An Insane Easter 2025, My Grandma's Last Month

Hey everyone, so 2025 has been a crazy Easter season for me. It all started with March 20th weekend when my grandma went to the hospital with sepsis from her bed sores. Yeah, that's very concerning, she's 90 years old and not in great heath, and has dementia and is on a puree diet because she's having trouble eating. We had many goodbyes and it was very touch and go, but she managed to pull through, making it the 7th time she beat death. I went to the hospital after work when she was in emergency and told her the story of when I didn't shut up the entire way to Pennsylvania for a family reunion, and she said "and he [me] just kept going and going and going," which was very good for me because it meant she remembered the story. When she got to her room her ring hand started to swell so we took off her ring and necklace, and I wore her ring and necklace Frodo style until she passed (keeping her ring and necklace safe). During her time in the hospital I texted her other grandson (the one who lives in Texas) and my oldest friends who she considered grandkids (she was at like all our major events since we had a lot of events, and went to many of their sports games) to call her because we don't know how much longer she has. They all called her that day and everyone was really happy that they did. The hard thing with the dementia is that we couldn't have "real conversations" and haven't been able to for over a year, so even with all the goodbyes and such it was uncertain how much she really got and if we really had closure. Well about a week later I had a vision where she came to me in a dream as her younger self and we had one more conversation, a real conversation where we went over things that haven't been said had real REAL closure. After all this she made it back to her memory care facility where my mom and mskate spent basically every day with her just in case "it was the end." I brought over our extra roku, set it up on her TV, and they were able to watch more than just MeTV Toons and PBS Kids (specifically Out of the Box on Disney Plus, because she loved kids and watching them play, and that's basically all Out of the Box is). A kind of funny thing with the hospital, my boss was very understanding and told me to do anything that I needed to, and one time I told him "this might be the end and I might not come to work tomorrow" but then she pulled through, I went to work, and he said "I thought you weren't going to be here today" to which I responded "I didn't think so either, but my grandma's a fighter and a trickster, so I don't know when."

Palm Saturday is when we had a big final event. Our family is about family celebrations and holiday parties, and we had been planning a party for my grandma at her memory care facility basically since we realized she isn't going to be able to make it to Easter at my mom's house. The plan was that on the Saturday before Palm Sunday we would take her down to one of the activity rooms and all of her family and friends would go there and we'd sing sing alongs and have pizza. Well she got even worse and couldn't get up and leave the bed, so we got all her family and friends in her studio apartment where we sang songs and had pizza. At the party we had my parents, brother, mskate and myself, her best friends, my mom's best friend, the mom of "figurative grandkids," and some of the old neighbors she was very close with. Here's the big thing, she had become semi-non-verbal while in the hospital; before then she didn't say much but would respond in a semi-appropriate way to what we were saying, but after the hospital she wouldn't really respond to much. When her best friend and accordion player came in and said "I'm here to play music for you" she said "thank-you," and that was like "the last real thing she actually said" (she mouthed words and "talked to visions," but saying "thank-you [for coming and playing music]" was the last thing she said). Throughout the entire sing-along mskate held my grandma's hand, and at some songs she squeezed her hand using what little strength she had, and during other songs she held her head up "looking at us" during the music instead of just having her head lay on the side. It was really something. Pizza went well, mom was worried that it would be too much of a smell and cause problems, but it was fine. Everyone said goodbye after the party and let her rest now.

After the party mskate and I went to the mall just because we were kind of in the area (not really, but there was "a need to go there"). When we were there we made her one last build a bear. My grandma really liked build a bear, she loved the cute outfits and the personalized messages. For her 80th birthday her grandkids and great nieces made her a bear. Mskate and I decided we'd make her one last bear, one she'll take with her in her casket to hold onto for eternity, and we'd make a shirt similar to all the "this grandma belongs to [each grandkid's name]" shirts that she would wear when we we were little. We also recorded a voice clip about how much we love her using the same words I said in her first bear. It was pretty emotional (because she was dying and this was "the end"), but I pulled through. It was a very cute cub bear, the smallest they had, and since we didn't know how much longer she'd have mskate played the recording for her over the phone as my mom held it up to her, and she perked up with it. We also got our picture with the mall Easter Bunny since mskate worked with them for Santa and we got little bunny stuffed animals and coupons for either ice cream or gourmet cookies. I got the cookie, mskate got the ice cream. It was good.

Now it's time for my favorite Sunday of the year, Palm Sunday. Why is it my favorite? Because I get "a toy" for mass (a palm branch). This was kind of extra, because it was also our week to do coffee and donuts (there are 4 groups that do coffee and donuts; the Knights of Columbus, The Women's Group, The Ushers, and then Pokematic and Mskate with 1 other lady). It wasn't a big deal, it's just that this was why we had to have the party on Saturday and not Sunday. After mass I told our priest why Palm Sunday was my favorite mass as a child ("I got a toy" as I wave my palm), he chuckled and said "there you go." Hey, it got me involved in mass and that's a big thing for kids. Some time after mass we went to Meijer with our build a bear and tried to find a shirt we could put cricut letters on (because mskate has a cricut); it wasn't going to be "the most sticky and secure" because it would be adhesive vinyl on fabric, but it "just had to last until the burial" and "wasn't going to be played with much." We settled on a yellow toddler swim shirt since it was about the right size for the bear and could get all that we wanted on it. Mskate made 2 sides, the front said "this [grandma's nick name] belongs to" with hearts on both sides of the words, and on the back it listed the grandsons and their wives, "just like the shirts she wore when I was a kid." The funny thing about "it doesn't have to last that long," she lived 1 more week, was able to listen to it multiple times, and everyone's name except for mskate's started to peel and loose letters. It was good though, because that meant she was able to enjoy her last gift.

Fast forward and it's now Easter weekend, specifically Good Friday. Because there was so much going on this weekend with Easter we were already planning on spending the weekend at her parents. The plans were Good Friday liturgy (because "Catholic's don't technically celebrate mass on Good Friday") up by my parents, pretzel making with my parents, and then dying eggs at my grandma's. There were 2 traditions there, we'd dye eggs with my maternal grandparents and we'd make pretzels with my paternal grandparents. The pretzels this year didn't turn out very well, I put too much baking soda in the boiling pot and I think they were a little under cooked, making them turn out VERY bitter, but I later found that if I squirt some lemon juice with every bite I get a good fizzy feeling and neutralize the excess baking soda. Then at my grandma's apartment we dyed eggs while playing out of the box and reminiscing about all the times we dyed eggs at her house. I don't know how much she actually remembered, but it was good for us. We told her "we aren't taking our shirts off and climbing on the table like we did when we were little." We also used some egg dying kits that were pretty old and some of them didn't work well (specifically red, for some reason red/pink is always tricky). The nursing home was also doing breakfast with the Easter Bunny that day and the plan was to have her go down and see him, but because she couldn't leave the bed the Easter Bunny came up and saw her in her apartment. She liked it.

After egg dying I did balloon animals. A little backstory here. When I was about 8 years old I said "I want to learn how to make balloon animals," and my grandma bought me a pump (because balloon animal balloons are very difficult to blow up by mouth) and a bag of balloon animal balloons, and I picked up on how to do it pretty quickly, especially after reading some how to books and experimenting. I'd do it for myself, and as a teenager I did it for people that needed someone to do balloon animals for birthday parties and carnivals. My late uncle had special needs and lived in a group home, and I would make balloon animals for him and the residents of his house all through my years of him being alive, and now that my grandma is in a home I started making balloons for her and residents once she got back from the hospital. Most of the time I just made balloons in her room and then brought them out to the activity room, but this time they were all sitting in a circle without much to do and so I went into the circle and made everyone balloons. I mostly made dogs and swords, and for one resident who didn't have much hand motor abilities I made her a giraffe hat. One of the residents asked if I could make him a gun; I actually kind of can (I once made a tommy gun similar to the one in The Mask), but that's a 2 balloon creation and I didn't want to make something that could be "extra mean" ("I'm going to shoot you" kind of thing), so I made him a sword instead. He then got creative by taking the bunny rabbit I made for his wife, sticking the sword through the ear loop, and he said "look it's a gun, bang bang bang bang bang." The funny thing is he used to work in the same department at the same company I work for now. When I found this out I asked the oldest employees that still work with me if they knew him, but they unfortunately didn't. When I talked to the resident I asked if he knew [this one guy] since he was the oldest guy I worked with and he retired like 1 year after I started, and he said "yes, I think I did," and it was in a way that suggests "I reminded him of something real" and not "I'm confused and just agreeing." Now for "the loud resident." Her big thing is to ask "are you my baby," and other things, and one time when she asked me that I said "no I'm [my grandma's] baby," and that threw off her script and gave her some lucidity where she said "no you're not a baby, you're too big." I asked her what she would like and she said "I want a man, can you make me a short man I can pick up." I said "no, I can make you a dog, a cat, a giraffe, a wiener dog, a poodle, a rabbit, or a sword." Her friend that was sitting next to her said "she can't be trusted with a sword, make her a poodle." She liked her poodle, which became her baby.

