Our Baby is 30

This blog will be following the incentive from Rachel, posting for her daughter Annika. I really don't know why it should be so hard for me to tell my children that I am so proud of them, but it is. I wonder if it may come from my background. Man, the older you get the more that you recognise influences from your childhood poking through. Eli, I am not sure where you got your work ethic probably from your Mother, but it makes me proud to see that you are not afraid to work hard to get what you want. I ought to know I have helped on a few construction projects with you. We can see what a good father and husband you have become and that makes us happy for you too. You have gone from a child on a Z50 Honda to a rider that quite frankly scares me to watch at times, so I let you break trail when we ride off road. You have gone from entry level jobs to being an engineer for the Union Pacific. You have no idea how much pride we take in watching you grow into a man that we can be proud of. I hope that you don't find this too mushy but it is for a 30 year old that still kisses his Mom and I and says " I love you".

Love Dad

update of sorts

Just a short note to the two or three readers that may know me. St. Jan and I drove over to Rochester on Wednesday and spent the night with the Theobalds. If those boys get any bigger and I am sure that they have a long way to go, I will not be able to wrestle on the floor with them much longer. It is tag team time when they get going. Anyhow, the most recent visit to Mayo was a good one, with both Doctors Moore and Miller saying everything looks great, although they could just be trying to make me feel better, you just never know.. After our morning appointment we cruised the mall, or Jan did. I headed for Barnes and Noble after we both got our hair cut. We stopped in Mankato on the way home for a couple items and were home by supper time - 6pm to you non-midwesterners. Yesterday I had a new tire put on the front of our GS and made a PGR mission run over to Marshall for the funeral of another PGR member that died of a stroke over the weekend. She was Ginny Tusa, in her early 50s and originally from Jackson. According to her male friend she was an organ donor and eight of her organs were transplanted and a total of forty benefited from various parts from bone marrow to skin grafts, so in a way she lives on in an assortment of other people. I also got talking with another member that has an autistic grandson that is involved with making quilts out of old blue jeans. It sounds kind of cool. I think that they sew all of the pockets together to form one side and the use the legs for the backing. In the middle goes some batting and then they tie it. It sounds as if they are sending quilts all over the place as word gets around. Anyway I was home by 2030. Stay well and stay in touch.

SSDD

Guess what, it is still cold and snowy here, although, today it is in the mid 20s. Of course along with warming temperatures we now have freezing drizzle. It's funny, complaining about the weather does not make it any more bearable. I have been working on a project that gets me out of the house, I finished sheetrocking the ceiling in our new garage and last night I started on the walls. My neighbor Ray, loaned me his sheetrock jack for the project and it was a lifesaver. The toughest part was hoisting those 70 pound sheets onto the jack, once they were on the jack they were cranked up to the joists and screwed into place. Working the sheets up around the overhead door tracks, and light fixtures would have been impossible without the jack. So much for that. Last Sunday Jan and I took a drive up to Rosemount for a PGR mission to welcome home two busloads of 34th Division soldiers at their armory. These types of missions are a lot more fun than the other type, if you know what I mean. While we waited for the buses to arrive we were offered cookies, water and probably coffee, this is Minnesota after all but I didn't see any bars come to think of it. After a while we could hear there sounds of approaching sirens from cop cars and then the coaches came around the corner to be greeted by our cheers and applause. These troops had been in Iraq for a year in the area of Basra. Come to think of it I believe that the three funerals that I attended last Fall were troops attached to this unit. Ben Kopps' funeral was just up the street from the Rosemount armory and the others were in the southeast Metro just across the Mississippi from there. It was a cool but sunny day for a drive in the GT and we were home by supper time. A couple weeks ago Jan and I spent a few days in Rochester trying to take care on Gen and Steve's boys, Sam and Gus, while they were in Phoenix for the marathon. Gen ran and Steve cheered her on. Gen finished with a time that she was satisfied with. I think that most serious marathoners would crawl through broken glass to finish the race after running 26 miles. St. Jan and I chased Sam and Gus around while they were gone, again I had forgotten how much work is involved with a couple of active boys. One day we took them back over to Kellogg, Minnesota to a toy store that they had visited earlier. We will definitely will be going back there in the future. It is like a toy store in Europe perhaps, not at all like Toys Are Us for sure. Well, that's about it for now. I'll throw in a few pictures to illustrate the narrative. Take care and stay in touch.