Invitations

Today our youngest son came over for the day for a short visit. He brought his girlfriend with him, and we had a nice visit. My wife actually went to pick them up at his apartment; he lives about an hour away from our house. On the way home they stopped in town and went to the 34th annual Spring Festival in Old Town. Although we’ve lived in this area for over five years now, we’ve never gone to any of the street festivals that have been held up until now. My wife has always asked me to go with her to some of the festivals, but I’ve always resisted going, so it was good that she got our son and his girlfriend to agree to go with her to the festival this year.

When they arrived home from the festival, my wife was excited to show me that she had purchased some hickory syrup from a vendor at the festival. Neither one of us had ever even heard of hickory syrup before, and she said that the booth caught her eye. Having lived in New England for much of our lives, she was familiar with maple syrup – but what was this hickory syrup stuff like? The vendor was giving out free sample tastes, and all three of them had a sample. They all agreed that it was quite tasty, and bought a small bottle of it to bring home to share with the rest of the family. They told me that there was live music, and a lot of vendors and free food samples. And lots of funnel cake booths! Back in New England we called them “Doughboys” and they are so tasty! I guess that the next time my wife extends invitations to go to a festival I should accept it and go along.

After the festival they stopped at a grocery store to pick up the fixings for lasagna for dinner, and when they arrived home they prepared a really nice lasagna and served it with garlic and cheese bread. We created our own dessert by combining lemon cookies and vanilla creme cookies – the combination of the two cookies was much tastier than either cookie by itself. We talked about putting some vanilla frosting in between the cookies to make them stick together, but decided against it for today. Maybe next time!

Corn hole games

Recently I was invited to participate in a corn hole tournament. To be perfectly honest I had no idea at all what in the world a “corn hole tournament” was! So I went to Google and typed in “corn hole tournament” and discovered that it is a competitive game of bean bag toss. When I was a child I can remember going to school fun fairs where they had a bean bag toss game set up, and the targets they used DO look a lot like the targets used in the “official” corn hole game.

Apparently this is a game that is increasing in popularity, and it really surprised me! On the one hand it seems to me that it would be considered “lame” by many of the adolescents that I know. But on the other hand, it seems to me that it is a portable game similar to horse shoes, and I have seen quite a few people playing horse shoes lately. That in and of itself really surprised me, but there it is, what can you do?

When did that happen?

For a few months now I have been unable to watch one of my favorite television shows Bones. So I was very surprised when I managed to watch it a few nights ago and found out that they two key characters appear to have married and had a baby! I can remember episodes when they were talking about how “Bones” wanted to have a baby but that she was thinking about artificial insemination. Now they are living together and have a baby together. The married part I’m not completely clear about- in this day and age it could be that they have not yet taken that step.

I’m thinking that I’m going to have to try to find out if I can watch reruns of the show on the Internet of the show to try to see the episodes that I’ve missed so I can catch up! Geez, you get busy for a few months and then all this interesting stuff happens!

Not loving the city

I appreciate the guest post, Jewel Rodgers

My kids were just not loving it in the city – they weren’t really making any friends and I didn’t necessarily feel safe with them walking long distances and things like that. I thought about it for a long time and I finally made the decision last year that it’s time for us to all move out here to the country for a different life. We’ve been here for about 6 months now and the kids are adjusting really well. We got a dog and http://internet.hughesnet.com internet so they could still get on Facebook and all that and I generally just feel more rested and less stressed being out here. My boss is allowing me to work from the farm most of the time which is great since it’s about an hour commute and I just feel good about the changes my family is making. My kids are great kids but they needed more room to thrive and I feel like now that we’re out here in the country they can really be who they were meant to be.

The tuba and the whirligigs

A couple of days ago I was driving down Braddock road during rush hour, and saw a man walking on the sidewalk, facing traffic. He was carrying a tuba, but I could not tell for sure if he was playing the tuba or not. What caught my eye in the first place, though, were the three or four whirligigs that were on the tuba. They were red, white, and blue, and they were spinning around while he was walking.

Now to be honest I have never seen a tuba adorned with whirligigs before, so I thought that was quite an unusual sight to see! The man was not dressed in any type of uniform, so I do not know if he was on his way to or from some type of marching band rehearsal, or if he was on his way to or from a gig of some kind. But seeing him walking down the sidewalk, with the whirligigs just spinning like crazy did pique my curiosity and made me smile. Just a few moments ago I went onto Google and tried to do a search for tubas and whirligigs, but got no results putting them together in the context of whirligigs on a tuba. That was surprising to me – I thought you could find just about anything and everything on Google!