Halloween and the letter S...

We won't be handing out candy this year, we won't be taking small children door to door and I didn't put up any decorations, I didn't even buy any candy!

We usually get less than 15 little trick or treaters and because Halloween falls on a Wednesday this year, we won't even be home, we'll be at choir practice. Yes, choir practice on Halloween, Bonnie is such a slave driver (ha!) but she said she would understand if some of us didn't show up, but as my hubs and I really have no excuse Not to be there, I guess we'll go. I just really hate driving in the dark when I know there might be a kids on the side of the road.

I did take a few pictures that meet the Halloween theme, including the following one that I emailed to Karen at http://thisoldhousetoo.blogspot.com to be part of a blog post along with 23 other people. We all take one picture during a certain hour of the day, email them to Karen and she will put them all together. My hour was midnight to 1:00 a.m. October 31.
I can't wait to see what the other 23 people took pictures of, although I'm not sure if Karen even has power or not as she lives in Connecticut and was in direct line of Hurricane Sandy.

This is the one that will be in that blog post, in color, I changed it to black and white for this post.

These following are of my sons, my two sweet boys as they were getting ready for the Zombie Pub Crawl http://zombiepubcrawl.com They ended the night looking even more Zombie like.

When Andy first moved to Cincinnati, he and Ethan were not what I would call friends, in fact barely brothers. Their personalities are very, very different, even though they grew up in the same house, with the same parents, and given the same opportunities. So, when Ethan told me he was going to drive to Cincinnati to visit his brother, I just about fell over. Months later, he visited again, now they talk and text each other often. When Andy comes home to visit, he stays at Ethan's instead of staying in our new guest room. I feel a little sad about this, but I'm very happy that they get along now, and they are still just as different as they used to be.

People at church would Always call them by each other's name, which drove them nuts. They don't look like each other, Ethan is 6 feet tall and solid, Andy is 5'7" and small (although he's at the gym several times a week, drinks supplements and protein and is very muscular).
Ethan can talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime about anything. Andy can talk, but not simply for the sake of talking. Ethan is a free spirit and has a "don't worry about it" attitude, whereas Andy is more serious and very, very driven. Andy knows what he wants to do, and will research ways to make it happen.

Ethan, above, looks like a Goettsch (my hub's family) and Andy, below, looks like a Shocinski (my dad's family).

I think it was a good thing that they were so different growing up, because that meant I couldn't treat them totally the same. I tried, as much as I could, but they needed me in different ways. Ethan is ADD and had all of the symptoms that goes along with this diagnosis, homework and school problems, getting in trouble at school, losing things, forgetting things, stubborn, argumentative. He also needed vision therapy because he was seeing double. I Knew he was attention deficit when he was in Kindergarten, and kept trying to get him tested, but without the help of teachers, it's hard to get doctors to believe. He was finally tested and found to have ADD in fourth grade. He charmed all of his teachers into thinking that he just needed to mature a little more which didn't do anything to benefit him. All of that charm turned out to be a big plus for him though as he can talk people into giving him things for free and doing things for him and giving him jobs. He does a lot of bartering, by fixing people's cars, and will be getting a full sleeve tattoo this way.

Andy taught himself to read at age four, did his homework without me harping at him, got good grades, saved his money if he wanted to buy something that we didn't want to spend our money on, never got in trouble at school, he was responsible, teachers loved him, he was neat and clean and had the same backpack all through high school. He would always say "Ethan gets everything, I don't get half the stuff he does". (that's why them getting along now kind of freaks me out a bit)
He was never sick, never got strep throat, never got ear infections, he was good at everything he tried, artistic, coordinated. He does have bad eyes though (takes after my side).
When I would complain to coworkers about my boys fighting and arguing and pretty much hating each other,  they would assure me that when they got out of their teens, they would start to get along and be friends. I really didn't believe them, but geez, it turned out to be true. I'm so happy for that.

they make me so proud...my little zombie boys...

