Washington Whitehouse in Grand Rapids, Mi.?

Since I retired at the end of 2008, I have been trying to come up with ways to spend the day with Margaret when she gets a day off from work. My idea was to to take day trips to the museums of former Presidents of the USA. Because the mid-west was the home of many of them, it isn't hard to find one within a few hours of Toledo. President Gerald Ford lived in Grand Rapids Michigan. That's about 3 hours NW of Toledo near Lake Michigan. The museum is located on the banks of the Grand River.







Besides the normal presidential memorabilia, there was a traveling model of the Washington DC White House.





















As you can see from the pictures it is very detailed. I included an inside view of the main
Building.

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Margaret in Washington, I think not. They had a number of wall size blowups of Washington DC that you could pose in front of.

The Pedee Boys in KC

I thought you all like to look at pictures of the 3 Pedee boys. I will dedicate this blog entry to nothing but pictures. Enjoy!









Ryan Pedee


Cooper



































Tyler

Kansas City Here We Come!

The Texas Pedees are now the Missouri Pedees. Jason, who recently took a new position with North Kansas City Hospital, sold his home in Austin and has somehow crammed all his family's possessions into half the space in a 3 bedroom townhouse in North Kansas City, Mo.
This last weekend Margaret & I drove to visit the clan in their cramped quarters. I like the fact that we can drive to KC in 12 hours, not 2 days like to Austin. They have been actively looking for a new home since they moved. The townhouse is a 6 month lease, giving them enough time to check out the local available housing inventory or consider building a house. We spent Saturday looking at a number of finished new homes and empty lots for potential homes. The North Kansas City area has rolling hills and mostly farm land. The kids love when Jason drive the SUV over the hills like a Cedar Point ride.
Saturday & Sunday were suppose to be rainy, But instead the sun shined the whole weekend. Sunday Margaret & I & Jason took the kids to the KC Zoo. Andrea went to check out more houses. The zoo is in south side of the city on a fairly widespread hilly piece of property. Lot's of walking. It's larger than the Toledo Zoo property wise, but lacks in the number of animal exhibits.
One of the unique areas was an Australia Exhibit. All the animals in this open area were indigenous to Australia. As we came around one corner, I couldn't believe my eyes, kangaroos laying out on the grass with no fence around them. They didn't seem to even notice the people walking nearby. You can see from the pix of Jason with Cooper that they are very close to the animals.

Broardway Hits the Pedee Family!

Diane , our family Thespian, has done it again. Staring in "Jerry's Girls" on the Strongville Players stage hidden within Strongsville High School. Jerry's Girls is a musical revue based on the songs of composer Jerry Herman. She was one 3 leading singers in this tribute.


My favorite song was "Take it all off" about and aging stripper. Margaret & I took Grandma Pedee to the only Sunday Matinee performance. Diane had about 4 or 5 solos along with singing with the other performers. I may be a little partial, but I think her singing voice was the best of all.

Afterwards, we had dinner with the cast at a local Italian restaurant.

Fall 2008 Comes Late to Toledo

When Margaret & I left for Texas on Oct 1, 2008, it was still summer-like out, temp in the 70s and leaves still on the trees. By the time Halloween usually comes most of the leaves are down and raked to the street. This year was and exception. Seven or eight days into November and leaves were just starting to fall. The City made it's first leaf pickup with hardly any effort. A few days after they left the leaves finally started to fall and boy did fall. I think 80% fell in about 2-3 days. I raked most of the leaves in the back yard against the neighbor's fence. If we are lucky we'll get another pickup before Christmas. I'll wait till the last minute to rake them to the street and hope they don't freeze solid.

Today I looked out and guess what? Mother Nature was laying on us a preview of things to come. The temperature fell into the 30s. It snowed for a few hours. No accumulation because the ground is still too warm. Look close, you can see the giant flakes. All next week it will stay COLD!

