A Day At The Lake And Then Some

These are the fine folks we spent our day at the lake with. Our original plan was to head for the Oxtrot in Brainerd but we detoured up to Grand Rapids first and spent the night in Cher and Alan's cabin. It was the most perfect afternoon for a gathering of these old friends and family.Natalie was having a blast in the water and on the beach. Sometimes, though, I just don't know who's having more fun...her or the adults that play with her! We had a delicious meal of ribs and salad and spent the twilight hours around the fire with a lovely sunset on the horizon.

Monday we headed up to Coleraine for 18 holes of golf. We chose to walk since we weren't getting much other exercise. Bad move! It was solid sun and extremely hot when we finished and, in retrospect, I think Jill may have had a little heat stroke. She felt crappy, literally, before it was all said and done and we ended up scrapping our second planned golf outing for Tuesday morning. But we did get a start finding the 23 Babes around the Brainerd area.

(There's actually three babes in this picture. Hee! Hee!)

They were each painted differently but more on that in another post. By the time we got home we'd covered over 800 miles. The cheapest gas we saw was $3.58 in Royalton. It's not four dollars a gallon but even so we wished we could use...:) !!!

What IS This Mess?!

Usually we have about three times this much stuff stacked up in the sunroom to pack in for vacation. But this time we're taking just the bare essentials because we'll be eating out and not spending much time inside. Check back in a few days for a report on The Oxtrot!

Thursdays On 1st

Two Thursdays ago we got stormed out of browsing through an upscale flea market sort of thing they set up through September down on 1st Avenue on Thursdays. Last Thursday would have been a rainy one too. But this week it was perfect! We got to meet Mindy and Kate for lunch and a stroll through the booths. Each of us had something different to eat and I finally got to have my Cuban sandwich!

Tiger Says....

Keep your head down. Keep your eye on the ball and keep your left arm straight.

The Truth About Golf

We played 18 holes today at the Chatfield golf course. Jill's always wanted to go back after having a pretty good round there once many years ago. Turned out they had a Monday special which made the drive worthwhile and she had a good round besides. The event this week for the women's league we're in was Low Gross. Too bad it wasn't High Gross because my game was highly gross!! But...once again, it was a fun time. To me it's not so much the score as just being out on a scenic course. And on this one there was the added advantage of a prevailing smell of fresh cut cedar.

Sunday Evening In The Park

It was a perfect summer evening to sit in the park and listen to the Concert Band. Bev and Fay went with us to have a little wine and candlelight Subway supper down by the river.

Tony was the only K boy in the percussion section this time.

They gave out bottles of bubbles as a promotion from Think Bank so there were bubbles in the air during the whole show.

The band shell is most impressive when it finally gets dark. But the music was good all evening long.And here's the riverside we were down by...

Dressed For The Party

Our friend, Amy, has a July 4th party every year only this year it wasn't until the 19th. These little girls were certainly dressed for the occasion!!Claire, Olivia and Isabelle

Don't Call Her Grace

Jill had a little incident the other day that left her with bruises to rival Lynn's son, John's, baseball and golf bag bruises.I guess the back step reached up and grabbed her and down she went. Not only did she end up with marks like these but she was carrying an organizer full of small parts that went all over the place!

What's Happening To Me?!

Today Jill stopped over at Claire's and the three of us took a walk to the park. Holy cow, was it hot!! So when we got back I filled the pool and, rather than go upstairs for a suit, just decided Claire could go swimming in her regular diapers. They are definitely super absorbant!

At one point she was even having a little trouble walking with all that weight in her drawers!

Working Hard At Having Fun

I swear, we picked the hottest day of the summer so far to golf 18 holes. We went to St. Charles and were teed off by 7:50 so at least we were done before noon. But we walked and were pretty hot and tired by the time we got done. I say it was a good round because Jill only beat me by one shot. Jill thought it was a terrible round because she only beat me by one shot! The course was in great shape. They've redone several of the holes since we were there last but they look like they've been there forever. The other thing that made it such a good round is that we never saw another soul on the course until we were finishing 17. That's my kind of crowd!

Monday Afternoon Theatre

What do a couple of nerds do on a Monday afternoon?

...Go see a movie in 3D, of course!

We went to "Journey To The Center Of The Earth" this afternoon. I don't believe I'd ever been to a 3D movie before and that was quite an experience. I know I jumped a mile several times when things came shooting out from the screen at us. You wanted to reach out and grab them. The movie itself was pretty preposterous but entertaining even so. Imagine "Jurassic Park" or "Indiana Jones" in 3D. Now I'd like to see if the library has the book by Jules Verne that the story was based on.

Flashback To The 60's

Last night was a little Motown By The Riverside with Martha Reeves and The Vandellas. "Nowhere To Run", "Heatwave", "Jimmy Mack" and "Dancing In The Streets" were the only songs of hers I recognized but I thought they sounded great just the same.

During the intermission I was trying to swat a "bug" off my leg when I realized it was the phone vibrating in my pocket. Brian was calling to say they were two trees over from the little white tent and where was I. So I had company for the second half of the show. (I let them sit with me even though they had Packer colors on! :)

They looked a little different than when I saw them last!

Watermelon Hearts?

I've heard of artichoke hearts and hearts of palm and celery hearts but have you ever seen a watermelon heart?

