We awoke Saturday morning to another beautiful day, after getting showered and dressed, Jennifer, Crystalie and I went to get a coffee at a nearby Starbucks. After that we headed over to the Field Museum of Chicago.

This picture below is an artist creation, located in another park close to the museum, these are cast iron pieces about 8 feet tall, no heads or arms, but half a torso, there were very rusty in appearance, and there was no pattern to how they were positioned. Anyhow kind of different but very noticeable.

We opted for the one feature ticket along with visiting many of the free area's to go into, the feature we wanted to see was on Whales! It was very cool but the area did not allow pictures. The one below of the elephants is a life size replica of two bull elephants in a battle. I took this for my daughter Raquel to see, she has an elephant collection.

 This T-Rex skeleton, was a promo to the T-Rex Sue, which was a featured event, and included a 3d movie  in their I-max theater. I took this one for my nephews Joshua and Jacob!
 Jennifer, pictured below, is in the main hall that separates all the exhibits, the huge suspended balloon is a whale in the background. I think Jennifer was checking out the elephants when this was taken.

We also toured the Gem collection, and Jade collection and we also toured the Field Museum's Botanical Hall, one of the most complete collections in the world. Needless to say the gardener in all of us found this pretty amazing, it had seeds, plants, and history on them, along with uses of the plants. After that I think we all were suffering form brain overload, and decided it was time to leave and get some lunch, and also get ready for the wedding that was scheduled for 4:30pm!

I would recommend a trip to this museum which has an emphasis on the world and the history of man, and the animals that inhabit this planet called Earth!

Some of this will go to Wooden Nichols, and the rest will be used or given to relatives, I know Jennifer and  Matias would love some of the tomatoes and peppers and zucchini, and a cabbage also.

Friday after some lunch, we opted to take a swim in the pool area of the hotel which was a greenhouse type structure on the 4th floor roof that was atop their meeting room portion of the hotel. The water was very warm, and you can see my daughter Raquel, and Livia a granddaughter and also Eric's head in the picture, Raquel's husband. It felt great and was a nice way to relax for a couple of hours.

Jennifer and Crystalie and I decided to go see the Bean in Millennium Park, north of our hotel about 10 blocks. It was set in a huge courtyard, and it stands about 25-30 feet tall, and is in the shape of a bean. It is a stainless steel sculpture, that is polished to a mirror like finish.


With the curved surfaces, all the images our distorted some, but it does give a very accurate reflection people were taking pictures from all sorts of angles around it and even under the center. Which you can see is tall enough for people to walk under it!

It was a pretty cool spot, and had lots of visitors, we found out form a cab driver later in the trip, that they actually move it inside for maintenance during the winter. Probably a through cleaning and polishing.
Our evening plan was attending the grooms diner, at a local bar restaurant called the Rockbottom Brewery and Grill. So needless to say we had to find a way to get there, and one of my brother Neal's friends, Kurt, talked to the concierge about getting a large limo to take us there, and in 10 minutes up pulled this long black limo. $5.00 a piece to go about 2 miles int he city traffic, we pile 14 of us in this limo and off we went.

We took some time early Friday Morning to do some sightseeing in the area close to the hotel. Below we saw this guy making bubbles in the park and of course he was asking for tips also, so we took a few pictures and some video.

Below is the Buckingham Fountain, located in the park across from our hotel, just across the road from the Chicago Harbor area of Lake Michigan The center spray only happens for about 5 minutes every hour on the hour, and at night this is all lit up.

We arrived in Union Station around 6:00pm but of course it took about 20 minutes to get outside. Below is the Station sign, which was located a little over 1 mile from our hotel.

Well,as I mentioned in my previous post, we took the Empire Builder to Chicago. Below are some pics of us at Staples, and in Minneapolis, we did have one of my Mom who was with also, but the only picture I have of her is at the Staples Depot, taking a nap while we waited for our train!


Crystalie and I above and my Dad Bill, and myself below.

Brother Bill, sent me a new picture of the pool, that was taken at night with the post lights lit up, and their house spotlights shining down on the pool at night. Looks pretty cool doesn't it...

Sounds like they are loving the new backyard, and pool area!

I posted this information on Facebook, but I know some of you aren't on my friends list so here is the link again...

http://www.kare11.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=1123621242001&odyssey=modtvideoarticle

Our son-in-law Matias, was on the Kare 11 news show on Monday of this last week, it is on their 11:00 am newshour.

Chef Matias prepared a beautiful meal all in a few minutes! It looked really great and he did very well. This Friday he is appearing on Fox 9 also promoting the event at Madden's!

Remember, when I took a picture of some of the flowers earlier this spring and pointed out fact that some chipmunk, had planted a few sunflower seeds in the pot of flowers?

