Although the weather wasn’t perfect and we did get some rain, we managed to have fun this weekend. Saturday morning we headed up to Frankenmuth to check out the Dog Bowl. We watched dogs catching frisbees, amateur agility runs, and of course dogs leaping into water!

Later that evening, we came back to see the hot air balloons. It took some time and some of the pilots didn’t want to take off in the windy conditions, but eventually we got to see some hot air balloons take to the skies! Henry was super excited to see them, Ollie pretty much slept the whole time. Then, they started getting ready for the hot air balloon glow and neither one of the kids enjoyed the burner ignition. With two screaming children, we headed back to the car.

On Sunday, Henry and I discovered a new park. He was so excited, he didn’t want to leave. He had a great time climbing up to the top of the twisty tube slide and coming down all on his own!

This past Memorial Day weekend, I spent quite a bit of time in Frankenmuth. Friday night, we headed up there to check out the hot air balloons. It was pretty cool being close enough to feel the heat from the fires and watch the ballons take off right in front of us. Henry seemed to be enjoying himself and Susan was able to get quite a few photos using her new camera lens.

Saturday morning was an early day. I sold my road bike last year to build up my fixie/singlespeed cross bike and knew that wouldn’t be a good choice for a road race, so I decided to volunteer instead. It was pretty neat to be on the other side of the table during registration.

Some volunteers didn’t show up and I was asked to be a road marshal. I grabbed a flag, a hi-vis vest, and a map to where I’d be marshaling at. I got to the intersection and noticed there was another volunteer there, but no police. After we chatted a bit, we decided it would be wise to have two marshals running the intersection. It was a good thing we did, when the peloton came around the corner, they pretty much took up the whole road. We always had one person on the lookout for traffic and the other was directing the cyclists. It was a lot of fun!

For volunteering, I got to do the Gran Fondo di Thumb for free. I loaded up my cross bike and headed back to Frankenmuth Sunday morning. Before the ride started, I was talking with a fellow cyclist who asked if I was going to do the ride singlespeed. I replied I was doing it fixed. He took a look at my tires and said good luck with that, pushing those tires will be a lot of work.

We set off just after 8 AM. My training plan called for a two hour ride that day and I figured I’d get to the first rest stop and turn around. All I can say is riding in a pack is a lot of fun. I was able to keep up with the big dogs for about twelve miles. Right before I got dropped, the cyclist I was talking with before the ride told me I was bad-ass for keeping up as long as I did!

I was alone for the next few miles until I heard someone come up behind me. We worked together and were some of the first ones to reach the rest stop. After a short rest, a cookie, and some Gatorade, I was off on my own back to Frankenmuth. I ended up following the wrong markings when I got back into town and had to turn around a couple times to get to the finish line.

On Monday I finally installed two outside GFCI outlets so the A/C folks can come out and install the units. After that was done, we decided to take Henry to the beach. We drove up to Port Crescent and found a nice spot to relax at the state park. Henry wasn’t sure what to think. We tried dipping his toes in the water, but it must have been too cold for him. He shriveled up and was not happy about being in the water.

Even though it was a busy weekend, it was a great weekend!

So, it has been awhile since this site has received some updates in the form of a blog post, so here goes!

As can be seen in the top right corner of this site, my big race is coming up quickly! As part of my training plan, I decided to enter a smaller race as a “warm-up” for the year and had a lot of fun doing so!

It was the 4th Annual Pi Delta-thlon (a unique race experience) and experience it was! I managed to convince Susan to come with me for packet pick-up the day before the race, she wasn’t too impressed with the campus of MTSU. I wasn’t too impressed with the one ways and lack of signage for the pick-up. We finally managed to find the rec center and were trying to find a parking spot. I was behind a card and figured if I followed him I wouldn’t have a chance. Unknown to me, the way I turned was a one-way, but slipped into a spot just before the car that was in front of me rounded the car (hehe, sneaky, but it worked!)

On the way back home, Susan mentioned how long a drive it was to get to Murfreesboro, which I responded with, yeah I plan on leaving around 5 AM to get set up for the race. She rolled her eyes and I figured I was flying solo for this race. I tried getting to bed early, but was pretty excited for my first triathlon of the year, I couldn’t sleep and 5 o’clock couldn’t come soon enough.

As much as I wanted to use my new bike, I opted for my roadie. I had cleaned, de-greased, re-greased, lubed and put new handle bar tape the day before the race and that definitely made for a smooth ride.

