kevin has all the parts for his sail board now.  on friday he took this picture of a sailboat, maybe assessing the wind potential.  it was windy, but he didn’t try the sail board that day.

last night was amy’s BIG BIRTHDAY GALA.  thank god it was nothing like randy’s big BG…this one was just the family including AUNT SANDY, and also bev, who is like family except she’s not technically related.

amy says that when she was little she did this same thing; she covered her ears when we sang happy birthday to her.

here is the special cake i made for her.  a yellow cake with white icing, filled with a lemon-curd kind of thing, per her request.  the cute tink candle was my idea.

because she can’t go anywhere empty-handed, even though i TOLD her we’d have gobs of food, bev brought these delicious white-chocolate-covered pretzels plus yummy cookies.

very thoughtful and delicious of her, even though i don’t actually believe in white chocolate as a rule.

i think this is funny because it looks like aunt sandy HATES amy and is VERY VERY MAD that amy is opening a present.  she doesn’t, and she wasn’t, but i still think it’s funny.

numie, noodle and mollie spent the dinner underneath or next to the table, vigilantly keeping watch for stray bits of falling food.  soon they were completely worn out.

here, bev is showing mom and dad her photo album of pictures from a trip out east that she took a few weeks ago.  i didn’t get to see the pictures then, but she stayed at my house later and showed them to me.  they’re FANTASTIC.  they went to newport, and to cape cod, and on the way they stopped at the LONGABERGER BASKET COMPANY.  it’s shaped like a giant basket!  i mean, it’s really extraordinary.  i’ll have to get her to send me the photo she took so i can post it.

jim had never heard of longaberger baskets and i explained that they’re very very expensive and collectible baskets….but just WHY are they so expensive, i wonder?  whatever the reason, they’re obviously rolling in the dough, based on the fancyness of that office building PLUS there’s another HUGE LONGABERGER BASKET sitting in a park somewhere.  when kevin and i go to VA, we might stop by to take a look.

here is beautiful ellie.

yesterday kevin made his maiden attempt at mastering the sail board.  instead of pictures, i shot lots and lots of video.  i have to cut it into a little video presentation very soon.

he’s about to try it again today.

ok then,

sunday grace.

mollie, on the other hand…i’m at one end of the huge couch and mollie is at the other.  if i went into the bedroom, she would follow me in – she loves the be nearby – but not too close.  if i sat next to her right now she’d enjoy the petting for a while, but eventually she would be forced to go lie on the floor because she just can’t cope with all that intimacy.

love, but at arm’s-length.  unless she’s getting a treat.

it’s not like i have to leap up this morning because it’s only FIFTY SEVEN DEGREES right now, not necessary to go running because it’s a little bit chilly for that, which seems weird to even think about.

we might go for a bike ride, but no need to spring into action to do that yet.

tonight we’re having amy’s BIRTHDAY HOOPLA, but i have nothing to do for that because the very special surprise cake is finished.

are we definitely going to camp later in the month?  i mean, really?  we are borrowing garrick’s popup, but it will be colder then, plus what about when we’re in the shenandoah forest camping?  way way up there in the mountains?  COLD i say.

i will have to dig out many very warm clothes, including the two pairs of flannel-lined jeans that kevin bought for me last winter.

plus of course many pairs of warm and soft sweats.

hmm, maybe also a hat and mittens and a scarf and coat…

it could easily be in the 40’s at night.

we could bring along a little space heater, but the campgrounds in the shenandoah nat’l park, which look  fabulous and amazingly beautiful, have no electricity.

many many blankets.

a roaring camp fire.

and also, S’MORES!

life is perfect when i have s’mores.

winnie has jumped up on the couch and is looking at me.  he wants something.  he’s such a good kitty all day long, but  this morning around five there was a loud thumping in bed and i thought mollie was thumping her tail for some unknown reason.  it was winnie.  he was doing something bad to kevin, maybe beating on the top of his head.