Shopping In Vermilion

On Saturday Oct. 25, 2008 Margaret & I took grandma Pedee to meet Diane & Elaine for a day of shopping & family bonding. Margaret suggested that we meet half way somewhere like Vermilion. So off we go. We picked up my mom about 9:30am. Traveling down Reynolds to get to the Ohio Turnpike I shot through a traffic light that changed red as I was going through. I didn't see a flash so maybe there wasn't any traffic camera at that intersection and hopefully no ticket.

We met up with the girls on Main St. in downtown Vermilion. Downtown Vermilion is about 2 blocks wide. It is mostly a summer resort town. This day was no chamber of commerce day, it was bone chilling cold and very windy. The warm clothes we brought came in handy.

First off we stopped a local coffee house for a cup of joe. After warming up a bit, we ventured out to scout the local shops. I get tired quick when the shopping goes beyond 15 minutes, so I went to the car to nap. It was perfect day for a nap. The sun was warm inside the car even though the weather outside was brisk.

We ate lunch at a local restaurant/ ice cream parlor. After lunch the shopping had not been satisfied so off they went to a second hand store. Me, I retreated to the comfort of the front seat of my Camry.

You know thinking back, I probably shouldn't have gone with the girls. I don't like to shop and I know the girls were upset that I didn't want to participate in the shopping. I should have just let it be a girls day out and stayed home.

After the shopping urge had been satisfied, we parted ways. I decided to take Rt. 2 instead of the turnpike. Big mistake! The speed limit on Rt. 2 this side of Sandusky is 65 mph. As soon as you cross the bridge over the Sandusky River the speed limits drops to 55mph. Dummy me! I was still going the 68 mph, when out of the corner of my I spotted a State Highway patrolman laying in wait. No! Noooo! On go the flashing lights as he pulls out in pursuit of his prey. I looked around to see who he might be after. Not me, I said, I was only doing 68 and the speed limit is, oops, Oh NO... 55. I slowed down to late realizing that he was after me.

"Hello Officer", I said. Standing next to my door he said "Let me see your driver's license and insurance card." Knowing I was at least 12 mph over the speed limit, I knew I might have to make a hefty contribution to the Ohio State Highway Dept. He took my information and went to his car to check my history for warrants and accumulated tickets. Coming back, he gave me my papers back and said I had a clean record and that he was only going to give me a verbal warning. Thank God my clean record saved my sorry ass.

October 2008 Visit the Austin Pedees

We knew that Ryan the newest seed to carry on the Pedee namesake across Texas was about to start to crawl, get some teeth and start to jibber jabber a little and we wanted to be there when it happened. The planned trip to Austin began as a standard Internet search. Get on Travelocity or Priceline and try to find some cheap airline tickets to Austin. Normally I can find tickets for in the $200-$250 range. With the price of jet fuel going up, flight tickets are going up also. Margaret had 2 weeks off, so we decided to drive. Margaret said because we had extra time to travel, lets stop and explore a few places along the way.

We had been to Mamouth Caves in Kentucky 2 times already, but never to any of the surrounding commericial caves. We decided to stop at Horse Cave, Kentucky.

This old town is about 6 hours south of Toledo, just north of Mamouth Cave off of I 65.

The cave is called Hidden River Cave and is right in the middle of town. Main St. runs right over the top of the opening. The large opening was formed when a sinkhole colapsed. You walk down about 230 steps to reach the river that runs under the town. Polution caused the cave to be closed for many years. Once the community realized the connection between dumping garbage and sanitary waste on the land and quality of their drinking water, they managed to clean up the underground river. It is so clean that that the animal species that only live in caves are coming back naturally.

Our halfway point in our travels is Tunica. Mississippi. As I mentioned before we like to gamble there when we have the chance.

We got into Austin about 6pm on Friday Oct., 3, 2008. We didn't have any plans other than enjoying the kids and being a part of their lives.

I took many pictures of the trip and have put them on Flickr. The link is http://flickr.com/photos/60999985@N00/ .

Check back again next week at the flickr.com site and I'll have more pics of Ryan and the kids.