My mom sent me this pic of my dad with his best friend Roger (who'd just gotten back to Florida after being in the UK) with Easter Bunny ears on. Pretty good.
...my dad's best friend Roger and his wife Bonnie for dinner. Roger is British and my dad's version of Grant. It was really sweet to watch them hang out and interact. (Sadly, Roger passed away just a few months after my dad in late 2018.)
Later that afternoon, after I'd hosed all the lizard blood off the patio, some of my parent's friends came over early to pregame before my dad's big birthday party!
My brother and I thought we were going to be all hot shit and outshoot the old guys, but it turns out my Uncle Tom and his brothers all brought their own handguns and PRESSED THEIR OWN BULLETS. They were all crack-shots.
My dad making Max laugh. ;) (I'm writing this in January 2019, four months after my father's passing and it's nice to see all these photos of him). Miss you, dad!
Mom gave us stocking stuffers with Florida lottery tickets. I won $2 and she offered to buy me out so I didn't have to wait until my next trip to Florida to redeem my WINNINGS.
My dad teaching me how to drive the new riding mower he bought! At first I couldn't drive it because the tractor came with a kill-switch underneath the drivers seat that would stop the engine in case you fell off while mowing. But I didn't weigh enough to keep the switch down! My dad wasn't about to mow the lawn himself and so he went into the kitchen and found a really strong magnet, lifted up the seat and clamped the magnet to the kill switch! Blamo, problem solved!
This brilliant move, however, would come back to haunt him later in the afternoon when he was teaching me how to park the tractor in the shed. I went in to far and started hitting the back wall of the shed, and instead of telling me to hit the brake, my dad just started yelling "STAND UP! STAND UP!" thinking the kill switch would engage and the tractor would stop. But he forgot about the magnet he put on and I drove the tractor right through the back of the shed. Hahaha. Famous family story.
Every summer, my family would drive up to Bow Lake in New Hampshire and spend a week at my Uncle Steven & Aunt Kathy's lakehouse on Beech Island! Here's a shot of Brian Crowell getting ready to waterskii!
