Minnesota with Bates Family 2011

I did my fair share of sliding that night, and although I don't have photographic proof, I can assure you that I could qualify to be Bernie Brewer in the 2012 Milwaukee Brewers season based upon sliding experience alone. But I always face a classic conundrum - if I don't take the pictures, then who will? Sometimes that means I have to step out of the water, dry my hands off and snap away so I have some pictures to go with my story. I am more than willing to take one for the team if it means getting the story told. The greater good is more important than being seen by the people.

The bar only stayed open until midnight because it was a restaurant bar in a hotel. It didn't attract a whole lot of local traffic. That was alright though because we are getting old and it gets harder to stay out late. That's alright though, because everyone else was asleep.

We're both big fans of the Onion "fake" newspaper. It's our kind of humor. In high school Mike and some of my other friends created their own called The Underground and self distributed it. I wish I would have saved them because I remember it being hilarious.

Mike and I hung out at the bar for about two hours and caught up on new stories, laughed over old stories and drank a couple of beers. Hanging out with Mike is so much fun and I wish it could happen more than a few times a year. I hate distances. They can go to hell.

For the last years or so I have been sleeping on a child's size twin bed. There's barely enough room for me. So when I got a King sized bed in my hotel room I didn't know what to do with all the space. I tried contacting local ladies on Twitter, but it didn't work. So I slept alone.

As the night wore on the children got tired and eventually went to bed. That is when the adults had the chance to enjoy the slides and more importantly the hot tub without the constant barrage of loud noises, rule breaking, wet noses and relentless screaming. I have no idea what time the pool closed but we stayed there pretty late as evident by the lack of other people around. We didn't want to spend our whole night here because the restaurant bar was calling our names. There's nothing like putting back some beers with your buddy and I didn't want to miss it.

We spent the rest of the night playing at the pool in the hotel. The kids loved it and as it turns out the big kids loved it too. Personally I would have preferred a bigger pool, less kids and more hot women but we can't always get what we want, can we? But right now everything was great because I was surrounded by the people that I love and we were all laughing and exuberating pure joy. Reese slid down the ass end of this swan and she wanted her Mom to do the same. Since Katie can't say no to her daughter she did the impossible and made it happen. Well done.