Maybe it's the quarantine, because we're certainly all losing physical activity opportunities (he had no karate for months) but Nick's been doing pushups in the evenings, and it shows. Besides being taller than me, his strength has improved significantly, which he's asserting. He wants to shoot hoops more often, which I enjoy (now that our backboard is good), and he's trying to play defense on me. Feels like the first time he's trying to impose some dominance, in any respect. I love it, bring it on.
Brandi and Nick visited the Sugar Creek Roundhouse and Train Museum in central Ohio for a day trip, lots of photos, of course. It's out in farm country, without much else around it, Amish buggies passing you on the rural roads. Funny to see photos with masks on, but Nick is already eager to go back.
He and I returned to Cincinnati for a short trip to see everyone together, Carrie drove in from St. Louis with her boys. The older boys are all on the same page now, and essentially disappear together for most of the weekend. Noah is the ring leader ('Mo Mexican' as his friends call him... he tells Nick, "you need a street name," funny how the churchgoers provide the 'bad' influence), Nick is the instigator, Mason is the middle-man, and Myles who is the youngest, just tries to keep up. They created a skit on WWII and shared it with all of us at the end of the day, which was fun to watch. The scene where Nick and Noah disappear behind a curtain, start simulating a bar fight, and Nick yells, "That's my wife," was the highlight. We made a stop at the firing range on Sunday morning before heading home.
We tried Cincy Crab this month (in Toledo, coincidentally), where they drop a trash bag of boiled everything in a pile on the table and you put on your gloves and dig in. Nick enjoyed it, wasn't bad. I still prefer a Chick-fil-A, simple is good, even when they forget the fork in the bag (forcing Nick to get creative and use a nugget sauce packet as a scoop... it's good to test his creativity/survival skills.)
Jason