I simply love them to pieces

And, just a little bit of color. I hope you all had a great Halloween, and to all of you that were in the path of the devastating Hurricane Sandy, my prayers go out to you. Until next year...

MN State Fair…

I should have worn my pedometer today, because I’m sure I got way more than 12,000 steps in. Whew! I’m tired, I’m stuffed, my ankles are swollen and I’m going to bed, now, at 21:00.

We had a good time though. We got an early enough start that we were able to find a place to park on a neighborhood street by the north entrance and the Pet Building. We got to see Australian shepherds run the agility course. There was an older, slower dog and a wildly excited, very young dog, one wouldn’t complete the teeter totter, one went through the wrong end of the tunnel, twice, and others were so, so, fast. I thought of Kate from http://chroniclesofacountrygirl.blogspot.com/ because of her George. He’s a border collie, but I know they are known to run agility courses too.

We took the sky ride to the other side of the fair grounds just so we could get our Turkey Sandwich and All You Can Drink for $1.00 milk. I don’t think it was even 10:30 yet, but we couldn’t even think of looking at a thing until we had that sandwich in our hands. Mmmmmm, delicious, it’s one of the foods that we always get.

We visited sheep, goats, pigs, cows, llamas, and horses. There were no chickens, rabbits, or turkeys yet, probably later on this week. Did you know that Belgian horses are HUGE? We decided to sit for a bit and watch the teens and pre-teens perform English riding. They did such a nice job, even if some of the horses had other ideas in their heads than performing correctly. There always has to be at least one, doesn’t there? Before the show, I was able to get my raspberry malt from the Dairy Building, which happens to be the other food that I always get.

Lots of walking through various buildings, Horticulture, Fine Arts, 4-H, Education, and the one that has all of the quilts, clothing, jewelry, jams, jellies, breads, cakes, and demonstrations, and of course, we walked through tons of people, and ended up going to the Northern Equipment building that has tools, and gadgets and log splitters. Did I just say log splitters? Yup, they even had a State Fair sale going on, and one of them just happened to be the log splitter David wants so he can split all the wood at Barb’s cabin in Wisconsin. It sort of followed us home and is right this very minute sitting in our garage. It’s a very pretty log splitter, blue and silver. Ha! Well, we figure if we use wood to heat our house the majority of the time, why not have a log splitter? David isn’t a spring lumberjack anymore.

We ate and wandered a while longer and now I’m sitting here writing this when I told myself I was going to bed. So, goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Oh, one more thing…I got to see my favorite thing while we were passing the Pet Building on our way out, the Police K-9 dogs in action. Take a young, handsome, extremely fit ( in a tight t-shirt ) Police officer, with a padded arm, and a Police dog trained to attack on command, or when their partner is threatened, and mmmm, oops, sorry, ouch!! I tell you, it sure is a good thing I never do anything wrong, because  I would NOT want to get attacked by a Police dog.

Father’s Day…

I had the best Father’s Day this year, and I’m not even a father.

David and I got up and went to church. Five people gave short talks on what Father’s Day meant to them. One of them was a real tear jerker, the kind where you really don’t want to start blubbering in public, so you try to hold it back and all that does is make your neck muscles hurt and your mouth move all on its own, you don’t have a tissue, so you don’t want the tears to start falling and you try to blink, blink, blink them back. Good stories! We were going to stay and practice a song with our fellow Quivering Quartet singers, but our organist had to get home and finish packing, because he was heading to the airport for a month long trip to Sweden. He plays organ for a Swedish group of singers and as they were going there to perform, he sort of had to go along…gee, tough huh? I hope he has a wonderful time. I suggested going out to lunch, because I didn’t think our only child left at home would have planned anything to do with his father, and David was pondering this, but he wanted to stop at home first. We took the long way home and drove through some of the worst hit areas of the recent tornado. All I can say is, WOW!

