Jumpers in Hinckley (originally posted 7/7/06)

Only 10 days, and counting, to the launch of everyone's favorite new sports site - JCF. What's JCF, you ask? Just California Firefighters? Juicy Chicken Fingers? Joe's Crab Federation? Those are good guesses, but you are wrong! JustCollegeFootball.com, of course! To ease the pre-launch tension, the Geneva Smiths took a nice drive into the country tonight for some down-home fried cookin' at the local Dairy Joy. Brady says, "We saw Jumpers!". Not jumping earwigs, just jumpers. (That will be our next web site - justjumpers.com. Get working on it, Uncle E). After elevating our saturated fat and cholesterol levels to an unhealthy range, we hopped in the Vandango and headed out past the booming metropolis of Hinckley to introduce Nora to the exciting spectator sport of jumper watching. Because we are experts at this type of thing, we arrived precisely as the plane was loading and taking off. We amused ourselves by taking pictures by the split rail fence and answering Nora's repeating question of, "what's zat?". Then the moment arrived...tiny little jumpers soaring through the sky like black ants. The ants even made a circle while they were dropping like rocks - pretty cool. We think Nora saw them coming down, but she kept asking "what's zat?" and we told her, "jumpers". Avery and Brady enjoyed the show from the roof of the Vandango. Since it was such a nice night, we decided to let them ride on the top of the van for a while. It might take a few more vigorous teeth brushing sessions to get all the bugs off their teeth, but it sure was a pretty sunset through the sunroof. We capped off our country excursion with a little deer watching. You have to go down unmarked gravel roads to find the really good deer. Score for deer spotting: Brady, Avery, Dad and Mom - 1 each. Brady spotted a deer with a hurt leg. Avery wanted us to load him up in the Vandango to take him to our vet, but Daddy said, "do you take dead animals to the vet?" Oh wait. That's from a movie we saw once. Anyway, we layered some good soft serve ice cream on top of our greasy dinners and headed back to Geneva while singing Jack Johnson's "Bubble Toes" as our family sing-a-long (la, da, da-da, da, da - if you don't know it, we can sing it for you sometime). After our trip down memory lane to Hinckley, Dad said, "I've seen a lot of things in my life, but that was AWESOME!"