Grove: The Reception Video

This is the official end of our series... Probably not interesting to most people, but this is a little bit of flavor from the reception.

My Friend & My Brother

I don't know many people who have the same best friend at 30 as they did at 10 & 20 (and also married their high school girlfriend, for that matter). But I am one of those people. And I consider myself extremely blessed because of it.

This post will draw to a conclusion my series on my friend Mike. I have been trying my best to humiliate him online as he is busy preparing for his wedding this weekend. I want to just touch briefly on some of the reasons we have managed to stay close over many years and an indescribable amount of life changes.

The first, and single most important reason, is that Mike is responsible for leading me to Jesus Christ. I have told that story on this blog before, so I won't go into it again, but I believe that creates a bond that is difficult to break. More than that, Mike & I have journeyed together spiritually since that day. Many times, we took the same path, and often we took very different ones. But somehow we took them together (if that makes sense {it doesn't}). I know that we each have incredible respect for the spiritual journey the other has taken. We sometimes disagree on the path, but never the destination. And although he is my friend no matter what, it brings me immeasurable joy to again call him my brother in Christ.

I could go into countless other reasons, but they largely all involve time. We simply have spent a TON of time together. From having the same classes, to soccer teams, baseball teams, marching band, church, living together, group dates, mountain biking (on those huge Indiana mountains), disc golf, late night & early morning conversations about life, car rides, ping pong, road trips, and doing terrible things to our neighbor's house in middle school, I've seen enough of that hairy monster to last a lifetime. This may seem a trivial point to make, but the fact is that time is the most important part of a relationship to me. I am not a fast friend, the guy who knows everyone and is known by everyone. I don't say that proudly, but it's the truth. However, I love investing in meaningful, long-term relationships, and this one certainly qualifies!

So, in conclusion... Mike- I love you buddy. I've been blessed tremendously by your friendship. If you enjoy marriage half as much as I do, you are going to have a great time, and I look forward to seeing the two of you grow together.

OK enough of the sweet stuff. Here's what I've got left...

Oh yes, these ARE his senior pictures...

I suppose it's only appropriate to bring in the pictures that embarass both of us...
1991

1994
1995
20002007

Somehow my brother, who is the tallest of all of us, appears in this picture to be a midget.

Grove & the Cubs

My ongoing series of trying as hard as I can to make fun of my friend Mike leading up to his wedding next weekend has now reached the point where I tone back on the humiliating videos & pictures (although not entirely), and start to talk about the many reasons why he's my best friend.

This may come as a surprise to the readers of this blog, but I am rather fond of a Major League Baseball team known as the Chicago Cubs. Due to this affection and the relatively close proximity of Chicago to South Bend, I have been to many a Cub game, often with Mike. We have gone several times with other friends and a few times just the two of us. One of my favorite life moments was on my 23rd birthday, just a few short weeks before my wedding, when Mike took me to a Cub game for my birthday. Due to, well, a "connection," Mike was able to get us into the Cub's VIP restaurant/lounge during the game. This was certainly very cool, if for no other reason than all the food and drink was free! One of the many quirks about Wrigley Field, however, is that the VIP lounge has no view of the field (at least it didn't back then). So, essentially, everyone makes an appearance just to confirm their VIP status and then immediately leaves to go and actually see the game. We basically did the same thing. I loved that day. Kerry Wood pitched a good game. Sammy Sosa hit a home run. The Cubs lost, but it was a good game and a good day anyway.

OK, so what? What does it matter that I went to a couple of Cubs games with my friend? What's so special about that? Well, the thing is that Mike doesn't like the Cubs. He's a Tiger fan. I don't think he holds any specific ill-will towards the Cubs, but he generally doesn't much care about them one way or the other. But for a guy who doesn't like the Cubs, he's been to a lot of Cub games. To me, this is Mike in microcosm. He invests in people, genuinely caring for them, and genuinely caring about the things they care about. With me, that means he went to Cub games., among many other things. Is this why he's my friend? No. But it is what makes him a friend.

Anyway, that day was a special day for me. Oddly, I can't seem to find any pictures of he & I actually at the game. I think it's hiding in a frame behind another picture somewhere (sadly this was pre-digital camera days). I did manage to find some of the other pictures from the game, though, so I'll put a few of those here, for no real reason. Speaking of "no real reason", I was shooting in black & white that day.


Well, I certainly can't let this post end on that note, so here is a video of Mike telling us of the miracle of blankets.

Grove: The Photos

Just for fun, here are a few pictures:

My apologies to Derry & Shawn for dragging them into this, but clearly whatever they're talking about is WAY over Mike's Head.

The thing is, this is the best picture I have of him.

Hopefully, he chooses a better tux for his wedding than he did for prom.

If he looked this nervous at my wedding, I wonder what he's going to look like next week.

Grove: His Own Worst Enemy

One of many things I like about Mike is his willingness to jump head first into just about anything you suggest- and sometimes he suggests it himself. A perfect example of this was his bachelor party. He knew that I was in charge of the, well, "torture" part of weekend, so he gave me a call to let me know about one thing he did not want to do. Fair enough, he's my best friend, and I wasn't planning on doing that anyway. However, he didn't stop there. He went on to say "If you want me to run naked in the snow, I'll do it. I'll eat anything you put in front of me or embarrass myself in any way you see fit, just don't do that one thing." Now to be honest, I hadn't really given much thought to the idea of making Mike eat "anything we put in front of him," but since he asked for it, we might as well do it, right? This led to this video, definitely one of the highlights of the weekend. FYI- for the benefit of all of the rest of us at the party, we did not make him run around naked.

