Early onset of Alzheirmers

I have a quirky tradition that the grandkids seem to love and the adult family members wish I would discontinue. Any time I burp while around the grandkids I make sure I do it with full force so the whole world can hear. After each noisy eruption I immediately try to blame it on someone else, which usually creates a good deal of laughter. Sometimes the others in the group will join in and try to put the blame on whomever I fingered as being the culprit, but most times they all respond in unison letting me know I was the guilty party after which I innocently ask..."That was me?? Oh!! Then excuuuuuuse meeee!!!"
I will do this even when I am with only one of the grand kids, but still blame the burp on someone who isn't anywhere near us.
This was the situation Brynlee (our youngest grand daughter) found herself in recently when I cut loose with one of my patented burps. Immediately I blurted out..."Arianna" (the absent grand daughter) to which Brynlee reacted to in an unusual manner.
Brynlee walked the few feet that separated us and put her hands up to both sides of my cheeks to make sure I could look her squarely in the eyes..."No grandpa, this is me , Brynlee, not Arianna...."
She must have thought I had a sudden onset of Alzheimers to the point that I didn't even know which grand daughter was which. It was a precious moment, but I am still following the same method of blaming someone else for my burping moments

We weren't angels/Wielding an ax

"Bet you can"t"...how many ill advised, youthful activities have started with this challenge? We were at the sandbox just south of the house with Curtis Scott to see if he could successfully accomplish the dare we had issued to him. The sandbox was a square made of 2X10 planks keeping the sand in its rightful place. We had gone into the house to steal the wind up alarm clock that sat on Dad's side of the bed in Mom and Dad's room. The dare went something like this..."Bet you can't chop through that big board in 5 minutes using this ax..." and we were set to go.
Curtis must have been 8 or 9 at the time. He was older than Dennis, but younger than Vic and Dennis at this time would have been 7 or so.
We waited for the big hand to get on an easy to calculate spot for the chop fest to start. Ready, set, go!!! The arms started swinging, the ax was falling and the wood chips were flying. It was an impressive sight to behold. Curtis did not have a lumberjack body though, the sweat started streaming down his face and the heavy breathing soon set in. The blistering pace of the falling ax slowed considerably and the flying wood chips were becoming more the size of sawdust. When we let him know his five minutes were up he wasn't even halfway through the 2X10 and we let out a short hoot of triumph knowing we had given a challenge he couldn't meet... he dropped the ax and walked away without saying anything.
As he walked away I felt the urge to try to finish off the board so I picked up the ax and tried swinging it myself. It was evident after only one swing that this was a feat quite beyond my 5 year old body. The ax hit at a crooked angle and the ax spun out of my grasp.
Dennis tried the same thing, but having the onset of Muscular Dystrophy his body also was not up to the task of ax swinging so there we stood, looking at the ravine now lodged in the middle of that sandbox board. We turned and looked into each others eyes and both had the instant realization that certain adults would not be as thrilled with this activity as we were. Unfortunately for us there was no easy way to glue all those wood chips back together so we put the ax back into the shed and hoped that no one would notice...like that was going to happen! When we were asked if we had chopped the sandbox up we were truthful in saying it wasn't us. When we were asked if we knew who did, the truth came out. We tried to blame it all on Curtis, but all excuses fell on deaf ears when it was found out Dennis and I started the entire fiasco with those convicting words..."Bet you can't"...we reaped the punishment dealt out by the parental justice system of our house...a quick paddling by Dad.

Happy surprise anniversary

It has been awhile since I danced last but Megan was very forgiving when I stepped on her toes

Dot was thrilled when Conner came up and asked if she would like to dance
Amy said we looked like we were enjoying ourselves,,,,you know what??? We were
Hello...let me introduce you to our crew Megan and Conner are the 10 year olds standing in the back. Stockton (standing) will be 8 , he was our favorite waiter. Zander is sitting on Dot's lap and Garrett is sitting on on mine.


Amy, our oldest daughter, invited us over to join them for dinner last night. Little did we know it was a special dinner to help us celebrate our 33rd anniversary. Actually, our anniversary was last month but we spent the special day watching Amy's children while she was having a wonderful time with her husband on a cruise. They felt guilty for having us do this for them so they organized the special dinner for us. It was a complete surprise!! The boys greeted us at the door with their suits on and ushered us to our table which had candle light and roses. It was a hoot but also very cute to see them with cloths placed over their arms as they tried their best to be professional waiters. They were careful to download many of my favorite songs onto their ipod and were very attentive while we ate our dinner. Niel...our compliments to the chef.
After 33 years of married life we both consider our family to be the greatest blessing of our life. Thanks guys for making this belated anniversary celebration our best ever.

Dumb Moves\Mom and Roberta

There was one day when Roberta decided she wanted to join us out side for our daily explorations. I think most times we just headed out the door and whatever we saw first is what we put our efforts into. It must have been spring time when the ground was not frozen from the winter, nor sun baked from the hot summer temperatures, the first thing we saw was a shovel so we decided to find some buried treasure or some similar artifact. The truth is, one hardly ever finds buried treasure unless it was put there by themselves at a previous time so we had to be content with a goodly supply of earthworms we had dug up.
Roberta was a youngster and you know how excited they can get just from the simplest of experiences, so Berta took a close inspection of the worms and a curious probe into the texture of their skin and the reactions they got from her blowing on them, touching them, you can probably imagine the scene.
When she started off away from us with the small collection of worms in her hand we wanted to know where she was going, so we inquired as much after her.
“I'm going to show Mamma” was her reply.
We could never see the need to let Mom in on our escapades, after all, such information usually got us into trouble so we tagged along just in case we had to do some explaining and defend ourselves.
Berta marched right up to Mom and thrust her little hand up and into Mom's face as best she could, displaying the little collection of nature she was holding there in her palm for Mom's consideration.
I know Mom doesn't have any fear of little creatures as harmless as worms, but she had to make some kind of reaction to the offering that was now in front of her. It might seem a common thing for a boy to have in his hands, but for a little girl? Mom pulled back in mock horror, opened her eyes widely and let out a forced “EEEK!!!” while throwing up her arms as if a big, ugly mouse was being forced upon her.... bad move.
Roberta now seeing Mom's repulsion at these poor little critters figured she must be in some danger, so she immediately dropped the whole pile of the little slimies onto the floor and stepped back quite aways to have a safe distance from the squirming monsters.
This wasn't quite the reaction Mom hoped to instill, but couldn't do anything after that to let Roberta know she could do other such things that were natural activities if she were going to be a tomboy. From that day on I don't think Berta ever followed us out again to participate in our world of being boys. As a result she turned out to be much more interested in curls, frills, lace and anything princessy.

