silly dog photos

Poor dogs, with all my spare time this weekend I took at lot of photos- many of them silly ones of them. Here's Mattie helping me plant flowers. She's a good helper and seldom asks for anything.

Dawson, on the other hand, is pretty demanding. His favorite pastime is begging for whatever we're eating. For example, a muffin. Here's his "I'm so hungry I could eat the coffee table" look that he usually uses on me.He's no dope, though, and has perfected his begging to fit his audience. This is his "I really feel like you need to share your muffin" look that he gives to Brian (who seldom, if ever, falls for it).
Yes, he eventually got the muffin, but had to split it with Mattie.

Memorial Day Weekend

Believe it or not, Brian and I had 4 days off together this holiday weekend! We made the best of it by making a big "to-do" list and (in the end) scraping it and doing fun things instead. It helped our goofing off that the lawnmower broke on Friday morning so Brian couldn't even get the lawn in decent shape. That's when we knew that we had the makings for an excellent holiday weekend!


Off to adventures!

On Friday afternoon we went up to Spirit Lake, Iowa for a flea market (always a good time).We both found some treasures. I was excited to find a glass Pyrex double boiler that I've been wanting for the last year or so. It usually sells for $50-$75, but I found it for $5! Now that is a find that's hard to beat! However, perhaps the most impressive purchase of the day was a little antique jeep. Brian took pity on it and bought it for his jeep collection. It looks an awful lot like the other jeeps he has around our property, being that it is missing many parts, needs a lot of work, and has plenty of rust.
On the way back from the flea market, we stopped on a whim at the Little Swan Lake Winery for a bit of wine tasting. As it turns out, they have excellent wine and a fun hostess from Australia who is having an adventure in Iowa educating people on good wine. This stop was one of the highlights of the weekend! Somehow on Saturday Brian managed to talk me into cutting his hair really short. I've been refusing to do so for years, but he caught me at a weak moment when I was really sick of his mane. This is much better and I may continue to cut it and pocket the savings. We also managed to fit in an excellent bike ride around one of the local lakes to try and burn off some of the calories...
...that we packed on over the weekend. Steak: yum-o. (You can tell that we couldn't agree on the cut.)
And some tasty grilled potatoes Brian made. He used 4 potatoes, half an onion, and an entire stick of butter (which he informed me of after they were done cooking). Needless to say, they were delicious! I also discovered some mint that survived the winter, so we made fresh mojitos to sip on while enjoying the sun this afternoon. We ended the weekend with a bonfire...and s'mores. Who could have asked for more out of a weekend? Oh, and by the way, we didn't see any prairie-fires Saturday night.

Hope you all had as much fun a weekend as we did! Happy Memorial Day!

Hens and Chicks

Hey Ryan and Louise- look how good the hens and chicks you gave us are looking! I put them in pots and they live at the bottom of our front steps. There's a long history of these cute plants in my family (right, Grandma O.), so they make me very happy every day. :)
By the way (Ryan and Louise), Brian wanted me to tell you that when you come in October he has plans to do some cowboy cooking seeing how the boys are "cowboying it up". Ryan, I'm assuming that will involve you and a fire...

How do you hang a flag?

We were excited to bring out our American flag this weekend for Memorial Day. Unfortunately the flag line took a beating this winter and we needed to replace it. Actually, it didn't so much take beating as was blown away (literally...no trace left). Brian did an excellent job getting the flagpole back in working order, so I thought it was worthy of a blog post.

Taking down the top half of the pole. Threading the line through the top. Hosting the flag.Happy Memorial Day!

Waiting on Parts

So I took the dogs to the lake this morning, they enjoyed running around in the rain. They seemed to be pretty tiered so now what?

Its still raining so lets work on the Willys! It's been awhile since I have done any wrenching on the CJ-2a, but if I am ever going to drive this thing, I need to get back to work on it. Its been awhile since I have posted anything on it so here is a refresher, this is what it use to look like

Someday hopefully it will look similar, but drivable. Anyway flash forward to present day and a messy garage. I am working on getting the front end ready for the parts I ordered. Once I get the parts the front end can go back in the frame and I will have a rolling chassis again! Then on to the brakes.

Front of the frame is painted.

Front diff taken apart. Parts somewhat organized so I can remember what goes where. And for the Willys geeks (only two of which I know of, yes Ryan you are one of them) I found a seal with an f stamp, and I thought the plates that said "bendix joint" on them were cool.

All in all a good day, now just waiting on parts!

Bee update

So the bees have been in the hive for a bit over two weeks now. I've enjoyed feeding and watering them, watching them bring in pollen and create comb. Things are not, however, well this this colony. The queen is, to be blunt, dead. My bees are queenless and confused. This causes many problems, but the long and the short of it is that I need a new colony because at this stage it will be almost impossible to have them accept a new queen. Hopefully I can salvage some of the bees from this hive, but in the coming weeks there will be some new bees to tell you about. Stay tuned.

(As it turns out, getting pictures of individual bees is difficult, but here are some of the "girls".)

Visiting

Last weekend we headed out to Seth and Michelle's for a few days. Aunt Judy, Uncle Kevin, Matthew, Andrew, and Alyssa were going to be there too, so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see them. It was a little family reunion!

We have a bakery in Fort Dodge that make adorable cookies, so we brought some with us. We picked out frogs for James, butterflies for Harmony, and flowers for Gabby. Yum!This is what happens when you leave frosted cookies unattended on the kitchen counter. I think Brian was the culprit. Seems like something he would do. Gabby...still cute.

James...still cute.

Harmony...still cute.

Brian and I had a great time watching James' and Harmony's first t-ball game. They did a great job! James was a fantastic hitter.

Harmony was speedy.Although we didn't spend nearly enough time with Kevin, Judy, and the kids, it was wonderful to see them and catch up in person (rather than on Facebook). Thanks for making the trip out to Ohio! Hope you see you again soon!