I happened to be driving and as we got closer to home, I wanted to stop at my Mom’s and pick up her Sunday newspaper. She was at the cabin and she specifically asked if I would pick up her and her neighbors mail and newspapers. As we were approaching my Mom’s house, we noticed a car in her driveway, a black car, a black Nissan Altima to be exact. My thought was, OMG, there is a car in her driveway…who can that be?…should I go in?…why would there be a strange car in her driveway?…wouldn’t that be cool if it was Andy’s car?…maybe Gorm parked her car there and got a ride to the cabin. I Never for once thought it could really be Andy, because he was in Cincinnati working. We were planning to go for a visit this weekend and he asked if we could come the following weekend because he had some food thing going on and would be working the whole weekend, so we decided we would be all packed and ready to go so we could just hop in the car and start driving as soon as the Jethro Tull concert ended on Saturday the 25th. It takes approximately 12ish hours to drive there and we wanted to get there by noonish. So, you can see why I didn’t give a second thought to a black Nissan Altima parked in my Mom’s driveway as possibly belonging to my son. David just said, I’ll come get the paper later, let’s just go home. (Little did I know, he, Ethan and Ray all knew Andy was planning on coming for a visit and they kept it secret from me. They almost succeeded in keeping it secret from his friends too, but someone spilled the beans).

So we get home, leave the car in the driveway, as we were going to leave again, walk into the house and who should saunter down the hall but Andy…I kind of just stood there and thought…huh, Andy’s home, weird! It took a bit to actually register in my thick confused brain. I gave him a big hug (and he actually hugged back), and then it was sort of like he’d never left. It’s so strange when the kids come to visit, how after just a minute, it seems normal for them to be standing there. He had to see my new car and test it out a bit, so we drove back to my Mom’s and picked up the black Nissan Altima that really was my sons’ and I drove his back and he tested mine out a bit more. It seems there are a few envious people out there drooling over my new baby. I like her more every day!

We got his car unpacked, gazed at his golf clubs, all the different kinds of beer and a 13 yr old Bourbon in the trunk, chatted a bit and left him to try and take a little nap while we made a Cub run for hamburger, buns, cheese, chips, coleslaw, pickles, corn, baked beans and soda. Trying to eat up a little more time for him to nap, we also stopped off at Bachman’s to get a Clematis for David from Ethan. I could have sworn I saw an email stating that all perennials were 50% off (they were not) but we bought them anyway.

Andy put together the hamburger, adding: salt, pepper, garlic, garlic salt, onion, hot pepper flakes, A-1 Steak Sauce, Lowry’s Seasoning and a few other things. They grilled them up, added the cheese, toasted the buns while I got the other stuff all ready. Andy’s friend Ray made an appearance while we were preparing and when all was ready, we loaded up our plates with excellent food, carried them on the cool vintage trays I recently purchased and ate on the patio.  Yummy!  I always wonder why my burgers are boring, well, I just don’t take the time to add the right ingredients because it’s just too much trouble. Ha! I really should remember this next time I try to cut corners.

They started talking about golfing and decided to go to Centerbrook Golf Course, a Par 3 close to us. I got left behind to clean up and weed the flagstones, but it sounds like they had a great time, and I didn’t mind staying home, this was guy’s time.  David got a birdie and Ethan did really well for his first time ever golfing.

Now it was time for Andy to see all his other friends and the next destination was Psycho Suzie’s and I got to go along. We sat out on their new patio overlooking the Mississippi River and ended up with 14 or 15 people gathered around three tables. All the boys were drooling over our waitress, Theresa. I didn’t see the attraction, but I’m not a boy. She reminded me a little of Megan Fox, (well I just went to IMDB and looked her up, and I guess she looks a Whole lot like Megan Fox), Yeah, now I guess I can see why they were drooling. Anyway…A whole lot of alcohol was consumed and a little food was eaten and the noise just from our table was…LOUD! Janelle, Matt Schleppenbach’s fiancé was just amazed that our waitress was able to remember everyone's name. Poor Janelle, she was pretty amusing, the more she drinks, the more she talks, and she was doing a lot really fast talking. It seemed like we all had a lot of fun though, and I keep thinking that I would never in my life have gone out with a bunch of my friends and had my Mom and Dad along too. So a big Thank-you goes out to Andy and Ethan’s friends for making us old folk feel welcome. They have done this on more than one occasion and I think it is so cool. Actually, the friends of all my children and very nice and accepting. No one is into anything bad, they are polite, and I can honestly say I like them all.