I swear there is no time when I-24 is free of traffic, even early morning on a Sunday! Although I do wish my commutes to work had similar volumes of traffic… I got to the rec center and started unloading. I aired up my bike tires and took it for a quick spin around the parking lot, making sure I didn’t mess anything up the day before… I headed off to transition to get set up (not realizing I forgot to leave my bike shoes unbuckled… again!!) >:(

After I got my number written on my arms, I headed back to the car for a powerbar and some water. I always like looking at the attractive…er…fast looking bikes and seeing how everyone has theirs set-up. It was getting close to 7:30 and I figured I would check on my spot and make sure no one messed with my stuff.

When I racked my bike in, I was the first and only one there, now the rack was completely full and people were trying to cram bikes in all around me… My stuff seemed to be out of the way and I figured I’d take a look on how traffic flow was going to work during transitions. The mount and dismount lines for the bike were quite a ways away, I should really learn to leave my shoes on the bike and slip them on/off while riding, but I think I’d need tri shoes to do that safely! 😉 I did managed to run with my bike and not fall…

After getting the flow down, I figured I should probably do a few laps in the pool to warm-up. I was probably the only one to shower before hand, but at least I followed the rules. 🙂 The water was cooler than what I typically train in and it actually felt kind of nice. Shortly after my warm-up someone came over the megaphone and said something and the lifeguards were getting everyone out of the pool.

Counting is a tough part of the race. During sign up we all entered our estimated swim time, which seeded us accordingly. The lowest numbers have the fastest predicted times and the highest numbers the slowest. I’m pretty sure no one after the first few people were in correct order. I was 226, found 224 and stuck by him near the back of the line.

After we had been waiting for a very long time and the line not moving much, a lady came up and said they were already in the high 200’s. Well we decided to head to the front, which was good because I was ready to go! I knew I was going to overestimate how long it would take me to do the 300 meters, but I wasn’t sure how fast I was going to be compared to everyone else. Well, #224 started right in front of me and I had passed him before we got to the second length. I passed quite a lot of people during the swim, at one point I even managed to swim under someone!

The swim seemed to go by really fast and before I knew it, I was climbing up the ladder and jogging off to T1. When I got to T1 I had troubles getting my socks on (need to bring the white ones instead of the black ones…) and found out my bike shoes were still buckled. With all the trouble I had, I still had a pretty decent T1 time! I was on my bike and cruising.

I had not looked at the elevation profile for the course, but compared to what I train on, it was super flat. There were a couple of hills, but nothing compared to the monster hills around our house. I managed to pass a few people on the bike and the only guy that passed me, I was able to catch and pass him back. Near the end of the course, there was an intersection where police were guiding traffic.

I thought I saw someone turn left at the light, but seeing as how there was another cyclist in front of me, I decided to follow her. As we approached the intersection, she yells “Which way do I go?”. There was no response from the police, and I’m thinking, crap what do I do now? As we get to the other side we both turn towards the police and she asks again which way to go. The response was, “back to the rec center.” Oh wow… that’s helpful. Then another officer said he didn’t know. The cyclist spotted a couple sorority sisters in pink helmets and asked which way to go, and they got us on track, totally costing me like 2 minutes on the bike… 😉 As we were getting closer to the transition area, I really wanted to pass this cyclist. She seemed to be just out of reach until I really stepped it up on the straight-away back to transition. I managed to pass her, but she beat me out of T2. -.-

That little maneuver on the bike really got my heart racing and I wasn’t sure what that meant for the run. I managed to finish the run without taking a walk break and passed a couple people in the process! Although it wasn’t quite the advertised distance of 3.14 miles (due to construction) I still managed a good pace and as I crossed the finish line, I was thinking, dang I could have went faster!

Although that one intersection posed a problem and apparently the criss-cross of the transition paths caused some people problems, it was still a great race! I had a lot of fun and managed to finish faster than my goal time of 1 hour 15 minutes! 😀

Looking at my training log a couple weeks ago, I noticed my bike training has been suffering a little. I re-arranged my schedule to include 3 bike sessions instead of 2 and cut my 3 times running down to 2. So far this has helped me get a lot of time in the saddle (T.I.T.S) and get adjusted to my new bike. Training has really ramped up and I’m super pumped for the race coming up in May.

Two weekends ago I had taken my bike up the the Ashland City rail trail and stopped by Cheatham Lake on the way back. It’s a nice park with a swimming area and I figured what a great place to get some open water swimming (OWS) in. Last week-end I pulled out the wetsuit and we headed down that way.

