2017 Part 2 - April and May

In this post I will continue with the pictorial review of 2017 family activities begun in my last post. And, yes, so far I'm proud of myself for improved timeliness. So let's go.

April

Unfortunately, we were so busy with other things that we didn't take any pictures of baby Ian in April. 

April fool! You probably saw that coming. In fact, April began much as March ended - snapping pictures of our new grandson. Like this one of Ian in his brown snow suit.

Not too far into the month, Ian's mother and Grandma Burk whisked him off to the zoo for a little exposure to the non-human world. Not sure how much he took in, but he did meet other creatures with similar outfits. Like this little guy (species unknown).

And this big guy (species formidable).

April also saw the start of that old spring ritual, gardening. One of 2017's projects was reclaiming the slender strip of yard along the west side of the house, next to the neighbor's new paved driveway. It's hard to get to with a lawn mower, so we opted for ground cover (any reduction in the square footage I have to mow gets my vote; you know, to reduce stress on my new Snapper). Here are a couple of shots of the problem.

Ycch. The first step in the reclamation was bringing in dirt. So we had a nice young man from a local garden shop (anyone younger than I is now referred to as "a nice young man") bring in a couple of yards of dirt and build the ground level up to match the new concrete. He did a nice job.

Then the head gardener took on the task of planting the ground cover. Here is a shot of her handiwork. Now, we just have to wait for it to grow out and spread (and of course keep it weeded in the process).

And while we're in that part of the yard, here's our annual shot of our weeping cherry in bloom. It shows off with these gorgeous pink cherry blossoms for about two weeks, then spends the rest of the year shedding willow twigs that aggravate the Snapper. I like the cherry part better than the willow part.

April also involved some new wheels for certain members of the family. First, Christine's new ride - a sporty four-door Cruze hatchback.

And equally flashy, Ian's new top-door carpet-cruiser with deluxe teething ring tray and bootie rest. Again, what can I say about this kid except...stylin'.

May

May turned out to be more interesting than we'd hoped. First, you remember our little fallen limb incident from March? There was a little complication from the cleanup. When the tree guys came to remove the limb from the family room roof, they found that a second limb (smaller but still large) had fallen out of the tree onto the deck itself. When it landed, it poked a small hole in the deck planking. But as any hole is a problem, I went about the risky project of fixing it. Risky, because of my checkered past with power tools. Fortunately, I was able to manage the repair without incident.

First, there was the task of removing the damaged wood. The board that was damaged was about 16 feet long, so I opted to preserve as much as I could and just cut out the broken portion. I was able to replace it with a short piece fashioned from a length of planking that I had left over from an old deck gate that had been replaced. Here are a few shots of the problem. First, separation of the bad board from its neighbors.

Then the tricky part - amputation (luckily of the bad wood and not a body part).

And voila! Ready for the prosthesis.

 

In this last shot if you look to the lower left corner, a couple of boards up from the bottom of the picture, you can just make out my little 16" replacement board, doing its best to blend in with its bigger brothers and sisters. As my fixit projects usually go, this was a huge success (my criteria is low cost, no injuries, and I didn't have to hire someone to come and fix my fix; I never claimed that the bar was very high).

But the next hole in my property made this little irritation seem like it didn't even happen. Remember seeing this on the local news?

This is a picture of the gas company digging through one of their own lines while attempting to repair a recently and incorrectly installed line vent. This was part of a long term project to replace all of the gas lines in the city. You may further remember that this was one of a rash of gas line incidents in the Grosse Pointes in a period of a couple of months. But I digress.

Nancy and I were lounging in the living room, enjoying our morning routine, when there was a loud boom followed by the sound of heavy rain falling on the living room roof. At this point we both sprang out of our chairs and turned to the front picture window. The "rain" turned out to be sand and dirt blowing profusely out of a hole in the boulevard portion of my front yard. Next to this volcano of earthen material, shown in the above picture, is a DTE digging machine with its shovel arm suspiciously deep in the hole. Note that there is a DTE employee who seems to be casually walking away from the scene, perhaps looking for a safer hole to crawl into.

