Falon’s World

Today we went to Howard City to see my little cousin wrestle. He’s really, really good. It was a lot of fun to watch, but also kind of crazy. There were loads of kids there. When they lost they cried:

There were kids as young as four wrestling:

There were some girls:

They make some crazy faces:

This is Nicholas, getting revved up for his turn:

This is a photo of him actually wrestling, with his coach (also his Dad) yelling in the background

He’s such a little guy but he’s so good!

I got a couple of videos too

These are all from the same time/same opponent, I just had to keep adjusting to try to get the best that I could.

Nicholas ended up with a First Place win! That was pretty awesome too. I got a photo of him with his little chart and his trophy.

His older sister, Paige, helped to run the timer during the whole tournament and so we thought she needed to be in a photo too, for all of her hard work:

There are more photos that Eric took here, and my Dad’s photos are here.

This morning when I woke up Eric surprised me with some ginormous pumpkins and some gorgeous roses .

I’m excited to carve the pumpkins!

I stayed home and did some home stuff while Eric went to the football game. When he got home we went to Erin’s parent’s house for group dinner – $5 pizza and crazy bread. Then we headed to the Grand Rapids Griffin’s Game. I got a couple of ok photos.

A ton of people had glow sticks – we weren’t included in that:

The mascot…

There were a couple of fantastic fights – I love hockey

This week was hell at school. Midterms in three of my four classes. I made it through though and I think I did well on all of them! Today after class, I set the fish tank (the ten gallon that we traded Adam for the 50 gallon of Eric’s) up so that it would have time to get up to room temperature and the filter could run for awhile before we get my fishes.

Then I did the laundry (that Eric started one whole week ago), cleaned the house (Midas is shedding like mad) and then relaxed in the evening while Eric went to a High School football game to shoot some photos (for pay thank goodness ).

Friday

After class I went home and packed up everything I able to (and could find) and waited for Eric to get home. Once he got there (and found everything else he had “put away”), we loaded up the boys and headed out. We ended up leaving only a little later than planned, but due to a dinner stop (I like to chew my food…), we were running a little behind. Then we stopped in Cleveland, Ohio where the Indians were playing the Yankees at Jacobs Field…right at the end of the game.

It was packed to say the least and we were there for over an hour before we finally managed to escape. I really liked this purple building although I couldn’t capture it how I wanted

Yeah, definitely late now. We finally found the campsite, started to unload and I saw the biggest spider I’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing and had a mild (ok a little more than mild) panic attack. For a short time I refused to leave the truck and insisted I was sleeping in there…Eric coaxed me out though and we slept fine for the rest of the night.

Saturday

We woke up very bright and early (Oh did I mention that the side of the campground we were on didn’t have bathrooms? Or that we were bushes away from a pretty busy road? Yeah…it sucked.), had breakfast and then crossed the road and had a really good time letting the boys swim until they wanted to drop and collecting a wide variety of colored pretty stones. We have project ideas in mind for them…

We also saw this on the beach:

It even has a little “fire-pit”:

The rocks were each only about the size of the palm of my hand they look bigger though. Eric really liked this leaf and asked me to take a photo of it for him:

After the boys were sufficiently exhausted we loaded up we drove over to the Mercyhurst campus for the game. I hung out with the boys in the truck,

in the shade the whole time and it was nice and relaxing (they liked all the attention they got from people passing by who just had to give them a pat). GVSU slaughtered the “other” Lakers 59-7. Then we started the trip home…the long, long trip.

First, we trekked around trying to find a Hobby Lobby to complete our aforementioned project ideas. The night was not off to a great start. Next we struggled to find someplace to eat and finally we drove around for 2.5 hours looking for sand. Not any old sand would do. We needed Lake Erie sand…and Eric finally found it. I had long ago given up and was sleeping soundly in the passenger seat. We crossed the border into Michigan to the realization that we were going to have to stop immediately. Eric was falling asleep, it didn’t matter if I talked to him or he talked to me, his eyes were closed. We pulled over for a loonnngg nap at a rest stop, then struggled the rest of the way home (I had to continuously jolt Eric out of his eye-closing stupor). Arriving at our house at 8 am. Wow.

