2009 Garden

We started planting our garden in early May with peas and potatoes. Now two months later we have added spinach, green beans and carrots. The photo below is showing the carrots and some of the 45 potato plants.Behind the potatoes are a couple rows each of peas and beans. The peas are about 4 inches higher than our four foot fence and will be ready to pick in about two weeks.
Here is the spinach and the peas and beans from the other end. I have already had four cuttings of spinach, each equal to a large bag of it at the store.
Judy has this each day.
Almost ready to pick.
The asparagus is perennial and has long ago stopped producing the eatable part and has gone to seed. But we got few meals of it in the late spring.

Earle Brown Parade Reservations were made

Thursday was the annual Earle Brown Days parade that has always gone down Dupont Ave N on the fourth Thursday in June. I got home from work at about 1:30PM that day and I passed row after row of chairs already setup for a parade that was starting five hours later. Since I had already invited half the ward to come and put out the FaceBook notice, I thought I had better get all the chairs out on the curb to reserve our spots in front of the house. The Winkels always came to the parade but since they would be coming from Texas and would be really tired, I thought I would reserve some front row seats for them. So here they are: Yeah for the Winkels.
But alas, they were no-shows. Maybe next year. Here is mom with the two cuties.
I will just let you enjoy the photos and not say too much. Most of you know these people.


Andrew and Brandon will be spending a couple of days with us.
The refreshment table was full. It was so full that a group of unknown teenage kids starting gathering at the end of the driveway. Jeff mentioned that they were eyeing the the refreshments. I was close enough to shew them away after they started reaching for the goodies. I think they were singing, "I'm Bad, I'm Bad" in honor of the king of pop. And they were, for trying to take our stuff without an invitation.



This was Sara's first parade appearance since before her mission. Welcome back.
Anna is showing off her fruit snake, I mean snack, skills.
Parade wavers

Don't cross that white line!
Jordan was the king of the band. When he arrived, we, the parade viewers, drowned out the band when we hollered "Jordan" over and over again. He did hear us, he told us afterwards, but he didn't crack a smile - just the stoic parade marching look.
Ronald McDonald was there and we were hoping he would toss out some burgers or French fries but no luck.
Clowns were entertaining.
Collecting and discussing the loot.

Live snakes were a hit.


Peter had fun stuffing small beach balls into his shirt and pants.
BFFs.

Them Waskely Wabbits

Well, since it was so hot out today (98.6 degrees) I needed to water the crops and flowers. I was watering the carrots when I noticed a rabbit in the beans. That is the first time one has gotten past all the chicken wire I have around the vegetables. He had to go and there was no way out. He was surrounded. Well, needless to say, he will no longer need to worry about food and shelter. Bye bye you waskely wabbit!

The pool party Videos

Here are some of the many videos I took of the pool party. I did say that some plants got watered over and over again.

Logan ran towards the sprinkler and dropped his watering can and had to go back to get it.

The Dudes are going full steam and having a ball doing it.

The girls like to do "Ring Around The Rosie"

Here is the gang of pool partiers.

Two beautiful Cow Girls came to visit

Saturday we had two of the cutest cowgirls come to visit us. Their Mom had an appointment so we said "'Mon over!". The Barnhart kids were here for about 10 hours and had a blast.

Great day for outdoor fun and picnic

The Barnhart kids came over for a visit today. We decided to got our gigantic backyard pool out ofthe shed and fill it with water. It was in full sunshine when we filled it, hoping that the sun would warm it. The kids kept telling me that it was really cold but when I checked it, I said that it felt like bath water - they knew I was kidding but I never gave in. Eventually they braved the water and started having hillarious fun. It did get to 90 degrees. Little miss casual girl, relaxing in the yard.

Splashing was a must.

She has the greatest smile.

Then Logan and Liam joined the fun. It took them a little while to get in the mood for water, but once they did, there was no stopping them. Some of the water toys were watering cans and since it was so hot outside and they noticed the flowers were in heat stress, they took it upon themselves to water them. But they usually watered the same ones over and over, making puddles of water around them.

Fill-r-up!

Dump-r-out!

Finished the canning. Whew!!!!!

I was lucky enough to get the dry pack equipment at my house. I got an additional 61 cans and finished canning ours and Brett's sugar, flour, hot cocoa and spaghetti. I did that all by myself and that took about 1.5 hours. That is hard work. Now I have 22 cases of canned goods that I need to find a place for in our tiny house.

