A wonderful weekend for a Spring Game

First we’ll start with a picture that was left on the camera.

Kyle and Jenni on their 6-month 'dating' anniversary…a first for Kyle, and buying flowers for the occasion at that! Wow! Who is this guy?

Ok, so this weekend started out with Ken picking me up at work with the RV at 11:30. The weather was to be gorgeous all weekend, in the 80's for highs, 60's for lows. The winds were gusty but we still pulled in to spot #11 at Fox Ridge State Park by 4:30 pm. (the flamingo showed up again)

Trev called about 5:30 to say he’d be out for dinner so we had him pick up some extra pork chops that Ken did on the grill.

Kyle and Jenni called to say they were running late so, since it was such a lovely evening Ken and Trev set up the tent and air mattresses outside for them.

It was late when Kyle and Jenni pulled in. Temperatures overnight were in the 60’s and breezy…absolutely wonderful for sleeping.

Of course, since the EIU spring game was at 9:30, Kyle was not thrilled at our wake up call at 8am….at least 2 hours earlier than his idea of when you start Saturday mornings.

Chef Ken made the whole campground hungry for breakfast, with his great sausage, eggs, and fried potatoes, with plenty of juice and coffee. We had some trouble getting moving from the table to get in to town on time.

Before the game, we dropped off a triple batch of Ken’s Italians Sausage and Potato Soup at Trev’s house so that it could warm up in the crockpots while the game was on. The guys on Defense were having a picnic at Trev and Andre’s house after the game and the soup was our contribution.

Since Trevor is still on the ‘disabled list’ because of his wrist surgery, he was named the honorary coach of the blue team for the scrimmage. That allowed him to also be part of drafting his team.


It turned out that the teams were pretty evenly divided with Trev’s blue team only beating the white team by 3 points.

Most of the seniors, some of the new recruits, and even some of last year’s graduates were on the sidelines to enjoy the scrimmage with their past and future team mates.

We found out this weekend that Pierre Walters, one of Trev’s comrades on the D-Line last year, and one of our regular guests at our Friday night feeds for the boys, is going to the NFL, having signed with the Kansas City Chiefs as an undrafted free-agent.


I couldn’t resist this picture of Trevor and Coach Rock. See, Trev really has picked up that ‘coach look’, I think.


Sheriff Brent Fisher, from back home in Adams County, came over to enjoy the spring game at his alma mater where he played football for the same Coach Spoo some two decades earlier. Since he now does some coaching with our QND high school in Quincy, he is able to see two boys from QND at EIU now – Trevor and Dominic Pagliari who is a recruit joining the team next year.

After the game, we checked in with Trevor to be sure they had all they needed for the party. Hmmm, ok, no plates, no silverware, no cups….just a few minor items missing. We made a supermarket stop and then headed to his house.

Of course, they really had what to them were the key ingredients already for a great football picnic.

Lots of meat for the bbq, plenty of beer and plenty of friends to share it with.


You could find some of the players and their families partying in the backyard


Some of the players were watching the day’s replays in the living room


And there were always a good number of them in the dining room chow line, where they were making a ‘Mom-approved’ use of Trevor’s beer-pong table as the serving table.




They had Dad Frericks on Chicken, with Dad Odom on Steaks and Chops

Ken and I left the picnic at about 3:30 so that we could drop by the EIU versus SIU baseball game. It was a unique situation where we had 3 past QND high school players all on the field of a Division I game. Brian Morrell was relief pitcher for EIU while Blaise and Colin Haxel were on the field for SIU. It was pretty obvious by the end of that game that I was getting too much sun and so we headed back to the RV.

I lathered up with some Aloe Vera and we enjoyed a quiet evening doing some brats over the open fire.

Kyle also realized he’d had too much sun and he and Jenny decided to call it an early night rather than try to keep up any longer with the college crew.

Sunday morning Ken and I enjoyed quiet coffee time outside, and Jenni joined us about 8:00. We left Kyle sleep a bit longer this morning, all the way to 8:45.


Ken, Jenni and Kyle took their tent down to let the base dry out before we packed it in.

We’d told Trev it was ok to invite friends for breakfast so I ran in to Walmart to pick up some extra groceries.


This time, Trevor’s guests turned out to be all of the female variety…members of the EIU swim team.

Ken and I were back on our own again by noon, to begin the packing, dumping and trek home.

I’m keying this on the trek home which has turned out to be quite the adventure in itself. Ken is battling 50+ mph gusty side winds. Luckily we had no required time to be home and since weather.com shows the winds dying down in evening he has pulled over a few times and just sat listening to the Cub's game for awhile, hoping the worst of the winds would get past us.

That’s the nice thing about being empty-nesters… nobody waiting for us back at home so we’ll get there when we get there!!

Hugs, C

PS. It took us from 2:00 - 8:30 to make the normally 4 hour trek home since we gave up on the winds and pulled over in New Berlin until after 7pm when winds finally died down. We've gotten really good at our unloading routine though so I still made my 10pm bedtime!