How We Roll

There is a five-year-old in our family who pretty much has all of us wrapped.  His name is Caleb Rudolph and he is my sister's son.  His imagination is alive and active and my sister is constantly telling me the creative and hilarious things he shares with her on a daily basis.

Caleb is a boy who loves his machines.  He knows the color (maybe even make and model) of his ENTIRE family's cars, trucks, lawn mowers, weed eaters, bicycles, four wheelers, boats and any other sort of machine we may have.  Whenever he comes to my house, he always asks if he can go out to the garage and check out our machines. 

Grandpod (my dad) is the family member with the MOST machines by far.  Having 150 acres of mostly wooded land, he has need (want) for more than the average suburban family, and whenever Caleb goes to visit his grandparents, he wants to try out ALL of these machines, and talk about them at length.

I'm not sure how long ago it was, but Caleb came up with an idea he called the Machine Parade.  Not only did he decide which machines would be in this parade, he decided who in the family would drive each machine and in what order.

Well, on Father's Day, an opportunity presented itself.  We were all at Mom and Dad's and so were all the machines.  So what did we do?  We had a machine parade, of course!

Leading the parade would be Grandpod riding his orange Kaboda tractor.  Behind Grandpod would be Caleb riding his four wheeler, with Caroline riding as his passenger.  Behind Caleb would be Julie (my sis) riding their four-wheeler.  Behind her, I would be driving the Ranger with Jason as my passenger.

Behind us would be Mom on Dad's four-wheeler and behind her would be Mark (Caleb's Dad) on my dad's riding lawn mower.

We got into formation and down Shang-ri-la we went, all of us laughing and grinning at each other.  The pictures were taken by Mark's parents who had also joined us for Father's Day.

On the way back, Caleb's tiny four wheeler had a hard time getting back up the hill.  So Jason hopped out of the Ranger and pushed Caleb and Caroline back up the hill.

It was a hot day for a machine parade, but I don't think any of us minded all that much.  I was ready to take off in the Ranger, but since the woods are full of ticks and chiggers this time of year, I figured I should probably wait.

Caleb is planning to have another machine parade on his birthday in January.  His party will be held on Marathon Mountain (Mom and Dad's land), and he is already talking it up in constant excitement.

And I think the rest of us may be just as excited as Caleb is....