Dry Pack Canning

Today we did a lot of dry pack canning at church. We were able to get the equipment from the Bishop's Storehouse. We stopped at Costco and bought several 50 pound bags of flour, sugar and rice as well as about 48 pounds of Spaghetti. The folks at Costco kept asking what we were going to do with all of that and we just said that we were going to make a batch of cookies. Brett, Charity, Andrew and Brandon and Kirstin, Jeff, Logan and Liam joined us as we canned 149 cans of rice, sugar, flour and hot cocoa that we already had - that is when we ran out of cans. That was all done in two hours. I took 200 additional pounds of un-canned food home, along with the spaghetti, with me for next time. Almost all hands were working, except the dudes. All the cans were labeled, dated and boxed with names of who belonged to them. Here Brandon is helping me fill cans with rice and Brett is sealing the cans.
Brett was kind of tired, because he is watching Jeff man-handle a 50 pound bag of flour.

Great job done. Most of this stuff has a 20-30 year shelf life and should probably last us through the summer.

Winter is over - finally

Last month we had two days with temperatures at 96 and 98 degrees - Blistering HOT for early May. Then it got cool and even later down right cold. We finally made it above 60 degrees today. The past three days we had high temperatures in the mid 50's. For crying out loud, it's June! I had to turn on the furnace because the temp was below 67 degrees in the house and this is the latest in the year that I had to use the furnace (it's usually the AC by now). That was the coolest three consecutive days in June since 1951. Tomorrow it will be 70 (but remember the normal high is 78).

It's a boy

This is the before picture of Tiffany. She tried everything in her power shy of taking caster oil to get that baby out while we were there visiting. Yesterday Charlie was born at about 4:00AM MDT at a birthing center (water birth). We are waiting pictures. There were a couple issues with Tiffany after a successful birth and she spent a night in the hospital. Congratulations to Kyle and Tiffany.

Meet my new girlfriend

We had an extra person with us in the car for the entire trip but it was not crowded with three. I invited my good new friend Julie to go with us. After getting to know her better, we just called her Jewels. She was our GPS and told us when and where to turn. She was quite stubborn at first and only wanted us to go the way she wanted to go. If we did not go her way, she would recalculate and tell us to do a U-Turn. One example of how Jewels acted was when we got off I35 at Kansas City, MO and wanted to go south on highway 71 in Missouri and she wanted us to go on highway 13. We let her have her way after driving on Hwy 71 for about eight miles, just to see where she would take us. She took us on a back road's roller coaster ride in Missouri to the highway she wanted to go on and got us to Gary’s just fine. She did good. Another example, however, from Denver she wanted to go north to Cheyenne on I25 and we wanted to go west on I70 through the mountains (longer but more scenic). For 28 minutes and for every mile we drove and every exit, she wanted us to get off the road and get back on the freeway in the opposite way and go back to I25 North. I almost got the duct tape out to cover her mouth when she realized she wasn’t going to get her way. For the most part Jewels was very helpful in guiding us on our journey. Thanks for going with us, Julie. You are the best girlfriend a guy could have.

Utah by way of Texas

This year for my birthday trip I decided that I wanted to visit Kyle and Cheryl Winkel, Analee, Jacob and Sam in Plano, TX. Then I said, “Well, while we are out, we should stop by Kyle and Tiffany’s in Murray, Utah.” After all it is almost on the way. Actually it is farther from Plano to Murray than from Brooklyn Center to Murray by almost 200 miles. But the path of the trip changed several times.

We spent the first night in Forsyth, MO, just outside Branson (no time for shows) at Gary and Lisa’s house. Funny thing was that Misty and Shelly left the cities a little after us and got there about 20 minutes after we did. We all spent the night. Thanks Gary and Lisa for putting up with us for a night.

If you ever get in trouble and are arrested in Branson, Gary will be your best friend.
The next leg of the trip was to Plano, TX. We all went out for Pizza after some catching up and then went to the movie “Night at the Museum 2”. Great movie (and it beat Terminator in box office sales). Sunday after church we all played Harry Potter Clue. I was the first to guess: who done it, in what room and with what weapon. If I was wrong, I would be out. I was never any good at games so it was no big deal. Well I got two of the three correct, but, and this is the big but, there was two rooms and one person in the clue envelope, so nobody won.

Monday was play in the pool day. Cheryl cannonballed into the pool at first but only spent two minutes in the water, because “It’s too cold”. She says she will wait for warmer water, maybe in a month or two. Sam built a raft and we had a water battle with balls and water balloons. Sam assisted his dad in building a raft for the day in the pool. You can see that there was not a lot of buoyancy at first. But...
Jacob is ready to let one rip with the water slingshot.
We added some water noodles as out-riggers which stabilized it and added buoyancy. You can see that it is now floating high in the water.
Is Sam getting advice from Analee or getting more ammunition?
I am the winner!
Sam, you are in my space. Back up.
Buddy was always around, chewing on pant legs, arms, hair and anything else that got close to his mouth.
We had a great time with them and this is proof that they survived us. Thank you for your hospitality.
Judy and I bid our good byes to the Winkels at 3:00PM and hit the road again and made it to the Oklahoma/Kansas boarder where we spent the night. The next morning we headed for Denver to visit Bill and Bunny Yetter, old time Brooklyn Center friends. We had six hours of driving rain in Kansas and by the time we got to Denver, I was beat. Rain hypnotizes you. We visited and then went to a “Back to the 60” place for burgers and malts. We spent the night in Denver and then left at 4:00AM, west through the mountains to Utah. We stopped in a small town for breakfast and there was still snow around and 36 degrees. But I was still in my shorts, short sleeves and sandals (I’m from Minnesota and I can take the cold).