Here's where things get crazy. Mskate is doing a fund raiser of "egg my yard," where we set-up egg hunts for people who donate to the diabetes charity she really likes. Last year I bought a bunch of plastic eggs on sale the weekend after Easter and the plan was that we would do them on Holy Saturday, but one family had something going on and requested us to do it on Friday. We said we would, but then mom got "the hard call" that my grandma was on her end and we had to get over there now. Mskate and I, my mom and dad, my brother, mom's best friend, and grandson figure's mom all drive over separately. She was on oxygen and holding on by a thread. Since it's Easter and were going to be spending a lot of time there as we wait for her to go home to Jesus, I found the Ranken Bass Peter Cotton Tail specials on youtube and put them on the TV. She seemed stable enough, so around 7PM mskate and I went to do the house that requested we do it on Friday. We hid the eggs all over their yard and porch, hiding eggs in bushes, seat cushions, sports equipment, and everywhere. We asked if anyone needed anything while we were out and all that was asked was water. We picked up a case at Walgreens and were like 10 minutes from her apartment. When we were maybe 5 minutes away my brother texted us saying "forget the water, come back now, it's happening" (we already bought the water so that wasn't an issue). Apparently my mom called my great aunt and after she said her goodbyes my mom noticed the color draining from her face and she was like "no mom, you need to hang in there a little longer for [pokematic and mskate] to make it back." This is like 8:45 PM long past visiting hours so we were kind of locked out but vikingpolak was able to let us in. We all gathered around, said an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be, and around 9:15 PM she passed. We called hospice and it took about 1 hour and 15 minutes for them to come and pronounce her. During this time the other residents were asleep so we were able to go into the activity room and just come to grips with what happened. One of the insomniac residents was walking around and sat with us as we were processing the passing of my grandma. She was showing us her stuffed animal dog she was carrying around, and it was comforting to have someone that "wasn't there" to be a little distraction. After about 15 minutes we went back in the room and waited for hospice. They came, pronounced her, and then we just had to wait for the coroner at the funeral home to take her away. While we waited we packed up her apartment, just packing up everything in the bins that we brought knowing it was a matter of when and not if. We wrapped up all her pictures, took down her command hooks, packed up her dishes, identified things we'd donate to "trash for treasures" (a thing the nursing home does so residents can get rid of things and pass them onto residents who could use them), put the things that would be going to the funeral home in a specific bin, and basically got the place ready to move out. It was kind of weird doing that while my grandma's body just laid there deceased, but that's what we did. Mskate and I left before the coroner got there because it was like 11 PM and mskate was REALLY tired and just wanted to go to bed. While we were taking things down I made a big deal that we had to be careful with the oil painting of the wedding dresses (grandma, mom, and aunt all in their wedding dresses), because I remember my grandpa always telling us "you boys be careful when playing in the house, that painting is very expensive and can't be replaced, and we can't put glass over it because of how it is." Some people were being less than careful with it and I had to be my grandpa and said "this isn't me, grandpa just REALLY beat into my brain that we need to be careful with this painting." We also wrote a note for her resident friend that would come in her room, say hello, and tell her the church is praying for her (didn't want her to try to go in the next day and get all confused why the door was locked).

Now it's Holy Saturday, a day that was supposed to be a rest day. However, with the whole "grandma died the day before" thing it ended up being our "meet with the funeral home and plan arrangements" day and "move everything out for final" day. I don't have a lot to really say about making the arrangements; we picked out a nice rose casket with rose accents on the corners (not like she was a big flower person but it would match her style), we picked out prayer memory cards, got the link to upload pictures to, and gave the funeral home her burial outfit, specific lipstick, and some things to send with her (the artificial corsage from her 60th wedding party and 90th birthday party, her "grandma's little angels" pin with our birth stones that she had in her jewelry box, and pendants of our pictures from when I was 4 and vikingpolak and tanman were 2 that we found in her purse the night before). We said "we don't have any specific requests, just make it look good." After the funeral home, we went to her apartment and cleaned out everything. She didn't have a whole lot left; 2 bins of photos and assorted things, a floor lamp, 2 end tables, a minifridge, and 2 standing lift chairs. Vikingpolak rented a utility van from home depot because of the standing lift chairs. One of the chairs was going to my parents house and one was being donated to a "pay it forward accessibility" charity. We moved the chairs in order of when they would be taken out (first the chair going to my parents, then the chair to be donated), and had our "rush out the door of memory care" sprint since they kind of lock the residents in so they don't wander out and get lost. Since we were moving we were able to use the employees only hallway and delivery doors. Here's where things got really lucky, apparently right after we loaded up the van and got on our way the power went out and they went on emergency generators for essential functions, and the elevator is not considered essential and therefore wasn't working. A tiny miracle if you ask me.

Vikingpolak and I drive to the place where we were donating the one chair and her 4 prong cane. It was kind of out of the way of everything, and since it was a holiday weekend no one was normally there so we had to have someone come in special to receive the chair. It didn't seem like it was that big an inconvenience though, he was just happy to get a stand-up chair since they seemed to primarily get power wheelchairs and walkers (at least from what I saw when we brought it in). Since we were kind of in mom's best friend's neighborhood, we stopped by and said hello. We went to McDonald's for lunch and had an extra diet coke (we each got a meal but vikingpolak didn't want his drink), so we gave it to her. She then gave us red and green M&Ms to give to my mom for her baking. It was a quick "hello, hug, exchange, bye" since she had work to do. After that we went to my parents and swapped out the chairs. I don't know if the chair we replaced was a stand-up chair or just a powered recliner, but the motor burned out and it was "just an upright chair" now. I tried to take the back off but that wasn't happening, but in the process of trying I found my brother's old keys he lost 5 years ago. We put it on the curb and my dad listed it on freecycle (a local "you want it, just take it" group), and then we moved the new to them hand-me-down chair in. Getting the old chair out and the new chair in was not easy, both had very heavy steel mechanisms and my parents have a vestibule that does not make moving furniture easy. We made it though, and now they have a good powered recliner with stand-up functionality.

Later that night it was time to "egg the yards." We had 14 houses to do, Mskate and her dad did one half and her mom and I did the other half (with 4 of them all being on the same block, 2 of them close to that block, and then 1 close to their house). For the 4 on the same street with each did 2 houses. As I was doing it when I saw a ring doorbell I held up some eggs and waved; not like I had to prove we were friendly, but just a nice gesture to say "we're here and this is what we're doing" and maybe give them some social media fodder. One dad said "thank-you" over the smart doorbell and I responded "you're welcome." It took us about an hour to do all 7 houses, and I want to say it took mskate and her dad about an hour and 15 minutes to do their houses. It was a lot of work but it was worth it and everyone gave us very positive feedback the following day. We'll definitely do it again next year and probably take on additional houses, but next year we'll enlist the boyscouts, girlscouts, highschool national honors society, and anyone that want to/needs to volunteer to stuff eggs and distribute them. It's funny, we originally said "just the cities our parents are in" but then we expanded to another neighboring city by popular demand; mskate was worried that we would get in trouble for breaking the rules and I reminded her "who would we get in trouble with, you're the one who made the rules and can change them if you want to" and she was like "oh yeah, I guess you're right." Then when I brought up enlisting people that need service hours she said "but who would we get to sign the sheets, the people who are in charge of the charity live out of state," and I said "honey, this is YOUR non-profit fund raiser, YOU would be the one signing the service hour sheet" and she said "I guess you're right, it's just such a weird thought of being the one in charge and signing the sheet instead of having to get the sheet signed."

It's now Easter Sunday. Things were a bit odd since we were planning on going to my grandma's apartment and just spending some time with her, but without her anymore we kind of didn't have plans. We went to mass with my parents and exchanged Easter eggs with people during communion. One of the people gave us a real dyed egg that had the egg stuff taken out and was just a shell with confetti inside it. After mass at my in-laws we smashed the egg outside and made a fun confetti cloud. At mskate's parents we got Easter baskets, candy and some presents; mskate got a region free bluray player (because last Christmas we got a region 2 DVD set of Disney movies but nothing to play them on), and I got a collection Godzilla movies. We also had Easter brunch. After that we went to my parents and had some Easter baskets with candy and ate some of the honeybaked ham dinner that one of grandma's neighbors got us for dinner. Nothing super special, just a nice calm day.

The Monday after was pretty calm. "I got the day off because Easter falls on a Sunday this year" (it's just a joke I tell), and we spent the day buying day after Easter Eggs and prizes. We bought about 600 eggs and many prizes. Since a lot were prefilled I spent an hour or 2 emptying them. We then packed up and went home. Then when I got home I uploaded all the pictures I had of my grandma for the different videos. On Tuesday I went to work for 1 day, and then took bereavement the rest of the week. Mskate had to help mom get different arrangements set up, and then I spent my time getting the live stream set-up. I used my new laptop to get that done, so that was getting OBS working with the elgato and making sure the camera could pick up audio, and deciding if I would do a facebook live stream like I did for my grandpa or if I would do it through youtube like I did for my wedding (or both since I have a restream account). Since it would be easier to share and access an unlisted youtube link instead of making sure everyone was friends with my mom (especially for people that weren't on facebook like various old people who couldn't make it to the funeral, because they're all really old like my grandma), we went with youtube. I did my tests through facebook live though and a lot of my facebook friends were like "I can hear you" since my test was "can you hear me."

Now it's time for Friday, the day of the visitation, and testing the live stream at the church. We went to the church around 11AM and brought in all our stuff. The decan said he knew people were coming to test but didn't know who, then after he got close to us he recognized who we were since we regularly took my grandma to mass and she was really close to the decan (he'd come and visit her at her house, and some times at the memory care). We asked him to turn on the microphone at the pulpit so we could test the sound. I asked mskate to get up on the pulpit and do a sound check while vikingpolak stepped outside and listened to the live stream. Mskate wasn't very good at doing a sound check, he sheepishly said "hello," and after some coaxing "Marry had a little lamb," and some other things after long periods of nothing. Then I told her to get out of the way and then rambled for like 20 seconds until my brother came in and said "yes it's good." After that we went to accordion friend's house and watched Dumbo with the husband while we waited until it was time to go to the visitation. Whenever we watch something Disney with him he always says "the first movie I ever saw was Dumbo, I was 6 years old on the army base and had to take my little brother with me, I haven't seen the movie since and don't know what happened to it," so we said "let's watch Dumbo with him" and he really liked it.

