Somewhere in the fun of butterfly watching & Halloween partying & carbohydrate mass-ingestion during our pal Maria’s visit in 2016, I neglected to post pics of that year’s epic pumpkin-carving session. This year I got home too late to carve with Margot & the dudes. So, although I can show just a couple pics of their fun results, I’ll right the old wrong & share this gallery of carving with Maria. You’ll be pleased to know that then as now, I clearly dressed up as Suburban Dork. 😝
Lately we’ve been trying to get our screen-obsessed lads out from behind their devices & out of the house. If we can’t quite pry them off the screens, we can at least get them outside & onto the other side of the device.
Behold the weird tales of “Horz” and his associates “Gophie” and “Doggo” (“a couple of nose-picking morons he found online,” Finn informs me) featuring the acting & filmmaking talents of our dudes plus neighbors Henry D & Sadie. Behold the magic below—and soon you’ll have as little idea what’s going on as we do. 🤷🏻 ♂️😌
As you may know, Henry is waiting very impatiently for the day he can grow his own mustache. In the meantime he makes due with things like this little animated avatar:
Occasionally, though, he gets access to some quality real-life props like those our photographer friend Michael furnishes at his own birthday parties. Last week, much as we did two years ago at Michael’s, the whole fam (well, minus too-cool preteen Finn 😌) had fun donning props & mugging for the camera. Here’s a gallery in which Hen kinda resembles Salvador Dalí. 👨🏻
Oh, and shh: Alongside the Vincent Van Toe socks we’re getting Finn for Christmas, we’ve scored Sole-Adore Dali for Hen. 😝
Lately Hen has quite reasonably bemoaned the fact that few kids share his passion for old cars, coins, and trains. Well, I told him, in a city of nearly a million souls, we must be able to find your people somewhere, right? And so we have!
Last night we dropped in on Silicon Valley Lines, the local model railroad club that turns out to be located just a mile or so from our house. All the guys we met (including a German Googler named Bernard, who spent ages letting Hen drive a train) couldn’t have been nicer, and of course I needed a crowbar to pry our man out of there—even after two hours. And today he’s raring to go back, hoping to meet another kid who might be dropping by.
“On a scale of 1 to 10,” says Henry, “I’d rate it a billion.” ☺️ Check out a little gallery plus this vid of our budding engineer in action:
On Sunday we took our budding engineer & his long-suffering (but not excessively suffering :-)) big brother up to the Niles Canyon Railway for an afternoon of riding the rails and—in Dad-O’s case—flying over them. In addition to the gallery of photos we snapped (featuring Hen mugging with innumerable old cars), you can check out this little installment of Henry Nack Model Train Central…
…as well as some Johnny Cash-flavored touring from the air…
…and a 360º panorama from above.
All in all, a solid outing!
Not content (finally!) just to sit & watch YouTube, both of the dudes are becoming rather avid creators. The last few nights have seen the lads filming up a storm with Henry D. & his sister Sadie (stay tuned for that horse-mask-clad craziness 😌), and meanwhile Hen has turned from posting about trains & currency (see previous) to posting from the pool in Cabo. (His mortification at the sound of his own voice reminds me of when I got a tape recorder at age 5 or so from my Aunt Dolores. I told him that we all hate our voices. 🤷♂️)
We were rather charmed to find this self-reflective little work amidst G-Man’s recent papers. Thank goodness he warned us in time about those deadly pennies! 😌
“I am creative, kind, patient, funny, friendly. I love trains, history, transportation, currency, owls, pandas, the pool. Different. I feel excited. I wonder what I’ll get for Christmas. I fear zinc pennies, because they can explode cuz they are all somewhat nuclear. I would like to own a real-life train. I’m able to save up a lot of money. I dream to own a real-life train.”
Oh, and he’s drawn a keen bead on his future, mustachio’d self 👨🏻:
Nothing to see here, just a Hen Of The Sea. 😌 Our young guy really pushed his swimming skills in Cabo, zipping along under the waves. Go Hen Go!
Our flight from Cabo gave me a chance at last to edit some photos & vids from our August trip to Galena. The dudes loved visiting our friend Tom’s farm—driving tractors and scaling silos (file that one under “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”!). Tom’s brother Jerry was a great host, while Maria & Bert (the Buffalo) were good-natured passengers.