Dumb Moves\Dad's Turn

The first job I remember Dad having was that of a delivery driver for Clover Club Potato Chips. I don't know if he took anyone else on the route with him or if he took me out more than this one particular time. I just remember it being very, very memorable.
Delivery trucks really aren't meant to have passengers. If I wanted to sit, it had to be on one of the steps that led down to the out door to the right side of the truck, much like a school bus. If I sat on any of those steps there was nothing to see , but if I stood up to look out the window there was nothing to hold onto so I became a swaying body trying to keep my balance while standing next to Dad there in the front center of his delivery truck. Things were mostly fine on the open road as we were headed to Durango, but the balancing act got very tricky once we were inside the city with all those stop lights, lane changes, turns, etc. It was becoming a fun challenge to change the position of my feet or the leaning of my body as if I were on a surf board trying to navigate a big wave towards the beach. Unfortunately for me a big wipeout occurred! There is just no planning on an inattentive driver who is trying to make a quick lane change and cuts you off...Dad had to instinctively react as the driver to the right of us started to pull over and cut him off the lane he was in. As Dad slammed on the brakes I took a face smash into the front windshield and as he jerked the steering wheel to the left to avoid a collision I did a twisting feet over head tumble down the stairs and landed against the door on the bottom step upside down and almost unable to move as if I were a square peg pounded into a round hole.
The first words out of Dad's mouth were directed at the incompetent driver and not fit to be listed here. Being at the steering wheel in the middle of traffic he couldn't come to my aid and as I was attempting to aright myself he started driving again which caused my misplaced body to take one more fall so I was now lying flat on that bottom step. This allowed me to be able to jump up in a normal standing position there at the bottom of the truck, so I turned and looked up at Dad who was making quick turns of his head from me to the road, from me to the road, in an effort to avoid any more catastrophes.
All this took place in about two seconds. When Dad saw I had survived my in-flight acrobatics the look on his face changed from anger at the driver to instant relief. I must have had a befuddled look on my face because he broke out into laughter at the situation. This brought sudden anger to me that he would find my plight so amusing so I pushed my head in his direction and yelled out..."What did you do that for?" as if it were all his fault (does this remind you of the war with Vic??). This made Dad laugh even louder at my theatrics. All in all it was a combination of dumb moves on everyones part.

Dumb Moves II

On the east side of the house in which we were living at the time was a tree I loved to climb in. The branches seemed to grow straight out from the trunk, allowing me to climb into the tree as if I were going up a ladder. With my slight build, the branches didn’t bend much even if I got out onto the outer parts of the highest branches. As I got better and faster at climbing the tree, I relished the ability to jump from branch to branch as if I were a monkey or a squirrel. I have seen movie clips where even monkeys can fall from their perches and that is why this particular tree climb sticks in my memory. I was in the upper most part of the tree and I started to fall. Whether it was from me trying to jump from one branch to another I don’t recall. I do remember the fall. As my body flopped downward from branch to branch I tried desperately to grab hold of anything to save myself, but I had no such luck. It was as if I were a pinball and gravity was pulling me to the bottom of the machine. As I hit the lowest of all the branches, I landed on it almost squarely with my face down and I straddled it with my legs and arms. This position only lasted a split second as my body spun there on that last branch and I found myself upside down, still straddling the branch. My arms were the first to let go. Half a moment later my legs parted also and I fell the remaining few feet head first and I landed in the grass squarely on my head. Most all parts of my body had scratches from the fall as I scraped against all the branches I had fallen through. I laid there momentarily, trying to decide if I were alive or not. My neck had such a pain in it from the final landing I knew I was indeed alive. This fall didn't deter me from tree climbing as I had a similar experience several years later while I was trying to showoff my tree climbing abilities for a cute neighborhood girl. They were both truly dumb, painful moments, even for a five year old.

Dumb moves

There was a shed to the south side of the house. As a youngster it looked quite large, though considering the activity we used it for, it couldn’t have been very tall. It had a flat top roof and we accessed the roof by climbing a ladder attached to the building on the north side of the shed. We decided it was a perfect place to play “King of the Mountain” All you had to do to be king of the mountain was to be the last one left standing on the shed. One by one we would throw each other off the roof. That’s right! The losers were physically thrown from the roof top to the ground below. I have always been small for my age so it wasn’t uncommon for me to be the first one thrown overboard. Curtis Scott was a husky kid and as I recall, was always the king. You would think there would be some serious injuries from this activity, but the only wound I ever remember anyone receiving was when Dennis slipped off the ladder, gashing his leg in the fall. Maybe we were catlike and always landed perfectly. At any rate, I remember hating to be the loser so I would immediately ascend the ladder once more only to be thrown overboard time and time again. I think maybe that is why my joints are aching right now just reliving this particular activity.