Friday

Two of my three morning classes were canceled because my prof was sick. Unfortunately they were the first and third class, so I still had to go to the middle one. Oh well, it was nice and relaxing anyway. I got decent grades on all of my exams/quizzes last week too, so that made me happy. Friday night we went to Tequila Willy’s for Erin’s birthday. The service was horrible and the food was gross – well, mine was all soggy on the bottom (I got a chicken sandwich). I wasn’t feeling so great all day so by the time the cigarette smoke was hitting me I was ready to get going.

Saturday

Spent the whole day doing massive cleaning. Still can’t get the damn living room carpet clean – no matter what I use . Then Grandma and Grandpa Gray, Mom, Dad and Adam all met at my house (Eric and the gang had left earlier to go tailgate). The Grandparents, Dad and I all left to head to 5/3 Ballpark for the Wayne St vs. Grand Valley football game and Mom and Adam went to the Imax theater. Tailgating was fun, I was really excited that my family was there and everyone was really nice to them. It helps that they aren’t standoffish people and also that they drank and ate with everyone – that was nice . The game was…eh, pretty boring. GVSU won 41-10 I think, so nothing too incredibly exciting. But, my family had a good time.

Here we are:

Grandpa liked to talked to the coppers on horseback:

Here are all the girls:

And then me and Tara (she of the hot choco- stained pants of the last home game):

Eric went out after the game and I stayed in and watched movies in bed with the boys keeping me company.

Sunday

Eric left for a conference in Chicago with Ben at 5:45 am. I slept in and then got up, made some breakfast and lazed around all day. I did do all the laundry and clean up a little. I had originally planned on taking the boys to the river but Mason wasn’t feeling good again (he kept puking), so we alternated between watching movies, reading and napping. Overall, a very relaxing day!

Saturday we were up very bright and early and stopped in Marquette for the sunrise. This is the same beach Eric photographed last year and we have framed in our house, along with this photo. But, this is my first time taking photos:

This is also where we found out that we’d been taking Midas’s amazing posing abilities for granted. Mason can’t pose worth anything. I took loads of him and these were the best two:

Notice he’s not paying attention in either…oh well, he’s young yet.

Eric didn’t want to get his pants wet (can’t blame him) but kept forgetting to unroll them so he was walking around like this…Man-Capris?

Next we headed over to the game and tailgating. Unfortunately, I had chapters to read and an exam to study for so I ended up staying in the truck most of the time. After Mason knocked an older lady over, he was banished to the truck too – and depressed about it.

He whined and gazed out the windows until everyone left for the game and then he looked like this:

We slaughtered the Huskies 48-6 and I was very unimpressed with most of their fans. They were rude to us and sloppy drunk. Ugh.

Next we headed to the boys’ hotel room for me to shower quick, pitched our tent and then we went on a tour up to Copper Harbor. Unfortunately, my camera battery died so I missed some truly spectacular shots, but Eric got some….they’ll be up…sometime.

After a quick dinner at Subway we crossed the river to Hancock and got settled into our campsite:

It was a frigid night and I got up in the middle of it to pull on sweatpants, sweatshirt and socks (Eric voted only for socks) and then I slept a lot more soundly. Which means that we slept in to make up for the troubled first half of the night. Next morning we made breakfast (or Eric did) and packed up to leave. And therefore…on to Sunday.

This weekend Grand Valley State University Lakers played Michigan Tech Huskies in football. Originally, we were going to leave early Friday afternoon and get at least to the bridge, camp and then the rest of the way Saturday, go to the game and then camp Saturday night. Things didn’t go quite as planned. Midas’s surgery postponed everything and we didn’t leave Shelby until around 6:30 pm. We drove up to the bridge and then stopped for some photos. This was my first real excursion with my new camera and I was pretty psyched to try out some of the features.

My first ever attempt at a night shot:

Then I realized it was because I couldn’t hold still enough, long enough so I braced it and got this:

And then I found out how much I like benches:

Then we continued across for awhile until it started POURING and we were both too tired to stay awake. We parked the truck on the side of a very quiet road and slept for four hours there. It wasn’t too bad at all. Woke up and started out again. Drove for awhile, got tired and slept a tad longer and then finally we made it…ooops this is going to Saturday – stay tuned.

Today I have made my decision. It was really hard. Yesterday I skipped practice because I was so tore up over what I should do that it was making me sick. I discussed it with Eric, and with my mom (one at each extreme of course) and tried to stay up to talk to my dad but my allergies were bothering me too much. I let it simmer in the back (and sometimes front) of my mind all day (because I have practice scheduled again for tonight) and have come to the conclusion that I should not stay in rowing. I am really, really sad. I hate that I can’t, but I have taken on too many things and I am wearing myself thin. I have two exams, an essay and a quiz coming up in the next ten days and I hardly have time to get all my stuff done. I don’t know if I can function like that for the rest of the semester. I am going to email the coaches tonight and label myself a quitter…I suck .

