Grandpa's visit

Last week my dad drove down for a visit. Initially it was to be a five day visit, but he ended up staying eight days because O'hare was closed down for weather. He started to have truck problems on the way down so we spent the first few days of his visit getting his truck fixed and dealing with the lovely insurance company about our car (which is still in the shop).

Day three we decided to spend the morning rummaging through lumber piles at Lowe's to built a new gate to connect our back yard to the community park. Finally, we both came to the conclusion that Texas lumber is crappy and commenced the building of the new gate, which is built more like a fortress door. I think by the time we were down it weighed close to 200 lbs. I was really happy how it turned out, but it makes our old fence look really bad.
We had just finished the fence and it was about 80 degrees and sunny so we decided to drive down to the beach and break in my new rental car that had 400 miles on the odometer. By the time we reached the island it was about 60 and rainy. We hit a local burger joint and then took the ferry over from Galveston island to Bolivar peninsula. We drove to car out on the beach, tracked in some sand and Erin filled the back seat with seashells. When we returned to the ferry we were pulled over for a random security inspection. We got to laughing because when we drove up there was a big sign that read" Do not verbally or physically abuse the inspectors." I thought it was odd until I saw the guys inspecting up, they looked like they were a few teenagers working at McDonald's. Got to love national port security. Dad razzed them a bit and then asked if he could have his picture with them and then got really nervous about it and said it was a security violation.

Then we decided to stop by Sea wolf park back on Galveston and tour the sea wolf sub. It was very claustrophobic with just a few of us on it. It typically carried 60 men on a mission and was amazing to see restored.
Erin and Papa in the missile launchers
Erin trying out the bunk quarters. I think she had to jump on every bunk
We deiced to buy dad's 96 Dodge Dakota to replace our 94 achivea so we flew him home, which ended up keeping him here a few more days then planned.

Erin loved having him around. Jared and I had some meetings during the week so Erin and papa just hung out. We had some wood left over from the gate and he built her a swing and hung in up in our oak tree. As you can see they had a blast.