A frabjous day!

Callooh!  Callay!

It's getting toward that time: late school year, exams coming around.  Our third son is poised to graduate from school.  The older two are busy with school concerns and job concerns as always.  And yet  they managed to pull Memorial Day weekend off, the three of them!  For old times' sake, they'd like to dust off some old games, get ready for festivities, and hang with the family.  Preparations to commence presently.

Even when dating, they'll tell the girls in question that they must have at least one day a week to be with the family, often adding days to make sure they have time with their youngest (as they did the other Saturday in order to be at his last game).  As a result, despite being nine years younger than our third son, and a whopping fourteen years away from our oldest, our youngest just sees himself as 25% of the Griffey boys.

So it's with great anticipation that this weekend, before everyone hunkers down for that blitz through exams, grading and end of year brouhaha, including graduation, they are going to take a weekend and spend it with us for cookouts, outdoor fun, probably visiting the cemetery, and of course playing some old games from years gone by.  All is right with the world.

Most plans are still in the making, but here is a taste of a couple pastimes, one in the running on a weekly basis, one just dusted off and brought out of mothball, and the others we are hoping for pending weather.  Here are a few images to whet our appetite:

First up, our wargaming itch will be dealt with.  This is our three youngest sons' German armored column. Properly, those would be Panzer IV Ausf. J series, with 'Elefant' tank destroyers in the background (which won't be deployed owing to the theater in question). 

In response, the oldest and I have a US mechanized infantry company ready to go.

Those are from miniature war gaming, my old preference to fantasy and sci-fi genres.  I posted on this hobby some years ago, but it's been a bit since we played that, times being what they are.

Meanwhile, our ongoing hobby-get-together-boys' night of the week game continues apace.  Called 'a flawed masterpiece', it is the definitive Napoleonic era war game (though we have played others).  As long as you have permanent space and infinite time, Empires in Arms is a great play.  Plus these games can be opportunities for learning in the glorious setting of homeschool.  After all, how many eight year olds can not only locate and explain the importance of Sevastopol, but also pronounce it correctly!

Don't look now, but I think something is getting ready to go down along the Rhine

Depending on weather, we'll try to get out for some hiking, visiting the cemeteries, have cookouts and enjoy our very long awaited dose of spring.  Since the only thing to watch in sports is whether or not the press can hoist LeBron to the position of sports god, there's not much sporting to gather around.

If the creek don't rise, one of our favorite local haunts for hiking, general nature loving and tree hugging

Our local cemetery and location of many a ghost run over the years.  During Memorial Day, July 4 and Veterans day, however,  we get a bit more somber as we visit veterans' graves and pay our respects. 

I think, whatever the weather and whatever we get to do, time with the boys will more than suffice.  We consider ourselves fortunate that we have young men who put a premium on including their family in their social calendars.  It's been all the world to their youngest, and it hasn't done my wife and me that much harm either.

The myth, the legend, the boys.