So, why do I bring this up? Well, last night Mike calls me and says "I've been checking your blog frequently to see if there are anymore posts about me, and it's been a while. What's the deal? Get writing man!" Why does he do this to himself? I know he saw the last video. I mean, I left out the most embarrassing parts (hard to believe, I know). So Mike, I love you buddy, but you have officially opened Pandora's box. One week from today, you'll be able to "thank" me in person, but until then, you're getting a post every day. Maybe even two today. I thought I would take it easy on you, knowing that you've got a lot going on right now, but apparently you have more time and energy than I thought.

In the meantime, please enjoy this short video of Mike learning how to use the stairs (much like Sophie, only she doesn't fall) and play with dolls (again, much like Sophie). You may be asking yourself "is that Enya in the background?" Yes, yes it is. Why? Well, it just seemed appropriate since Mike is such a huge Enya fan* - and the only thing worse than watching Mike do these things is hearing a 14 year old Dan talk about Mike doing those things.




Disclaimer: I may have made that part up.

Grove: The Video

As part of our ongoing series about my buddy Mike leading up to his wedding (parts 1 & 2), I now present you with "Grove: The Video."

Several things you need to know about this video:
1. In order to protect the innocent (me), I had to heavily edit much of this, because trust me, the video of me is infinitely worse than the video of him. By heavily edit, I mean remove any trace of my existence from the video. My apologies in advance to anyone else who did not get edited out, mostly to our friend Chad.
2. I'm reasonably certain that our 20 year friendship can withstand this.
3. It is likely that this is not interesting to anyone but me. I, however, have a lot of fun watching it.

Grove: The Beginning

As first teased here, I am starting a series of random posts leading up to the wedding of my bestest bud Mike.

So, I met Mike when I moved back to Indiana from Michigan. I was the new kid in school in fifth grade, and as far as I could tell, he was the "popular" guy (I've always been quite bad at making those types of determinations). This is the strangest thing, but I thought he was sooo cool because he was allowed to wear a sweater without an undershirt. I begged my mom to let me do that, but she never would. When I eventually reached the age where mom no longer had input on my clothing decisions, I realized that wearing a sweater without an undershirt is the itchiest thing ever. Why did Mike wear his sweaters like that? Is his skin made of leather or something?

I hoped that maybe Mike and I would be placed at the same table the next time our teacher rearranged the seating chart. Eventually, that indeed happened. And so our friendship began. Our first act as friends was to steal the lipstick-shaped eraser from the girl who sat in between us (Mike & I sat across from each other). This girl was obsessed with that eraser and was genuinely hurt when it went missing. Mike & I would make a game of getting the eraser out and seeing all the different ways we could keep her from seeing it, even if it was on the table. Amazingly, she never caught on. Let's be honest, it was cruel.

Our cruelty to girls extended into the sixth grade, where we were again seated across from each other at the table. This year, instead of stealing a cherished possession, we choose to be less passive-aggressive and more directly aggressive. So, we flicked things- wads of paper, erasers, whatever- at the girls sitting between us. As the year went on, we began taking this more and more seriously and began to build various contraptions to assist us in our endeavor. This led to the first time I went to his house and stayed the night. The purpose was to build as many elaborate slingshots and catapults as we could devise. I think it was at that point we realized we may be going too far. So the rest of the year we played paper football, pretty much all the time. Now you may be thinking, "weren't you supposed to be learning something?" All I can say is, that was life in Mr. Wooden's class.

Fortunately, our relationship eventually extended beyond cruelty to girls (although there may be girls out there who disagree with that). We'll get to some of that next time...

Three Weeks

In three weeks, this guy


will be marrying this girl.
More posts to come in the following weeks.

Bachelor Party

So this weekend was Mike's bachelor party. It's amazing how different these events are at 30+ versus 20. So much more laid back and relaxing. Of course, we couldn't make it completely relaxing for Mike, so we gave him a list of tasks he had to accomplish in order to prove himself worthy to be married. Among those worth mentioning here:

1. Prove Financial Worthiness
Mike is about to start a job as a financial planner with Edward Jones. So, I found an old copy of the Certified Financial Planner exam. For every question he got wrong, he had to eat a heaping spoonful of Poor Man's Gruel (ingredients: Ramen noodles, Spam, chili, sardines, horseradish, food coloring, Hoisen sauce, and mushrooms). He needs to study...

2. Prove Musical Worthiness
His fiance is named Cecilia, so of course he had to sing the Simon & Garfunkel song "Cecilia" on a busy street corner in the town we were staying. He was thrilled.

3. Prove Cecilia Worthiness
We asked Cecilia several questions over the phone about herself that Mike then had to answer correctly. If he did not, she could then make him do a dare. Our favorite was the modern interpretive dance of "Old McDonald Had a Farm."

He did this on his own...And finally, our group picture at the end of the weekend: