Randomness...

Nothing to say tonight other than I'm tired and looking forward to the weekend..

I'm not finished with vacation blog posts yet and then I have stuff like some Adventureland pics, a second vaca that we took on a long weekend to Apple Creek Wisconsin, and other stuff that I'm simply forgetting about.

On to some random pics from the Good Woman's phone.

Happy boy! He discovered a new container of tomatoes!!

A wonderful Caprese pizza that I made at my sister's house one night.  It's blurry, but it's crust, olive oil with finely chopped garlic as the sauce.  Red and yellow cherry/grape tomatoes.  Fresh basil and fresh mozzarella with pink sea salt and rainbow pepper on top.  The darker looking stuff is a balsamic vinegar reduction drizzled across the top, because I'm fancy that way!

This was a fun night at my cousins house.  The boys had a blast playing together until the tornado sirens roared and we drove home to beat the storm.

An oldie but a goodie.  The picture, not Molly!   Zing!!!

Nobody, but nobody can make faces like this boy! 

The Mobile Chaos Unit

Pictures taken on September 26th, 2014.

Pictures taken on September 6th, 2009.  Two years and two months before welcoming Caleb into our family.

Kinda makes you wonder...

This photo kinda makes you wonder what they've been up too, or possibly, what they've just planned!

Crazy Hair / Sock Day

The week prior to having school pictures taken, they schedule crazy hair / crazy sock day.  So Robby is on us like a bitin' sow for dying his hair some crazy color(s). 

Not gonna happen...

My sister Doris has some wigs from past Halloween costumes and lends them to the cause. Rob is HOT at first but eventually comes around.

Good thing too, because his teacher determined he was too much of a distraction and made him put the wig away for the day. That would have been tough to do with dyed hair!!

Calebber with the red wig, green swimming trunks and a nice orange pull-over with un-matching socks.  He told me he got called a girl a few times.  I like teaching moments like that.

Robby with his "throw-back" Steven Jackson jersey, blue, pink and white shorts, with a pink and yellow sock.  Oh, and the wig.  Awesome!

The lads together prior to their unveiling.

Vacation Post 10 - Devils Tower

One of the stranger things to see in the "Black Hills" area...  Devils Tower.  This was my second time up close to it, but the first time where we actually hiked around the base of it. 

We don't have as many pictures as we'd have like to have had because of a perfect storm of camera/phone batteries dying.

Go figure.

Hiking around the base of this bad boy did provide a perspective that I didn't think possible. The awesome size of the monument is something to behold.  You would spot rock climbing folks 3/4 the way up with their rope hanging down and they weren't even ants!  Smaller than ants!

We stopped and had lunch down by the guard shack.  Did a little shopping (read: buying local micro brewed beers! Woooooooo!!!!) and the what not.  A good time for sure.

When I was going thru pictures tonight, Caleb came in to "check on me", and saw the pic on the computer, got excited and exclaimed, "I REMEMBER THAT!!".

As parents taking a family on vacation, THAT'S what we're looking for!

As we arrive near the park.  We'll be hiking this bad boy soon.

This is the boys on the trip, fat tummies from cold meat sammy's and doritos, feeling spry prior to our hike!

Not too far after we first got started.  Yes, we've had a break prior to getting this far.  The pictures refused to load in the order I wanted them in and I'm too tired to fight it, but you'll see a photo of silly young man later on which was taken during our break.

This was on the drive to Devils Tower.  We are goofy for cool rock outcroppings and take many pictures of the like.

And wildly out of order, a prairie dog!  Can't get enough of these lovable little critters!  There are large expanses of... well, prairie, where these little fellas and their fella-ettes are running wild and entertaining all of the goofy city folk.

Not sure exactly what this is/was, but it was on the drive into DT.  I would love to hear some stories that surround this piece of equipment and other old pieces like it.

A last cool shot as we were parting the area and heading into Montana for what would be a long, BIG SKY drive.  Eastern Montana?  Wow!  Pray you don't have car troubles!

After lunch on the patio by the gift shop/tourist trap, Caleb posed with his 12 shooter, recently aquired at the Corn Palace gift shop.

And not to be out done, Robby with his 12 shooter, and a different tin-can-cowboy.

Here's a dude who was about "1 hour" up the side of the tower.  He was taking a selfie.  I suppose if you're going to risk your life in regular jeans and t-shirt, you may as well get a good selfie for facebook while you're up there.  You never know if you'll make it down safely or not!

And so was our camera depleted trip around the tower.  Would I do it again as the boys get older?  Absolutely!

Vacation 2014 Post 9 - Badlands, SD

Having been here, I believe, four different times now, I enjoy the beauty of the place more every time.  I think this may be the first time that we actually got out and did a little hiking in the Badlands as well, so perhaps that helped.

Regardless, it was the first time for the boys as well as Aunt Molly and I think they were quite impressed by the strangeness of area.  It is quite similar to the Painted Desert down South, which Molly visited with us when Robby was only two years old, so we did stir some of those memories.

The Chinaman climbing and likely wondering why we put him in such places!

Bro's looking good together.

A family shot prior to Robby getting sick...

A family shot post Robby getting sick.  He looks a little thinner, don'cha think?

Aunt Molly and the Chinaman doing some "edge of the world" hiking.

What is truly amazing about this picture and the next one, is how LITTLE justice the picture does for the sheer beauty of where we were, and the drop just behind the humanoids.

Exhibit B...

Just to prove that the Badlands aren't all colorless crumbling stones.

Calebber never misses an opportunity to model a good hat!

Again, it just simply does not capture the true magnitude of what you see in person!

Vacation 2014 Post 8 - Crazy Horse

It was interesting to see this some 22 years after my bride and I first laid eyes upon it.  

To my memory, there wasn't all that much that had changed.  After going thru the gift shops and museums around the joint, we came to a series of photos documenting the progress of this monument.

The nearest photos were from 1991 and 1993, while we were there in 1992 on our honeymoon.  I thought I had snapped a photo of the changes, but alas, I did not.

The monument as it stands today.

A model of how the monument will look whenever they get it finished.  It is slow going as the family doing it will not accept government money for the project.

A couple of cute little varmints in front of a large tipi, painted by the late Lakota artist Paha Ska, is a central attraction in the INDIAN MUSEUM OF NORTH AMERICA®.  I didn't come up with that...  I had to look it up off of the fancy hi-tech world wide interwebs.

Aunt Molly and Robby off the beaten path checking out a "marker" of some kind.

My fine family!

Two wonderful creations!