Sunday Sundae

The woods up behind our house are really becoming a jungle. There are a lot of elms that need to come out, (Has anyone else noticed that it seems to be a really bad year for them? There are newly dead ones all over!) and there's a lot of underbrush, a lot of gooseberries and raspberries. Only a couple other years have I stopped to pick the berries but today I got enough black raspberries to have ice cream sundaes tomorrow!

Cuban Thwarted

After Angela told me about this Cuban sandwich she and her sister had last week at the Thursday's on First setup I had my heart set on one for lunch today. We didn't ever find the booth that served them but even if we had we would have had to eat it at home. Just as we found something else the weather sirens went off and all the booths started to batten down the hatches. A strong system was moving through so we hightailed it to the car and home. These are some of the clouds we saw en route.

We ended up getting a little over 1/2 inch of rain that came so hard it was white in the air.

There was just a minute or two of hail and strong enough wind that I said "let's head for the basement." But the storm was clipping along at 50-some MPH so in the time it took me to run to the bathroom quick the wind was past. (There may have been a little wind in the bathroom too!) I found our recycleable container two doors down and our ditch that had finally dried up just yesterday was running freely again.

No Nap Today

Miss Claire let me know she wasn't going to stand for any naps today. And I think near lunchtime it was starting to catch up with her.

But we had plenty of fun along the way. We went for a barefoot walk in pajamas early on and the most fun was walking in the wet grass and making footprints on the sidewalk. Then Jill stopped by for a visit and we got out the swimming pool and the bike.

Pretty good spirits for having gotten up at 6:15!

Especially for MY Sister!

Some of you may have seen my sister's post dedicated to me. Not to be outdone, this is what I encounter with Claire.

Okay, so maybe it's one of the craft projects she did with her mom but to me it's just as scarey. Get the vacuum!!!

Garden Party

Does anybody remember Ricky Nelson singing "I went to a garden party, to reminisce with my old friends"? Jill and I were at Sargent's Nursery tonight for their 4th annual Garden Party. We mostly went just to see what it was like but we did actually run into two of my old friends from many days gone by in the HCL. One of them told us each of the two nursery locations were expecting about 800 people! And they had wine, beer and dessert for all!

Maple Valley Golf

We just beat the rain today since we teed off before 8:00. It was just starting to sprinkle as we came up 18. This pond is a new little wrinkle they've added by the 16th green which, for most people, probably doesn't come into play. But, I swear, my ball is a divining rod searching for and usually finding water if at all possible. I did manage to stay out of the pond but went all along the side giving me fits with each swing.

Wind Turbines

Lately I've been obsessed with the wind turbines they appear to be erecting over by Dexter. There are piles of parts laying at various spots in the fields. I've already posted a blog about how big the parts are. Today we drove back into where they store them before taking them out to where they'll be installed. Maybe with my car right up next to them you can get a better idea just how big some of those pieces are.

That's some fan blade!!

More Deer

As we were going to get in the car down at Jill's folks' we spotted these two fawns down by the road. Pretty soon they started heading for us and just kept coming. There didn't seem to be a mother deer with them but there were some lifesize ceramic ones near us. So we weren't sure if they thought mama was up by us or what. The one got within about 20 feet or so before she decided maybe we were something to be leery of.

I was all ready to experience petting a deer!

150 Years Old!

The Sesquicentennial celebration for Northwood continued on through the weekend so we went down on Saturday to see Jill's folks and to go uptown to check it out. They had a couple blocks roped off for foot traffic only but even though you could walk down the middle of the street no one was. So we girls being from the big city made a spectacle of ourselves and did! There were some art displays along Main Street and tours of some of the old buildings and houses. We went to a concert that had a bit more of a religious tilt than we cared for. Jill and her mom oohed and aahed over some of the quilts at the Quilt Show.

There was an All School Reunion that Jill went to for just a short time while her mom and I just enjoyed the afternoon.

And in the evening there was the "adult beverage" garden that we planned to attend for just a short time. Jill ran into one of her old high school buddies and his friend so we hung around with them while the band played on. The two bands were pretty good but, of course, plenty loud. There had to be several hundred people milling about but in spite of being a small town Jill only knew a couple dozen. Nonetheless, the beer was tasting pretty good so our quick stop by turned into a four hour stay!

Oh, Say Can You See?

We just got back from a morning walk and almost wish for a little more breeze. But it's a beautiful day to celebrate our country's independence. We're heading out to Mom and Dad's this afternoon to help with a little mowing and then have some fried fish from Jill's May trip up north. It'll be a low-key celebration but it's one more holiday with the Old Folks! Wishing everyone else a great Fourth too!

(I know Brian's got some better pictures of fireworks but this is all I could come up with.)

Reminder: He who goes forth with a fifth on the Fourth may not go forth on the fifth!

An Evening With Natalie

Jon and Mindy had a date at the waterski show tonight so I got to stay with Natalie. Maybe she'd say differently but I think we had a pretty good time.

We read some books and played on the deck and took a long walk around a couple of blocks. We came to the end of the bike path and I think she was saying "now what?"

But we just retraced our steps and took the long way home. When I saw her last she was busy sawing logs.

Sweet Thing Part II

I did a "Sweet Thing" post back when I started my blog to introduce you to my little friend at work. Here's the same little gal about 5 1/2 months later with her typical morning face!