December 2019

There wasn't much time after Thanksgiving, we rolled right into Christmas.  We opened gifts on the preceding Saturday since we were headed for Florida early.  Our small tree served it's purpose again in a hurry. Brandi did nearly all of the shopping and preparation, I did build out a train table in the basement with Jay, which is technically a birthday gift. It's 4' tall, as per Brandi's requirements(!)

Brandi joined me in California for my Irvine office holiday dinner, a quick two-day trip right before we left for Florida. She was able to get in shopping and a ferris wheel ride at the Irvine Spectrum, and an afternoon together at Fashion Island in Newport Beach before we had dinner at Pacific Coast Hotel in Laguna Beach. We had lunch at Cucina enoteca, and then drinks with Cheri and Christoper at Canaletto Ristorante Veneto, where Brandi tried a Paper Plane... one of a couple strong drinks she tried, putting Brandi face-down on the tray for the flight home. Nick stayed behind, his first extended stay with Grandpa, which went more smoothly than I had imagined.

We delayed our trip to Clearwater Beach by a day since Brandi had a tough-to-shake cold, and took two days to drive down. We stopped overnight in Macon, and visited the Air Museum at Warner Robins before moving on. It's four hangars of amazing airplanes, from WWII and Vietnam, to modern era. It was well worth the walk in the pouring rain, and the struggle to find it, for the two hours of visit.

Our week in Clearwater was half washed-out by rainy days, and Brandi stayed close to the hotel every day, slow to feel better. We got one day on the beach, and two days at the pool, Earl and Sue came over for lunch and poolside one afternoon from Sebring, which was a nice visit... there's limited time to talk to them at the holiday events with all the activity.  As expected, the trip was highlighted by great food: Nick and I found a server named Monique we liked at CK's which was critical on Christmas Eve to get any service, he of course got his bairdi crab legs, but by far the best of the trip was Capital Tacos, an accidental stop on the way home, which blew us away, wish we had one in Detroit ("it's raining tacos", which we had no idea what the song/meme meant, but Brad's daughter Samantha recognized it, so it's a youth thing, I guess.)  I was bummed the Opal Sands wasn't as good as in the past, probably time to find a new hotel.  Our last activity was kayaking in the mangroves north of St. Petersburg, a recommendation thru work led us to Matt Lentz's tours. We spent two hours paddling in quiet canals and lakes, even without seeing much wildlife, it was excellent (any potential wildlife would have been scared off by Nick' paddle tangled in the bushes and his cursing anyway.)

There was one last stop in Columbus, lunch with Brad, Colleen and the girls for an afternoon at the end of the break, which was simple and uneventful, just time to catch up, as Brad has a new place in D.C.

And, I finished second in the Morpace Fantasy Football League, losing the championship game by a single point, when my RB took a knee on Monday night.

The long break was much-needed.  Photos here.

Jason

November 2019

We split Thanksgiving this year, with Brandi and Nick staying home while her family came to visit, and I flew to St. Louis for Carrie's family gathering.  Brandi made a full dinner, and the kids were entertained with trips to the Zoo Lights and Harley Davidson stores. We got beanbags and the old TV setup in the bonus room so Thatcher and Nick had a place to hangout, play video games.  I was able to join them for a dinner when I flew home. I did a 48-hour turnaround for Carrie's dinner, which was low-key as usual... this was our Christmas gathering, but early this year.  Brian spoiled us with the 'expensive' bacon, complementing enough food it couldn't possibly be consumed by all.  I got a late dinner my first evening at Cooper's Hawk, it was outstanding.

He's settled in well at SFS, had a great report during our Teacher meetings. Nicks' got a circle of guys he hangs with, and he's making the grade. The tough part is getting used to the routine, which feels like a career with so much activity to track: checking email, reviewing online assignments, calendars changing... Nick's getting used to writing it all down to keep up, but it's a constant chase.

A few pics here.