The visitation was really good. Mskate and my mom worked on making the photo boards and they turned out really good (3 different eras). My grandma was really into ear rings, every holiday and outfit had a pair of costume ear rings, in total 78 pairs that she still had. What do we do with 78 pairs of costume ear rings? We decided to give them away to anyone who wanted them; came to her visitation, take a pair of ear rings. She was also very generous, always making sure people had food and money, so my mom had the idea of making goodie bags for everyone who came; m&ms, lint chocolate, meiji pandas, rice krispy treats, and/or biscof cookies, and an envelope with a $5 bill to do with as the recipient saw fit. Afterwards a lot of people texted my mom a photo saying "got my favorite snacks on [grandma]," and that was really happy for her. The funeral home did a really good job making her look good; her hair was great, her lipstick was good, her nails were done well, and mom said she would have been happy with how she turned out. Since she liked balloons and we couldn't have real flowers due to my allergies, we had balloon flowers. They put the balloons behind the casket all together, but we wanted to spread them out (1 at each photo board, 1 at the ear ring table). We had to climb behind the casket, which was a little comedic (as it should be). We also put the bear in the corner of her casket and her little Minnie Mouse that we got her on our honeymoon. I spent a lot of time visiting with people, making sure people took a pair of her ear rings (a lot of people were like "where did these come from, did someone make them" and I said "no these were all her ear rings") and telling them the significance of the stuffed animals and some of the pictures (particularly how the one chuck e cheese photo was from her last outing with us and how she liked the wheel of fortune games at the arcade). At the end of the night we had given away 73 pairs of ear rings. It was really great, I saw a lot of people I don't get to see very often and it felt good seeing all the people that she touched. She was a kindergarten teacher and 3 of her students paid their respects, one even said that she inspired him to go into teaching. It was kind of funny because the students were "around my age" and after I thought about it a little I'm like "that checks out, they would have been 5 and were from like 3 or 4 years before I was born." A lot of employees from her memory care came and paid respects as well, which was really good. In the final hour we had a prayer service and then my brother gave a eulogy. A really perfect coincidence, when he was talking about how she got a college degree while raising a family his college graduation picture with her popped up on the screen. At the end of the night we packed up all the family snacks into our folding wagon and packed them into our cars. We packed up the stuffed animals and let her have the Cinderella doll for the night (one of her other stuffed animals from a Disney vacation). I told the funeral home people "she's sleeping with Cinderella tonight, keep an eye on her" (and they did, we got Cinderella back the following day).

Now it's Saturday, the big funeral day. Mskate and I got there about an hour beforehand and got the streaming set-up, after buying a roll of wide masking tape to tape down the extension chord. PepperBC asked if there was anything she could help with and I said "yes, you can tape down the extension chord so no one trips," and she did and did a good job. Once we got everything set up, my laptop decided it wanted to do a BIOS firmware update. This couldn't have happened 2 hours prior when I was just surfing the web? Oh well, while it updated I went and said hello to the people that were there and paid some respects, telling my grandma "I'm doing a thing on my computer that you don't understand so your family that can't make it can watch" (because whenever I'd do something with my computer she and my grandpa would be like "I just don't understand that"). I went and checked on my computer and the update was done, so I started the stream. I did my sound check and said hello to all the family that I knew would be watching. Sound came back good so then I just went and saw everyone. Zeldamaster93 made it even though he didn't know my grandma all that well. I offered him one of the last pairs of ear rings for someone in his family. He got the speech of how to be a pallbearer even though he wasn't planned on being one, but at the cemetery we didn't know for sure who would still be there so he might have to fill in (the people who were scheduled to be pallbearers were myself, brother, her 2 grandson figures, nephew, and my brother in law at the church with the accordion friend's son doing it at the cemetery). My godfather and his family made it and I offered them the last 2 pairs of ear rings and they took them. I also had my god-brother do the pack-up of the streaming stuff once we were done. I went over what he had to do and he said he would do it. We said our final goodbyes and took Minnie out, and I asked the funeral director to have her holding the bear when they closed the casket. I kind of wanted her to be holding the bear facing down so she would be hugging the bear like she would hug us, but the director did it with the bear facing up but then that meant that the grandkid names were over her heart. We walked her down the aisle and it was a good funeral. After receiving communion and praying, I saw her in heaven waving at me, and then I saw her with my uncle, and then my grandpa, and then some people I think were my great grandparents, and then my other grandparents, and my older sibling that miscarried, and other people. It was a very "satisfying" vision. At the end we loaded her into the hearse and all went well. After that I went and helped my god-brother pack up the streaming stuff and then we loaded it into our car and drove to the cemetery in procession.

As we were driving to the cemetery I noticed we were close to where my uncle's group home used to be. This will come back later. We lined up at the mausoleum by the final chapel and all us pallbearers lined up by the hearse. It was good zeldamaster93 was there because the accordion son wasn't there. Then since we were carrying her a fair distance my mom pulled my god-brother over and told him to help carry the casket (afterwards I said he was like Simon being called to help carry Jesus's cross). In total 7 people carried her. We all lined up by the casket in the cemetery chapel, said a final prayer, and said our final goodbyes. We pulled out the stuffed animals (Minnie, Micky, and Cinderella) and had them kiss the casket (my god-family thought that was funny). We all followed her to the mausoleum and watched her get put in the wall. After we watched her get put in the wall we went over to where her walker made tire tracks in the wet cement when we "buried" my grandpa 5 years earlier. It was kind of funny.

After the cemetery we went to the luncheon at the country club that was right by the cemetery. I'll give the food details because that's what she would have wanted. We had salad, chicken cutlets, roast beef, mostacholi (or however that small tube pasta is spelled), and roasted potatoes. All of it was really good, and she would have approved. We didn't have a bar, just soda pop and water, but since hers and my grandpa's drink of choice was a Perfect Manhattan, I asked if I could buy a single drink and was told I had to go to the bar that was attached but not connected. I got one and we passed it around to whoever would partake (mostly just my family and the grandkid figures). It was very high octane, and no one was particularly happy with it. We ended up drinking about 2/3 of it, it was more for the symbol than enjoyment. Afterwards we paid off the bill and it was the end (my mom did her "stick the landing" gesture). After the luncheon mskate and I drove by the rout to my uncle's old house. We went by the McDonald's that we always went to beforehand where we would get lunch for ourselves and take to him, and play in the play structure (we had a lot of adventures in the play place using the paper ketchup cups and whatever the happy meal toy was at the time). The McDonald's play place was really simplified, now it's just a small slide. A far fall from 2 stories of tubing with a videogame thing and later TV with mirrors that was sometimes turned on where the ball pit used to be. We then drove by his group home, and it was still there. Afterwards we drove home using the same rout that we used to take to see him, pointing out all the different sights from when we would drive there. It was a good trip down memory lane. Nothing else after that for Saturday.

Now it's Sunday, (my brother-in-law) IRA's birthday celebration. He and I started the celebration by going to see A Minecraft Movie. Neither of us were super interested in seeing it initially, but then there were all the memes and rowdy crowds and we wanted to experience it. The funny thing about that, there was now a warning before the movie that said "if you are causing a disturbance you will be forced to leave without a refund" using official movie art, so that's kind of funny that it got official. I can see where the rowdy audience like The Room would work, a lot of things would lend itself to that. After the movie we went to PF Changs since that's kind of how the family celebrates, and cousin M joined us. After that we went back to their house and gave IRA his birthday presents. We got him a mystery box ornament for Nightmare Before Christmas (it was Zero the ghost dog), a mystery plushy for Nightmare Before Christmas (it was Sally), All in the Family the complete 9th season, and a Power Rangers model car. After that we packed up the cars and went home. And now I'm writing the blog as I sort through all our Easter and funeral stuff. It was one crazy month for me, lots of ups and downs, lots of emotions. But now I know she's whole and we no longer have to worry. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Cedar Point, a Funeral, and Octoberfest, a crazy set of things

Hey everyone, this was quite a crazy couple of weeks/months in 2024 for me. Normally I would split these into different blogs, but they're all a little too interconnected for me to make them separate things.

It all started with my grandparents (maternal grandma and paternal grandpa) having a lot of really rough things happen. Earlier in the year we moved my grandma to memory care and that meant a lot of going through her house and getting it prepped for selling. Lots of things to go through, and one of the things I did was get the curio cabinet for our house (we have niknaks and such we want to display). I bought another curio cabinet many years prior and it was easy enough to move both carrying myself and hauling in my car, and I figured that I could do the same this time. Unfortunately my car is smaller and the cabinet is bigger and heavier, so I had to rent a uhaul trailer and get mizorlover to help me move it. That was the first time I used a trailer, and it wasn't that hard; not exactly easy but was easy enough. I also took 2 shelving units, one from the basement that I'm using in the garage and the shelving unit in my uncles room that we're using for storing our business stuff. Mozorlover and I went to one of the arcades by me afterwards and it was fun seeing him again. Also while cleaning out one of the dressers we found my grandpa's ring that we thought he lost. I liked it the most as a kid and I'm the only grandson that wears rings (my brother and cousin both have a school ring that they don't wear often, whereas I have 2 class rings and wear them all the time), so there wasn't any push back of "no I want that."