he also threw up early in the morning,on the oriental rug, so i got up and cleaned it before mollie had a chance to eat it all up.

now winnie’s lying right next to me, purring,  an angel.   it’s funny, because morning grace is stern and no-nonsense and not a lot of fun; evening grace is happy and carefree and very mellow.  early morning winnie, though, is Devil Kitty.

i guess he’s not really the devil.  he’s just very determined and focused on GETTING THAT LAZY KEVIN OUT OF BED.  IT’S FIVE O’CLOCK ALREADY.  so i guess we’re really a lot alike, both of us very determined.

i hope your labor day weekend goes well.

ok then,

grace in the morning.

here are the photos i took of the LAST TOMB CEREMONY OF THE YEAR.  the sky was beautiful on tuesday night.

once again, kevin was in the back.  he claims he’s in the back because he’s so tall.

i kept trying to get a good shot of him, but he was continually covered up by somebody.  all you can see here is the top of his hand.

and don’t those two guys to the right of him look at least as tall as him, if not taller?  yes they are.

as they got ready to shoot, i couldn’t see him at all, not even his jacket sleeve.

there he is!  looking very very serious.

i was about to get a good picture, and as the shutter finally clicked, this guy walked through.  damb flag thing.

the sky got more and more pretty.

here they are at the end of the ceremony.

and this is the final picture of them for the year, unless i happen to be there when they’re doing some random thing between now and next summer.

the next night, the sky in the back yard was incredible.  when we walked out on the deck there was a pink cast to everything.

the smoke stacks were really cool.  they don’t even look real.  i love this picture.  kevin said they look two-dimensional, and i think he’s right.

the pink didn’t last long, though.  here it’s almost gone…

i wanted to get a picture of the sky from the deck but it was hard to see much of the sky because of all the trees.  we were about to race to the front yard to get another shot, but by then the pink was completely gone.

wednesday was AMY’S BIRTHDAY, by the way.  so if you happen to see her you can wish her a belated happy birthday, although she might not like that because she doesn’t like lots of attention focused on her and her special day.

right now i have to make her BIRTHDAY CAKE because we’re celebrating tomorrow night.  so if you do wish her a belated happy b’day, DON’T MENTION THE CAKE!

actually she told me that she was going to make her own cake but i put my foot down at that.

ok i must get busy now,

friday grace.

mom has this cute little spam truck.  she brought it over to show bev, and i’m not entirely sure why she didn’t want to give it to her.  maybe mom is going to enter something in the contest next year…

the spam was delicious, by the way.  dad had been eagerly awaiting the SPAM-TASTIC spam, and he did have two helpings, and didn’t even touch the lasagne that i’d made.  but then next day he said the tetrazzini “wasn’t as rich” as tetrazzini he’s had in the past.  he’s had the kind made with ultra-heavy cream and lots of super-high-fat cheese and maybe some lard thrown in.

here are two photos i forgot to include about the saturday photo shoot.  here, kevin and his friend rich are just hanging out.

and this is a close-up of him with his sign.

that is all for now.  more later.

ok then,

thursday grace.

ok, maybe i did have time for a (very short) nap saturday afternoon, but it was pretty busy nonetheless.

saturday morning kevin was going to lincoln’s home, where they were going to re-create a photo taken after lincoln was elected president.  i took lots of pictures, because it was all very scenic.

here are some of the people milling about.

abe!

a mixture of tourists and reenactors – the asian women there on the right wore bright red lipstick, very chic.

a very cute little boy in old-fashioned attired, and his mom is there in the background with a baby.

these costumed ladies were very fancy, and tourists were taking lots of pictures.

kevin got to hold the sign!  somebody had an identical sign in the early photo because kansas wanted to be part of the union.  kevin is here with other members of the 114th, all looking quite dapper in their fancy duds.  i’m used to seeing them in their blue uniforms.  i probably wouldn’t even recognize them in modern-day clothes.