September & October 2019

Winding down the summer, we had some warm days to swim, even though the water had cooled; my last swim was teeth-chattering. Nick was helpful closing the pool, we pulled a new cover this year. Football season fills the weekend afternoons, of course Nick hates watching football, so he washes my car instead. There's a small pond in our neighborhood that's stocked, there's pics here of Nick fishing. He's had the equipment in storage for years, now it came in handy.  He didn't catch anything, but he got a feel for it.

Brandi and Nick got tickets from my friend at work to attend the Halloween event at Greenfield Village.  Brandi's Wednesday Addams costume was perfect, Nick didn't dress up, really. He also didn't trick-or-treat this year, but it poured rain and washed out the evening for most kids. 

We brought our Corvette home after a light restoration this summer, so we enjoyed a few evening rides in the Fall.  I was riding around NY on a work trip, eating at east Long Island diners and seeing a ballgame at Citi Field with Joe Cook.

He had a karate test in there somewhere as well. He's got a good routine at karate, he's a veteran student having been there a while.

A few pictures from the last couple months.

Jason

August 2019

School started at the end of August, so Nick's summer was a little shorter than others, ending in Michigan and starting in Ohio. School shopping included the annual tables at Dillard's where I buy my shirts for $10 when they go on sale, and this year I was buying for us both. I like the school's plan, they are really working with the boys. Nick's starting to get the swing of things, even knowing when he needs cover... he asked me to cover for him about forgetting his notebook in the first week.  He looks good in a jacket and tie, from a height perspective, he and I are about the same size.  There's so many sites and apps for Brandi and I to remember, we never bothered to figure it out last year... he got all A's last year and we didn't figure it out until we found a paper copy buried in his 6th grade bag in the corner when 7th grade started.

I did the Dream Cruise alone this year, as Nick decided not to join me that morning, backed out at 5 AM. Brandi and I had a Saturday night Chili Cookoff at Jasinski's, I was setting up for Fantasy Football, sold the Jeep to Brad, and I had a short trip to NY for Volvo, so the month was really focused more on us than Nick, he spent his time relaxing to begin school.  With all of that time, you'd think he'd remember the basics, like trimming his thumb nails (he trims the other eight fingers, then gets distracted.)

The photo here with the snow plow reminded him of his childhood when we lived next to the Chrysler dealership, so he wanted to re-create the moment.

Photos are combined with July this month, as there's only a few.

Jason

July 2019

It's been a hot month, lots of time in the pool.  We had tickets to the Mud Hens game on a Friday night, Nick was booked to throw out the first pitch, roughly 95 degrees at game time. We barely made it onto the field in time, they called out Nick's name, handed him the ball, and sent him to the mound... I didn't warn him ahead of time.  He threw a better pitch than the mayor, Wade's toss was a little shorter, then we spoke with him down on the field afterwards. I went to school with Wade, and his son now goes to SFS with Nick.

The school hosted a camp at Vineyard Lake, where the 7th and 8th grade boys get to know each other before the year starts. We left Nick for the weekend, where he got a lucky draw of the cabin with air conditioning.  The kids spent most of their time in the lake, though, and Nick didn't go in. But he said the food was good, they were kept to their chores, and he knew a couple kids from his past schools. The camp was property purchased by the Oblates back in the 1940s for a couple thousand dollars, it's a beautiful 40 acres or so for the school to use.  Brandi and I walked the MSU Hidden Lake Gardens for the afternoon after we dropped him.

Our phones stopped working at one point because they were full, roughly 50GB of space filled, it seemed like overnight.  After hours of investigation, I realized Nick had takes selfies on his iPad, thousands of them. He sat in bed and shot photos of himself non-stop, and filled our storage space. Really, Nick? I took a screen shot before I deleted them all.

Photos combined from July and August this month.

Jason

2019 EAA AirVenture

Nick and I attended the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, WI this year, the largest air show in the world, with over 10,000 aircraft flying in for one week each year.  My company was fielding brand research for Ford onsite this year, so this was a work+play trip for me (guess which one I did more of?)