Friday

So far I LOVE rowing. I love it! It’s so fun and such a terrific workout. The coaches are fantastic, I just enjoy it so much. On Friday I got to be coxswain. Well, I ended up being so anyway. We all ran down to the boathouse, and then find out that while we have enough girls for three boats, we don’t have anyone that wants to be coxswain. So, Bob decided that instead of going out on the water, we will run back to the boathouse and Erg. No, this doesn’t sound like fun. Four of us immediately volunteered to be coxswain. I was picked as one of the three. It was interesting. The weather was clear but quite chilly and windy. I was extremely thankful for wearing wind-suit pants and a heavy sweatshirt because I had to cram my hips into the smallest spot and sit still for the entire practice, with my hands out in the wind. Needless to say, by the end, I was numb, stiff and my hands were frozen. But, it was pretty neat. I got compliments from all the girls in my boat and from both coaches that I had done a good job. Yay me!

Saturday was our first weekend practice. It was kind of rough to not only get up semi-early, but to go right out and exercise – no breakfast either. I got to row and it was the first practice where I didn’t screw up the fundamentals of the stroke royally. It felt more natural (finally!) and was a good, hard workout. Blisters started on my hands, but they’re underneath my calluses so they aren’t too tender. I feel very accomplished I feel skinnier too, but that’s a lie because the scale says I’ve gained five pounds .

Monday

This was a hard, hard day. Practice went fine. I almost had to be coxswain but ended up rowing. There were only seven of us at the early practice so six rowed in an 8. I picked up the nasty habit of bending my wrist, with the side-effect of it being extremely sore by the end. Then at the end of practice we had The Talk. About dues. And that was bad, very bad. It is a club sport, so I have to pay in $175 by September 27th and then work 12 hours for rent-a-rower at $10 an hour and then another $100 is due next semester. Plus, I need to buy spandex and for one pair of shorts, one shirt and one pair of pants it is around $150. This put a serious damper in my spirits. They said that money should never be the reason that we don’t row. But, it might be for me. I cannot afford that at all. Eric said he would cover it, but that really bothers me. The only thing we spend that much money on (besides living expenses) we either do together or it earns it back (like Eric’s flash for his camera). This will not be the case for this. Then the 12 hours…there is no possible way I am going to have time to do that. I have no time now as it is. I am so tightly scheduled that if one thing goes wrong it could throw off my whole day, possibly week. If I don’t work those hours, I have to pay that out of pocket, so that’s another $120 I need to assume I would be paying. I love this sport, I really do, but should I do it? I HATE being a quitter, but is that the best option?? Am I neglecting the boys/Eric/my family too much already? Is my school work going to suffer? I’ve got a lot of hard thinking to do and a tough decision to make.

Tonight was the football game. Which is not the most interesting thing to have happened actually. The tailgating was ok. Eric got hammered and was stumbling around like an idiot but we all had fun. I made Tara take her pants off so I could wash them in scalding hot water in a plugged sink which had run over and out into the hall after Travis spilled hot chocolate all down both her legs. Yeah, that’s a bad run-on sentence, but I don’t care. Then the game, blah blah, we won, shocker.

(don’t you love the random guy smiling in our photo (and blocking Erica’s face) and the old lady looking at us? Crowds are funny)

THEN a friend of ours, who usually does incredibly stupid stuff, did something incredibly stupid, which was going to be a really terrific blog post but now can’t be because I am forbidden to tell. UGH!

After the game, we went home, dumped stuff out of the truck and headed to the Intersection. Get the Cat (who has a new name…Roy David Scott perhaps??) had finished playing and Branded was on. It was a great time! I got to see the band, all the band’s wives/significant others/best buddies and pals and that was stupendous! I danced (in my incredibly sexy tennis shoes and football-wear) and drank a tad and generally had a good time.

Note the guy three down from me with the cigarette in his ear – classy.

Then Eric said we could leave, but drank instead, and then we didn’t leave, but got invited to another bar which unfortunately I had to be the one to say no to and it sucked big time – oh and Eric was DRUNKer than before. Fun stuff.