Camp Grandkid 2010

Friday night Mom and Dad hosted a camp out for the grand-kids.
I initially said that the boys and I would camp out too but it turned out that Friday was one of the hottest days of the year.
So sleeping in a tent did not sound to fun to me.
We just stayed until after midnight and then went home.

The front yard that was nothing but grass when I was growing up was the forest for the camp out Friday night.

Here are the other cast of characters.














This was to be the girls tent. Was is the word for it.

Very nice camp grounds.

We did some fishing and the mosquitoes did most of the biting.

Though a few people caught some fish.


Dad took us to his peach tree and we ate some peaches and took a bag full home.

We sang some songs with Paige doing the leading.


It was nice to sit around an open fire while the state was under a heat advisory.
That is how we roll!



I heard that this was the way the night ended.
Brett slept in a tent next to the fire while everyone else went inside.

He should try deodorant sometime.

More on the House

Framing of the house continues.
If you look close you can spot some monkeys in the second story window.

This room would become Brett and I's room when the house was finished.
Brett broke this window one time too.
We were playing wiffle ball in the front yard.
We grew tiered of that game and started playing another favorite game of ours.
I would go behind the house and Brett would stay in the front of the house.
We would then throw footballs, baseballs, kick balls, Frisbees and in this case hit a wiffle ball over the house.
The guy on the opposing side of the house had to try to catch whatever the projectile was before it hit the ground.
This is harder than it sounds.
You had to be close enough to the house to catch the ball which also meant you couldn't see the ball until it was already coming down at you.
This was a great reaction building game.
The only bummer was if you made a spectacular catch no one else saw it.
Great game.
We would play this game until...
1. It was time to eat
2. It got dark
3. The ball got stuck on the roof
4. The ball got stuck in a gutter
5. Dad heard us hit the house
or as it happened in this case
6. You broke a window

I am glad it was Brett and not me.


Someone is in the front yard with a dog.
Let's zoom in.

Looks like Chad to me.
I don't think this dog is ours though.

Little house on the tender box.

One spark and the whole house might go.

Looks like we were in the middle of a drought.
These slides are dated as April and it should have been greener than this then.



Work crews hard at it.

The driveway doesn't even go all the way to the house.


The workers look like they are installing the window in the garage which is now a living room.

When I zoomed in I could see we were playing the "Don't fall in the deadly porch hole" game I mentioned HERE.



This was taken form the giant Ash tree near the back of the property.
I can see the Buckeye tree to the left.
The property sure has changed since these pictures.

Construction

Mom inspected the framing of our house in the last update on the building of our house Here.

She saw a few things she didn't like and had them tear it down to the foundation and start over.

Here she is micro managing their ever move of the construction this time.

Or I found this slide after I posted the other pictures.
You decide.

Snow Time

Mom is feeling the Olympic spirit.
She is doing her Dorthy Hamill impersonation.
Mom did go as far as to have her hair cut to the Dorthy Hamill camel style.

I think this was taken in Columbus or Bloomington in 1974.



The old Datsun B210 buried in the snow.
It didn't take too much snow to bury this little car though.
I still can't believe all five of us rode in this car on vacation.
Dad drove it all the way to Boonesborough, Kentucky.

While we were on vacation there Dad took us to see this new movie, the guys at work were talking about, Star Wars!


A cozy ice covered house.

A shot from the back of the property towards our newly constructed home.

House Progression

It looks like the construction workers are coming along pretty well with the new house.
Date, 1974.

The foreman, Mom, is overseeing the framing.


This is taken form the living room looking into the kitchen.

Starting to hang some drywall.



In the garage looking through the wall, into the living room and out the living room windows.


Mom seems overwhelmed or is she just hiding from the camera. You decide.


We are now in the garage looking into the living room. You can also see where the floor steps up for the kitchen.
The wall to the left is no longer there.



We are now in the kitchen looking into a bonus room.
I guess we called it a bonus room. I don't really remember ever using this room until we took the wall out.
Then it became a dining room and is now the kitchen today.
Before then I think that it was Mom's art room.

I know at times it held our second TV.
It was a portable, small TV that was usually in Mom and Dad's room but was in this room from time to time.
The cool thing about this TV, besides being our second TV, was that it was covered in Wrangler jean material.How cool was that?
As I was saying. This TV was normally in Mom and Dads room but I know it was in this craft room sometimes too.
I remember sneaking in the room to watch "Kiss meets the Phantom of the amusement park" in 1978. They told me not to watch it after I had lobbied to do so.
So while we were watching whatever we were watching I would get up from time to time to sneak a peek of the show on this Wrangler TV.
It was one of the most watched television movies in 1978 but is also known as one of the worst movies ever made.
I thought it seemed weird because I only caught bits and pieces of it but no, it just stunk.
I should have listened to Mom and Dad.


There I am in background in the days before I watched lame-o TV movies on the sly.
Chad is in the foreground with a stick sword attacking Dad.

More drywall.

The place is really starting to come together.

Front Porch

The family standing in the front door of what will one day be our front porch.

We have got to zoom in on this group.

Mom was camo before camo was cool.
This was 1974 and if you don't believe me look at the collars!
Chad is in his overalls, Brett is the height of fashion and I have my Joe Nameth jersey on.

It was always fun to come down and explore the house back then.
We would come down most days after Dad got off work. We would come down to see what had been done on the house that day or days.
It was fun to climb around on everything before it was done being built.
I remember walking around the edge of the porch pit like high wire walker.
If we fell in it was certain death.
At least injury.
It was pretty deep and they threw all kinds of scrap stuff in there to help fill up the hole.
Maybe Dad said he would kill us if we got hurt.
It was a lethal game one way or another.

Looks like they used the garage to prestain the molding this trip down.

We couldn't wait to move in to our little house on the prairie.