filling. It was a soft filling and when you cut out a slice of cake, it kind of oozed. But I had to admit it was tasty. She misunderstood what it meant to garnish with mint and actually placed the mint in the cake mix. Eric thought that it added a toothpaste quality to the mix.

Her second experiment was with cheesecake. She made a reecie cup cheesecake for her boyfriend Ron. It was a hit. She made flowers on top with a couple of small reecie cups and some sort of candy flavored pringles looking things that looked like the petals. I told her she may be the next martha Stewart. She quipped, "I'd like to be like her except the jail part".

Cousins
Mood:  happy
It has been a whirlwind week. The Grace's are in town and the cousins have been able to spend some time together. We went to Kings Island, Brookville lake for boating, Hueston Woods for swimming, and Mike stayed over at our house for paintball.

It was interesting to see how the older two, Katie and Chad, seemed to hit it off. Then the two troubled middle children, Chelsea and Callie seemed to match up. Finally Joe and Mike got along great. Although Mike is not the youngest of the Grace's, Joe and he are real close in age.

Joe did manage to get lost at Kings Island for about an hour to help spice up that trip. Chad put a nail in my tractor tire - it cost like $150 to fix it. I guess that it couldn't be a perfect week.

Grandma Freedman passed away - after heather arrived. It was almost like she waited for her to get back before letting go. She was all about family, so it is fitting that us three remaining grandkids would be together the week that she passed away. She spent a lot of time with us grandchildren, the rest are in California so we were a bit closer I think. I like to think that she was able to watch the cousins this week and see them get along so well and have a good time like they did. If she had been here, she would have liked to have been with the children.

One unusual coincidence? I had purchased a pear tree back in the spring. It never did anything - it was basically a stick in the ground, no leaves, the buds showed no life, nothing. I was planning on cutting it down with my chainsaw when I had some spare time. On Sunday I was showing Heather my boat in the back yard and lo and behold - it had burst out in small leaves all over.

A coincidence that on the day she passed away the tree finally sprouted leaves, or... Reminds me of the two balloons at Grandpa Freedmans funeral service. During the memorial service two ballons that had gone up to the ceiling during a party the day before came down in front of his favorite son, Uncle Vaughn, and his namesake - Joe. Again was it just coincidence or an unseen hand.

baseball n wedding stuff
Mood:  bright
Topic: General
Took Joe and Chelsea to see a Reds game. It was our first visit to the new stadium. Kids had a good time overall although they did get a little bored towards the end. Neither of them are big baseball fans, so they didn't get into the game so much. They did comment about the rude guy behind us. He was talking about his sons baseball team. "There are what, 4 good kids on your team and the rest of them suck, right?" Was one of the comments he made. I glanced back and this kid was only like 8-9 years old. What kind of parent makes a comment like that to his child? Well we didn't have to look far as it appeared that grandma was also behind us. And she was ragging on the outfielders and was making fun of the Japanese player for Saint Louis. I guess the apple did not fall far from the tree.

Both Joe and Chelsea thought that her comments were rude - you shouldn't make fun of someone just because they are different. But we enjoyed the atmosphere nevertheless. I joked to Joe "How come I have to sit by Chelsea when you get to sit by two beautiful women???" His seat was next to two young women who were there with their boyfriends.

Vanessa has set a date for her wedding - Sept 10. We have a lot of planning to do between now and then. Did take the boat out on Friday. Cody and Joe, Morgan and Chelsea all went tubing. Chelsea tried to water ski, but that did not work out too well this go around.

fathers day
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: General
Chelsea had a fair showing with the basketball team. They were 2-2 at Miami. One of those losses was by 1 point, so that is pretty good considering that neither of their 6 foot players was there. Chelsea was so-so, she scored some and made some good passes.

Vanessa made an appearance this weekend. They checked out the gazebo at the American Legion. They want the wedding to be outdoors, so they liked the background by the stream. Still working on a date.

Chad took his Star Chief to the Cruise-In. His back is feeling better and he has done some work on the scrap wood by the barn.

Joe kicked the football some. For a fathers day present they got me a 'Dads ATM' T-shirt. I have always maintained that I am a walking ATM, this just confirms the fact.

Fishing n Football
Mood:  cool
Topic: General
Spent a Sunday with the kids. We dropped off Chelsea in her kayak, while Joe and I drove downstream to go fishing. She made it about a half mile when she ran into a barrier of downed tree's and had to paddle back. I caught 3 fish in the meantime. Joe was determined to use a piece of beefstick as bait and didn't catch anything.

I drove back to get Chelsea and showed her a good spot to try. She caught 2 rock bass fairly quickly. Some youngsters drove down the stream in a 4 wheel drive. I think it scared away all the fish, but we were about finished anyway. Joe didn't catch anything, maybe next time he will listen to the old man.

