Oh no, not another teenager in the house!

Today's Birthday Shout Out is to my baby boy, Spencer, Spence, the Spencinator, Spenzilla.

It's his Golden Birthday. That magical day when his age is the same as the date that he was born. Thirteen on the Thirteenth of June. I don't need to find embarrassing photos of him to publish, because I have been doing that for the past 7 years and so he's got it easy this year.

We had an entire day of celebration.

We started with breakfast at Rosie's Diner, the original. Here's their web site; http://www.rosiesdiner.com. We dined in style on awesome diner hash browns, cakes, eggs, and breakfast meat, lots of breakfast meat. Meat is good.

Next, downtown Rockford for the "Start of Summer" parade. It's a parade that we used to be in for years. The last few years, we'd not been in town because of NeoCon for my job and this year, our tenth living in Rockford, we stayed in town and we were able to just watch the parade. Spence stood there enjoying the parade and endured the sirens of all the emergency vehicles, it was awesome!

After a brief respite, or nap, we went back downtown for dinner, yum, fresh hot corn dogs, awesome! Spencer had a Polish dog that was so big he couldn't eat it all.

Off to the Dam for the duck races. While we were waiting for the parade, some kind older fellow had conned us into buying a ticket for the Rotary Duck Races. As we're milling about near the dam in the afternoon, we're wondering how they call the race. What exactly is the protocol. As the minutes tick by, we see no duck, no big set up. We're sure the old geezer scammed us. Then two guys walk up with a large box and dump the ducks into the river. No ceremony, just dump. We're pretty sure our duck got caught in an eddy and never finished the race.

After that we watched a band, called The Outer Vibe, check out their website here; http://www.theoutervibe.com/ Good band with lots of great tunes, old and new. Spencer was so taken that he bought their CD's. All three! It was the first concert he was forced to sit through and after a fashion, he loved it.

Done with that, time for fireworks, our long time, most painful event. We stood in the middle of the carnival that is a part of our little celebration and watched them blast away. Another fear conquered!

What an amazing day.

Have a great day, I know that we did!

Pat

So the cup is decided, Penguins 2, Red Wings 1

It was tough to watch, but in the end, the Pittsburgh Penguins won and our Red Wings lost. We beat them last year, but that's last year. This year, new winners and sad losers.

I have noticed that I haven't shared much of the 500 pictures that I took in China. Let's see, what can I share this time?

This first shot is a pharmacy, pretty obvious, we're in Hong Kong yet.

This is when we discovered the Hong Kong Boy Scouts Head Quarters, yes it was really raining outside, thus the drowned rat look.

A boat floating by our hotel

Note the square hole in the building, to let the mountain dragon fly through.

More next time!

Have a great day!

Pat

One fine day!

It was pretty chilly here this morning, but by the time of my afternoon drive it was awesome and I was thrilled to be riding the motorcycle.

The concert last night was pretty good, but it was so cold we didn't even make it to the break, we left for home a bit early. It was good music, but the "Hot" blues wasn't enough to keep us warm.

I have a Birthday Shout out to my dear Step Mom, Patty. Hey, Molly, can you let her know that we're thinking of her. I have a very limited stock for Patty, but here's a pretty good one.

I also have a shout out to Maureen. Way to go! Maureen was given some new responsibilities at work and I, for one, am really proud of her. I am going easy on her. PS, I hope you and Tom have a great trip to Alaska!

Have a great day!

Pat

Summer fun

Tonight is the opening session of Rockford's Blues Summer series. Lucky for us, the boys are staying at home and so it's just me and Holly. We have a pretty good system, we put two camp chairs on the back of the Honda, ride down and park in places only a motorcycle will fit, usually very close to the action. It's great! The weather is cool, but clear, should be a good night for an outdoor concert.

Here's a shot our lovely neighbor, Amy, took of the Smith clan. We have Terri, Larry, Jean, Spencer, Jake, Jeff, Bob, Holly, me and Ian.

The following is a limerick that Spencer wrote for school. I thought it was pretty good.

Chinese-American

by Spence Young

There once was a Chinese man

Wished he was American

Oh China he hated

So he immigrated

And now he lives in San Fran

It's pretty good, isn't it. Probably not politically correct, but really amusing.

Have a great day!

Pat

Back in the USA and back to work

First off is a Birthday Shout Out to my brother David. Here's to you Dave! As I had hoped, I found some good shots without resorting to the Christmas 1967 shots.

Looking good!

Big Brother

Uncle Dave the buddy

Uncle Dave the comforter

Uncle Dave the terrorizer

Which one's got the fish on?

Have a great year big brother!

As for me, it's great to be back home, but I am having a hard time getting my clock reset to the right timezone. Not sure why the problem, but I hope I'm through it in the next few days. Exhaustion doesn't become me.

Have a great day!

Pat