Vacation: Day 4

Today was fun; it was just me and my son, Alex.

We got up, went to an old friends house and he played with her two sons and daughter for two hours while me, her, and her husband caught up on gossip and such from the last two years.

After that, we went to eat at my son's favorite place, McDonalds, and then I took him to the park for about an hour.

After that, we went to my baby brother's house and swam in his pool for about two hours before coming home.

It was really nice to spend the day with just me and my son. I know he enjoyed it as much as I did.

Have no clue what to do for tomorrow, but tomorrow night the wife and I are going out to eat with several other couples for a little while. (Couples that I went to school with and grew up with, as well as my baby brother and his wife).

There is a lot going on this weekend, so far, so if it gets too busy I might not update again until Monday.

Vacation: Day 3

The wonders of relaxation... It is amazing what just a few days of doing absolutely nothing can do for the body!

I have only received three work related phone calls, all three from two of the owners (It is so nice to be missed :) )

Today, my wife and kids went shopping with my mother, leaving me at my parent's house by myself. I sat around, watched a few movies, made a few phone calls, and installed BF2 on my gaming clan's server.

This evening, I took my wife and kids along with me to visit my cousin and her family, which is about an hour away from my parent's house. It was worth the trip to be able to spend some time with them. My cousin and I were like two peas in a pod growing up, and I dearly miss the connection that we had. We were always very close, and could talk to each other about anything.

When we got there, we had a few slices of pizza and then swam in the pool for a few hours, and then just kicked back and visited for another couple of hours. We just got back about 15 minutes ago.

Tomorrow, it will be just me and my son for the entire day, so I plan on taking him to a few parks and maybe visit a few old friends that I haven't seen in several years. It will be some much needed father/son time, that I have not been able to give to him. My wife and daughter are going shopping with my mom and dad in Houston(Dad has a meeting to go to for work)... What is it about shopping that entertains women so much?

Oh, well...time to get some sleep!

Vacation: Day 2

More of the same today....All that I did today was go shopping with the wife & kids for a few hours...

So this is what relaxing is all about??? No wonder people like days off.

Of course, I am going to end up going crazy if I sit still for too long.

I have started coming up with a few new ideas for some new projects, so I am most likely going to work on that tomorrow.

What is it, you ask?? Well, that is for me to know and you to find out :)

Vacation: Day 1

Today was nice... I slept in until 9am, got dressed, and then my wife, kids, and mom all left to go shopping. While they were gone, I solved a few issues that I had with my van on the way down here, and basically relaxed.

When they got back, I spent some time with my son. We washed the bugs off my van from the trip down, and then we swam in the pool for about an hour.

After that, we had supper and my grandmother came over to visit for a while.

Tonight, we watched the movie Hitch. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it. It is completely hillarious. It is definitely one that I will see again.

Now, it is time to go to bed and rest up for tomorrow, where I will probably do nothing again :)

And the vacation begins

Now, after 18 months of trying, I finally got to go on vacation.

My family and I left Friday evening and drove to Grandview, MO for the first leg of our journey. Pretty much uneventful, and we got there in about 5 hours because there was little to no traffic.

Saturday morning, we left around 8:30am, and started our second leg of the journey. Ten hours and roughly $100 in gas later, we arrived in Shreveport, LA and hooked up with some friends from my gaming clan for a nice bar-b-que and conversation. Got back to the hotel around 10:30pm and slept well :)

We slept in this morning, knowing that we were going to have a short drive to my parent's house, and did not leave until 10:30am and arrived at my parents house in Groves, TX around 2:30pm.

Now, hopefully, I can get some much earned rest and relaxation with my family. Of course, it has been so long since I have done that, I don't remember how to do it.

I also need to make a few adjustments to the transmission on my van, because we averaged 13MPG on the way down, which is very unacceptable. I should be making at least 18MPG on the highway, with all the new equipment on it. The TV cable(Throttle valve, AKA kick-down cable) adjustment is way out of whack, and I had to manually shift it out of overdrive to get up some hills.

Anyway, now that I am on vacation I am going to try to post here each day to give updates on what is going on. (For those who are curious).

Roller Coaster Ride

The last week has been a roller coaster of sorts.