Joe did have some success on the football field. We drove to the high school so that he could practice his kicking with real goal posts. It took him several tries, but he finally kicked one thru the uprights. He kicked several more, but will need to be more consistant by July. Anyway I could tell that he was proud that he could do it. We celebrated with Blue Moon icecream at Barnies.

Kayak
Mood:  happy
Topic: Chelsea
Chelsea wanted a kayak for her birthday. So we used her birthday money to get a used one. She still owes me some money for it, but she will pay it off with earnings from her job. We took it down to a tributary of Twin Creek. It went fine, she handled it just like they showed her. I took it for a spin too and it was fun. If she stays with it, she will have shoulders like a linebacker by the end of summer. I wouldn't mind getting a canoe or a kayak myself if I could get one for decent price.

Went bike riding with Joe. I wanted to go out about a mile and come back. He wanted to go all the way to Gratis. I didn't want to be shown up by a 13 year old, so that's where we went. I was huffing and puffing - but it was fun to feel the wind whistling thru your ears when coasting down hill. It brought back good memories of long ago summers...

I raced Joe the last 100 yards, but my horse power to weight ratio is badly out of porportion in comparison to his. He won handily - this time.

Joe's kicking is slowly improving. Hard to tell if he is on pace to do any good this fall or not. I am going to take him to the football field and let him try to knock a few thru the uprights this weekend.

Memorable weekend
Mood:  surprised
Topic: Vanessa
Well this will be a Memorial Day weekend to remember. Vanessa was coming up to visit from Louisville. Eric had to work - or so he told Vanessa. He found someone to fill in for him and so he arrived at our house maybe an hour before she did.
He parked his car behind the barn where she would not see it.

So when she came down the sidewalk he greeted her and proposed to her on the front steps and gave her the engagement ring. Very chivalrous of him. Vanessa was not entirely surprised as she noticed that his toothbrush was missing that morning - so she had suspisions...

We visted Erics parents in Covington. Seemed like nice people, we had a bbq and sat around and talked. No date or location has been set yet. Sounds as though it will be in the fall and will be local.

Joe and Chelsea are out of school now. Chelsea had an end of school party on Friay - 10 to 12 teenagers showed up. It went well and everyone had a good time. Joe had Cody come over night so that he would have a friend. Joe wants me to get the boat in the water so that he can take his friends out for a day.

Dancing Joe
Mood:  happy
Topic: Joe
Joe went to the last Junior High dance of the year last night. Originally he was not going to go. But he had two girls ask if he would dance with them, so he obliged them. He had a good time. I asked him if he started any Conga lines this time - "No, that's kind of old."

When he went boating, Joe found a unique piece of driftwood that he is making into a cane. He is using my dremel tool to carve some tiki type markings. It looks pretty good so far.

AAU over
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Chelsea
Well Chelsea's AAU season is over. She saved the best for last pretty much. She had good games on Saturday - may have been high or next to high score in the second game with 10 points. She was shutdown on Sunday, but did a fair job on defense. She was disappointed with the season overall, but felt that she did improve some. We will see how she does when South has it's camp in June.

Joe had a good time with Kyle. He stayed overnight, then got to go boating all day on Sunday. I left to go watch the star wars movie at 7pm and he still wasn't home. So they must have had a good time. We have been working on his place kicking. It seems to be improving although he still has a way to go before he can even do extra points.

Chad went with me to go see star wars. It was nice to talk with him. Generally we are out working on some project or another and don't have time to sit and talk with one another.

School is out at the end of this week. Chelsea has some friends coming over for an end of school party. That should be an adventure.

BB - Columbus
Mood:  not sure
Topic: General
Chelsea had a tournament in Columbus. We made a trip to visit an Indian Cave after it was finished. It was small - nothing like Ohio Caverns. We also worked in a trip to Panera's and Cold Stone Creamery. We ate well even though her team did not win a game. The last one went into overtime, but they couldn't pull it out.

I have been working with Joe a little on kicking the football. He will need a lot more toe to do much good. He seems to like it, so maybe it will be a direction to go as he will be small next season. He helped Chad on Sunday with his lumber project. Salvaging the good scrap wood out of the remnants of the old barn. Chad is about finished and soon the scrap will go up in flames.

Chad has some friends from a young adult group at church coming out for the 4th of July. So the event will be a bit bigger this year.

Vanessa mentioned that she will probably visit over Memorial Day weekend. We have her truck up for sale, a few tire kickers but no buyers yet. I figure I can use it as a farm truck in lieu of her paying her debt to me if we don't get any good offers.