Chels
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Chelsea
Chelsea is going thru another mood swing. She didn't want to play basketball. Then she decided to give it another shot after I reminded her about the deal. You have to play sports if you want your transportation take care of. No sports = no car. So for now, she is playing. She seems to be enjoying school so that is a plus.

Joe is maintaining. Seems to get taller everytime I look at him. Saw Vanessa briefly last weekend. Chad doesn't like his transfer to the Dayton hub. They have him on first shift and he doesn't like those hours. Plus his boss is a lot tougher. He misses being at Middletown.

Vanessa's wedding
Mood:  happy
Topic: Vanessa
Vanessa got married on September 10. The day got off to a shaky start when they arrived at the hairdressers for their noon hair appointment. They were a no show. After waiting for 15 minutes Becky made some calls and found someone to take care of them - thank goodness.

The rest of the day went rather well. The ceremony itself went just fine. I didn't step on her toes during the father - daughter dance, so that was a plus. I told the story about how Becky had bought Vanessa's wedding dress at a garage sale for a dollar. Then I related how Becky promised her a husband for a dollar. Then I gave Eric one of my silver dollars as payment.

A big highlight of the wedding was Chad presenting Vanessa with a car as a present. It was a nice 1995 Buick. He got it for $300 because the transmission was bad. When he was finished working on it. He had about $500 total in it and the vehicle was worth about $3000 to $4000 dollars.

School starts
Mood:  a-ok
Well school has started back up. We had to buy Chelsea Kakis(sp) for school, so we got her like 5-6 pairs. Teacher says they have to be tan. So we shall have to make a return trip to the store. We didn't know that color mattered - I thought it was just a style of pants. Joe can't play football because of his grades from last year. Hopefully he has learned his lesson about how making mistakes can cause problems in the future.

Amanda Brubaker got married to a fellow named Joe. She is the same age as Vanessa. She seemed real happy, I hop e that they have a good life together.

Chelsea has a new car after clobbering a telephone pole with her old one. She was lucky to escape with bruises; the car was a total loss.

vaca and crashin'
Mood:  lazy
Topic: General
Went to Cambridge for a few days of vacation. Well the first day we did go to grandma Susan's and did some work on the fence. We went fishing right before a storm. Joe got a big bite. We thought that he had a snag and told him to stop reeling, but the rod tip was bouncing around - he had a big fish on the line. About 5 minutes in to the battle, Joe relaxed because his arms were getting tired. The fish took advantage and threw the hook. We had to fly back to the dock as the storm approached.

Joe was able to land a catfish later in the week. We went out at night and it was a full moon. Salt Fork lake was scenic. We sat for a while with the lights out and the music off and just watched the stars. We were reluctant to go back but had promised to go in by midnight.

Chelsea gave us a scare after we returned. On her way home from her boyfriends she went off the shoulder of the road and over corrected and went into the opposite ditch. Then she flew over a drainage pipe and when airborne. Finally she hit a utility pole and splintered it. She finally came to a stop pointing back the direction that she had already come.

Luckily her seatbelt held her in place. She had a rope burn and bruised from the seatbelt but was otherwise OK. She did go to the hospital for checkout since she stated that her head hit the roof. I quipped that all they would find was rocks. Anyway 6 hours later she was released with a clean bill of health. The wreck happened about 10:45pm, we did not get home until daybreak, about 6am the next day.

The car is totaled. The passenger side front fender impacted the pole and was crushed back into the engine. It impacted at an angle indicating that the car was airborne and leaning forward. In a way it was fortunate that she hit the pole. The car probable would have flipped several times had it not.

She is grounded for 30 days. That is the standard for any accidents or tickets. We will search for another car soon.

Vanessa and Eric visited. They only stayed a short time because of his work. It is always nice to see her. Chad is back with April. A moth drawn to a flame. I feel that she will stay with him until someone better comes along and his heart will be broken again.

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.