Since we have a new patio and a built in fire pit, the logical next stop was our house, complete with fire, more alcohol and lots of really LOUD talking. I was getting a little nervous that the neighbors would call in the authorities, but thankfully no one did.  I’ll have to admit that they even did a fairly good job of keeping their mess contained, no one accidentally let a cat out and they made sure Annie wasn’t out to get her tail burned. I’m assuming they all made it home in one piece, I haven’t heard otherwise yet, and I know a bunch of them (the ones that could get a day off work) are together again, eating, drinking, and catching up with their lives.

So, I had a really great day and I’m so glad that David had the best Father’s Day yet.

Didn’t get a good picture of Andy, so I guess this one will have to do. this is right after we ate the wonderful burgers and before they went golfing. He’s soooo tired, but he just wasn’t able to sleep. He’s still got another nine or so hours to stay awake.

Wine and Cheese…

A few weeks ago on a cold snowy day in December, David and I took a little day trip to St. Croix Winery in Wisconsin.  Andy had given us a gift certificate for a five sample wine tasting with cheese and crackers, a tour and bottle of wine. We had the certificate for months when I thought I better take a look at it and see when we had to use it by. I’m so very glad I looked at it, because it had to be used by the first of the year. We called and made reservations the same day for the next Friday we both had off. The tour was a little lacking, but only because it is a very small winery. They hold special events there and it can be reserved for special happenings such as parties and weddings. They get their grapes and grape juice from California because they don’t have enough grapes yet. The grapes they have growing are special for this climate so they can leave them up and not have to bury them. It will be several years before they have enough to do much with, but they’ll get there.

I’m not much of a wine person because most of the wines I’ve had are too dry for me and make my nose stuffy. These wines though, mmmm, they were very good. Even the reds, which I always thought were dry, were Not! I didn’t get stuffed up either, and I found out that is because they use the smallest amount of tannin allowed by the FDA so their wines don’t give the headache and stuffiness.

Our ‘Free’ wine tasting event ended up costing us $46, because we just had to get some of the wonderful cheese we sampled and an additional two bottles of wine. They were so tasty! I think I may become hooked. hahaha

 

 

 

 

Thanks Andy, we had a great time, and we plan on visiting other wineries.

Squirrels…

We just can’t seem to keep squirrels out of our yard, not that we really want to, but they’re just so bold! I saw something white on the bank by the driveway and realized it was one of the many white squirrels we have roaming the neighborhood. Of course I pulled out my camera ( which lives in my purse) but only managed to get one picture of him before he noticed me. Drat!

Once I got into the porch, I heard a strange noise…a squirrel, this time a grey one, having a snack out of the bird feeder. He was so cute I decided to take a few pictures of him too.

Honorary Bass...

Greg was fortunate enough to be included as an Honorary Bass for the party, even though he is only a Tenor...shudder! Just kidding Greg.

Bass Patrol...

BASS party, this annual event was held at Phil and Bonnies house on their new deck. The weather was beautiful, cool and a little breezy, but no rain (like was forcasted). We ate a hearty Gumbo filled with corn, okra, crawfish, shrimp, rice? and assorted sea food (that I only knew about AFTER I ate it), and probably more thinks that I wasn't aware of because I was busy devouring it. There was also crusty bread and butter, salad with citrus slices and walnuts, assorted beverages and brownies for dessert.

Once we were stuffed, fine cigars were lit, aged Scotch was poured and conversations continued. Bass sung music was played in the backround and at times the guys sang along. Dan (also our organist), David, Phil, Jerry, and Bernard make up Parkway UCC's Bass section of the choir. The ladies present drank other spirits and had other conversations. Mingling, but not. We even had a reporter join us, getting information for a book she's writing, all about the BASS voice and why...