this woman was quite fashionable with her little bitty parasol.  the two guys were both smoking long-stemmed pipes.  i don’t think they were from around here – supposedly there were people coming in from all over the place, different states even, but there wasn’t really a huge crowd.  but the people in attendance seemed a little more gussied up than reenactors i’ve seen around here.

i wish i’d taken a photo of this white-clad couple from the front.  in the original picture, there were lots of people dressed in white.

everybody was gathered together for the photo, finally…and the guy toting a big garbage bag walked through.

this is sort of the angle of the final photo, except that the guy shooting it was up in a cherry picker.  in the window on the lower left, a mary todd impersonator is sitting.

here’s the guy in charge striding across the street.  i like this picture because of his purposeful stride.  his name is dave wachtveitel, and he’s a park ranger at the lincoln home.  he might be in charge of the home, i’m not sure.

after the photo, the public was invited to join the reenactors for another picture.  i love the stance of that old guy in the bright yellow shirt down there on the right by kevin.   he looks like he’s really hustling to get a good spot.

the photographer in the cherry-picker.

kevin and me.  but ok, now here’s the thing – i got this woman standing in front of us to take our picture, but do you notice how everybody else is looking up?  THAT’S BECAUSE THE GUY IS TAKING THE PICTURE.  i never heard him say that he was going to take it, because i was very busy showing the woman how to use my camera and she had problems so i had to show her some more.

so, when the photo is published somewhere, all the people will be looking at the camera, except for us, who will be posing for this woman standing with her back to the camera.  oops.

i laughed at the woman in blue’s expression here.  i thought it was so funny that i had to show it to her.

as people were leaving, one woman opened her fabulous parasol.  damn, i really need to work on getting myself a nice dress for any dances that might come up, plus more photo opportunities.  plus i really need a cool parasol like this one.

i made the photo black and white, but i didn’t mess with it enough to make it look beaten-up and authentic.

sepia isn’t bad, but it looks much too crisp for an old-fashioned photo.

here’s the video i took of the event taking shape:

and that’s all the photo documentation i have of the weekend.  we went out on the boat every day, which was fantastic.  i want to go out on the boat and jump in the lake as much as possible because COLDER WEATHER IS LOOMING.  except that it’s supposed to be hot tomorrow.  but then we’re going to have a perfect labor day weekend, and i might just stay outside the entire time.

ok then,

monday grace.

as i was posting this on you tube, i noticed that there’s ALREADY a flag-lowering video out there! with six parts! the person who shot it shot lots more footage i did. they included the long section where somebody from the crowd walks up and down the line inspection everybody.

the most important thing to not about that video is that KEVIN ISN’T IN IT! that must have been when we were in scotland.

so here they all are:

but there’s never any writing from dad now that he lives a half-mile away.  but today, an e-mail!  so i’m including the whole thing here:

he’s a funny guy,my dad.  i love him.

ok then for real,

gh

last night we watched this odd thing called “dr. horrible’s sing-along blog.”  it was about 45 minutes long and starred neil patrick harris, and it was quirky and i just looked it up on wikipedia and it was made in 2008 so maybe you’ve already seen it.  you can see it online if you look it up.  the guy who did it, joss whedon, is a very successful hollywood writer and director and all of that.  you might recall a little show he did called “buffy the vampire slayer.”

as august winds down, i still have more photos plus a bunch of video.

here’s lovely erica at her birthday party. i think she looks better than anybody else who’s worn it in the birthday hat.  note that she got TWO birthday desserts, neither of them cake, which she’s not so crazy about.  one of the desserts is a peach crisp made with peaches from our tree…

…and the other is a tray of bev’s delicious AWARD-WINNING COOKIES!  you can kind of see in the photo above how nicely bev arranged them (she always does this, the fancy arranging of thing), but by the time i snapped a picture of the tray they had already been attacked by many COOKIE FIENDS.  mmmm, cookies.