Well fast forward some weeks and my grandma fell and broke her hip. For a 90 year old woman that's pretty bad and concerning; it could be quick and easy, or it could be a death sentence, and all sorts of in-between. Thankfully it was "quick and easy," now it's just rehab. Rehab was not great, yes she got her hip fixed but she developed some bed sores and pressure sores, and they weren't very attentive to "dementia patient who can't verbalize there's a problem," which resulted in someone basically staying with her all the time (mostly my mom). That took quite the toll on her as it was like a month long process.

Once my grandma got out of rehab, my 97 year old grandpa somehow contracted covid. "Somehow" being the very key word, he doesn't go out much, neither did my aunt who he lived with, and he didn't get a lot of visitors. One grandparent out of the hospital, the other one in. My mom and dad looked after him while he was in the hospital since it was probably the end (because again 97 year old man), knowing full well they were going to get sick from him. Vikingpolak also went to see him while he was in the hospital because he wanted to see him as well, which of course meant that he got sick too, or at very least meant that he was at risk of carrying for a while. Mskate and I didn't see grandpa when he was sick, mostly because it meant that we were the only ones that could see my grandma since she certainly couldn't get sick especially since she is living in a nursing home with lots of other old people, and since we are her only family that's local (everyone else lives in other states) it was super necessary that we stay healthy. Even though she didn't need a family advocate we did visit her often since she needed our company.

Here's the crazy thing with my grandpa, he's 97 years old, his wife had been dead for 10 years, he personally met 3 of his great grandkids and has seen all 6 of his great grandkids, he saw all his grandkids graduate college, he outlived his older brother so his last goal was met, he had been losing his strength and independence while maintaining his mind for years, all of his friends died; he lived a very full life and was saying "I don't know what's taking the Lord, I'm ready to go home." Once he got out of the hospital he lived for about a week more, giving all of us time to say goodbye (and he stayed lucid the entire time). Mskate and I went to see him a day or 2 before he passed, he was really rough and was spending most of the time sleeping since he had no energy, we went in and held his hand and told him how much we loved him, and his eyes lit up and gave a little smile to us. Really great moment.

Around this time there was also a funny work story. My first boss was retiring and he's a character. One of his traits is that he always had a bottle of diet mountain dew with him, and I had the idea of "mountain dew cake." I don't remember where I first heard about it, but I knew there's a way to make mountain dew cakes. I looked up some recipes and asked my coworkers if they would chip in (which they did). I made 2 different recipes and shared it with people to get their opinion, and then made the recipe people liked most on his last day. On his last day we got him out of his office, decorated it with balloons, and then brought everyone back in. He really liked the cake as did everyone else. Great way to send him off.

Now for my Cedar Point 2024 adventure. Last year in 2023 my mom and I went to Cedar Point twice for some fun weekends since I had the season pass, and this year my mom needed a break from all the craziness she was dealing with. We had been planning this for a week or so before grandpa passed which was about a month after grandma got out of rehab. It's halloweekend mid-September which means it wasn't hot at all, and I took a day off on Friday so we could go during a weekday and less crowded. Mom got to the condo early in the morning so we could get there around when it opens, and we didn't eat much because of all day dining plan (eat a meal once every 1.5 hours). The drive down was pretty easy. I had a little trouble getting my account on the app because cedar point updated the app since last year and it required a complete redownload, but I printed off our tickets so no problem. We went to Hugo's Italian Restaurant first since it was the closest to the entrance, we needed to start the dining plan, and most importantly we were hungry. We split a piece of pepperoni pizza and Caesar salad. We then went on our first rides of the day, Ocean Motion followed by Raptor. Ocean Motion is a fun ride, it's a boat ride where it rocks you back and forth, really fun little ride. Then raptor is a fun roller coaster.

After the "opening things" we went to the pier area. We rode max air, a ride where it swings you back and forth as it spins you around. There are 50 seats on the ride so there wasn't much of a line (I think we had to wait until the current ride finished before we could ride). It was quite fun. Once done with that it was time to eat again. We went to The Pavilion and had roast beef and lobster bisque as we watched the waves crash on Lake Erie. We then went to the different small rides at the pier area; Calipso, Matterhorn, Troika, and dodgem cars. All of them are fun spin-around rides, and dodgem was really fun even though mom had a little trouble getting in and out of the cars. The big thing though was that we were able to ride Windseaker, the super swings ride we weren't able to ride last year. It's like 200 feet in the air and spins you around on big swings. It's REALLY fun, and kind of thrilling because of the heights. There's parasailing and small planes or something, and we were above them. Once we rode Windseaker we went back to the Pavilion and had fancy nachos; dorito chips, nacho cheese, taco meat, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, and I think sour cream. REALLY good. I also don't know exactly when this happened, but in my camera roll I have a guy with a really funny t-shirt, which was before a picture of an error/no signal on a TV monitor at the Pavilion, so they had to be here.

Now it's time for some roller coasters. We went to gatekeepers since it was close to the Pavilion. This is an interesting roller coaster where there are 2 different sides with the riders riding on either side, with 1 giving a view of the lake and the other a view of the park. The line wasn't long so we rode both sides. As we went through we rode Rougaru and Valraven, 2 really fun roller coasters. Valraven is a fun ride where it drops you down a 90 degree drop. It was about time to eat again and we went to coasters where mom had chicken fingers and I had the fries. Since coasters is close to the main stage we watched some of the Peanuts Halloween show that was going on then. Something that was funny was they did Time Warp, a song from an R-rated musical, in a stage show that's made for kids. Kind of funny. 

This is when planning had to happen. During halloweekends the back of the park is scary land starting at 8PM, and it was like 4PM now or so, and since we aren't into scary we wanted to do those rides before scary started. We walked through frontier land and went on Skyhawk in scary land. Maverick was the next ride on our list, a really fun roller coaster with a 95 degree drop; yes, it's an inverted drop which is pretty cool. In my notes I have that we left the line for some reason when we were close to the end and then went back and the line was longer. I think it was for food, which is when we went to a hotdog and pizza place where I wanted to get the bratwurst burger but they were out, so I think we split some pizza (which wasn't very good). The maverick line on the 2nd time was pretty long, so it was time to eat again. We went to frontier farmhouse kitchen and grill and had brisket and Brussel sprouts. Yummy.

It's now like 7PM, meaning we have about an hour before scary starts. We rode like every big thing but there were some small things we would have enjoyed like the train that goes between scary and not. I had the idea of riding the train out of scary land, but it must have closed around 7PM so people don't accidentally go to scary, so we missed vikingpolak's favorite childhood ride. We walked our way through the back of the park to the side where camp snoopy is and the other rides we haven't rode yet. We wanted to ride pipe scream, a spin and wave ride in camp snoopy, but camp snoopy was closed down probably because it was in scary land. We were really close to the entrance to scary land when it changed over, we thought we'd get out but nope. When the time changed there were crazy sadistic laughs that started playing on the park sound system signaling the start of scary time. The scary was a lot of scary clowns that would get in your face and spook you. We got out before we got spooked, and on our way out we saw a girl that was crying from terror in a place where the clowns weren't going. Poor kid.

Now that we're out of scary land we went to Back Beat Que and got brisket and macaroni and cheese. This was a pretty good meal for what we did next. There was a trampoline show coming up soon and we wanted to see it, and the brisket and mac ended up being good food for us to have while watching the show. The show was REALLY cool. There were these stilt walkers that were leading the trampoline artists to the stage, and it was all morbid like evil spirit things leading them by the neck to their punishment, and it was going through the crowd that was gathering. Then they took off the robe hood revealing a skeleton costume and the funny thing was the costumes were on backwards. It was a bit uncanny since their knees would be backwards and they were clearly facing away from us but the skeleton was looking at us, but whatever still cool. What was neat about this is that it was all acrobatics, like they're jumping over each other and jumping together and doing jump rope with each other, and jumping in and out of the wall of the stage, and it was really cool. After the show the performers did a little meet and greet, and I told one of them it was a really good show. Also, one of the performers was a trombone player, and I took a photo because I played trombone in school.

Now its's like 2 hours before close, and we had some choices to make. One coaster we haven't rode yet was corkscrew, and we decided not to ride it since the ride is really rough. We did ride power tower, the ride that's either a drop or a shoot up. I think we did both because the line wasn't very long. We were also close to Magnum XL, another old ride, and mom decided to sit it out. This was definitely for the best since it was rather rough and probably would have hurt her a little. The thing that's kind of crazy is that it's a "just a lap bar" coaster and is kind of open on the train car, and it goes up super high. Like, I know it's safe, but it gave me some fear of heights or something. We watched a little of the last show of the night at the main stage, a jukebox musical about witches or something. After watching some of that we got a burger and frings (fries and onion rings) at coasters at like 11:50 PM (right before the park closed). Good way to end the day.

That was basically the trip to Cedar Point. We spent like 14 hours in the park until they closed and kicked us out, and ate $154.02 worth of food for like $40. We made it to the hotel and fell asleep really quickly. On the drive back we picked up a case of Yingling since Yingling was my grandpa's favorite beer (he grew up in the same city as the brewery and would watch them load up the kegs for fun), but it's not available in our state so we had to get it while we could because we needed to have his favorite beer at his luncheon thing we were doing. At some point during the trip we walked through the arcade in the park and I got this funny picture of me at one of the rides. I turned it into this meme.