The eruption continued for the better part of an hour, depositing dirt and sand on everything in sight including a large portion of our front yard. To further complicate things, it took the city a couple of hours to locate the proper main valve to cut off the flow of gas. In the meantime, a number of people in uniforms came to "manage" the crisis and clear out a couple of blocks worth of neighbors. I have a scary memory of a DTE supervisor telling me to hold off turning the ignition key on my car until he took a gas reading in the driveway. Yikes. Here are a few more shots of the circus that unfolded in front of our house over the balance of the afternoon.

Among the visitors were a battalion of DTE workers and officials, several law enforcement agencies, three local news agencies (including one with a helicopter circling the area and filming the carnival), and lots of neighbors I had never met in my 30 years of living here. I was briefly interviewed by Channel 7 about whether or not I thought the power company was at fault (duh). I think I answered with something like "Yes, I think DTE should know where their lines are located and to keep that knowledge in mind when sinking a large digging device deep into the earth." It must have sounded too snarky, as I don't think my little sound bite actually made it on the air. Can't remember.

To round out this fun-filled day, here is a last shot of the organized chaos. The old Usual Suspects line "Did you bring enough guys?" comes to mind. 

The broken gas line was repaired just about sundown, and by then most of the debris had been removed by an army of yellow-jacketed DTE workers with hand shovels. Likewise, the crowd of newsmen, policemen, DTE officials and curious neighbors slowly dispersed. They had let us back in the house by happy hour, so we could sit with cocktails in our living room and watch the third act of this little drama. It would take several months for the mess to be totally cleaned up. More on the aftermath of our "gas adventure" a little later in the year.

We had one other minor casualty in May. During my biannual power washing and varnishing of our beloved yard swing, I discovered this.

And when I tried to clean things off and tighten the joints, parts started coming off in my hand.

So with a heavy heart, I dismantled the swing and the hanging frame and tucked them away behind the garage for future disposal. I guess after 20 years of weather and refurbishing, the only thing keeping the old pine logs together was the varnish itself.

I'll wrap up May with another Ian update, who was then pushing four months. Here are a few pics from Ian's first Memorial Day weekend visit to Wiser Times. In this first shot he is lounging in his portable donut seat, gnawing (well, gumming I guess) on his favorite giraffe.

In this pic Ian is assisting me with an important call from a telemarketer, something about a can't-lose investment opportunity in Nigeria.

Here Ian has relocated in his donut seat (which turns out to also be sort of a baby chaise lounger) in a sun tent on the beach. Note the flashy shades and the matching hat/shorts twin set.

And now the family classic "first foot in Lake Huron" shot, here engineered by mom. He was you might say, underwhelmed, as I think the water temperature was a tad cool. Okay. Very cool, likely requiring more than the traditional four ducks to adjust to (water requiring four or more ducks to adjust to is officially unswimmable). But as Ian was only immersing toes, the duck limit was formally suspended for this event.

In this final shot, I'm helping Ian recover from this rite of passage and assuring him that feeling will return to his little feet before happy hour. And it did.

As the family had a very full June, I'll save that story for the next post in my 2017 review series.

Be back soon.

2017 Part 1 - January to March

Two years ago I launched my "last year in review" posts, as one component of my duties as family historian (the other component being my "memory lane" posts, involving digitizing and sharing our family pics and slides from my pre-blog period; only 30 years behind on that little item). For 2015, I completed the review in five posts and was done by March of 2016. Not bad. For 2016, it took me nine posts and I didn't finish until December 2017. Not good. I'm going to do my best to mirror my earlier effort, and move on to 2018 fun before the vernal equinox. We'll see how well I do.

January

Nancy and I woke up on New Year's Day 2017 in Florida, as we have for many years. This year, we were hanging with my mother in Zephyrhills, catching up on daytime dramas and watching bowl games. Before heading home to the Pointes, we meandered over to Disney World for a few more days of warm weather. We stayed at our favorite haunt, Disney's Old Key West Resort, and traveled around to theme parks and other attractions in the least onerous fashion - the bus. Each day's adventure began here, just a few steps away from our vacation home - the closest station for catching on-property Disney buses. 

Taking the bus is way easier than gassing up, navigating theme park parking lots, and getting to and from one's car at the various stops of the day. Plus, you get to commune with all sorts of other interesting travelers and mechanical devices for assisting mobility. It's an education that I appreciate as one day I may need to acquire and learn how to use such devices. And as as most of you know, I like to plan ahead. Here's a shot of Nancy and me on the bus making the most of this educational environment. You can tell that I as a potential beneficiary of mobility devices (pushee) am more excited than my bride, who may be contemplating her future as an operator (pusher). Just a guess.

