Herrs At The Lake Part 1

Betsy's family spent most of last week with us up at the lake. We did so many things while they were there, and I took so many pictures, that I decided to break the report up into multiple postings. So here is the first.

Naturally, Henry continued to hone his pinball skills. Since his Uncles Will and Rob also have pinball machines, he gets lots of practice. Because his eye/hand coordination is so much better than mine, he regularly beats me!

I delivered a step stool that I made for Clara to her at the beginning of their visit. She used it to climb into bed and to spend lots of minutes playing at the sink, allegedly brushing her teeth or washing her hands. We all thought she just liked being able to operate the faucets herself.

The grandkids wanted to take turns at the wheel when we went out for boat rides or fishing expeditions. Henry actually got pretty good at running the boat. If he doesn't look too happy here, it is only because both he and Clara are becoming increasingly tired of being asked to smile for the camera.

For three consecutive years or more, we have been trying to make sure that Pete had a good fishing experience while he was at the lake. Prior years have not been all that eventful, but this year, I think we succeeded. He and I had fun fishing for bass in the river one morning and caught quite a few, though we released them all. Then we had two consecutive evening outings when crappie were hitting. We anchored near a floating bog both times and fished right at the bog's edge. The first night, we were treated to a rather spectacular sunset. (That is the bog in the foreground.)

We caught a total of 18 the first night, including one nice walleye that Kathie caught. We could have easily kept more, but cleaning 18 fish late at night was enough work. Anyway, Pete seemed to have a great time, as did we. We caught and kept 11 the second night when Betsy and the grandkids were along with us.

This is what it is like fishing at the edge of the bog.

Here are the 18 fish in the live well of the boat after we got back in for the evening.

Also, Henry showed that he had not forgotten how to fish. He caught this bass off the end of our dock.

More tomorrow (or the next day).

Kathie's New Puppy

Today was Acquire Puppy Day. Kathie's chosen new puppy, a sable English Shepherd (Josey is a sable English Shepherd), attained the ripe old age of eight weeks recently and, so, was ready for its new owner. We drove to central Iowa today to pick him up. Named Redstone by his original owner, this little guy was the first-born of the litter and evidently won the hearts of lots of the prospective new owners who saw him. However, Kathie is the lucky one to have him.

Here is Redstone with his mother, who is named Keeva. Keeva is smaller than Josey, and so we hope Redstone (final name to be determined by Kathie) will not exceed about 45 pounds or so. However, "Red" is a soft, fluffy, chunky young boy, and so it will be interesting to see how fast he grows and how big he ends up being.

I like this shot of Redstone lounging in the grass, while Kathie talked with his original owner about the transfer.

In this one, he looks a little sad at the thought of leaving his comfortable first home, his mother, and his brothers and sisters.

Red took a few moments to say goodbye to Marcia, Keeva's owner and the one who arranged for Red to be brought into the world and who helped give him a delightful first eight weeks of life. I don't know what they said to each other, but I do know that there were a few tears on each side.

While Kathie and Marcia did the paperwork for the transfer, Red spent a little time chewing on Marcia's throw rug for one last time. Then he posed for me for this shot.

Along the way back to our home, we decided to stop briefly at Ledges State Park to stretch our legs and to give Red a chance to walk with us. When we first left his original home, he whimpered for awhile. I know it must have been hard for him to leave his family behind, and he must have wondered where they were. But he found lots of love in Kathie's arms and comfort in being in her lap, so he settled down pretty quickly. Here he is with his proud new owner. He did a good job of walking along with us on leash, although we had to carry him quite a bit. Of course, everyone else walking in the park found him as cute as could be, especially all the little children.

Josey found Red pretty interesting. Red initially found Josey pretty scary and sought shelter in Kathie's friendly presence. Our home has been puppyized for a few weeks of training. Right now, Red is crashed on the kitchen floor, after having a nice supper and a tour of the home and yard. He seems to be settling in nicely.

Extended Family Vacation

About two weeks ago, Jessica, Mike, Travis, Nicole, and Mike's parents, Ron and Jan, came for a visit. Travis had packed along his Wii video game. So even rainy days were action packed.