The Jimmy John’s sandwiches we got were pretty disappointing and it took me awhile before I was ready to hit the water. We were watching the kids “play” in the water… for about 2 minutes before they realized how cold it was and ran out. The water temp was around 63 degrees F. It didn’t seem too bad, until I was neck deep and water was getting into the wetsuit. A few times around the buoys though, and I was actually pretty comfortable. I almost ran into some people and darn near went head first into a buoy, but managed to avoid any collisions. I guess people were pointing at me, and I felt super “cool” making my way to the water in my wetsuit, but I got a pretty good work out in and found out its a lot easier to get out of a wet wetsuit then a dry one!

For Easter, we visited my folks in New Madrid. My mom is making progress and definitely had a lot of improvement since the last time I saw her. As always, I got to have a learning experience as we tried to get the dining room ceiling finished before dinner was done (we put some tiles up, but weren’t quite able to finish in time). Apparently tiles from the same dye lot can be different colors and my dad has about 150 tiles he won’t be able to use.

We took a box of tiles home to see how the color looks, and it’s pretty darn close to the fake tile linoleum we have now. We had been thinking about tiling our kitchen and now it seems like I got a new home improvement project that will be happening once I get the deck done…

Well, it wasn’t the ideal weekend for a camping trip to Cedar Point, but
we still had a lot of fun! Around lunch time on Friday, we finally made
the go decision… I went home, took the dog out and loaded our camping
gear into the car. A quick phone call and a couple clicks on the internet
and the dog had a reservation at the kennel, us at the campground and
tickets to get into the park. After we dropped the dog off, we headed to
Ohio. We arrived at the campground around 10:30 PM… yeah it was pretty
dark there and the numbers on the sites were hard to read. We found our
spot, the only one left in the row… there were quite a few campers there
that got to see us put our tent up, in the dark.

Either the tent is getting easier to put up or we are getting better at
it, because I think we had a record time of 15 minutes getting it up.
After transferring our stuff from the car to the tent, I went to hook up
our extension cord to charge my phone, that was quickly running out of
juice! Unfortunately, there wasn’t a normal hook-up on our site, or any
sites nearby…

The next day I went to the office, they have power convertors we could
have used, but they didn’t have any left… I did manage to get my phone
charged up enough to call my sister to find out they wouldn’t be coming
this time… we’ll have to plan something a little further out next time.
🙂 We headed off to get some food and see if we could find a converter to
buy… Upon entering Meijer, I was in front of Susan and sort of talking
over my shoulder. I turn and realize she wasn’t there and she wasn’t in
the parking lot. Apparently when she said, at the camp site mind you, she
had to use the restroom, she thought it’d be alright to just take off
without telling me… After I found out she wasn’t abducted, we got our
food and some things we forgot to pack, but no converter. Thinking a
hardware store might be a good spot, we went over to Menard’s and didn’t
have much luck. They had a converter that went the opposite way of what we
needed… so close yet so far.

We got into the park and it was pretty dark out. We were able to get on
quite a few rides without waiting very long at all, then around two
o’clock it started to sprinkle and a lot of rides were being closed due to
the weather. We decided it was a good time to get some food and wait to
see if the rain let up. After eating, we headed back to our campsite and
it was still coming down… I’m not sure how Susan was able to sleep
through it, but it really started to pour and there was some thunder that
was quite loud. After her nap, the rain finally started to let up and we
headed back to the park. We were able to get on a couple rides and decided
to head over to Millennium Force. It was the 10th anniversary of the
Millennium Force and we noticed in line there was this guy with the
anniversary shirt, hat, and a number of Millennium Force pins on the
hat… I dared Susan to ask him if he liked this ride, but she wouldn’t do
it. 😉 We managed to get on the platform, a few trains back from the
silver gates when they had to close it due to rain. Since we were staying
nice and dry, we thought we’d wait it out. Several annoying teeny-bopper
stories later and quite a few people leaving, they sent a test train (it
was about an hour or so…) Then the next trains went and every cheered.
If I were to guess, I’d say Mr. Millennium Force could have shed a tear…
Millennium Force is a whole different ride at night, but man it is totally
worth the wait!

Packing a wet tent up is never fun, but we managed to get everything
back in the car and headed back home… blue skies and sunny with a few
clouds… go figure! We picked Waldo up from the Kennel and he was really
excited to see us, Scout on the other hand not so much… She just wanted
more food (and water!) All and all it was a pretty fun weekend!