last night was the next-to-last tomb ceremony, so you’d better get there next tuesday night at 7 o’clock if you don’t want to miss the very last one.  PLUS next week they’re serving punch and cookies after.  maybe punch and cake?

there haven’t been as many people in attendance this year.  even though the weather was perfect tuesday night, not so many people showed up.

across the way, though, i spied this fellow and he looked like he was wearing NO SHORTS AT ALL, just that shirt and those big black socks.  i told mom that he was probably wearing some pink high-heels, too.  in this bigger picture you can see the shorts, but if you squint he definitely looks pants-less, with just those big white shimmering thighs.

once again, kevin was IN THE BACK.  he says they almost always put him in the back because he’s tall, but that guy directly to the right of the flagpole, russ, is just as tall.  they need to put kevin up front more, that’s all i’m saying.

my, doesn’t he look somber?  except then they’re standing there at parade rest and if he finds me in the crowd he always breaks into a grin.  not so official but very cute.

here’s all the guys standing for their photo op at the end.  lots and lots of people take pictures then.

i also shot a bunch of video with my camera to capture most of the whole deal, but i don’t have time now for all that slow uploading and everything.  later, though, the EXCITING AND DRAMATIC CEREMONY will unfold before you.

unless youtube rejects the videos, which it does an annoying amount of time.

ok then,

thursday morning grace.

first, the butter cow.  why, i ask you, did kevin figure that this was a view of the cow that ANYONE WOULD EVER WANT TO SEE???

and my, the butter cow sculptor certainly worked on her backside cow details, didn’t she?

the cow was OK this year, but i think it’s been better before.  i think i mentioned that there appeared to be a big line around its neck, as if the neck had been severed and then re-attached.

besides examining and documenting bev’s MANY MANY AWARDS.  we saw other cool stuff in the hobby building.  when we first went in, there were some artful produce arrangements.

this makes me want to have a produce arrangement on our front porch.  dad always decorated the porch with many wreaths and pots of fake flowers and all kinds of fancy stuff, and right now we have lots of real plants that were desperate to be outside for the summer, plus a couple of dad’s wreaths.  hmm, i could steal a few ears of corn from the field where we run, but i don’t know where i’d get bunches of those stalks of wheat or whatever.

some PRIZE WINNING CORN.

lots of produce.

this is popcorn.  very pretty.  it would definitely look good on my porch.

mmm, grapes.  the thing about all this produce is, do they just judge it on appearance?  apparently so, because there were plates of peaches, five peaches per plate and the little marker said “peaches, five per plate.”  that means they didn’t eat any of the peaches to judge them, which seems slightly odd to me.  we had some beautiful peaches growing on our trees, but even some really rotten-looking ones were delicious.

but maybe looks are everything, as is the case in so much of life.

when we go running, on our way out to the field, we run past a fence with grapes growing on it.  i could have entered them because they were lovely.  i could have also entered our beautiful peaches.

i wish we’d gotten a better picture of this funny thing.  it was in the category “antique games” or something like that.  it’s a “dial typewriter.”  did people actually use this for typing?  and if so, why was it in the games category?  anyway, it was cool.

right next to it was this old monopoly game.

after over an hour in the hobby building, we moseyed over to the other end of the fairgrounds.  all the way across was the orr building, where i’d seen all the happy chickens on sunday.  kevin wanted to see them; he had some chickens at one point in his life, when he was living by himself out on a little farm.  he raised aracunas.

but alas, the chickens were all gone.  the huge, deliciously air-conditioned building looking empty, but then we spotted a couple of BUNNIES!  we saw jerry hicks, who for some reason was KING OF THE RABBITS this year.  he and his wife had to go around to the millions of cages and staple name cards to each one.  there don’t seem to be a lot of perks in being bunny king.

it was funny because there were only about four or five bunnies when we got there.  this one, a “junior doe,” was just so cute…

you can see another bunny way down the way.  clearly, this little bunny was lonely.

an older bunny.