The day after Cedar Point was my church's Octoberfest, where mskate and I were volunteers. It's a fun festival and fund raiser; there's a beer garden, brats, bavarian pretzels, polka music, and various games. I sold 50/50 tickets, just walking around yelling "50 50," and I think mskate was selling food tickets. Another fun thing was the basket raffle, people donate different baskets of things and parishioners put tickets in for a drawing. Mskate and I made a frankenmuth basket to donate and it got a fair amount of tickets. I normally buy about $200 worth of raffle tickets, but even so we didn't win anything. One of the fun games was the pretzel toss, which wasn't actually pretzels but ping pong balls with pretzels drawn on them. I ended up winning, my teammate and I were really good. It was a fun time.

Now it's time for the sad bits, my grandpa's funeral. Here's the rough thing, our family is REALLY spread out; my parents, brother, aunt, 1 cousin, and myself live in the same state as grandpa, and my other cousins and uncles live on other ends of the country (and 1 lives in Japan). Since I streamed my other grandpa's funeral and grandma-in-law's funeral I got all the necessary equipment and set-up to stream the funeral for all the family that couldn't make it. Vikingpolak came over a day or 2 prior to do some tests since my laptops at the time wouldn't be good for streaming, so he brought his laptop over and we did some tests after getting OBS set-up on his laptop. My aunt decided we shouldn't do that and so we didn't. We brought all the gear (camera, cables, capture card, and laptop) just in case, but it didn't end up happening. This was not ideal since only my one uncle and same-state cousin was able to come, meaning everyone else missed it, but I'll get to how we mitigated that in a bit.

The drive up was pretty surreal, because I had been up there many times as a kid but haven't been up there in at least 10 years and mskate had never been. We put the condo address in the GPS and it was going to take us a certain direct way, but I was like "no we need to go in the town way." We were early before the funeral so I had a little time to show her around the small town. I showed her the McDonalds with the play place that we spent a lot of time in. I showed her the small park that we would walk to and play at. We drove to the house with the friend with an indoor pool that we would swim at all the time (the friend isn't there anymore, had to move out because they were old and the house had a lot of regular maintenance since "indoor pool" and a really large property, and so we didn't knock on the door and say "I used to know the previous owner, can I see your basement"). We drove by the school with the big wooden play structure that we would drive to and play at. We drove by the local 1 screen theater that was always fun to see what was playing and maybe go see it (last one I remember seeing was Skyscraper). I don't remember what the movie was, but it wasn't super interesting. The movie theater is owned by an old couple, I'd love to interview them and get their story as a "real old time movie theater." I also showed her the drive through party store and got her a diet coke from there. Then we went to the local grocery store that has been there forever. Something interesting is that since there's an Amish community in the area the grocery store has a hitching post for a horse and buggy (because that's what the Amish drive). When we were there there was a horse and buggy parked at the post, so that was cool. We went to the store to see if we could get the elfwich cookies that grandpa loved (or maybe it was grandma, one of them really liked them and always kept them stocked), and one year for Christmas I gave him a wholesale box of them and he and my aunt liked them. It was a fun story to tell at the luncheon.

The ceremony was really great. He didn't have a "funeral home visitation," just a wake in the vestibule of his home church where we were having the funeral. We video called my cousin in Japan and I think also my uncle who lives in Florida. My grandpa was a carpenter by hobby and his main thing in retirement, and his casket was a really nice wood. I got to meet some of my extended aunts and uncles that were kind of local, which was nice. I also got to spend some time with my one cousin and let him know about when we'll be over his way for a catechism training thing and that we should meet up.

Now to start the ceremony. First off, my grandpa was a world war 2 navy vet which meant that he could get full military honors. However, there was a small risk that this wasn't going to happen since there was some paperwork problems; now there's some kind of form that says military career and such, but that started in like Vietnam and wasn't really a thing for WWII, but we were able to find something that counted and he got the full ceremony. It started with members of the VFW in military dress putting poppies on his casket and giving him a military salute. Afterwards active navy did a color guard presentation of the flag, putting it on his casket, and then presenting the flag to my aunt and thanking him for his service. After that he got a 9 gun volley (since 21 gun salute would be too much for even a rural farm town) and taps. Really great ceremony. After that it was time to go into the church worship space where my uncle gave a nice eulogy. Lots of stories of him at work and in the navy and his kids and grandkids and great-grandkids. Then for the funeral my brother and I read readings. After mass I was one of the paul bearers. The hearse had the military emblem and American flags on it since they were moving a veteran, really cool. We had a nice little final goodbye at the grave site and then went to the condo for a luncheon. Before I get to that though, even though we weren't doing "full filming and streaming" I did get mskate to record the military ceremony, my uncle's eulogy, and the final prayer at the grave site, and once mskate gets enough pictures scanned in I'm going to make a slide show over the eulogy (because we were filming the floor to not be conspicuous). I sent a rough cut with "the floor" to my uncle who couldn't make it and my other uncle who gave the eulogy since my aunt wasn't able to come and wanted to hear the eulogy, but once I get the full thing done I'll send it to everyone.

After the funeral we all went to the condo and had a luncheon type thing for anyone who wanted to join. 10 years earlier when my grandma died we had a thing at the church social hall, but they stopped doing that so we just had sandwiches at his condo. Mskate and shared the cookies with everyone, but I was kind of the only one that really got the significance (probably because it was mostly my memory). We hung out with the cousins that came, and I primarily hung out with the big cousin who came. We did a lot of talking about stories, like how my cousin installed quake on my grandma's computer and that was a big deal for her, and one time when they were over for a visit they were watching subtitled anime on her computer (this was before youtube). A great memory from when I was a kid is that change would fall out of my grandpa's pockets and fall into the chair, and if you lifted it up there would be a bunch of change under it, and every time we came up we would "check the money chair" and there was always money there (like maybe $5 in various coins), and then we would play with the money while we were up there. I lifted up the chair and there were 2 dimes, one for my brother and one for me. Even in death my grandpa gave us "magic money chair money." I have them in my money drawer with a little note saying "the final money chair money." We also went through some of this things to see who would want what. Everyone picked some tools and such that they would use (because he was a carpenter by hobby and had a lot of REALLY nice tools), and one thing that I found that really spoke to me was "the toy train assignment." In an introduction to drafting class one of the final assignments is to draw a toy train in isometrics using a top, front, and side view. Why is this the final assignment? Because it has slopes, overhangs, cylinders, and domes, some of the hardest things to draw in isometrics. My grandpa was an engineer and I'm pretty sure that he had to do this assignment as well, and because he's a carpenter he made it out of wood. I uploaded it to r/engineeringstudents with the title "my engineer and carpenter grandpa made it real" and it got 400 upvotes.

After the luncheon thing we drove home, and stopped at the McDonalds. You might say "it's a McDonald's, it's all the same, what's so special about it?" In this small town it's not just "a McDonald's" it is "THE McDonald's." When we were kids and my mom had to grade papers, she would go there before everyone was awake and do the school work there. Since she was so regular she became friends with other regulars that would go there, because it was like the only place that was open at 6AM on Saturday. They had an indoor play place and in the winter it was the only place where kids could run around. They also had those "Fischer Price play houses" in the play place, and we have home videos where my cousin and I are playing in them. When there was the Inspector Gadget and Beanie Baby happy meal toys my grandma and her friend would go there to get the toys (of which I still have my inspector gadget). We didn't eat there often, but it was "a place with memories." One of the funniest things I remember from when I was like 18 or 19, we were getting some food there and a "tig bitty goth girl" (platform boots, black leather pants and jacket, black corset, died hair, and black lipstick) and her 90s grunge boyfriend (ripped blue jeans, cutoff sleeve t-shirt, denim vest with patches, long hair with a manly headband), and it freaked out some of the locals that were there. Mskate and I went there for some additional food and because I wanted to have a visit at another memory. The play place was downgraded but still there, and it looked like there were some regulars that were hanging out. Great little way to end off this literal trip down memory lane.

Well it's now like a week later and it's time for Fall Festival in Evansville with my family. Mskate and I shared a room with vikingpolak and he went down with us. Mskate and I were really happy to go there since we missed seeing everyone at the 90th birthday party due to being in Hawaii, and there were some people we didn't meet yet that we would have met at the party but didn't. I packed up a cooler of drinks and foods for everyone, including cherry spite from the funeral. Vikingpolak got to our condo early in the morning and we each drove for about an hour and switched places. The drive down was pretty uneventful. We got to our hotel, checked in, and unloaded all our stuff. We had a suit where vikingpolak had the sitting room and pull out couch, and mskate and I had the bed room. Good spot for all the fun.

Time for the start of the festivities. We started by going to my great aunts house and visiting with her for a while. We just sat in her kitchen and talked. Eventually my parents showed up and they had the boxes of things we were giving everyone from my grandma's house. In the process of going through her stuff we picked out things that we figured people might like; different tchotchkes and knickknacks that had some meaning (like German beer steins for my uncle, hummels that match their personalities for my cousins), and clothing that would be meaningful (like the alumni clothes for my one aunt and the sweat shirts my other aunt made for my grandma and grandpa), and once everyone was together we were going to open it up at my great aunts. She keeps her house very clean and wasn't super happy with us putting a bunch of boxes on her fireplace hearth, but we told her it will be gone by the end of the day. After our little visit I scoped out the arcade that was right by her house, and it was a "single price admission, unlimited games included" with a good selection of all kinds of video arcades (I'll give details when I get there).

