Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Roadtrip

On Friday night Maurice and I left for Indianola for a barbecue at Tony's place. Eric was up from Texas with his wife and new baby, Gabriel. It was really fun hanging with all my friends and drinking a few beers. Unfortunately I left the camera in the car, so I have no pictures to commemorate the event.

On Saturday I was supposed to go to Eric's baby shower in Moravia. But I couldn't actually find it, so Maurice and I stopped in Fat Annies for a beer. A $1 beer! It wasn't even happy hour. One dollar beers, all day, every day at Fat Annies. I love Iowa. Unfortunately they didn't have any food outside of pickled eggs, so we only stayed for 1 $1 beer.

Next we headed out to the Landing for dinner. On the way we cruised through Honey Creek, looking for the looking unsuccessfully for some destination park that is supposedly being built for Lake Rathbun. We didn't find any construction, but we found this old barn in the process of slow decomposition.

I wish that I would have had the DSLR camera for this barn. The point and shoot is compact and convenient, but it has it's limits sometimes.



The Landing's had this burned out sputnik thing going on outside it. The food was fairly good, but the bartender messed up Mo's dirty martini.

On the drive to Maurice's farm to set up the tents, we found this stump.

We attempted to do hero pictures.



We weren't able to set up the tents, however. Despite the LSD in the cutlass, the Kumho tires couldn't get any traction in the wet grass/mud on the hill up to Mo's farm. So it was back to Centerville, to find a place to sleep that night.

We hooked up with Russ and Di Saturday night. We started the night off at a small party in someones garage, southern Iowa style.

Jessica and Di are singing with some 90's dance song in the back of Russ and Di's swanky Enclave. Maurice was quick to point out that his Jeep is much more butch than Russ's Buick. We went to Moulton first for drinks. I actually saw a couple of guys I went to school with and/or worked at Hy-Vee with back in the day. Then we went to another bar in Centerville that I'm not sure the name of. It seems the bar formerly known as Jim's is closed again, so we couldn't go there.

Sunday morning I woke up, surprisingly refreshed and it was back to Omaha.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Corwin

I'm home with Corwin for the third day in a row now. He had a bad fever on Monday and was basically miserable. Yesterday he ran a low grade fever all day, but was perfectly charming until about 3:30. I took his temp again and it was upto 102.5 again. He felt warm this morning, but I took his temp and it's down to 98.5. He says his head still hurts though. I think I may be able to take him into daycare later this morning if he keeps feeling ok.

So he's watching Pixar's Cars while I'm trying to get some work done for work at home. About half way through the movie Corwin comes upstairs to tell me, "Big red truck went away. Race car's sad." In the movie the race car falls out of the semi transporter and gets stuck in a little town on Route 66. Later the car gets found and the semi comes to get him. "The red truck came back! Race car's so very happy!", says Corwin in his sweetest voice.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

The Month (and more) in Review

Today wasn't great, but it started and finished well. Corwin and Corad in a box is a good way to start any day. But, Anke didn't sleep well last night and was not in the best of moods all day. The boys didn't nap as much as they should have and therefor were rather fragile most of the afternoon. I spent most of the day running errands and doing chores around the house. By dinner time, I was at the end of my line. But a beer with dinner helped. Then after putting the boys to bed, Anke and I watched a short film. Thankfully we're starting to get a little of our life back as the children get a little older. So anyway we watched Peter and the Wolf. It's a stop motion animated film based on the the orchestrated children's story that won the Oscar for best animated short film. It was fantastic. We watched it twice. So now, despite a bit of a difficult day I'm in a rather good mood. The two glasses of wine I had while watching have helped relax me too.

So what else has happened or what I should have been posting about for the past month (get ready for image overload):

April 19:
We went on a long (really long) hike in Fontenelle Forest.
Conrad likes the Deuter backpack, just as Corwin did at that age.

Corwin did really great walking over half of the hike.

These are two views of a ravine along history trail that I love. I need to drag Maurice on this hike some time, I think he'd enjoy it.

As the kids get older, I relish giving away the trappings that they no longer need. But I suspect I'll keep this backpack as a keepsake of Corwin and Conrad's early years.

Last winter arrived before I thought it would. So I didn't do anything to prepare the sprinkler system before the first freeze. But the brilliant engineers who created it created an easily accessible piece that's designed to fail in freezing situations. I photographed, unnecessarily, it so I'd know how to put it all back together after I got the new part.

April 20:Dad was in town for the weekend, so he went with us for a walk along the board walk on the marsh trail.
We let Corwin bring his little yellow bike.

I wish I still ran for the shear joy and abandon of it.

The turtles were out in force.

April 24:
Our major retaining wall went to hell over the winter. We knew when we bought the house it would need redone at some point. But I thought it'd last a couple of years at least. The top bricks pushed out over a foot since fall. Houses are expensive.

April 26:

My friend, Brett, from Indian Hills was in Omaha so Anke and I met him at the Zoo.

Brett's son Jadon and Corwin have lots of fun playing with boxes.

May 3:
Thanksgiving in May. These two were at the top of the hill behind our house. If I could shoot a bow as far as I can photograph, we'd be frying this bad boy. Assuming I still had a bow of course.

May 4:There aren't enough pictures to document the amount of yard work that I've done in may. Here I'm setting up the irrigation system for our raised vegetable garden.
These some bushes that we whacked the hell out of last year. They're about 15 feet tall now! After I borrow Maurice's chainsaw they're really gonna get pruned this year!

We got some bamboo trellis like things to help protect the bushes from the deer infestation.

Who needs sledding when you can just ride Tonka trucks in summer?

The magnolia tree and the raised vegetable garden before we put the clear plastic over it. It works as a little green house now. For some reason it hasn't been photographed in all it's covered glory yet. But the tomatoes are doing well so far.

May 10:
Who needs a truck when you have a hatch back. The Vibe has hauled over well 2000 lbs of compost, mulch, soil and stones this month. And let us not forget who had to load and unload all of that. Not the wife or kids!

No need for lowering springs when it's full of mulch. For the back anyway.

May 11:
Check out my awesome manga hair.

Today:The new and improved retaining wall with the freshly laid sod to cover the yard where the construction company that rebuilt the wall destroyed my nice green grass.

If anyone except Mom is still reading this, well I'm shocked. One of the big reasons that I do this is so that Corwin and Conrad can come back and read this someday (Hi boys) and get a bit of their dad's point of view on my life and maybe another perspective (mine) on who I am. Anyway, we started with the box and we'll end with it. It's really fun to watch Corwin and Conrad play together. And it must be said that my kids have the coolest hair at their daycare.