jerry said that bunnies literally die of fright – if they’re cornered or get particularly scared by something, it can kill them.  for some reason, jerry has 300 bunnies.  did he tell me why he has so many?  does he live on a farm?  he doesn’t seem like the kind of fellow who lives on a farm, and i’m pretty sure he didn’t explain his huge huge bunny collection, except to say that his kids raised them for 4-H.  and then, clearly, they must have multiplied like, well…rabbits.  300 of ‘em.

it was getting hot outside, so we lingered a while, and jerry said they would be bringing in the bunnies all day.  and sure enough, a kid rolled in a big stack of bunny cages.

a multi-story bunny prison.

this was my #1 favorite bunny.  bachman.  he was quivering a little, and seemed like he really wanted to escape bunny jail.

bachman and his friend…turner, maybe?  were conspiring about how to bust out.

then we saw a guy who had unloaded a bunch of pure white bunnies onto a table, and they were hopping up and down.  “they just had a long ride,” he said, “They want to stretch their legs.”

unfortunately, i didn’t have my camera with the video capability to capture the funny sight of the bunnies boink boink boinking up and down the little green strip.  here, it looks like a couple of them are contemplating the very long jump to the ground, while the other one posed for me.

really really cute bunnies, running free.

this gives you an idea of the vast emptiness of the place.  it was much quieter since the chickens had flown the coop.

i think this picture is funny because the fanny pack around my waist makes it look like i’m leaning way back.

we didn’t stick around to see the many other cages being filled because there were more fair things to see.  we walked into the pig barn, and i have to say that i think more and more that i want to be a vegetarian, or at least i want to stop eating pork.  i don’t eat a lot of it, but it was just so sad to see the pigs all stretched out and panting in the heat.  kevin says that at least as smart as dogs, maybe smarter, so WHY did we decide it’s ok to eat them?

jerry said that rabbits are way down on the food chain, not bright at all (and obviously as scared as rabbits), but how did it happen that we started eating pigs instead of keeping them for pets?

we sat in the pork pavilion where they were serving pork chops on a stick (no, we didn’t have one), and i looked around at the many people stuffing the pork chops into their mouths who actually resembled pigs quite a bit.  there was a video playing – it showed happy baby pigs, pigs frolicking all around, happy happy pigs…and then a plates of ribs, ham, bacon.  they skipped the horrible slaughtering part.

i really need to become a vegetarian.

we wandered through the state fair museum, which desperately needs updating.  it was getting hotter and hotter, and we stopped to say hi to a state cop who kevin knows.  it was funny to watch the guy’s eyes at first, because when kevin called out to him there was no recognition at all, only his stern cop face, but then when he finally realized that this goateed guy was kevin, he broke into a happy grin. all cops?  they all want to retire ASAP.

we went into the illinois wine building, delightfully air-c0nditioned, and i got tickets for five wine samples.  i really wanted to like one of them enough to buy one, but they didn’t excite me.  maybe if i’d tried ones from more wineries…but then, of course, i’d never have made it back on the long walk out.  the last thing i got was a delicious cup of a wine slushee.  mmmm, cold and delicious, if just a little bit too sweet.  hmm, i think i should make wine slushees sometime very soon.

we went back outside and my slushee instantly melted.  we wanted to see a little bit of this act of about six kids, a family of bluegrass players, including their mom.  we stood there for about two minutes in the sweltering heat and decided we’d had enough.

i didn’t get to the fair as much as i have in years past, but it was very nice to go with kevin, who usually manages to avoid it like the plague.

all right then,

tuesday morning grace.

second place whole wheat bread.  the funny thing is, i think the night before she was going to bake the bread, she asked me if i had a good whole wheat bread recipe.  THE NIGHT BEFORE SHE WAS GOING TO BAKE.  she didn’t use my recipe, because it’s whole wheat herb cheese bread, much too complicated; hers needed to be plain whole wheat bread.  i don’t know where she found the recipe, and i continue to be amazed at the blase attitude she has about finding a recipe for her entries.  i plan everything so far in advance, and would never wait till the night before baking to look for a recipe.