During our few days at WDW we made the rounds to several of our favorite spots as at the time we were annual pass holders. This privilege enables a person to wear themselves down to a bloody pulp in a combination of places instead of doing it in just one venue. In the shot below, a selfie within camera range of the Tree of Life at Disney's Animal Kingdom, we are taking a short break in between a ride on the Kilimanjaro Safari and checking our BP at the customer assistance station.

We did have a couple of new experiences this trip that proved interesting. The first was at Hollywood Studios. This next pic is another selfie of Nancy and I outside of the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater.

Over the years, I had walked by this eatery a hundred times on my way to other, more well-known attractions like Planet Pizza and the Muppet 3-D Theater. But this time we peeked in and were intrigued. Turns out this campy restaurant has tables in the shape of convertibles parked at a drive-in theater showing sci-fi movies. Here's a shot of us taken by a friendly car hop, about to take our order.
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And a second shot showing the cars and the drive-in movie screen which ran a constant rotation of trailers for diners' enjoyment. I was feeling very much a part of the program as (being a collector of cheesy sci-fi) I actually own several of the movies that were on display.

The other first-time event was this light show at the newly expanded Disney Springs shopping center (which encompasses all of what used to be Pleasure Island and Disney's West End). The lights are actually attached to a couple of hundred drones hovering in formation over Lake Buena Vista. The light show was driven by a computer which rearranged the drones into several different formations (like this Christmas tree) during about a 15 minute show. We watched it all from the new bridge that spans the east end of the lake from the Rain Forest Cafe area to the Lego store. Awesome.

We finally left the sunshine state and headed home by the second week of January. Back in the Pointes we did our best to keep warm, and worked in a little dog sitting. The Reinharts' dog Abigail bunked in with our Coco one weekend while the two-legged members of the family went on a ski trip. Now, I'm not saying Abby was a little out of sorts being abandoned for a few days, but I've never seen any of our dogs assume this position.

She did settle down after awhile and joined Coco for the usual evening puppy lounging area in front of the fire. This looks way more comfortable.

But as most of you already know, the big event of January 2017 was the arrival of daughter Cathy and her hubby Matt's baby boy, Ian Mathew Kuhlman, at 5:00 pm on the 17th. Or in military time, 1/17/17 at 1700 hours. Here's a shot of this one-day-old marvel in Grandma Burk's freshly knitted baby blanket with his new Teddy bear from Grandma and Grandpa Kuhlman.

And, of course, first photos with Grandpa and Grandma Burk.

And one more pic of Ian, deep in thought, bundled for the trip home from the hospital. Nice hat.

February

As you may imagine, February was all about snow removal and the new grandson. I have thoroughly covered my snow removal adventures in a number of previous posts. Fancy equipment, nifty outfits and lots of foot or deeper snowfalls. So let's move on to the grandson. As his first month unfolded, little Ian probably thought he had been born into supermodeldom. And that cameras (read phones) were some sort of life-sustaining activity that had to be repeated every 15 minutes. Here are a few finds from the February festival of photos.

At two weeks.

Three weeks.

Learning to walk. Well, learning to be walked. He's in there somewhere.

During his first visit to the Pointes (it's good to explore one's roots at an early age).

With Aunt Christine.

In the rocker with Grandma.

And finally with mom, exhausted from his east side road trip.

There was a little non-Ian photo activity during the month worthy of note. I received this great pic of my mother taken by her park for their annual directory. She is 92 years Ian's senior. The lad has some fine genes working for him.

March

March usually involves a trip south for us to rush spring a tad, visit my mother and relax at a Disney resort with friends and family. 2017 was no different, except it ended up being a little harder to get out of town. You Detroiters may recall that on March 8th last year the city was hit with a violent windstorm. The storm knocked out power to much of the southwestern portion of the city, including just about every traffic light in the area. Add to that the closure of the southbound lanes of I-75 due to reconstruction, it was just about impossible to navigate one's way from the east side of town through to the freeway south of the Rouge plant viaduct. It took us a couple of hours to go the first 30 miles.