I drove to Des Moines Tuesday morning at 10am, flew out to Houston, TX at 3pm, arrived at 5pm and my baby brother and his friend picked me up at the airport 15 minutes later. We stopped at Red Lobster and I ate for the first time in over 24 hours, and then I drove my cousin’s husband’s truck back to Kirbyville and got there around 10:30pm. The whole four days down there was so surreal…It felt like a dream that I just could not wake up from, no matter how hard I tried.

The turnout for Kael’s funeral was incredible…there had to be at least 700 people in attendance on Thursday.

This was quite an emotional week for me, and I tried to hold it in for the most part because for me it was very personal. I watch Kael grow up, and even though I did not have the closeness that my brother’s and everyone else had with him (Because I have been gone for 11 years), it still left a big hole in my heart. I always looked forward to seeing him and his wife when I came down. He could always find a way to get a rise out of you or make you laugh, and you couldn’t help but love him. It seems that I was not alone in that feeling, with the turnout at the funeral and the wake.

There were so many touching stories and testimonials given at the funeral, including my cousin Josh (Who is a Captain in the Army, Just returned from Iraq, and is Kael’s baby brother) who expressed how proud he was of his brother.

Kael turned around the band program at the school where he was a band director, and the sense of loss was truly felt from his students. He had given them so much, and never asked for anything in return.

Here is the article from the paper, that I got from a cached Google search.

We all love you very much Kael, and things just won’t be the same without you!

Kirbyville Man Dies In Louisiana Auto Accident

06/07/05 By Mike Lout Email this story to a friend Michael Kael Reeves passed away in a tragic auto accident in Louisiana on Monday. Officers with Louisiana State Police Troop D at Lake Charles said Tuesday that a Jasper County man died on Monday morning in a two vehicle auto crash in Allen Parish, not far from Reeves. The report said the accident occurred when a 1998 Ford sport utility vehicle driven by 29-year old Michael Reeves of Kirbyville for some unknown reason crossed the center line of US Highway 190 and crashed into the rear wheels of an oncoming 1990 Peterbilt log truck. Reeves, who was reportedly not wearing his seat belt at the time of the accident, was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the Peterbilt, 42-year old James Granger of Dequincy, was not injured. At last word, the official cause of the accident was still unknown and was being investigated by State Trooper Daniel Fontenot and Chris Cheramie

Calgon take me away!

The last few weeks have been an emoitional roller coaster of sorts.

I have been fighting problems here and there with Microsoft's limitedly documented issues from Service Pack 1, as well as trying to do work around the house and perform annual maintenance on my three vehicles (Hence the fact that I have not posted anything in quite a while.

Yesterday, though, my entire world came crashing down.

Monday started off like a typical Monday; full of mayhem and problems galore to fix. Then, I got a call from my baby brother which literally knocked the breath out of me.

He called to tell me that my cousin was killed in a head-on collision with a logging truck. Evidently, he had been up most of the night contemplating the three interviews that he had with three area school districts. He left from his parent's house, where he, his wife, and his two month old son were staying to his first interview. From my understanding, he was going to turn this job down but he wanted to do it in person rather than over the phone. He left early that morning for that interview, fell asleep at the wheel and veered across the median and struck a logging truck just behind the cab.

So far, this is all the information that I have been able to obtain. The family is still quite broken up (As am I), so I am not going to push for any details.

Currently, I am sitting in the staging area of Continental Airlines, waiting to board my flight back to Houston. I have had a few emotional moments since yesterday, but I am pretty sure that when I step off that plane in Houston and see my baby brother, it will hit me like a brick wall.

I am not the type of person who likes to display this kind of emotion at all; I don't even like to do it privately. I just don't feel comfortable doing it.

But this situation is different. Sure, I have been to more funerals that I can count - great-granparents, friends, an aunt, but this one is different...much different. I watched this boy grow up. He was a little younger than my brother. We spent the summers at his parent's house...

He and his wife had already gone through so much over the last few years, with his wife's cancer treatments, and finally they became parents in March; and now this.

The one thing that brings a tear to my eye everytime is the fact that he will not get to experience what it is like to be a father, and his son will not get a chance to see what a great person his dad was. He was a prankster, but had a heart of gold. He made mistakes, but who hasn't??

Well, better make one last pit-stop before boarding.