The Big Bash Was a Big Success!

The picture on the left shows our relatives gathering for the Watermelon Day parade in Stanhope on Saturday morning. It's not quite everybody, but it shows Claire (sitting on the curb) and my Uncle Charlie (sitting in the chair behind the green chair at left), because they didn't get to the Cubs game on Friday evening. (Samantha seems to be missing from this picture, too.)

The other picture IS the PERFECT Iowa Cubs game we all attended Friday evening. (The tall Titlest=hat in the front doesn't belong to us.) That's Joe Markey with his dad, Bob, in Cubs' jerseys in the front row of our group (far left in the picture). We had four rows with 8 seats in them, but didn't fill every one.

The weather had been 'threatening' for most of the day, but we headed out anyway, and it turned into a fabulous evening, the the Iowa Cubs victorious (over Nashville) and the fireworks afterward were fantastic!

Flooded field on 6/8, and today, dry and colorful!

Just a quick post to say the party preparations are going really well, with the pork loins and turkey breasts smoking in the garage (which give off heavenly smells throughout the house--yum) and a few odds and ends to finish before the fun starts
here on Thursday evening.

Kudos to my daughter, Samantha, (who's big 21st birthday is this Friday) who will be joining the ranks of the full-time workers in a couple of weeks in the Financial Aid Office at Grand View College (where she has worked a work-study job for three school years). She will continue to take classes and graduate a smidge later than originally scheduled, but tuition will be FREE!!!!!

Alex, on the other hand, will graduate next April with two degrees (well, he'd better, or I think his dad may do serious damage to him if he doesn't graduate by then), the original BSRN, and Psychology.

Friday's edition of rain and outside kitties

Iowa is known as an 'agricultural' state (which would not surprise anyone I know, and probably not anyone in this country!), but I get a kick out of 'wind farms'. There is a 'wind farm' northeast of our house about 15 miles (as the crow flies, driving it might be a little farther).
At night, the tops of the windmills flash a red light (for the planes?) and most of the flashes are synchronized to flash all at one time, but there's a bunch of them that aren't flashing at the same time as the others now, so it's interesting. I can see them from the north side of our house on a clear night.

The 8-second video is from Wednesday afternoon after I got my front brakes replaced in Webster City. Just as I headed to my car the skies opened and an hour or so of torrential rain and wind ensued. I went as far as the next parking lot and sat for more than 50 minutes. I finally called (son) Alex and asked if he could look at the weather radar and find out if I was ever going to be able to see to drive!

The picture on the right is Mrs. 8:30 being the good momma she has shown us to be by cuddling one of the babies. (It was fairly early in the morning and it was an 'ahhhh' moment.)