clearly, her style works for her.

this is what the little winning cards look like.

here’s another red ribbon, for her pie crust.   i’ve never had one of bev’s pies.  i really don’t think she makes pies very much, if at all.  ditto for the whole wheat bread, come to think of it, unless she’s secretly baking this stuff.

this is the GRAND PRIZE SPAM-TASTIC TURKEY TETRAZZINI!!! mmm.  it didn’t look so appealing a couple of days after they put it on display.  i wonder what she’s going to do with her spam t-shirts and her many spam-related prizes.

the morning i was writing about her win, she called me.  she was concerned that i’d write BAD NEGATIVE THINGS about spam, and how much bev actually eats spam, and stuff like that – she’s afraid that the many many spam officials nationwide are all diligent readers of this blog, and when her SPAM-TASTIC TURKEY SPAM TETRAZZINI is entered in the super duper grand prize national competition, my disparaging remarks would heavily influence the judges’ opinions, and her hopes for a huge bag of cash, a jet, a trip to sunny spain, and the other many many other SPAM-TASTIC prizes would be dashed.

i would never write anything bad about bev.  maybe, in time, she will realize that.

i do my best to not write disparaging things about most people, except of course those who more than deserve it, namely, blago.

here are more and more of her award-winners.  her third place honey nut bars:

her second place cookies; i can’t remember what kind they are, except i know they’re cookies that have to be made with cake mix.  they’re some kind of chocolate.

her BLUE RIBBON cranberry nut bars.  mmmm.

when she came over for dinner the other night she said she’d bring some of her “reject” cookies.  i thought that maybe these would be the cookie recipes she made that didn’t win any awards – maybe turkey spam cookies, or perhaps spam fudge.

so i was delighted to find that these were just the slightly less-than-perfect cookies that were part of the award-winning batches.  she obviously didn’t need to enter the whole darn batch of cookies in each competition, so there were plenty left over.  she arranged the “rejects” on a birthday plate (it was erica’s birthday dinner), and they they all seemed quite perfect to me.  everybody loved them.

i think she branched out into different kinds of non-food collections a few years ago.  she won second prize for her music boxes.  i thought this was good since she only had two of them, an the other award-winners had at least three different boxes.

she won a prize for her bells, but we forgot to take a photo of them.  sorry, bev.  next time.

but here are her AWARD-WINNING TEACUPS.  they’re quite lovely, as you can see, but she didn’t understand, neither did kevin or me, why she won first place.  there were many other very nice collections of tea cups.  she said this is the third year she’s entered and she’s never won anything before.  i asked her if she entered the same ones every year and she looked aghast and said NO OF COURSE NOT.

she was definitely robbed in the holiday craft package-wrapping category.  yes, she got a third-place ribbon, but she should have won first place.  the wrapping is a piece of fabric, and as you can see, there’s a tape-measure ribbon and a pin cushion bow.  very clever and pretty.

i should have taken pictures of the BORING first and second place winners.  both were covered with regular old wrapping paper.  the 1st place on had a big fluffy bow with a couple of white twig-like things sticking out of it; they’re those things that you see on top of over-the-top christmas trees.  but YAWN, shiny blue paper, not creative at all.  the second place package was just as boring, with some dumb ornament attached to the bow.

yes, she was robbed, but i guess we won’t picket or write angry letters to the editor or stage a sit-in protest this year.  bev did quite well for herself despite the lousy picking of the award-winning gift box wrapping.

after all she is the SPAM-TASTIC SPAM QUEEN.

hmm, that’d be a great halloween costume…

bev promised that she’s going to make us some SPAM-TASTIC TURKEY TETRAZZINI very soon.  dad is waiting in breathless anticipation for that.

and hmm again, is she starting to make plans for her trip somewhere for the NATIONAL SPAM COOKOFF?  because really, i can’t think of anything much more exciting.

ok then,

grace all about the fair.