So it’s been a couple days… er… months since I last wrote, I figured
I’d break this blog up into sections. Grab a cool beverage, put your feet
up and get reading!

The Lawn

Okay, I last left you off thinking our lawn was about to become the “It”
spot in Falcon Crest. People would come from far and wide to see how
beautiful a lawn could really be… Unfortunately things didn’t work out
this way. A day or two after my last blog entry (first week of June), a
funny thing happened… it rained… and when it rains it pours… We
ended up having a stretch of three or four days with severe thunderstorms
and showers… you can just guess what happened, all our seed washed away!
We learned two important things from this… firstly – never seed before
heavy rains and secondly – always know where your gutters downspouts
drain. Not sure exactly what the builders were thinking, but they decided
to have one of the downspouts go under the sidewalk that leads to the side
door of our garage. This is all and well, except they didn’t have any
where for the water to go. We got so much rain, it created a small hole
were water was coming up out of the ground. I’m glad to say this problem
is fixed. Our lawn guy put in what he called a “pop-up”. It’s a little
green thing in the ground that raises when the water fills up the
downspout, and settles back down once it stops raining. For a small fee,
he redid all our downspouts this way, which is really cool as I don’t have
to move them when I’m mowing the grass (once we get grass…) and we don’t
have to worry about them blowing away, which has happened in the past!

I bet right about now, you’re wondering when we’ll actually have a nice,
lush, soft, green lawn… I’m thinking the same thing myself. After the
seed washed away, we started getting a little growth. Some of it was good
grass, while most of it was weeds… Not wanting to spray over the weeds,
the lawn guy came out and killed off the lawn (for the second time now…)
A few days went by, then weeks, then finally he came out again to kill off
some more growth that had occurred (third time…). Finally, this past
weekend, he brought his tiller and broke the crust that had formed,
re-raked the yard, and sprayed it once more (four times… man weeds can
be tough =P). Right now the lawn looks really good compared to what it did
a few days ago, it’s just missing that green stuff on top… you know…
grass! Looks like rain is in the forecast, so maybe he’s putting off
spraying for a couple days. Boy, I’m glad I’m saving all this gas money
not having to run my lawnmower =/.

Running

If you haven’t heard we’ve done quite a few races already this summer.
There was the Loons Pennant Race I had mentioned in a blog earlier, the
Pinconning Cheese Fest Fun Run, the Dow Run/Walk, and the Cheasning
Riverboat run. The Dow one was really nice, it started off at the Midland
Community Center and looped through various streets of Midland. It would
have been nice if the water they handed out along the way was colder, but
it was a fun race. I signed up to do the 5K run and managed to finish just
over 37 minutes. Susan did the walk and was a little disappointed she
didn’t beat her time from the Pennant race. We also learned never to
forget your safety pins, but a quick run to Walgreen’s never hurts! The
Cheese Fest run was two miles and everyone that entered got a small block
of cheese, well almost everyone… Susan didn’t… It was a warm day and I
really wanted to run the whole thing ( well as least the first mile anyway
;)), but I was overcoming a cold and was only able to run part of it. When
I crossed the finish line, the clock said “21:25”, but to get our
“official” time we had to hand in our numbers. The only problem with this
is there was a bunch of kids that cut in front of me, I managed to get my
position back, but unfortunately Susan wasn’t able to and got a slightly
worse time then she actually finished… oh well… I ran the Cheasning
race and beat my previous time… I finished in 33:03. Susan also ran in
this race and almost got her time put down as a walker, which would have
given her a really good walk time, but she told them she signed up to run.

Scout

Scout’s doing well, even if she hasn’t reached her recommended weight
yet (she might be gaining =/). We got her back on the old food which
probably doesn’t help things much, but we had so much left over we thought
we’d better use it. She still begs for food and gets really annoying until
we feed her… It’s been pretty warm lately and Scout’s been losing quite
a bit of fur. To help with this problem we usually brush her, but one day
we (and when I say “we” I really mean Susan) thought it would be a good
idea to give her a bath. Out came the small tub we use to bath the cat in
and the struggle began. Scout’s big enough now that should could spread all
four legs across the lip of the tub and not get wet. After quite a bit of
struggle, we (both of us now) got her feet wet. She wasn’t too happy about
this and managed to dig one of her back claws pretty deep into my palm.
I’ve never seen Scout’s tail so big… it was super-puffed out. After she
scratched me I gave up on the whole bath thing. Susan tried to get her in
the water again, but Scout was helping things and managed to avoid getting
a bath. I think if we (Susan) try this again, we’ll be getting a bigger
tub! If you haven’t seen the latest pictures of her, head on over to the
pictures of the week!