But even before our road woes, we had an adventure at home. The same wind storm that crippled the city did this.

Yes, that's a shot of our family room roof. And, no, it's not a fancy new overgrown roof planter. It's a big chunk of maple tree that used to be located....here.

The limb in the middle with the abrupt end used to be much higher. The wind snapped off the top 30 feet of the limb like a toothpick and dropped it on our roof. I knew something was wrong when, while in the kitchen packing my Manhattan kit for the trip, I heard a loud thud overhead. I stuck my head out the back door but saw nothing. So I stepped out onto the deck, looked around, and discovered the problem. Here's another shot of the rearranged arboreal matter from our upstairs hallway window. Ugh.

In a surprising but welcome bit of luck, we were able to have a tree service come out within a couple of hours and size up the task of cleaning up the mess. They found no serious roof damage, just a crushed roof vent. And their estimate for removing the downed limb was reasonable. So we made the deal, finished our packing, and got out of Dodge before something else intruded (unfortunately, right into the traffic troubles mentioned above).

Now, remember this little episode as we move through the rest of the year in review, because there was an equally surprising part two of our tree troubles in 2017. But now, back to our trip.

Once the departure day difficulties were behind us, the trip came off without further adventure. We made it to Florida on time, picked up Christine at the airport a couple of days later, and had a nice visit with my mother in Zephyrhills. On Sunday the 12th we headed off to Disney and met up with Cathy, Matt and Ian (who flew in from Beverly Hills) and Ted, Summer, Leili and Cyrus (who drove in from Austin). We started our time together in a grand villa at Disney's Old Key West. Here's a shot of our three grandkids meeting for the first time, Leili almost nine, Cyrus almost seven, and Ian almost two months. This is the first of what I'm sure will be an oft repeated scene for the rest of my days.

The next day Christine, Ted and the rest of the Texans headed off for a day at the Magic Kingdom. The Kuhlmans, Nancy and I headed back to Zephyrhills for lunch and to introduce Ian to his great grandmother. Here they are getting acquainted. 

And a second pic, of the four generations.

After a couple nights at Old Key West, we all packed up and headed a few miles down the road to Disney's Vero Beach Resort for the rest of the week (for a full tour of this ocean side paradise, see previous post Hangin' With the Ps). Here are a few pics from the rest of the trip. First, Ian in his beach outfit. Stylin'.

Gathering for a little family competition. This trip the game of choice was Spot-It. It was a little too fast-paced for Grandpa.

A little quiet time away from the hubbub, as demonstrated by Grandma.

  

A little more Spot-It (new venue).

The customary dining table shot.

There were also outdoor activities, of course. Like the miniature golf (for two).

Water slides (that little pellet about to hit the water is Cyrus).

  

Sunbathing.

And hamming it up for the camera. 

And back in the condo, a little more Spot-It (third venue).

We ended the week together with a big-time photoshoot over happy hour. Here are shots of all the players, happy to have been together for another family vacation. First the Beverly Hills part of the family. Note that Ian is sporting his St. Patrick's day outfit, making an early sartorial statement.  

The Texas contingent.

Nancy and I with the grandkids.

And finally, the full group.

With the kids on their way back to their respective homes, Nancy and I headed back to Michigan. But as is our way, we worked in a little more visiting in the process.

Before heading north we spent an afternoon with Mark and Sue Gillman in Venice. Mark is an old high school friend with whom I reconnected at our 50th high school reunion. The Gillmans were gracious enough to have us for a lunch and a tour of their winter playground on the Gulf. Here's a shot of the four of us cruising the local beach. 

Our final stop was in Spencer, Tennessee, for a visit with our good friends Jan and Miguel Rodriguez. We get to see them fairly regularly as they live conveniently exactly half way between home and Florida. In the shot below, Jan and Miguel have taken us to Lynchburg, Tennessee, for a tour of the Jack Daniels distillery. Being somewhat of a whiskey drinker, I found the tour delightful and informative. Good to know just how some of the finest mood management products are actually produced.

That brings us to the end of March, and the end of this first installment of my 2017 year in review. But, can't really end the post without an Ian update. Here he is at 10 weeks, still quite happy to be here.

I'll be back with Part 2 soon.