I observed a “No U-Turn” sign in that town that was installed upside down. There were lots of beautiful sights until we hit the Utah border. Then it turned desolate with no gas stops for over 100 miles. Ten miles into Utah the westbound lanes of I70 were shut down. We were about seven cars back and it looked like there was an accident. There was a one car roll over and as the medi-vac helicopter was landing, the highway was closed down. That put us back 30 minutes. The closest hospital was in Grand Junction, Colorado.

We spent three wonderful days with Kyle, Tiffany, Ellie and Eric. What a wonderful family. We slept in the kid’s room on our air mattress. When we got there, it only took Ellie about a minute or two until she remembered us. It didn’t take much longer and Eric warmed up to us. What beautiful and smart kids. Eric already knows his alphabet and Ellie has a great memory. Soon after we arrived she told us that we would have “three sleeps” at their house. Then the next day is was “two sleeps left” and on Friday she told us we had “one sleep” left. The kids were not supposed to get up before 7:00AM and Ellie has a clock so she knows what time it is. Each morning, she woke up and climbed into bed with us. She scooted right next to me, in contact with me and whispered many times, “I love you Grampa”. That was enough to melt any heart. Ellie is not a quiet sleeper. She is a kicker and hitter. So obviously there was no more sleep for me. But waiting until 7:00 was hard so we read books by flashlight – thanks Gramma for bringing it. Saturday morning she said she was hungry and would not stay in the room past 5:30. Judy was already downstairs working on her laptop. She made eggs for the two of them. Then when Mom and Dad came down she needed cereal. We went to the park and played with the kids. We read many books and made chalk murals on the patio and fence, and eat many meals together. And on Saturday we went to Carl’s Jr (a.k.a. Hardee’s) for a Western Bacon Cheeseburger and chilly cheesy fries for my birthday. Then at home we had the chocolate pie from Costco. Mmmm-mmmm Good. Then we needed to leave at noon in order to make it to Cheyenne to spend the night before a 12.5-13 hour drive to Brooklyn Center. We packed up the car and Ellie realized what was happening. She was crying uncontrollably begging us to stay another day and not go. We told her that we would visit again. The drive home was uneventful. It was some of the best ten days ever.

Here we see Erik opening some of his birthday presents that we brought with us. He opened the first one just fine.
But this one he didn't was to touch because it was a Shake-N-Go car that roared to life when we handed it to him. He wanted no part of that noisy thing. So Ellie had to assist in the remainder of the presents.


The hit present was the "Noisy" electronic helicopter.
Hey, I'm not ready for any pictures.
Now I am.
The funny thing was the plate of cooked carrots. He actually got angry when anyone tried to dish some up for dinner. He ate them by the handfuls right from the plate.
I am a happy boy today.
On Thursday we visited the SLC museum and spent some time in the hands-on kids area.

That morning before we got up, Ellie wanted us to do the Nativity and we all has assigned parts. And then we saw this.
He looks like a character from a super hero comic book.
Then it was a morning at the park. Eric was not sure about this slide.
Not for Ellie.
She did the straight one and the curvy one.
Inside the Yellow Tube relaxing.


A lot of time was spent on the swings. Erik loved it and he insisted on the "big boy" swing.
Ellie had a great time also and the two traded swings a couple of times.
Either Ellie was assisting on some height for Erik or Erik was trying to kick her.
I love to go high!
Even Gramma got in on the action. Let's see. Who is going higher?
Saturday was Grampa's birthday, but we won't say which one. We had a very delicious chocolate pie from Costco. Notice the nifty birthday hat that the honored guest gets to wear that Erik is modeling.
My assistants are trying to load the pie with as many candles as they could find. Luckily there weren't too many found.
The group portrait just before heading home(out of order). When we were packing up the car, Ellie realized we were leaving and was begging us not to go and to stay another day. She was almost inconsolable. Tears were flowing. But we needed to be back so we could go to work on Monday.
I love this hat. It's so cool. Ellie is countnig them to make sure there is enough.
Grampa and the two cuties.
Thanks Kyle and Tiffany for being wonderful parents and putting up with us parents.