Four more hours and we were on the bridge traveling over the Mississippi river into Vicksburg, our stop for the first night. The hotel we are staying at had a nice cool indoor pool that was saltwater treated (no stinging chlorine). We went back towards the river into downtown Vicksburg and had dinner at a place called Monsours at the Biscuit Company. The food was good and the atmosphere was excellent. We got the feeling it was more of a local hang out but that made it even better. The smell of old wood was intoxicating!

We missed the sunset over the river by about 20 minutes but took a few photos anyway. The boys loved the big cannons there from the Civil War battle. Everyone is pretty wiped from the long day and we are all headed to bed. Tomorrow is Mississippi, Alabama, and half of Georgia.

These boys love their daddy (plain, simple and to the point). They ask for him to come into their room every night at bedtime, well except for one night last week when he had scared the begeezers out of them by quietly standing in the bathtub all Freddy the 13th like. They didn’t ask for him that night. Mostly because he thought scaring the pants of them was hilarious (a Revenge of the Nerds type of laugh hilarious), a view they obviously did not share. They sit on top next to of him on the couch when we watch tv as a family, follow him like attached little shadows when he wonders out to his shop, and basically think he’s the cooler one. That’s because he lets them try to stay up until midnight, or spend a Friday night playing video games, and takes them to see cool movies. Let’s be clear, I am apparently NOT cool, but their daddy is. He also drives a really cool jeep, and me, well I drive a Mini-Van. We could go on but I’ll spare myself.

Never has anyone looked better wearing the title of daddy, no one could be a better daddy to these two boys, and to quote Judy Garland “I’ve got my man who could ask for anything more?”

I don’t really remember what my dad preferred to do on father’s day. It was probably something close to what he does now, head to the coast and do some fishing (not that he got to do that back when I was a kid). I know we didn’t torture him with ties each year, in fact I recall one year heading up a campaign to buy him this flat acrylic thing that had sand and blue liquid in it that you put on your desk and it would wave back and forth. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called but for some reason I thought he would really want one of those. A few years ago I found him a really interesting tackle box, it looked like a cd holder with sleeves and you could use it to store leaders, lures, hooks etc. That turned out to be pretty practical. This year I didn’t manage to get even a sappy Hallmark in the mail but I did get to do a weekend of fishing in last weekend (and yes, I totally made sure I called him).

It was really windy throughout the entire weekend though which made fishing hard, well at least the catching of the fish part hard. I’m sure he know this but just getting to go fishing with him is a lot of fun, catching fish just makes it more fun. Dad tried just about every spot he could think of and we covered about 55 miles (that’s a lot of real estate in the water folks) but didn’t catch much of anything. Actually dad did but he refused to let me take a picture of his catch. Matter of fact when I reached for my phone to take the picture dad produced lighting fast reflexes and got his catch off the line and back into the water. The fish wasn’t ugly, in fact it was kind of cute. We did eat some good food that weekend and have fun and I can’t wait to do it again. Check back tomorrow for the other guy I know who is a dad…

My dad with his dad (my Popa)

And that, that’s tame for Mr. Bear. I’m afraid to let my boys watch his show, next thing I know they’ll be rounding up the scorpions and cooking them in a frying pan for extra “protein”. Speaking of scorpions, I found a baby one, alive and kicking in the kitchen yesterday just inches away from my barefoot and promptly trapped it in a 1/2 cup measuring cup. I asked my husband to please kill it and take care of it, yet again (note I say again here) he felt the need to “play” with. He shook it up and really ticked it off, “We used to pinch off the tail stinger then drop them on people to scare them as kids”. If he ever does that to me he’ll be pushing up daises. Then he says something like he feels the need to be macho like Bear. Huh? “Yeah when I was 20 I did stuff like that all the time (ie. showing off), but then in my 30′s I didn’t need to do that anymore. Now that I’m a dad and I have two boys I feel the need to be cool again and show them that kind of stuff”. Okay, so I’m summarizing but that was pretty much the gist of that conversation. And he wonders why I have dreams of being attacked by scorpions or snakes taking over our house. He’s like a twisted version of Dr. DoLittle and he’s not allowed to watch anymore “Man vs. Wild”…..

This boy has long legs and knows how to use them to run. I was surprised at how quick he got up and down the field. I think he really enjoyed playing this year even through the periodic temper flare ups and bad practices. Now that the spring season is over he still grabs his ball and goes outside to practice kicking against a ball return net thing we have. Our yard stinks as a soccer field (full of sticker burrs and pot holes) but he likes to get out there and kick it around anyway.You can see all his soccer action pictures on my flickr page.

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