Friday

Its Friday and I need it. Been a long week, work sucks. Dad had a 1 1/2 day stay in the hospital and started radiation treatment on his lung yesterday. We are all hoping it shrinks the tumor enough to get him back on his feet and up doing some things other than laying in bed all day.

Harley's 105th anniversary party in in full swing and the first time Dad can participate because he has a bike, he can't participate because he can barely walk from the garage into the house. How frustrating. I can't help but be angry and disappointed for him. I wish we could do something for him...

School starts next week. Huzzah! Wait that means I have to get up earlier again... oh well.

Fishin

I took Joel and Issaac to Yahr park on Monday. They have a noce fishing pier but its surronded by lots of weeds. Went with a big lure and caught a big fish. Ok not huge but a decent sized largemouth. We will go back with a different set up next time.

Mom's Birthday Part II

Well when you're special, you're special. You can have two days devoted to your birthday. All the grand kids line up for a picture at Grandmas. Was a nice day, Dad seemed ok. Tired and weak which is tough to see.

Happy Birthday!

On the heels of Jenny's 30th is Mom's 60th birthday. Went to the Brewer game and tailgated for the afternoon. Look your name is on the board!

Pops 3rd treatment

Dad had his 3rd chemo treatment Tuesday. He is still so whipped he can't do to much. He did get to everything under his own power at least. I know it is hard to hear how tired he is all the time and it's got to be so tough on him and Mom. Always so active, now this.

We love you Dad.

Too Cool

Ok Joel now has his own personalized guitar picks!

How cool is that.

Thanks to G-man.

Happy Lounger

Had I known that all it took to make my wife happy was to get her a nice chaise lounger, I would have done it years ago.

Dells Weekend

Had a nice Thursday - Saturday mini-vacation in the Dells. Tubing on the Wisconsin river, in less than ideal weather (rain, low 70's). But it was nice. Would be fun with a big group and a cooler, you're not going fast enough to worry about anything. Plenty of sand bars and places to hang out.

Friday was Noah's ark and as usual I had my doubts on how much fun I would have. I am not a great aficionado of the water park, especially the crowded ones in the Dells. :P

Well once I got over my aversion, I had a good time. Joel and I hit most of the slides, including point of no return. Which is more of a workout walking the stairs as well as a psych out not seeing over the edge. The ride itself is more like, that's it. I walked 8 flights of stairs for 4.5 seconds of drop? Mackenzie and Tracy did a few slides and hung at the wave pool.

Did some back to school shopping at the outlet mall and oh, yea. The picture is a panorama of Lake Delton. It looks very strange, stumps, weeds growing, piers that reach into the air and some boats still sitting on lake bed. One sign had pontoon rentals - 4hr for .95 Amusung but sad.

Great Taste of the Midwest 2008

Ahh where to start. Had a great weekend, beautiful weather, good friends and a few drinks.

Here we are at the beginning of the GTMW. This being my first trip here, I must admit it's even bigger than I had expected. We got started around 2:00, even though the gates opened at 1:00. Apparently there is a huge line to get in at 1:00 so this is a good thing as we did not wait in line for a half hour.

Prior to this, the girls did the huge Madison farmers market whilst the boys got a few bloody marys. Then off to the Great Dane for some lunch, more drinks and the shuttle bus to the event.

All that said we were already in a groove before we got there.
Here we are on the grassy knoll, taking a break. I have all the other photos on the web site here.

Anyway... Tracy's shirt got a lot of (good) attention. Well worth the effort to get it.

We drank our way through quite a few of the tents, but never fully got through everything. We probably missed a tent and a half. As Glen put it, 'need to rethink my strategy for next year'. Yes we probably started way too early in the day and the afternoon was a blur.

After the fest we tried to play bar dice, drink some more, had dinner, played darts, drank some more...(see a pattern). I know Tracy and I wussed out around 12:30. She had meds to take and I was done.

Sunday was IHOP (yummy) and head home. Let's do it again next year!

Jenny is 30

Happy Birthday to Jenny.

The old lady turns 30 today.

Next up Mom with her 60th.

4 Days to beer-fest

Really - that's what it is, beer fest. Ok, not that awful movie but a beer drinkers paradise. Forecast for Saturday in Madison - high of 78 and sunny. Bee- u- tif- ul.

Turksville.Net

Is back up and online - most links work - go to the Road Trip page - to see the final vacation pictures..

The layout kinda sucks but heck, it's a start.

Lazy Weekend

Friday was a little messed up as my mom had dad admitted to the hospital with shortness of breath. Typical Pop - he sees us show up in his room (emergency room at the time) and shakes his head like - Uh, you don't have to be here. Well of course we do. That's what family does. Anyway Jim and I hand around until about 1:00 AM or so and head out. CT scans indicated fluid in his lungs and the drained him Saturday afternoon and sent him home.

Mom keeps worrying me - she is always talking the worst case scenario and I think she has thought about it too much. Dad is in his 2nd chemo treatment, this stuff takes time.

Anyway, I don't like to dwell, so back to baking, just finishing up some lemon poppy seed pound cake to take to dad. Get him to eat anything if I can. Then 2 strip steaks with a Dijon horse radish sauce for dinner, a spinach salad, pan browned red potatoes and some green beans form the garden. Oh yea, got 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 2 ancho chilies and 1/2 lb of green beans so far.