Thanksgiving 2015 - Post #1 - Bushmans

It is Thanksgiving time for us Americans. Growing up, this only meant that we were either likely to have a bunch of people over to our house, or we would be traveling to somebody's house that had agreed to host a bunch of people.  

And I would eat until I couldn't see straight...

Last weekend, due to work schedules and such, we traveled to Crystal Lake, IA the morning after the years first snow, to have Thanksgiving dinner #1.

It was a fantastic spread as usual and just to keep with the traditions of growing up, I ate about four days of food in 1.5 days.

This is the larger American boy after applying butter to his dinner roll for himself.  Grandpa and I were watching him as he diligently covered every side with enough butter for 3 rolls, until Grandpa finally asked, "Robby, what are doing?".  The lad replied, with a smile much like the one in the photo, "Taking after my Grandpa!".   Indeed...

The Fisher Price train set that the both boys have put many many miles on!  Caleb's turn this weekend.  The addition of the xylophone car was his idea.

Once we made it back home safely, I looked at the weather for the week and convinced the boys that they should probably go out sledding with their buddies from across the road since they wouldn't be able to on Monday night and the snow would likely be gone by Tuesday night.  And so they did.

One of the critters on the snow board.

Caleb on their little snowmobile sled.

And in another hour from the time I sit here typing this, I will be engaging in Thanksgiving #2 with the Schmitz Family.  

I promise to keep my lifelong tradition alive.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

Halloween 2015

A little late, but hey, that's the story of my life! 

We didn't even get pumpkin's this year much less have time to carve the silly gourds...

So Halloween night rolled around on us in a fairly quick fashion and we were left shadow boxing for events.

We ended up having a great time at my sister's church in Bondurant with dinner and games prior to heading out into her neighborhood for proper trick n' treating before heading over to my mom's retirement village for our night cap.

Dinner #1.  My nephews, Sam and Jonah.

Dinner #2.  Calebber.  My niece Zoe, and nephew Sam.

At my sister's house with all five varmints.

Missing Zoe, but at this point, you take a picture with as many as you can happen to capture!  That's my mom in Halloween orange, with Caleb, Jonah, Robby and Sam.

And thus, we wrap up another Halloween season!

Vacation 2015, #3 - Seattle Ferry Ride to Poulsbo

So here we are in the third vacation post... yes, the third, even though it happened nearly a half a year ago. 

This time we're on the ferry in Seattle getting ready to cross the Puget Sound heading to Poulsbo WA. to see Aunt Kay and Uncle Sam.

Thinking back, this boat ride may have been the set-up for the down-fall of our next boat ride on vacation...  which will be covered a few posts from now.

This is shortly after "lift-off" and while nobody is sick yet.

A little further out from shore...  I'm snapping pictures like a wild man so that the coast guard and other investigative resources can immediately identify where our boat went down and henceforth, where to find the bodies...   In case you didn't know this about me, I'm a "land-lubber" and proud of it.  Even more so after we got home and I learned of the term liquefaction.  Do yourself a little search on that.

A similar shot to the above but zoomed in on the space needle which will be featured in another post very soon.

I'm from Iowa.  I don't know what boats like that are for, but I can assume that it is a cruise ship.  You know, one of those where you catch botulism and dysentery after a few days at sea.  :-)

I'm often captivated by the waves that boats leave behind and truly how quickly they're swallowed up by the power of the water.  Just another little sign on Earth letting us know how small we are in the overall scope of the universe.  Humbling, but sort of peaceful as well knowing that our God who created this has it all well in hand.

Speaking of creations, here are two of my absolute favorites!  This was at the very front of the ferry where the cars will eventually exit once we get to that shoreline way off in the distance.

Shame on us, but we took no pictures while we were at Kay and Sam's house.  Why?  We weren't there long enough to realize it and were having too good of a time visiting and going outside with the boys to feed tiny worms to the plants that Uncle Sam is currently nurturing thru a drought.

And so it was...

Next up, the space needle, underground tour and Pike street market.  Stay tuned...

Ridiculousness...

Our boys...  they go to the neighbors house on the mornings when Mom works overnights and Dad goes into work early.  They were both crazy excited about a week back because they were getting new "breakfast cups" at Mikey and Diane's house.  So what were these prized cups?  Well, they were NFL cups, the Browns for Robby and the Seahawks for Calebber.

Bob & Ted's Big Adventure

It was that time again... what time, you ask? Time to brew more beer! 

My friend Bob, who owns the equipment and the house that the equipment is in, and I have been trying to get together to brew again since it had been last January that we brewed together.  With kids' schedules, vacation, and those pesky things known as jobs, it took a while to accomplish that, obviously!

But alas, the time had come.  I had envisioned a rather simple recipe using Simcoe and Amarillo hops and Bob helped me refine that with his brewing knowledge.

Here we are.  That's Bob and the boys adding the grains into the mash tun.

Robby taking his turn stirring the grains making sure that everything is moistened and eventually covered with 170 degree water.

At this point in the process, we got to talking and drinking some of his previous "potions", playing football with the boys, and cooking a pizza amongst some other things that I've likely forgotten.  I bring this up because the photos skip to the next day here...

What can I say?

This is his new conical fermenting chamber.  That light colored stuff you see climbing the walls is the yeast doing it's magic.  When the boys and I left on Saturday afternoon, the yeast was in probably the bottom 3 - 4 inches of the conical.  It became that active in less than 24 hours!

This is the hydrometer reading. It measures the density of the liquid which more or less tells you how much sugars are left in it, aka, if it's done fermenting, or not.  I'm mostly unsure of how to read these yet, but my day is coming!

And there she sits in all her regal beauty after being racked into the secondary fermentation vessel.  She'll get a dry-hop addition and then loaded to the keg for carbonation.  I should be tasting it in about 7 more days!

Field Trip!

One of the pure joys in life is when you sit down to upload pictures from the camera and find stuff that you knew happened, but forgot about. In this instance, I remember when Mama took the boys on this field trip, but I don't recall ever looking at the pictures! 

So imagine my surprise when I uploaded photos and found these gems from the Botanical Center in downtown Des Moines, as well as the walking bridge across the river and the Victory Pogoda and Robert Ray Asian Gardens. .

I'll just let the pics speak for themselves since I wasn't there.