Now things are about to start for real. We went to my aunt who lives a couple blocks down from the big festival. Normally we just park outside her house when we come to visit, but parking by her was super full because everyone was at the festival, and so we had to park like half a mile away at a CVS. When we got there we saw aunt G and...you know I don't think I ever had a story with my boy cousin since I started blogging and so I never gave him a name. Anyway, we visited with them a little and he was all "I want to watch the video you made for [your grandma/my great aunt], specifically the final bit." If you forgot or I never mentioned it, I spent basically the first half of 2024 making a big video of my grandma's life for her 90th birthday party, with 6 different sections: youth and marriage to "It Was a Very Good Year," young adult married life from when my uncle was born until when my grandma started teaching to "Shake, Rattle, and Roll," her career as a kindergarten teacher to "What a Wonderful World," early grandkids (up through about middle school) to "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet," grandkids highschool to now (like Christmas of 2023) to "I Did It All," and then "the sing along" of assorted meddles sung acapella by me to a bunch of pictures I had left over (songs include bingo, skip to my lou, when the saints go marching in, ragg mopp, roll out the barrel, she'll be coming round the mountain, an "accordion solo," you are my sunshine, deep in the heart of Texas, it's a small world, let it snow, over the river, those were the days [all in the family theme song], danny boy, a luliby my grandma made up, and the pizza hut song). Boy cousin just wanted to watch the sing along portion because it was his favorite part. If you don't know the reference, just scroll through and find a thanksgiving, Easter, or Christmas blog.

It's now time for the main draw, the fall festival. Mskate and I walked around and got some ideas of places we might want to get food from, and got some food as well. Envision a "southern carnival," and this is it. There are food stands set-up across the entire main street from different local organizations (churches, sports teams, political organizations, scouts, and similar) all offering different things, and more than half of it fried. This time I had sauerkraut balls (sauerkraut wrapped in dough and fried) and fried zucchini. I think we also split a nachos. It was just getting the lay of the land if you will. We went back to my aunt's house and just hung out on the porch until someone with a key came back. "Boy cousin" came back with a giant 4 foot pronto pup stuffed animal (it's like a corn dog but there's something else about it). He's really good at carnival games (probably because he grew up playing them since they were so close to the carnival), and he had to win like 3 times in a row (which he did). The carnie was messing with him and on the 3rd win said "OK and now you just need 1 more win to get the grand prize" and he was all "look here you damn carnie, you said 3 wins and this was 3, now give me my prize before I slap your last good tooth out," and the carnie was all "man I'm just messing with you, here's your prize." Tough southern boy right there.

Now it's time for "Christmas in October at my great aunt's house." All my aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered at my great aunts house. Everyone found a seat on couches and chairs, some on the floor, and I helped out with handing out the boxes of stuff. This is pretty symbolic or something since when my mom and her family were kids they would go down to Evansville for Christmas and have Christmas morning with the cousins. This was very similar to what it must have been like when they were kids. After I passed out all the boxes I recorded it like one would expect when parents record their kids on video. Great little time with everyone saying "hey I remember this, hey this is so me, I'm so happy to have this from [grandma]" and seeing what everyone got. Afterwards we went back to our hotel and had dinner (Drurry Inn, free dinner). While we were there my great uncle and his wife came to visit with us. He's like 10 years younger than my grandma and great aunt and as such is able to do more than them. While we were there we asked him who the flower girl was at my grandma's wedding since she kept popping up in the wedding pictures and none of us knew, and grandma was too confused to remember. I want to say she was like a church friend or good neighbor, but it was like "no relation, we knew her and she was the right age for the job." Speaking of my grandma's wedding and the age gap, my great uncle was the ring bearer at her wedding, and when I first saw the photo I was like "who's the boy" and then it hit me that it was him. That was the end of day one.

Now it's day 2. We had breakfast at the hotel and then went to my great aunt's house. It was a bit early to get into the carnival and everyone else was all sleepy, so we went to the arcade by my great aunts house. Mskate, pepperBC, and I went down, paid admission, and enjoyed all the games; and then my mom and aunt K joined us shortly later. I played a teenage mutant ninja turtles arcade game (can't remember if it was turtles in time or the original) with the family and we played all the way through to the end since my brother loved TMNT and always played turtles in time at Wheels Inn (but being kids we never got very far). I also played some "line up the balls and clear the board before it reaches the bottom" game until I reached a level I couldn't beat no matter how many continues I did. This is a memory thing, because when I was on vacation with my grandparents once this same arcade game was at the hotel and my grandpa let me put like $6 worth of quarters into the game as I kept getting a game over. There was also some "driving and shooting" game which was really fun; the story is that you're like 2 cops on a chase and you have to shoot the bad guys that are shooting at you as you drive the car. I think I also played dig dug and pacman and similar games. Then there was dance dance revolution, and with how the free play was set-up it had 2 players worth so I ended up playing lite mode with 2 players (all of it was jumping). I got a good cardio workout on that one. There was also some Japanese import rhythm game with hitting the light up squares. Really fun, highly recommend. We spent a couple hours there before it was time to start the carnival again.

We parked at a lot that was for the girlscouts. This was the main event as it was the children's pet parade. It's where kids bring their pets and walk them down the main street as people spectate and it's all serious like (there's an announcer, categories, awards, and everything). VikingPolak walked Turtlegirl's dog in the "boy with pet" category (boy with pet, girl with pet, boy and girl with pet, family with pet, family with big pet aka farm animal). It was really fun, we met up with turtlegirl's parents as we watched kids and families walk with their pets. There were some families that got really into it, with them doing like a full wizard of oz costume, toy story group, beetlejuice, and others. There were also kids riding donkeys and ponies. The funny thing with turtlegirl's dad was he was walking their dog in a pet stroller, and it looked funny because he has a handlebar mustache, bald pony tail, and generally resembles a retired biker, while pushing a little dog in a stroller. We cheered really loud when our people passed by.

After the pet parade we met up with everyone; turtlegirl, her husband, her parents, the aunt who got married when I was in college, my aunt who lives close, my parents, and my great aunt. We went to the midway and watched some carnival games. They had some coin pushers set up (token in token out with prizes to knock off) and I played it for a little while. It was $1 for 5 tokens, $2 for 11 tokens, $5 for 30 tokens, and other "more than 4 for a dollar" conversions. I got just $1 worth and was able to play like 9 rounds; didn't win any prizes but I did knock over tokens to continue playing. After that was a very crazy game. In the middle of the booth was a roulette wheel type thing, a wheel with a bunch of holes with numbers over them, and around the booth were numbers from the wheel to put a bet on, 50 cents to play and if you win you get a stuffed animal. Pretty basic roulette, right? No, instead of a ball it was a live mouse. The carnie puts the mouse in the center of the table and whatever hole it scurries into wins. Well that's something you don't see every day, or every carnival. It's not very humane, the entire game is based on a mouse's fear that causes it to scurry away, and if the mouse didn't immediately run for a hole (just sat in the middle) the carnie would bang on the table using the box it was released from to scare it and make it run to a hole. After playing 2 rounds of live mouse roulette and watching some others my great aunt went home. There was a little trouble with that though, because she started feeling weak and needed to sit down, when there weren't any chairs. We went to the people who run the festival and their break trailer and they were able to get a chair for "this elderly woman" until she was able to get up again. After she left I got my brain sandwich. It's a deep fried pig brain on a bun served with pickles and onions, a specialty of Evansville that I get every time I go. 

After my brain I got my aunt some fried green beans since I knew where they were and wanted to get some myself. Mskate then got us Donald Trump shaved ice (I think part of the sales went to his campaign). We then hung out with some of the family at one of the bars on main street. During fall festival the bars say "outside food welcome, but no drinks" and are a good place to hang out. I know my dad was there, and my mom and aunt showed up at some point, and I think vikingpolak showed up, but that was kind of it, none of my cousins. I can't remember if I had anything while I was there, but whatever. After an hour or so mskate and I went back to the hotel for dinner at Drurry. After dinner we bought our tickets to Holiday World and just had a quite night in (I played amazon luna and watched Pelswick I think).

Now I don't remember where exactly this happened during Saturday, but according to my phone camera gallery at some point we went to the city courthouse where my great grandpa used to work. He was a local politician and his primary station was at the court house. We didn't know exactly where he worked, so we just went to all the offices to say "one of these is where he used to work." One of the receptionists asked if she could help us and we asked some history questions she didn't know, and she tried to get someone who might but they didn't (because this was at least 50 years ago and things had changed since then). There's also a bit of gray area on if we REALLY were allowed to be there since all the doors were locked except for 1 and there was a guard to turn people away, but we didn't get kicked out so there's that. This is funny, in the corner of one of the windows for one of the offices was a very interesting sight.

It's now Sunday, our day at Holiday World, but since it's Sunday and we're all Catholic we had to go to mass. Holiday World happened to be very close to Arch Abby, a really big place where many priests live and learn. It's this giant place with a small hospital, school, large grounds, and of course the church. Normally I would just talk about how cool it was, but that's not where this story starts. The Arch Abby is like "not on a main road" and is "so large it has multiple entrances," and GPS can get confused on "where the entrance is" and "where the mail goes." Our GPS took to the very back at the hospital place, and we couldn't find the entrance. We got out and wandered around, found our way in the prayer garden and saw where the church was, but we couldn't find a way to get to the doors from where we were. We saw a line up of priests and monks in a glass hallway that led to the church, but couldn't find our way, and there were some that saw us and wondered what we were doing. All this resulted in us wandering around for like 30 minutes and resulted in us being late. Eventually we just got back in the car, followed streets to what seemed like it would be "the other side of the property," and eventually found "the main entrance." We rushed to the church and then made our best guess on what door would be the least disruptive. We went in what we thought would be "the back" and would be "least disruptive" but it ended up being "the front" and it was "most disruptive." Whoops. We missed the first 2 readings but we did hear the gospel, homily, and communion. Here's where things got even more awkward. The church isn't "a normal church" with the alter up front and then rows and rows of pews behind it; there were like "2 alters" with 3 rows of chairs on either side, and not a lot of chairs, and since we were so late there weren't any available chairs for all of us together, so we kind of scattered and one of us had to stand because there weren't any more chairs. The priests were not exactly happy with us. It was a really nice place though, but if you ever go there make sure go to the main entrance and not the back, and if you find yourself in the back follow the streets around until you find the front.