We drove about seven hours on Sunday, planning to spend all day Monday at AirVenture. It was a rough start for the work portion, with FedEx losing our equipment, and then Monday morning the support team arrived two hours late... Nick claims I planned that on purpose to throttle his fun. But he got his time in, wandering for a couple hours on his own while I worked with Suzanne to set up the team (once I got them in, running around with passes and cash). Nick and I got about four hours of the day to walk around, enough to have sore feet.  We saw warbirds, small aircraft, vintage aircraft, and a few classic cars at the Ford display.  The formations and fly-overs went on all day, and were amazing.  Nick was able to strike up a conversation with all kinds of people, because he knows the planes, especially the military folks.

Our hotel in Fond du Lac wasn't bad, we had to share a bed (the hotels sell out a year early), which was better than all the tents onsite at EAA that got washed out in heavy rains. The food wasn't that good (our pizza at Ala Roma was excellent!), and the crowds were overwhelming, but the weather was perfect.  If you've never experienced AirVenture, it's one of those places you need to see at least once, even if you're not into planes.

And there's always a 'Nick moment'... I told him we were working, so no clothes with logos or pictures on them because others could recognize those and be influenced; we represent Ford, must remain neutral.  On the morning we go onsite, he packed, and was wearing, a Morpace shirt (the former name of my company.) He says, "No one will know what this is now!" Sadly true.

Jason

June 2019

You'll see pictures here of us attempting to be normal, Nick and I playing catch out front of the house, Nick doing dishes at the kitchen sink (with Lisa's visit, there was lots of construction with the kitchen torn apart, but also the broken sewer line at the same time, the night she arrived, anyways you can see the backsplash finished in the picture below), a rainbow over the house. In between the horrors of making the house livable, we try to give Nick a sense of normal. Then again, it's Nick, who will randomly blurt out things like, "Animal lube, it's a breeding agent." We're sitting at Berger's one evening, and he lays out the Keno pencils in a random shape and wants me to guess what it is.. it was Russia. (Really?!) We've been watching Chernobyl on HBO (highly recommend it), so it's top of mind I suppose.  As Nick says, "Welcome inside my head."  Brandi was called into work for three days this month, first time in years, so that was a good change of pace.

We tried a couple new restaurants lately, from Sardini's, to Kira Japanese Steakhouse, to Brenda's, where Nick's new favorite is the meat-lovers omelette.  The kid does love to eat, but he'll live off any box of crackers within reach if not forced into a meal.  We installed a small fridge in the kitchen just for him, and he loves it; probably drinks ten items a day, from bottled water to sparkling water to French soda.

Nick also hung out for a day with the grandkid of our neighbors, Asher who unfortunately was only in town from TN.  Seeing them communicate reminds me that other kids understand Nick even when I don't. 

The photo above is of Nick and his grandma-ma, not Brandi (they still look alike!)
 

Photos here.

Jason

May 2019

Nick has goatee like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. The doctor says he's about halfway through puberty.  I didn't know they measured that stuff.  When Brandi told me on the phone, following his checkup, I thought she also said he tested, "90th percentile white", which seems an awkward thing to measure, but he's certainly whiter than other kids. She said, "height", which makes more sense. What matters is he's a good person with a sense of humor, like walking through the Meijer, pointing to the top shelf, and saying, "Look, high Tide."

It was a low-key month, with Robert Brushaber's HS graduation and a quiet Memorial Day weekend.  It's not like we did nothing, just most of the time was tending to the disaster we now call home... sewer collapsed under the driveway and backed into our basement in week six, mold in the attic, missing peak vents, no HVAC for two months and counting, no yard, no working washer-and-dryer for two months (on the second repaired set now.) The neighbors (who are all having their own problems) are going to make us Internet sensations as they keep photographing and posting the shit at our house.  Our issues are setting the pace. Nick thinks it's cool when he can pee in a bucket in the middle of the night because there's no working plumbing, so there's some thrill from all this nightmare.

We made a Taco Bell run late one evening, and I asked him not to get one of those Watermelon Freeze things because he gets so whacked out on the sugar he won't sleep and won't shut up. He convinces me a small one will be OK.  As we start to eat, he leaves the table, and comes back two minutes later with a second one, now one each hand hand. They gave him the wrong flavor, made a new one, and he got to keep both. It was a non-stop evening of blab.  Ugh.