Racquetball

I played the infamous child star in the area. He’s 16 and if he doesn’t
win the Michigan championship, he’s in second! I was able to get 5 points
against him, while everyone else that tried, couldn’t get more then 2!
He’s been playing since he was 5 and is extremely talented. Even though I
got banged up the other night (took a racquet to the face, hit myself in
the leg with my racquet and got drilled just below the rib cage on a
serve that was long anyway =/), I still try to get down to the courts to
play once or twice a week. I even got to play doubles a couple times…
which at first seems like there’s a lot of people on the court, but it’s
actuallypretty fun. I’m really excited for the ladder season to start up,
sounds like Mittag will be doing it too!

Work

Work’s been going great, I’m getting a lot done and my boss says I’m
doing a good job. I’ll be a full time employee (for real this time) on
September 15th and am pretty excited for that! Susan’s job has been kind
of hectic lately… she started up a new process not too long ago and was
on call for the DeHate family camp out… She thinks she may have found a
lead on solving a problem she’s been working on for awhile now.

Once we get the data converted properly, we’ll be deploying our software to a
client for beta testing. It was suppose to happen this week, but some
issues needed to be fixed before we could go… maybe next week… The
company picnic is this weekend, it sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun!

DeHate Campout

Even though Susan couldn’t go, I went out to the camp out for the day.
Instead of a canoe trip, this year we had the DeHate Olympic Games. We all
drew from a hat to pick teams. The I’s and H’s looked pretty similar and
we had to figure who was on which team. We *cough* rigged *cough* it so my
mom and I were on the same team. We also had another team mate who was
pretty young (and pretty annoying…) There was horseshoes, mini-golf
(from hell), water balloon toss, bocche ball, cornhole, mini-basketball,
and ladder ball. Each station you met up with another team and played the
game together except for cornhole. Depending on how well you did, you got
a gold, silver, or bronze (aka pink) star. The team with the most gold and
silver stars was the winner. Our first event was the mini-golf, and man
that was tough, it was one hole at the bottom of an eight foot incline
with all kinds of roots growing out of the ground… we got the bronze
star on this one. We did pretty good on the other events, and when we got
to cornhole, we ripped it up. Not having played the game before, we
managed to get quite a few in the hole… “CORNHOLE!!!” yeah you have to
say it for it to count! 😉 The food was really good, especially Susan’s
Pizza Pasta, and pretty soon it was time to go. Next year, we’ll be
camping (hopefully… if someone isn’t on call.)

Cedar Point

We have been making good use of our season passes so far. We even got to
be chaperones for one trip. That was kind of fun, except for the annoying
bus driver. Dow Corning treated all their interns to a trip to the park
and Susan signed us up to be chaperones (even though technically I should
have been a guest 🙂 ). The plan was to leave early on a Saturday morning,
the only problem with this was sometimes plans don’t go according to the
plan… We headed over to the meeting spot for the two buses, only problem
was, there was a total of four people there… yup the buses were in the
wrong spot (or 50 interns were, you pick =P). So after getting to the
right spot, the day snacks were no where to be found (oh yeah, we got
fed!) So we waited around for the food to arrive, packed up the buses, and
were off, about an hour later then the plan. The bus driver told the same
story over a few times, but it was a good trip. We got to watch movies,
got to go to the park for free, got to eat for free, and didn’t have to
pay for gas, can’t hardly beat that!

Our last trip wasn’t as much fun as the others though… Someone said it
wasn’t suppose to rain, someone was wrong… We got to our camp site (same
place as last time and probably will be the last time there…) and it was
incredibly muggy out… and the bugs were out. After getting the tent set
up, I was pretty dang sweaty, and hopped in the shower, while Susan
attended to all her bug bites… The next day we went to the park, and it
was pretty cloudy. It rained a little, and a lot of the rides shutdown.
Then, near the end of the day it started to rain a little harder, we
decided to go, hoping Sunday would be clear… it wasn’t, we packed up our
went tent and came home… almost without getting lost. We were coming
back and past an exited I thought we should have taken. Well being
adventurous, I decided to stay on the road we were on – that’s the way the
bus driver did it afterall. All was good and well until we got to Toledo,
I missed another exit I should have taken… after driving around and
circling back, I managed to find that exit again and was able to get back
into Michigan, from there it was easy and all while my avigator was
sleeping… Halloween weekends start in September and you better believe
we’ll be there as much as we can!

