In honor of Pops, on the year anniversary of our loss, we went bowling. Bowling was something Pops LOVED and kicked serious butt in. It was how he spent his evenings with good friends for MANY years. He taught Ben to bowl even when the bowling alley didn't have shoes small enough for Ben to wear. He almost always managed a bowling trip with the kids whenever he came for a visit.
In Dad's mind, every morning was the perfect opportunity to see the perfect sunrise. Every time we went to OC, he would wake up, carry his folding chair and camera, and walk to the ocean in the dark hoping to capture the perfect sunrise. This particular year, we have lovely weather and he had quite a few chances.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
A bit overcast, but beautiful nonetheless.
Day 4
Pops decided to get fancy and videotape the perfect sunrise.
In Poppy's eyes, all sunrises were "the perfect sunrise"
We spent a week of our vacation time in Baltimore helping to get the house fixed up in the hopes of putting it on the market. A great big thank you to Aunt Mary and Uncle John for spending a fun-filled day with us scraping and prepping the porch for a fresh paint job! They took pictures of us all together. We didn't really smell good, but were just happy to be together.
It seems that Dad was almost always behind the camera lens instead of in front of it. He LOVED capturing memories on film and then looking at the pictures over and over again. Here we are on Tori's 3rd birthday taking pictures at the same time :-)
Dad can be heard singing loud and clear as always in this rousing rendition of
"Happy Birthday"
Dad always had a way with the weather. In all the years that we went camping for vacation when I was growing up, it never failed to rain (usually torrentially). It seemed that whenever he came to WI in the winter, he managed to bring a hefty snow :-)