Jason

April 2019

We attended '80's Nite' at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with the girls early in the month. Started the evening at Punch Bowl Social where the kids could run and we could eat, was busy but we squeezed our way in. I suspect Mason was surprised by the size of Nick, who is heads taller than everyone now, including his mother.

We moved from our condo at the end of April, which was a slow process over roughly six weeks.  You'll see pictures of Nick being present, but he wasn't a ton of help... wearing lampshades and laying across the back of the couch to test the view of the TV is hardly helpful. But he was patient as we shopped for furniture and got organized, it's never simple with us. As Brandi mentioned the piano requires movers, his comment, "When the piano moves you're going to have to pay me $5 to practice. I like this getting money thing." His grandfather has ruined him.

He visited SFS again for an evening of registration and selected classes.  The curriculum is like a small college, he'll be taking engineering classes in the Fall in seventh grade.

A few photos here.

Jason

March 2019

If it seems like all the pictures this month are of Nick asleep, it could be he's tired from all the moving activity into our new house. Or maybe it's the carbon monoxide coming from our furnace, which has now been inoperable for two months because it was poisoning us. Hard telling.  He hasn't lost his sense of humor, though.  I noticed a shampoo packet on the table from Mr. Bronners, and Nick had quietly scribbled out the 'r' and an 'n' when no one was looking.

He's been somewhat helpful with the move when not being gassed to sleep, such as helping me assemble my new desk.  There were areas so hard to reach, only his thin frame could squeeze in to do the job.  Then he helped me assemble a metal cabinet for the garage. Couldn't have done it without him. 

Nick also had a day at St. Francis, where we have him enrolled to start 7th Grade in the Fall.  They liked him, and he picked the school because they have good chicken nugget in the cafeteria.  Not completely, but so far it seems like a good match, as they have a very career-focused curriculum even starting at grade seven.

A few pics here.

Jason

February 2019

The preparation for moving and finishing the house consumes our time. We did an evening in Detroit again on a Saturday night.  Started at the Detroit Beer Company where we had an amazing dinner, followed by the DSO which played movie themes.  There was a rowdy bunch of guys next to us, even in the balcony, but they didn't ruin the evening... we moved.  The music was captivating, from The Magnificent Seven, to Superman, to Back to the Future.  The last seven minutes was the closing to E.T. which gave me goosebumps.  So after hearing this music, and then seeing Top Gun, Nick decided he wanted to learn the music for piano. His teacher helped him write a solid version, which he can nearly completely play now. I'll sneak of video of him playing eventually.  Along with the war documentaries, he's heavy into planes now.  A coworker sent an old John Wayne war movie, and Nick's watched it a couple of times.

Nick did get some time with friends, from a steak dinner at Blackrock with Jack, to his buddy Aiden who is a little older but has the same passion for trains. He's inspired to Nick to build a train table in our basement.  Soon, but not yet.

Few photos here this month.

Jason

January 2019

Brandi and I attended the North American International Auto Show Charity Preview this year, with Rich and Michelle Clarke. We started the evening at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Party, rode the people mover to the show, then returned to the David Whitney for dinner. It was a good reason to dress up, pull out the tuxedo and coats, and hobnob with the society of Detroit. The champagne is legendarily average, but the party handing out bedroom slippers to the women who attended was a really good idea. It was just nice to get out for an evening with good food and friends.

His birthday was relatively quiet as we recovered from the Christmas holiday. He got a Toledo Walleye jersey, which is kinda cool, but not his passion, either. (Dad thinks it's cool.)

Nick and I took a Saturday trip to Cleveland, visiting the Crawford Museum where they had a Radwood display this month (Radwood originated in California as an event for vehicles from the 80's and 90's.) There was a small war plane display as well, although not enough for Nick. An adjacent museum has an excellent collection of content from WWI, which was impressive. We followed-up the museum with pizza at Citizen Pie, and ice cream at Mitchell's.

Few pictures from here in January.

Jason