Now that mass is over we went to Holiday World. We got there basically right when the gates opened, and we went right to the Santa statue to get a group photo with it since it's been in the front of the park since forever (my grandma and great aunt have a picture with it from when they were teens). We weren't the only ones with this idea, and because I was kind of fast to get in I got in line for everyone. We got all 15 of us together and was able to get someone to take our picture. After that we went to a "haunted house" thing that was right close to the front of the park. Holiday World is a small family park and doesn't go hard core like Cedar Point, and so the "haunted house" was mostly "cartoony Halloween special" spooky and not "actual horror movie, legit try to scare you" spooky. This was mostly 3D paint and optical illusions, with the craziest thing being this "spinning room" illusion. It was like "walk on a cat walk, 360 projected screen with a spinning image," and it throws off your balance and you start walking sideways. I thought my family was just being dramatic when they were "falling over" but then I did it and yeah, you start to fall over because of how it messes with your senses.

Everyone has different interests and we didn't want to force everyone to stay together at the detriment of everyone's entertainment, but we did want to do something together, and so we were going to do the original nursery rhyme train (from back when the park opened, we have super 8 film video of my aunts and uncle riding it). It was kind of on the other side of the park, so we all walked together to go to it. After all the walking we got there, and it was closed. We were all "Wally World" (because my family loves National Lampoon's Vacation and if you know you know). After that disappointment we went to Thanksgiving land where they had a new ride, Good Gravy. It's like a roller coaster thing that launches you over some humps and turns before going up a hill and then dropping back going in reverse. The line was so long that it was out the queue and was like a 2 hour wait. Mskate has diabetes and can get a disability pass with it, so some of us were able to go past the line, but only some of us. I rode it and it was kind of lame. Like, it's supposed to be a "thrill ride" but it wasn't all that fast and wasn't all that wild and was just tame, and it took longer to load and unload than the ride, and because it was a "back and forth" ride instead of "run a loop" ride there could only be 1 train, and "potential-kinetic energy, dissipation of energy through friction, relative to inertia" stuff the train was only like 8 rows (16 total), so it just lead to "not a very fast line." It wasn't a "bad ride," but it definitely wasn't "wait 2 hours." So that's my review of it. Mskate and I want to get lunch now, but thanksgiving is "traditional thanksgiving dinner" foods and neither of us care for that much so we had to go all the way back to the front so mskate and I could get food at Kris Kringle Cafe. I got a barbecue bowl, which was pulled pork and mac and cheese, and maybe something else but I don't remember. It was pretty good.

We're close to Halloween land since that's close to Christmas, and so we rode the 2 roller coasters there; The Raven and The Legend. Both of them are wooden roller coasters, which means they are kind of rough. With mskate's disability pass we were able to get right on, and the funny thing is I kind of got stuck in ride cart. For some reason there was a divider between the seats and I don't remember it being like that before. Now here's the thing, I'm a little big but not that big, but for some reason these were "extra small" or something, and I swear this was new since my mom and aunts (who at one point were all bigger than I am now) could ride it without problem when I was a kid. I don't know, just kind of embarrassing. We then rode the hallowswings (big spinning swings) since they were right there and it's a fun ride. Again, weirdness because I could fit in the swings without problem and they aren't super big, but for some reason the roller coaster carts were small. I think around this time we did the other "haunted illusion house," but this was more of a maze. It starts with "go in a room and you need to find the flaps with the opening behind it instead of the wall," and a room with "door to nowhere" except for 1 that goes forward, and I think there was a mirror maze, and some other illusions that were "find your way out." Pretty fun. After this mskate and I go to the gluten free stand since mskate is gluten free. She REALLY wanted a funnel cake since she can't get funnel cake normally (because gluten), but unfortunately they were running out of batter and she had to settle for chicken nuggets.

With Halloween mostly used up, we went to 4th of July land and rode the liberty launch. This is one of those "reverse drop" rides where instead of "taking you to the top of the tower and dropping you" it starts you at the bottom and shoots you up. We tried to meet up with the family around this time, seeing if anyone wants to join us and the disability pass, but no one wanted to. After the Liberty Launch we did The Revolution; it's one of those "spin you around and feel the force of spinning push you against the wall" gravitron rides. I remember when I was a kid vikingpoak and tanman rode a rapids ride and got soaking wet, and then they rode that ride over and over again and dried off. Just a funny little story.

After 4th of July we went to Thanksgiving and rode The Gobbler Getaway. This is one of those "shoot the targets, get points" ride, kind of like Buzz Lightyear in Disney. The story of the ride is that the turkeys ran away and you have to use a turkey caller to get them to come out of hiding (shoot the target and then they pop out when the target is tagged), and SPOILERS, at the end you have pizza and the turkeys you caught put on a show. I think we rode that ride a couple of times. In Thanksgiving there's a roller coaster called The Voyage, but it's REALLY intense and jerky, and I'm like "I'm going to sit this one out," as did mskate. While we were in thanksgiving we went to a gift shop and found some things on sale. We got some clearance cotton candy for my mom since she really likes cotton candy. I think we also got mskate a stuffed animal of the park mascot since she likes stuffed animals. We went to the front of the water park since it's all part of the same park and included in the price. Back in the summer vacations we would spend the heat of the day at the water park and it was really fun, but because it was cold it was all closed so no fun there. They did set-up some trick or treat things for later in the day, but it was for kids under 12 so not for us.

Our next adventure was Holidog World, little kid land. There was nothing for us there, but mskate wanted to see what we were missing out on. It's inside the loop of the train. I want to say there's a kiddie coaster, a car ride, a splash pad, and a play structure, with a meet and greet stage for meet holidog. Since we were close to the gluten free stand we checked if they had more batter, and they did. Mskate was able to get her funnel cake, yay. The next ride we did was the antique cars, and we kind of met up with the rest of the family around this time. We went to the Christmas restaurant again and I had some kind of special sandwich. We went through the optical illusion house again and got our pictures with holidog and the cat character. That was the end of the day at Holiday World, we were only there for maybe 6 hours but it's not a very large park so we were still able to do everything we wanted.

After Holiday World we went to the hotel and had a little birthday party for everyone since there are like 4 birthdays in September - November (this was after Drury Inn dinner). We were able to get a conference room and had everyone together to have dinner, drinks, and cake. My uncle got candles that said "it's your day" and there was some trouble with the lighter, so we had to use the match book that I keep in my camera bag. I honestly don't remember where I picked up the match book since it doesn't have a logo, but it's been in the one pocket for years and has come in handy a couple of times. It was a fun little party, and afterwards we made sure to clean up really good. After the birthday party we were able to see MMT and her boyfriend Cowboy (not sure if he is one, but he's southern and wears a cowboy hat, and so he is "Cowboy"). This was really great because I haven't seen MMT since my grandparent's 60th anniversary party and have never met Cowboy despite hearing about him often. I would have met him at my grandma's 90th birthday party, but I was in Hawaii for my other cousin. It was a short little visit, but still good. After that we went to bed for the next day the trip back, and said our goodbyes until the next time.

Leaving was pretty uneventful. We packed up the car, checked out, and drove home. It was a really great trip, always fun to see the family again, even if it didn't end up being a whole lot (because they're all night owls and mskate and I are early birds, or something like that to where our schedules never intersected). It was also a good way to "end off" the craziness of all my grandparents and vacations for 2024. I use "sarcasm quotes" because as I write this my grandma is now on hospice, and we don't know how much longer she has, and that was a crazy adventure with all that went into it, but I already wrote that on my other blog. There was maybe a 2 month period where things were kind of calm, but then it hit the fan again. I hope you enjoyed my crazy long blog of everything interconnected. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic's The Big 10 Men's Gymnastics Final Competition and the Ann Arbor Hands On Science Center Adventure

Hey everyone, after going to the big 10 women's gymnastics competition 2 weeks ago mskate and I went to the big 10 men's gymnastics competition. We had to buy both events so we needed to be in the area all weekend, so we got a hotel for the weekend and decided we would go to the Ann Arbor hands on science center museum during the day. It's a children's science center, but we're not embarrassed. Also, mskate has a history with going to this hotel by UofM and wants to go there, and she's trying to figure out if it was the hotel that she went as a kid (which it was). Our exchange was basically this meme come to life.

We went to Ann Arbor after I got home from work. Mskate had everything packed so we could basically just pack the car and go. Normally when I do packing I pack our amazon fire stick so we could watch our streaming at the hotel, and I was planning on doing that this trip as well, but we forgot it and so we didn't have it. The drive was pretty easy, and checking-in was pretty easy as well. We got all our stuff unloaded and had some dinner stuff. There was a Wendy's across the street from our hotel, so I had a small fry and free jr. frosty with the free frosty tag. I had that with my vegetarian beans. We just kind of rested for a little before heading to the arena.