Check out a gallery from the day (including vertiginous 360º shot from atop the silo!) and watch the budding “Uber drivers” in action:
I love comparing this to how the dudes looked while visiting the farm with Uncle Ted back in 2011…
…and in 2014 (when they made “corn angels” in the silo):
Lastly, here’s a 360º overhead shot of the farm that you can click & drag:
Much as with ziplining, we decided to repeat another Hawaii-October adventure (see previous) & try snorkeling in Cabo. Although Hen somewhat expectedly bailed out rather fast, he was able to draw myriad fish to the rest of us by firing Ritz (with our guide’s blessings! 😌) into the sea. Afterwards he & Finn helped run up the main sail so that we could glide back into the gorgeous harbor.
Check out our gallery plus some underwater adventures that Finn & I shot with our little GoPro camera:
Being back in Cabo after four years, we thought we’d swing by the beach where we caught some great moments with the dudes back in 2014. Feels like they’ve changed so much & so little, doesn’t it? 😌 (Click for a larger version.)
As we discovered in Hawaii, the dudes have a real penchant for flying through the air while dangling from just a thin metal cable. Therefore while in Cabo we thought we’d try our hand at some aerial mayhem, this time mixing in some rappelling & a “Tarzan swing” just for good measure. Check out the gallery while mentally inserting loud cries of “YOLO!,” “Viva Changuito!,” and “Yo Soy Superman!” 🤪
A couple of weeks ago my teammate Buck’s wedding gave us a perfect excuse to visit South Bend with the whole fam. We got to explore campus (including my old dorm) ahead of the Vanderbilt game; grab lunch at the Morris Inn; and attend Mass on Sunday morning. The guys got some new perspective looking up from under the Golden Dome, and we enjoyed watching the marching band step off en route to the stadium. Check out the little gallery from our days on campus.
Ay, Dios Mío—meteorologist Finn is here to warn us of a giant inbound storm, español! Aaaaah!!
On Monday evening the dudes accompanied me to my friend Luke’s ultra scenic abode, which features a mile-long mountain biking trail and a pretty nifty pool. Here’s a taste of the two-wheeled & aquatic mayhem we got into:
Driving back into Galena the night of my birthday, Hen was thrilled to keep the top down on the MZ—but that was nothing compared to his reaction when, from the highway, we heard the rumble of a distant freight train. I immediately turned off the road and made a beeline down the hill, whipping out my phone on the way. Check out our close encounter with the iron horse. 🚂☺️
With Mom-O off working hard in LA, the dudes & I decided to head up the road on Saturday to check out the Good Guys hot rod show. Hen was in heaven, and I’m surprised he didn’t have to ice his thumb after popping it up in front of so many cars. 🙂 Despite the heat & his lack of interest in the subject, Finn was a great sport—encouraged a bit by the strategic application of a root beer float. Following the show we pulled the Westy into the adjacent RV campground where a lot of the ‘rodders & their rides were spending the night.
Check out this gallery showing some of the amazing rides we got to see.
Antiques-loving Hen spent all summer vibrating with anticipation of visiting Antique Archaeology in LeClaire, Iowa, not too far from Galena. It’s run by Mike & Frank of American Pickers—his favorite show, and beforehand he read Kid Pickers—a birthday gift from Grandma Nack, written by Mike & Galenian Lily Sprengelmeyer.
When our trip finally arrived, we zoomed up from Springfield, then across the river to the shop. Hen was thrilled not only to find a great piece—the taillight (?) from a 1958 Buick, but to bargain with Mike’s childhood friend and shake on a great deal! Given that it was found in Illinois, we like to think that the Buick might’ve been sold by Great Grandpa Liggett, or possibly to Great Grandpa Nack. 🙂
Afterwards we stopped off for some German food while Hen picked some old railroad shrapnel near a thrillingly active train line. Check out the gallery here.
Much as we’ve done in 2014 (gallery) and last year (gallery), on this trip to Big G we had a blast visiting our cousins Tom & Sarah Nack’s pond.
As we approached this year, I found myself eyeing my rearview mirror thinking, “Huh, I didn’t know that Galena Trolleys came out this far…” Well, they don’t except when Uncle Ted is behind the wheel! He was in the process of dropping off Ruby following Jenna’s birthday party, so our arrival was followed by a bus full of tired but happy 7-year-old girls. 🙂
Finn & Gus did some amazing synchronized jumping; Hen revolutionized his kayaking game; the dudes fed catfish bread with the occasional side of toe (!); and Hen & Ruby constructed some superb earthworks before getting wild with the hose. Check out the gallery plus a short video below:
And heres’s a 360º panorama that you can click & drag to move around:
Look at these handsome gentlemen; just look at ‘em! 🙂
Here they salute us with “The Gentleman’s Dab.”
And finally they demonstrate some of “the freshest emotes of 2018.” (It’s a video game thing, Mom. :-p)