Okay, so maybe you didn’t need a cold beverage to get through this blog,
but atleast you won’t be thirsty now!

The past couple days have been pretty exciting… we finally don’t have
a brown dirt lawn, now it’s green dirt! Yup, that’s right, we finally got
our hydro-seed yesterday and even a little rain to help it along… good
for the lawn, not-so-good for the baseball game. It was cloudy all day and
rain was threatening, but we still decided to watch those Loons battle it
out in Midland. It started to sprinkle a little and everyone moved for
cover, but we toughed it out and enjoyed watching the Loons beat the
Wizards 9-4. Just an FYI, it’s hard to eat popcorn when your fingers are
half-numb! Speaking of sports, any hockey fans out there? Even if you’re
not a hockey fan, the Stanley Cup finals are here, and man was it an
exciting game Monday night. The Penguins managed to hold on after tieing
the game with 30 seconds left in the third period and scoring a goal
half-way through third overtime (yeah that’s right, I said three!) I made
it til the end, but Susan called it quits after the second overtime ended.
The Red Wings lead the series 3-2 and the next game is scheduled for
tonight (hopefully it won’t go too late 😉 ). Oh, and our sprinklers
kicked on this morning and should be running again as I type this, which
is pretty slick. We should have a nice fuzz on our lawn in 10-14 days, so
stay tuned!

I learned quite a lot this Memorial Day Weekend. First of all I learned
that Susan and I can put a tent up in the dark. That’s right, we’re
hardcore campers now… Seeing as how we had a three day weekend we
thought we’d break in our Cedar Point season passes. We took off after
work, and a quick stop at Q-Doba’s and managed to get to our campsite
around 10:30 PM. After pulling out our lantern and one flashlight, we
managed to get our tent up in about 30 minutes without any major problems.
That brings us to the second thing I learned, that it only takes about 3
hours to get to Cedar Point (3.5 if you need to turn around cause you
missed your exit… whoops!), so the drive isn’t too bad.

We went to the park (after getting free parking with our season pass 🙂
) and were standing in front of the entrance where I learned something
else. Cedar Point’s signage for a season pass makes no sense. After
standing for 15 minutes in a non-moving line, we started to wonder if we
were actually in the right line… so we decided to get in another line.
We should have stayed in the first line, but in the end it didn’t really
matter. So, we got in a much longer line and waited to get our pictures
taken (it’s not on the card they give you, but it pops up every time you
swipe it…) With our cards we got in the park quickly and were ready to
ride! Susan conquered her fear of the 420 foot 120 mph coaster known only
as “Top-Thrill Dragster”. Unfortunately, we don’t have picture
documentation of such an event, but trust me I was there… Maverick was
down for a little bit that day, but man that ride is freaking awesome
(except at night, when the bugs are out!)

After getting lunch Susan wasn’t feeling well and we headed back to the
campground. We both took a nap and were back in the park later that day.
On Sunday we went back again and rode pretty much the whole day, when I
learned something else. Nap taking is pretty much a necessity when you go
to a park back-to-back days. About 40 minutes from closing time we were so
exhausted we decided to call it a day.

We also got our jackets before the
park closed, which we should have stayed in the line we were in the day
before to get them, but I convinced the guy we bought the tickets in the
fall while the offer was still valid. I also learned that the guy working
didn’t really know what he was doing, because he had people in front of us
that he was helping for like 30 minutes (and he had to get help from a
co-worker). Though, the jackets were worth the wait, V.I.P. all the way!
Wanting to have a camp fire that night, I managed to get one going (with a
little boy scout water 😉 ) and we made smores. Even though I was super
sleepy, I stayed up until the fire died down and doused the embers with
water (little did I know that was pretty much a waste of time). Yes, the
thunderstorm came and we survived it! Although, I did learn the tent has a
few holes in it and there were a couple small (really small) puddles in
the corners… so we stayed dry! There wer a couple lightning strikes that
sounded really close, but no trees fell on us and the tent didn’t blow
away, so that was good!

After packing up our soaking tent (on the outside) and the rest of our
gear, it was back to Freeland we go. We got home to see the lawn guy came
and re-graded our lawn. It looks a lot better then it did and it sounds
like we’ll be getting seeded either today or tomorrow, so we should have
the beginnings of a lawn in about two weeks, yay!