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!

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 my mom asked me what she could get us for a wedding present I told her unequivocally to go to www.Direc4u.com and look into getting us a sports package. My husband is huge into basketball and football and we hadn’t been able to afford cable so I knew it was something he could really get behind. I love how willing mom is to cater to our needs and so far it’s been the absolute best wedding present we received! She’s so generous with her time and money and Jared and I are talking about having her over sometime next week for dinner and a movie (on our satellite, of course) to thank her for the great gift. The wedding itself was a blast but we were so tired when it was over we couldn’t wait to get home and crash on the couch where we would watch our favorite shows! It’s been a great way for us to stay grounded as a couple and really reconnect after a long day at the office.

I just read about a stampede that happens in Colorado every June. They have everything for roller derby to monster trucks to concerts to roping. I would like to check that out some time. If I had known a month ago I could have planned to go this year, but I just read about it this morning and can’t pull it off that quickly.

Going to keep looking to see if there is a big one on a weekend when I can get away and get a cheap flight to see it. If you know of one toward the end of July or any time in August, please leave me a comment about it, and a link would be helpful. Thanks.

Because I grew up in a family where sports was emphasized so heavily, it was hard to move to a small town in Missouri where there are few professional teams to go see. The closest place to see any games is Kansas City to see the Chiefs play football or the Royals play baseball, but this is still about a three hour drive. That’s why I was so excited to spend several months in Chicago. Though I was there for business, I still made sure to schedule plenty of time to watch the Bulls play.

Since I was staying with one of my best friends from college while I was there, we would go to games together. To cut costs on food at the game, we would usually grab a pizza to eat at home before we left. Then, we would set the alarm systems and head on over to the United Center.

I loved being back in the atmosphere of professional sports, as seeing NBA games is something I’ve really missed the past few years. The NBA crowd is unlike any other group of sports fans — and Bulls fans are especially fierce. There is no excuse here for missed shots or bad calls. The whole stadium fills up with cheer and boos as everyone literally sits on the edge of their seats.

My mother has always been known for her green thumb. The house we all grew up in had the most wonderful window box planters that all the neighbors were very envious of, she really got a charge out of that. We also always had a nice vegetable garden in the back that we were known with sharing the harvest around the neighbor each season. The only indoor planter that I can remember back then was one that always held a nice and healthy mother-in-law’s tongue that ironically enough her mother-in-law bought for her shortly after my folks were married. My mother much preferred to be outside in the sun tending all of her beauties.

The Internet is a great way to find items, so it only makes sense to look for the perfect motorcycle or ATV or any type of transportation for that matter. I used to have a motorcycle but times got hard and I started running out of time for riding it and keeping it up each riding season and ended up selling it. That was before the Internet had made buying and selling items so much easier, I’m sure I would have taken advantage of it and probably would have made out much better than I did back then.

I just moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area about five months ago and was looking for an adult softball league for mixed genders. The search took me three days and I was on a team with other people in the restaurant industry. The games have been a lot of fun so far and the diamonds we’ve played at have all been top notch. One of the local semi-pro baseball team has even allowed our league to play games so long as we keep everything clean and sell a couple tickets to their games. I make sure to set my HOME SECURITY alarm from before I go play softball because the slum I live in isn’t very safe. I just started a new job and am making a lot more tip money so hopefully I’ll be moving next week to a house with three other people from my team! Eventually our team is going to move up in the divisions because of a fast pitch pitcher who will be joining us from Alabama. She is getting hired at the place where I’m starting. The competition is fairly high in our division but once we move up we’ll really be challenged. A couple of the guys on our team can knock it out of the park. Our DL actually happens to be a woman because she can rack up the base hits consistently, even when it’s a man pitching overhand to her! The off-season is here but the league has been fun.