packing in

the rest of the night was a great one, up at the cabin.  unfortunately i am not at liberty to share much about it.  you know, 'loose lips sink ships' and all that...  but the next morning, after a bunch of sleeping, we were back to having a great time!  usually when we are up at the cabin there is a deadline for when we have to leave by.  often one of us will have some sort of plans that day that we need to get back home for, which forces the rest of us to pack it in a bit earlier than we might like.  well, this year there was no such time frame- so we took our sweet old time packing up!  finally, around three or four in the afternoon, we had finished lounging around, packed up all our stuff, cleaned the place nice and good, and were ready to leave.  another cabin year successfully completed!  on the way home we were already talking about next year!  (this picture is very funny, but its one of those things that cannot really be explained...)
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sports night

after all the gun fun, it was time to eat up!  we headed up to baldwin for a little bit of grub at our usual watering hole: sporties.  we had a good time remembering all the zany antics we have had in years past up there, including the old shuffleboard game as well as adam's karaoke tribute.  the great thing about this place is that every time we go there is a strange assortment of locals to just sit back and watch.  whether its the waitress serving us who always seems to get flustered and mess up our order, the creeper cook behind the window, or the local drunks who always have something to say.  this year was no exception!  the thing is though, the food is always really good, so we keep going back!  now, with our bellies full, we head back to the cabin for a night of games and goofing around.
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cabin dance!

while most of the guys were busy shootin' stuff, aaron and adam hung out in the cabin.  when the two of them decided to go see what there was to see out by the shooting range, they did a little impromptu dance!  adam was shuffling his feet to a rhythm, doing a little tap dance out on the boards, and aaron decided to tap along.  with a little bit of coaching, the two of them were toe tapping with the best of them!  i think there may have been a little song sung about the cabin as well, but the most impressive part was the spontaneous tap dancing duet! 

guns!

every year we have gone up to the cabin we have brought guns along.  this is, in fact, what the cabin is actually intended for: hunting.  this is right up keith's alley, he loves guns!  so he brought a couple big ones: a shotgun, and a really huge rifle (i don't actually know what that one was called, but it was super loud and had a wicked recoil!).  after getting the cabin wood stove going so that the place could get cold, we headed out with the guns.  jeffry lee set up some of the toys he got on the way up, and we proceeded to blast them to smithereens!  i took a turn as well with the shotgun, not so much because i wanted to shoot at the targets, but mostly so that i could reload it one-handed style like in terminator 2!
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lunch en route

   a little over half way to the cabin is the town of big rapids.  we always plan to stop there for lunch at burger king before we make the second leg of the trip to the cabin.  partly this is out of tradition, and partly its because we love to see the crazies that always seem to be there!  this year was no exception, although to be honest, we always seem to be the crazies...
before we hopped back on the highway, jeffry lee convinced us to stop at big lots so he could find some fun things to shoot at while we are up at the cabin.  he found a few cheap toys, including a set of cheap plastic bowling pins!  that aught to be fun!  other things of note on that trip: i decided what my son's middle name is going to be, and adam made plans for us to recreate the battle of antietam while we were in baldwin.  time permitting, of course...

off to the cabin

its that time once again, boys and girls: its time for our annual cabin trip!  hurrah!  all the guys got together, as is our tradition, to head up to good ol' baldwin michigan for some time together.  we were very excited because it seemed like everyone was going to be able to make it this time, which hasnt happened in a couple years.
i drove up to grand rapids the night before and went out for a movie and dinner with rex, jeffry lee, and brains.  it was then that brains dropped the unfortunate announcement:  he wasnt going to be able to go after all.  suck!  he was really excited to come along and had been planning on it for months, even getting new boots and a hat, but the day before we were to leave he was informed that he couldnt have the days off and needed to appear in court during our trip (he's a lawyer, but the way).  we were obviously frustrated, no one more than he, but knew we needed to press on in spite of the loss.
tuesday morning the rest of us gathered together, dusty, jeffry lee, aaron, keith, rex, adam, and myself, at aaron's place.  we packed up the two cars and were off to a couple days of crazy fun!
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