We got to the arena about 15 minutes before the doors opened, which is about 1 hour before the meet started. Unlike the women's meet the lines weren't very long, and when we found our seats the arena was pretty empty. Mskate pointed out that it's so much more empty than the women's meet. I said "that's because the men don't compete in glorified swimsuits, let's see what the attendance is like when the men are allowed to compete shirtless next year." As general attendance we could sit anywhere, and so we sat somewhat close to the floor (kind of like when we go to the meets at the small gym). After setting our jackets on our chairs we walked around the arena just because, and got mskate nachos. As we were walking around there was this guy at a table with a shirt hung up with a bunch of signatures on it. I asked him "so what's this," and it was a project his group was working on since 2018, he was getting as many signatures of current and former UofM gymnasts and they were going to present it to the head coach this year. The oldest signature he had was from the class of 1949 and the second oldest was from 1959, and when I asked he was finishing up with someone who was also a gymnast. It's a really cool shirt and I got a picture of it. Mskate and I are kind of doing something similar, we have a 2024 American Olympic T-shirt that we had Fred Richards and Paul Juda sign, and we want to get other former Olympians to sign it. We brought it in case we ran into others, but we didn't (the Ohio State coach was an Olympian and there was someone from UofM in the stands that was also an Olympian, but since they didn't represent the US we weren't as interested in getting them, if we ran into them sure but weren't going to seek them out and really try). There was also a beenie hat give away for big 10. I put mine on top of my fedora and mskate just held onto hers.

It started out with the walk out; the Illinois Fighting Illini, the Nebraska Corn Huskers, Ohio State Buckeyes, Penn State Nittany Lions, and University of Michigan Wolverines. I was laughing really hard at "the corn huskers." Like, that doesn't sound like a real mascot. It reminds me of the South Park Cows. This is a "multiple events playing at the same time" thing, it was "floor and pommelhorse, rings and vault, and parallel bars and high bar." The teams then rotated through floor, pommel, rings, vault, parallel bars, and high bar, with UofM starting on the floor. It was a good set of rotations.

This particular meet was broadcast on the Big 10 Network, a national sports package cable channel, On the jumbotron they showed what was being shown on the tv channel and we were thinking "maybe we'll be on TV." but the camera wasn't pointing towards us ever. I looked up at the jumbotron and saw that when they did rings the audience was in full view and no one was up there, so I had the bright idea to go sit there and cheer for UofM when they were on rings wearing my high visibility yellow jacket. I told my aunt about it and she tuned in, and mskate told her mom to make sure she was recording it. I had to test the waters to see how far I could push it. First guy I just waved our pom poms while sitting down. Second guy I started dancing in my seat. Third guy (Paul Juda) I stood up waving my arms around. Fourth Guy (Fred Richards) I started doing the YMCA and Macarena. If you watched the Big 10 network during the UofM rings contests, you saw me dancing in the background. My aunt and mother-in-law really liked seeing me, and she sent me some videos and pictures. It was really fun. After that I went back to my seat.

Mskate recorded it. I'll try to get better quality but it might take a while.

The rest of the meet was pretty good. Lots of good competition and acrobatics. All of this went on and ultimately UofM won. I guess I should talk about some other events during the day. The MC of the night went around and talked to different groups and we got different chants and fun. Between the rotations one of the contests was kids doing the "stand on 1 food" competition, and the boy who won clearly was a gymnast since he was holding his arms in a very "direct way." We also saw the UofM storm trooper, and when I ran into him I said "hey hey, uhhh...the wolverines strike back right?" He said "*chuckle* no it's the M-pire" while pointing to the university logo "M" on his chest. There was also a boy by us that was waving at the front of the stairs (we were 4 rows from the front) that would regularly go say something to his mom. We could tell he was trying to get on TV and his mom said "you can try but you can't leave my sight." 20 years later he'll look at where the camera lands for different events and go there after saying "I'm the adult and I say I can go over there." After the meet we went to Wendy's for a large fry for me and diet coke for mskate. There was a promotion where I could get a free large fry with any purchase in the app, so I did that and mskate was getting a little annoyed since it was taking a while for me to figure out the app and people were showing up, and she wanted to get back to the room to watch the woman's gymnastics meet that was going to start. Since we were right across the street I told her "just walk back to the hotel." I got her the diet coke and myself the fries, and after that we just hang out in the hotel room for the rest of the night.

It's now Saturday and we went out to breakfast at Anna's House, a local restaurant that works well for mskate and her allergies. I don't care much one way or another, it's an aright restaurant but nothing super big for me. For like 2 days she was saying "I'm going to get a lemon poppy seed crepe with cream cheese filing and blueberry sauce," and then when we got to the restaurant she was like "maybe I want this," and I'm like "no, you've been saying 'I want lemon poppy seed crepe with cream cheese filling and blueberry sauce' for days, you're not about to change your mind." She chuckled and said "yeah what am I thinking." I got the brunch burger; 1 beef patty, an over medium egg, bacon, caramelized onions, hash browns, and burger sauce. It was really good. While we were sitting in the restaurant a guy approached our table and asked how we were doing. I was thrown off because I regularly have people remember me (because I tend to make a big impression) but I don't remember them. He then said "I saw you cheering for Michigan yesterday, now I need to ask, were you just cheering for them or were you trying to distract them." I laughed and said I was just cheering for them, and wanted to get on TV. This was the first time I've ever had someone "recognize pokematic and approach me for it" (because "I'm going to dance to get on TV" is more of a "pokematic thing to do" than "an IRL me thing to do") so it was kind of surreal to be on the other side of "I recognize your work." I ate my entire burger and fries but mskate needed to save her other crepe for later. That was OK because we had a refrigerator in our hotel room, and it would work for a good meal like thing before the meet later. We spent about an hour afterwards just resting in the room watching online videos.

Now for the day activity. Ann Arbor has a hands on science center in the down town and mskate said "hey that would be a fun thing to do." She went there with her school once, and I went with my grandparents. When I was little we would go to hands on science centers regularly since I really liked them, and once my grandparents too me to this one. The main thing I remember was that it used to be in a fire house and they still had the fireman's pole, and there was a thing where it was "pull the rope and go inside a bubble. There were also some things that I remembered when I saw them, a laser harp (stick your hand in the laser beam and it makes the sound of a harp string being plucked), and maybe the water exhibit but that's kind of common at other science centers, and maybe this "make a maze and the ball rolls down" but that's also common (someone also took the ball, so I pulled one of the balls I carry in my pocket and ran it). At this other science center (I think it was Cosci in Toledo) there was this "giant marble run" where pool balls run on tracks and do different things, with switches that allow users to change paths. They had one at this science center too (they just weren't pool balls, same size but "non-specific" heavy solid balls), and I just stood there watching it fascinated watching every path and seeing what every switch did. One of the workers saw me and said "this is one of my favorites too, want to see something cool, every 2 weeks or so the chain gets jammed and someone has to climb to the top and fix it, this is what it looks like at the top" and he shows me some photos on his phone. That was really fun. Mskate really liked this "logic and follow the path" event. There was this little general store thing, and there was a hologram of "people coming into the store," and then I explained how holograms worked to the camera. There was a "this is how a tornado works" display that makes a little tunnel of fog. There was a thing that showed off binary, and having taken digital logic I had some fun with the binary. There was also a "crane game" thing where it was working with different axes, and I did pretty well with getting the balls to the staging area, but then I screwed up the y axis and z axis and knocked the balls off where they were supposed to be. We also went to the water thing and had some fun with the water displays, and one of the things was "ball pit balls" to help show how water moves as they float on the water, but it was just for 1 location and if used on another they would get stuck. Lucky for me I'm now tall enough to get the things out of the place they aren't supposed to be at a science center (because that seems to happen a lot). Mskate and I went down to the group lunch rooms since she went there with school once and that was her big memory. Here's a video of clips I took.

Before the meet we had our left overs. I had the other half of my beans and coffee maker ramen, and mksate had her other crepe. We got to the arena without problems and got in line without problem, but then there was a little miscommunication of when the doors would open with the guy outside telling us "the doors are open, go in" but they're still locked and we had to wait another minute or 2. This time we tried to sit a little more center of the floor routine, and the interesting thing is that unlike last night where they had 2 events going on at the same time, it was just 1 event at a time and full display on the TV (probably because it was just the top 10 competitors instead of 5 competitors over 5 teams). I went over to where I could be seen on rings and did the YMCA and Macarena when UofM was on rings and then just doing arm waves and such when the other teams were on the rings. Once again, I made it on TV, and they were cutting away from me when they had the chance. Later in the night mskate noticed some other people doing similar things to what I was doing, so maybe I started a bit of a trend. I don't have much to say about the events, it was good competitors doing well at their sport. Between a rotation the hypeman MC came over to where we were sitting but interviewed the big Michigan group that was next to us since they looked more the part. I did do a YMCA for him and he seemed to know what I was doing.

Now for the big award ceremony. Everyone paraded in and sat down with the podiums in front. Here are the different presentations.

Floor Routine

Pommel Horse

Rings

Vault

Parallel Bars

High Bar (this was presented by former gymnasts from like 40 years ago)

All Around

Top Coach

Second Team (top 11-20)

First Team (top 10)

All around

Top Coach

Second Team (top 11-20 competitors)

First Team (top 10 competitors)

After the awards we walked around the arena just to get a little exercise and wait for the traffic to die down. As we're walking a boy points to me and says "you were the guy in the clouds," and it took us a little bit to realize he was saying "you were the guy dancing and cheering in the crowd." That was fun being recognized by someone else. We made it out of the parking lot and got back to the hotel no problem. Sunday was a pretty basic day. I had a breakfast baconator from Wendy's for breakfast, and mskate got a takeout breakfast sandwich to eat on the way home. We made it back home with enough time to make it to 11AM mass. It was a really fun weekend. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.