grandpa – Smells Like Popsicles

Grandpa Time

We are up north with my dad for a week – boating, paddleboarding, fishing, and euchreing the days away. Carson has become obsessed with making lanyards, and Mallory has decided that baiting a fishing hook and taking off the fish she catches isn’t very gross (but please stay away from me with that stuff!).

The weather has been OUT.STANDING this week. The forecasts warned of rain the middle of the week but the closest we got was a couple rumbles of thunder yesterday afternoon but it never actually rained.

Carson’s hair is getting that late-summer-whiteness, and Mallory seems to still be growing …

family, grandpa, Mallory

And then the summer was over

Here I sit on my deck, under my infrared heater and cafe lights, with Jimmy Buffett softly playing in the background and the sound of the high school football game in the distance. Rick & Carson are at the game, Mallory is still at camp (two more sleeps!) and I am enjoying a brief “silent retreat” :-)
We had a crazy busy summer (and spring!) full of baseball and softball. I counted up the games – 123 games played by the kids on their combined six teams (two travel, two spring Little League, one summer Little League and one summer All-Star) …

Carson, Football, grandpa, Mallory

Diary of a Football Saturday – 2015

I love going back to read my 2009 post about going to football games. There are a few things that are the same but I wanted to write an update.
These days I wake the kids up by blaring the Michigan Marching Band “Fire Up It’s Saturday” album. They do a little moaning and groaning but the lure of tailgate donuts is too much to keep them in bed for long.

Carson has been going in early with Rick lately which usually results in some fun pictures from Rick:

Mallory used to help me make the jello shots for the tailgates but when she …

Carson, cousins, family, grandpa

Lime Island – 2013

In August 2013, my dad took his favorite daughter and most of the grandkids (Shane, Lauren, Mallory, Liam & Carson) up north to Lime Island to go “camping”. My sister offered to let us take Cameron too but we were all set.
Lime Island is located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the St. Mary’s River and you can only reach it by boat. It took us like eight trips to get all of our crap across – no thanks to my engineer dad’s inability to do anything “rustic”.
We were camping in cabins without electricity and plumbing so my dad …

Carson, cousins, Gigi, grandpa, Mallory

Grandpa’s Field of Dreams

In the summer of 2012, I found this Fisher-Price thing that allowed you to use it as a tee (for t-ball), or have it pop the ball up to you, or lob it to you like coach pitch. My dad ended up buying it (because he is the biggest kid ever – remember the zip line in the back yard of his old house?) and that weekend organized a baseball game in his backyard. He bought bases and a pitcher’s mound too, and invited all of his grandkids over for a game.
Gigi took care of the concessions – providing …

grandpa, Mallory

Riding the rails with Grandpa

When my dad asked about what Mallory wanted/needed for Christmas, I looked around our house and realized there wasn’t much she needed. There are plenty of things she would say she wanted but nothing she needed.
We’ve talked about maybe taking the train to Chicago one of the times that we go and it never seems to work out for us to travel by rail.
This, along with the memory of my dad taking me by train to Battle Creek when I was about Mallory’s age for a tour of the Kellogg cereal factory, led me to suggest to my dad that …

Carson, cousins, grandpa, Mallory

Tobogganing

One of my dad’s favorite winter activities to do for the grandkids is to haul them around on a toboggan behind his tractor. Since we’ve had so much snow this winter (for fake), my dad takes the kids tobogganing when we only get just an inch or two of snow.
That happened back in January…and we all headed to Grandpa’s. Carson wasn’t a fan of tobogganing, especially after he fell off the toboggan on the first turn.

Carson, Football, grandpa, Mallory, stb

Road Trip

Nothing like a beautiful fall weekend with 80* weather for a night football game on the shores of Lake Michigan!
The kids and my folks and I took to the highway (or espressaway as Mallory still calls it) to watch Michigan play “the Kitties” (Northwestern).
We made a stop at Lou Malnatis in Chicago for my favorite pizza before going to Evanston. We tried to scope out parking and tailgating options but they don’t have golf courses and high schools nearby (and for some reason my package of football parking passes didn’t come with a pass for Ryan Field…)
So, we thought we …

Carson, Football, grandpa, Mallory, stb

Game One

Michigan’s 2011 season started yesterday.
The weather predictions were all over the place the whole week before the game. As late as Thursday night there were predictions of 60% chance of strong afternoon thunderstorms on Saturday. By Friday morning it had dropped to 20% chance – HOORAY! But it was now forecasted to be in the mid-90s. Hmmm.
As we packed up the van Saturday morning I totally forgot to pack rain gear. But it was like 80* and not a cloud in the sky at 9.30a. I had sunscreen though, which was all I thought we’d need.
Biggie & Rich had a …

grandpa

The Creature from the Blue Walloon

My dad on one of his nightly swims in Walloon.

We were doing sparklers on the dock during this. Pictures of that later.

Smells Like Popsicles

All About Mallory & Carson

Category: grandpa