Weekend on the lake

On Friday we headed down to southern-ish Indiana to my in-laws. It’s always a fun time seeing our family but this time was different because Lea’s parents have a boat now lol.

On Friday we headed down south. We began our two-and-a-half hour drive early in the day; I believe we left around nine or ten. I don’t remember. The drive was beautiful though! Farm after farm and an almost clear blue sky. I listened to one show, Allow Me 2 Be Frank, which is the Frank the Tank pod from Barstool Sports. If you’re unfamiliar with Frank let me describe him how Dave Portnoy so perfectly put it: He is a real-life Seinfeld character.

He’s a diehard Mets fan, goes on crazy rants about his team, and gives everyone plenty of content to enjoy. Besides going crazy about the Mets, Frank also appears to be a really nice man. The way he lashes out at his favorite teams is also not some kind of shtick. It’s really how he is, and it’s why so many Stoolies (Barstool Sports fans) enjoy him and his crew. Frank is also on a crazy weight loss journey and I encourage you all to look him up on social media and support him as he tries to better himself!

My “deep dive” into Frank Fleming will make sense here in a moment. Once the show was over, I put on some peaceful music in my headphones and read Hillbilly Elegy by Senator J.D. Vance. I believe he wrote and published this book before his political career. Now that he is running for Vice President with former President Trump, I thought it would be a good idea to finally read his New York Times Best Seller. I’ll be honest it’s pretty hard to put this book down. Reading about his life and what him and his family had gone through is incredible. As a personal blogger it’s interesting to me how he wrote the book. The way he describes things, how he goes into so much detail. There’s a lot for us personal bloggers to learn from memoirs like this. If you haven’t read it you should give it a try.

Before I knew it we arrived at our destination. Baby O was ecstatic to see his cousins again. Although they are all older than him (two by as much as ten years), they all try to include him as best as they can in almost everything they do. Sometimes they know he won’t be able to play whatever they are playing, or that it would be too dangerous. But for the most part they try to include him – which he loves! One of my favorite times is when they don’t include him, honestly. I know it sounds mean but just let me explain. Baby O is so good about not being included sometimes, and the way he just stands there, watching his cousins play, is adorable. He has the biggest smile on his face, he’s screaming his baby-babble and clapping his hands and laughing. He really does have the best time just watching. I think it makes him feel included still, just being out there with his cousins.

That night my mother-in-law made tacos. They were good. I mean, they’re tacos, right? Can’t really mess them up lol. Now to tie-in Frank the Tank. Earlier this month I had purchased a Rough N’ Rowdy fight on paper view. RNR partners with Barstool Sports, and the Barstool hosts commentate on all of the fights, including the founder/owner Dave Portnoy. It’s always such a fun time watching. They are amateur boxing fights, and they fit around twenty or so in each event. All leading up to a main event fight. Well, that main event fight just so happened to be a man by the name of Mikey Bets. He is part of the Frank the Tank crew at Barstool, and there was no way I was not going to tune in. I’ve been listening to the show for a long time, but in recent months they spoke about his fight at RNR frequently, and described how hard he was training, and I did not want to miss out on his fight. Mikey Bets ended up winning, which I think we all knew was going to happen. As the night died down at my in-laws, me, my brother-in-law and father-in-law, were the only three left standing to finish the paper view.

It was a really fun night hanging out, watching guys beat the crap out of each other, and seeing someone I’ve supported for a while pull off something that is very hard to do. After the fight ended, I took my brother-in-law home, came back to my in-laws, and crashed on the couch in a different room (I was not about to wake up Baby O. Or Lea. I don’t know which one would have been scarier to deal with).

On Saturday Lea, Baby O, and I went downstairs to have breakfast. The little guy had a blueberry muffin and some watermelon, while I had English muffins (which are my fave) with some butter. We went onto Netflix and put on The Fairly OddParents, which is a show that was on and really popular in the early 2000’s when Lea and I were kids. I used to watch it all the time and I thought maybe Baby O would enjoy it. I thought wrong lol he ended up playing with his toys and running around. Eh, maybe when he’s older he will appreciate the classics. However, after The Fairly OddParents ended we put on The Lorax, and he did enjoy that movie. I had never seen it before this weekend. It was okay.

Around 11am we all headed to the lake! We spent six hours out there. It was so much fun! We drove around, went tubing, ate a bunch and spent quality family time together. As fun as it was, there always has to be an annoyance. At one point the boat was really bumpy, as the water was choppy from going in circles to make waves for the people tubing to bounce off of. Well, the bumpy boat was causing my sister-in-law to constantly bump into me and I could not stand it! Ugh, she’s just so annoying (I’m only kidding lol. I had to add this because she made a joke about how she felt like she was annoying me and how I was going to write about it on my blog lol She probably won’t read this anyways, but I wanted to mention I was joking).

Here’s one of the pictures of me and my brother-in-law tubing! It was fun. I have to admit there were times when I felt like I was going to fly off, which did happen to other family members *cough* Lea *cough*, but not me.

Later that night Lea went to the movies with her sister-in-law (yes, the one that kept bumping into me), and I spent the night with Baby O. We went to bed and put on a movie; you guessed it – The Lorax. Baby O was dancing and suddenly full of energy. Bouncing all over the bed like a mad man. “This is gonna be a long night” I thought to myself. So I gave him about twenty to thirty extra minutes, then I shut off the TV lol. He was very confused but got the hint. He grabbed his blanky, put his thumb in his mouth and rolled up against me to go to sleep. I love cuddling him. That is until I wake up because I’m about to fall off the bed. This little s*&^ had an entire side of the bed to sleep on but he has to push me off because he’s cuddling so much lol. I had to move him away from me about three or four times in order to get myself more centered on the mattress, but it didn’t matter because an hour later he made his way back to me, and there I was again falling off the bed. At one point, I opened my eyes in the middle of the night, and he was sitting up staring at me lol. He smiled and said “Hi”, and then fell back down and went to sleep. If he wasn’t so cute it would have been really creepy. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

On Sunday I drove us home. Baby O slept almost the whole ride and Lea had her headphones on listening to her audio book. She reads so much and listens to so many books. I told her she should start her own book review blog but she doesn’t seem interested. I think she’d like it so I’ll keep bringing it up every now-and-then lol. With both of them out of it and not listening, I was able to listen to Pardon My Take. I had missed Friday’s episode so I’m glad I had time to catch up. It lasted almost the whole drive, which was nice.

When we got home I had to shower because I felt disgusting lol. When I got out I saw the cutest thing on my bed:

My mini me pretending to type on my laptop. He’s a blogger in the making! He wants to take after me and start blogging. Maybe one day I’ll let him type something out and post it on here as his first official post lol. Maybe when he can actually say a whole bunch of real words. Instead of just “Buh” (ball) and “Dada” (which means Dad, and also a whole bunch of other things because he says it for everything).

That was our weekend. It was really fun. I am glad to be home though. The rest of our Sunday was spent relaxing. I re-watched the USA Men’s basketball team win the gold medal at the Olympics (since I missed it while I was on the boat), and watched some Bears pre-season highlights from Saturday (that I also missed on the boat). Baby O was playing and taking the occasional nap. It was a great weekend and a great day to conclude it.

Peter