Vacation days 7-10

 When I last left off, we were finishing up day 6 of our vacation. 

Thursday, we had a free day basically, so we slept in till almost 11, had lunch at McDonalds, and stopped at Meijer for a few hours to get some things we needed. For me, it was hopefully baseball cards, chocolate sprinkles, and some long sleeved Tigers shirts (we usually keep the house at 70, so I need all of the long sleeved shirts I can find). We found the baseball cards I had mentioned in the 2 previous posts, didn't find any Tigers long-sleeved shirts at the price I wanted to pay, but we did find the chocolate sprinkles.

Let me tell you about chocolate sprinkles. I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan until I was 8. Both sets of my grandparents came to the US from the Netherlands. Near Grand Rapids is a town called Holland, Michigan, and there are vibrant Dutch communities in Michigan. Because of that, many different Dutch foods are available widely in Michigan, including chocolate sprinkles. What many of my relatives in Michigan do with the sprinkles is butter a piece of bread, and then spread the sprinkles on it and eat it. With my sweet tooth, I naturally loved these. I suppose I could just get some regular chocolate sprinkles from a store here in Florida, but I'm pretty sure they won't be the same. Needless to say, the past 5 days for lunch at work I have been eating chocolate sprinkle sandwiches and getting some pretty strange looks from coworkers. After Meijer, we came back to Uncle Jeff's, and took a nap. 

Jeff made us fried ham for dinner, which is something I never had before, but might try again. We had baked potatoes, and they went well together. After dinner, we had some time to shoot the breeze, and I had a Angry Orchard Strawberry Ale, and we talked some about labor unions. One of my goals in life is to be a part of one. I've never had a job were I've felt that the employees had a fair chance with anything against management. They have just been too powerful and either had money, other managers/corporate, or both backing them. I just think it would be nice to have a different perspective and see what changes could be made with the power of a union behind the employees at a place I would work. 

Friday was a day I was looking forward to. We were able to snag tickets to a Cubs-Braves game at Wrigley Field. It would be the 10th different MLB stadium I have attended a game at. The others are Tropicana Field, Turner Field, Fenway Park, Shea Stadium, Miller Park, Comiskey Park 2, Kauffman Stadium, Minute Maid Park, and Comerica Park. If you take away the 2 that got replaced, that's still 8 current ones. Kyler was at 4 after seeing Wrigley (he's been to Tropicana, Minute Maid, and Comerica). Not too shabby for a 4 year old. 

Originally, we were trying to get tickets for the Saturday game, and I was going to meet up with Dime Box Nick, but we were unable to, so we ended up going to the Friday game, and didn't get to do a blogger meetup. It was ok, because I didn't even realize that Friday was Jackie Robinson Day. 

We took the tram to the ballpark

My first view of the Wrigley Field diamond.

Kris Bryant

Ronald Acuna, Jr.

Centerfield scoreboard

One of the coolest thing was seeing everyone wear #42. Glad I got to go to this game. 

While I took Kyler to the bathroom, Karen got us some pizza. It was some really good pizza, from a place called Home Run Inn Pizza. I got a sausage pepperoni and cheese pizza, and I'm glad I didn't find out what we payed for it. We were freezing. Our seats were 2 rows from the top of the stadium along the LF/3B foul line, and it was in the low 40's with shade and windy. We only stayed for a time or 2 around the batting order and headed back to Jeff's. 

Me and Kyler in front of the scoreboard. There is one of the 3 of us, but it is on Karen's phone. 

For dinner, we stopped by Sonic, and I just got a hot dog. Sonic is another place that doesn't really have anything to me that is standout good. 

Saturday was our last full day. We met up with Karen's old college roommate Natalie, and we went out for lunch. Uncle Jeff lives in Rockford, Michigan, and let me tell you what, downtown Rockford is amazing. DeLand, FL (where I live) was voted America's #1 downtown a few years ago, but Rockford is really nice. There was a downtown area with lots of restaurants, a nice park with a huge dam system, and just tons of people out and about doing stuff like shopping, walking dogs, or taking the kids out. The park had firepits, a putting green, and tons of benches and picnic tables. Just a great place. We ended up eating at a place called Ramona's Table. I got a Cuban Sandiwch that had pulled pork on it. I think the pulled pork took away from the saltiness of the ham. 

The dam was beautiful. There were people fishing from it, and Kyler enjoyed throwing leaves into it. 

To add some cards to the post, here are some cards that Johnny from Cards from the Quarry, which were waiting for me when I got back from the trip. These are from his Sunday Trade Bait posts. Just some Rays and Tigers for those binders, a Schoop for my favorite player binder, and a card for my Dutch National Team collection. I’m not quite sure what to do with some of the guys I’ve picked up from some of the WBC sets. A number of guys like Schoop, Andrelton Simmons, and Kenley Jansen have all gone on to have successful MLB careers, but a number of the guys on the team didn’t, and I just am not sure if I want to add their names to my Favorite Player page since they just have 1-2 cards (with like 10 parallels), and not many people will even know who they are. I guess I will when I update my favorite player binder in the next month or so. Now, if I could only find a fitting place in the binder to put my card of the Netherlands flag...

Tomorrow I’m going to tackle mowing our lawn, but it might not take nearly as long since I weed eated today. After that the fun stuff will happen. I’ve really been wanting to visit my LCS and thumb through their 50 cent box and see what I could find, perhaps even buy a pack or two if they aren’t through the roof. I also need to stop by my friend Jim’s house and drop some cards off to him.  We’ve been to a few cars shows together, and he is a fellow autograph collector, and we’ve helped each other out a few times. It turns out that he had some knee surgery recently, and while on the way back from the trip, he let me know that the guy doing the rehab on it actually played minor league ball. Turns out, I have a card of him, so I’m going to hopefully drop it off either today or tomorrow and he’s going to try to get it signed. I also want to try to go to the post office and mail off some cards. If any of the cards on the last post I did look good, let me know, and I can have a pwe out by tomorrow.  

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy