Marlon Brando...I mean, my gramps.

This is a pic of my gramps as a young man. Isn't he handsome? I think he tooooootally looks like Marlon Brando in that picture.

Dylan's hair reminds me of my grandpa's hair when he was young - curly and thick, thick, thick. Sometimes, when Dylan's hair is looking particularly curly and crazy, I think it looks just like the above picture. Dyl has his hair in a "mohawk" right now - I put that in quotes because it's ridiculous. His hair is so curly that, when he puts the special stuff in it and sticks it up, it goes up a little, but mainly curls over on each side, so that it just looks like a fountain. :)

Dyls had to do a project and make a poster about his oldest living relative, which is my gramps. When I found out he had to do a poster, I went and picked out some cute paper at Porter's. Dyls said he wanted it to look just like one of my scrapbooking layouts, so that's what we did. We measured and cut and glued. Here it is without the photographs on it:

And then I felt bad for having helped him so extensively on it. I was like, "Ugh, I'm like one of those parents I hated when I was a teacher." Yeah, we did it together, and Dylan really wanted it to look this way, but still... I felt badly. So I told him to decide where to put the pictures and stickers himself. I really wanted it to look like HIS project, not mine.

They were supposed to find ways to represent a bunch of different things - what language Gramps grew up speaking (English), where he was born (U.S.A.), favorite games (poker), different jobs he's had, etc. Here's Dyl's finished product:

I thought I might show you some of these pictures up close (plus a couple of them that didn't make the cut, because I like 'em).

A picture of Gramps as a baby:

This is Gramps and his big brother, Eddie:

They used to play Cowboys and Indians together:

Grandpa's family before his younger brother was born. That's him, at the bottom, with the knock knees:

I think his mom, Elsie, died when he was six years old. Sad, huh? She was so pretty. She was half Native American.

His dad worked for the railroad, so when his mom died, he and his two brothers were farmed out to different families for several years until his dad remarried. It was a hard childhood.

Gramps's graduation picture:

Gramps was in the Korean War - he did the same job as Corporal Klinger did in M.A.S.H.:

Here he is with his wife and children. My mom's the one in the green jumper:

For a short time, Gramps and Grams owned a local 7-11. We got all the free Slurpees we wanted. I loved that. :)

My Gramps is a pretty great guy. He's having some awful health problems lately; I visited him on my birthday, and he's feeling pretty low. My son, Gage, attempted to make him feel better by breaking one of his vases. Yeah. That was pretty awesome. :)