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