Mom wasn't terribly impressed with the game, or maybe it was just that she has been busy working on her latest needlepoint project.

One of our guests got in a little solo hot tubbing time.

Ron and Jan prepared an excellent breakfast for all of us.

Can you believe these two have been married for exactly one year?

Josey frequently hung out under the table looking for scraps.

One night, Kathie served up a bunch of the fish we had caught recently.

We played group Pictionary one evening. Here are Nicole and Jessica working on ... Can you guess?

There was an especially interesting turn by Jan, who left us with this signed drawing. (Use your imagination!) We don't usually keep the various drawings, but this one was just too good not to keep.

One day, we rented a pontoon boat so that we could all have an outing on the lake together. There were some fishing attempts, although it was quite cool and rainy that day.

Mike did land a whopper, though.

Ron and Jan, who have a pontoon boat at their cabin back in Maryland, were our navigators and pilots.

Travis and Jessica were being Travis and Jessica.

An even bigger whopper!

Everyone took turns cooking. I was supposed to cook one evening but had contracted a case of Lyme disease and was not up to the task. Nicole and Travis bailed me out and took over for me. Thanks guys!

Later that evening, Travis introduced everyone to the mystery of the Land O Lakes butter carton, which Nicole is displaying here. (If you don't know the mystery, we can show you sometime.)

We thoroughly enjoyed having everyone with us.

First Summer Weekend at the Lake

We are back at the lake for the first of our summer outings. Rob, Carrie and Eleanor were here for the Memorial Day weekend. Earlier, Kathie spotted a painted turtle moseying across our driveway. We thought Eleanor needed to see it, so we retained it in a big cardboard box overnight and then gave her a chance to see it when she arrived. We took it to the lake to be released, and unfortunately, this is the only shot I got of it. I needed to be quicker on the trigger. Maybe Carrie will post her picture of the turtle.

Here are Eleanor and her mom from their turtle watching post.

On Sunday morning, we went to a new favorite breakfast cafe. Eleanor likes to make things out of the little jelly or creamer packets.

But she doesn't like posing for pictures. Her Pop, as she calls him, always tells her to at least look at the camera and make a chipmunk face. She seems to have a good teacher.

The cafe had a bunch of old games for people to play if they want. Kathie spotted one called Stadium Checkers that she has always loved to play. So, she introduced Carrie to the game.

Meanwhile, Eleanor and her Pop continued to study the jelly packet structures.

I bribed our waitperson into taking this shot of all of us.

After a subsequent visit to our favorite local garden nursery, we took a boat ride. Rob grabbed my camera and took some shots along the way.

Eleanor wore Kathie's bandana and liked to say "babushka", which we told her was what such head covering could be called.

Our neighbors were out playing with their log rolling apparatus.

Later, Rob took Eleanor for a walk along the beach near a place we had stopped for a quick lunch.

I told Carrie that shots like the one below are really precious to me for reasons I expect you can see for yourselves.

Old, New

Here is the old--a Lexus IS250 that Kathie bought in about April of 2006.

Here is the new, which she picked up two days ago--a Lexus HS250h.

It is a hybrid and, so far, is living up to and exceeding the mpg claims. These claims are 35 mpg city and 34 mpg highway. On the way home from the dealership, she got more than 40 mpg. It has an ECO (ecology) mode that attempts to make extra use of the electric motor. This seems to work well on the highway. For more typical driving responsiveness and acceleration, you can put it in PWR mode instead, but so far, Kathie hasn't felt she needs to use that too much.

The IS250 was a nice sporty car, but this new one has more room for passengers in both the front and back--I especially like this. It came nicely equipped with a navigation system, a system comparable to OnStar (though Lexus has a different name for it), a nice audio system with XM capability, and a bunch of extra safety features, including lane keep assist (beeps at you and resists turns if you move too close to lane markers--it really works!), radar-assisted speed control (keeps you from getting too close to a vehicle you are following), and some collision protection features.

P.S. I like it because it matches my pickup in color.