Well anyhow they are blooming now, and look pretty cool all filled out. They only got about 3-4 feet tall, but the flowers look good!

Okay, I am sure some of you remember the new pumpkin patch area I fenced this spring. You can see it looked quite empty.


The gate was newly hung, and below you can see just the top edge of the gate!




You can see the pumpkins have even started to spread outside the fence, and from the shot below you can see they are climbing my fence walls. The top edge of the fence is sporting a row of mini-gourds all along it...


Below in these two pictures you see some of the volunteer pumpkins growing in the llama pen, yes we set some of the pumpkins from last year in the pen to see if Bucky and the llamas would chew up any of the leftovers. Well some of the seeds liked my manure piles, and are grwoing a bunch of pumpkins also.

Well this is looking at our first step on the left side of our front porch. and the next photo is of the right side second step area. We developed a few spongy spots on the steps so I tore off some of the old deck boards.

These are areas seem to stay wetter after rains due to the shade of the house and porch. The boards underneath for supports also sat in some sand, and that caused the boards to be wet all the time. I added some new supports and also some blocks to let the supports rest on.

We had a cloudy evening but towards sunset I was on my way home from R. and I noticed in my rearview mirror, the sunshine peaking underneath the clouds.

This looking towards the northwest just north of our driveway, looking over Bay Lake towards the Battle Point Shoreline!

Don't worry this isn't in my yard, it is just a look at what junk can look like, but in this pile there could be something special!

Yes, I said late summer, it seems the summer has been flying by. I know time marches on, one minute at a time but it just seems like it was early June!

Still doing a lot of the same things, like mowing grass weekly, at both places the farm and the store, weeding the gardens both the flower gardens and also the vegetable gardens.

We have been busy also with harvesting some vegetables, cucumbers and broccoli, some beans yet, and also picked one of our first tomatoes Tuesday night, i t was one of the heritiage tomatoes, more of an orangy red color, but it tasted great in our supper.

We will have lots of tomatoes soon, if things ripen properly and the sun keeps shining!

We also have some red cabbage that is almost ready.

I will get some pictures of all this stuff, as we begin picking in the next week or so!

Recently our mailbox was trashed by someone, or a group of someones. It was getting a little rusty anyhow, but they tore off our loon head and dented up the front of it significantly. So whenever it rained, the water ran right inside the box.

A little closer view below of the front edge.

Okay, I am going to vent a little here.

On July 17th we had a number of thunderstorms roll through our area and I thought we lost our NBC TV station programming due to some storm related damage.

Well about a week went by and I still could not get a signal for the NBC channel we had which was channel 14. So I began to do some checking to see if they had storm damage, or other issues.
I contacted the company who owns the tower that our NBC signal was transmitted from, and emailed them wondering what was going on!

I got a response the next day and it was bad news, Gannet Media decided not to renew the contract for transmitting their NBC signal off of the tower transmitter. Just a cost cutting move on their part. leaving us with out an off air signal for NBC programing in our area. Bummer.....

I have tried pulling the signal for the Duluth signal for NBC and late at night, I can get it sometimes. But during the day the solar disturbance of the suns rays make it impossible to get a signal during the day. Some of the programming we miss is one of our Fav's "America's Got Talent" "Sunday Night Football" "The Voice" , anyhow it seems I may have to see what kind of signal I can get this fall as the nights grow longer!

Maybe, just one of the good things about our long Minnesota winters!

Where does the time go, it seems like Friday hardly gets done and Sunday night is here!

We did have visitors last night, my brother Neal and his wife Claudia, came up to visit, they now live in St Cloud, so we can get together more often. We spent the night fixing supper, which were some nice steaks Neal bought and also some corn on the cob. We made a salad and had various treats including ice cream later in the evening. I almost forgot Kiki their schnoodle was with them and she enjoyed playing with Smarkle!

We spent time visiting about our busy lives, and the upcoming trip to Chicago to see their daughter Michelle get married. And all the plans to go with that, Claudia has been busy sewing, making alterations to the dresses. Things are going nicely and it will be our mini-vacation this summer as we are taking the Amtrak Train from Staples to Chicago.

We also played a game of Scrabble, which requires Neal and Claudia to be good sports has they are not as skilled as Crystalie and I are and they usually take a beating. But they are trying to learn the strategies involved in the game along learning their two letter words! Crystalie eeked out a victory over me, but it was one of the closer games we played!

After that a little TV and a good nights sleep. We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning and fresh coffee. I had to work at R and Crystalie was off to Wooden Nichols...Neal and Claudia went and checked out their camper and bummed around before heading back to St Cloud!

A short but very welcome visit, as we always have a lot of fun and enjoy each other's company!

Hi!

This handsome stick man was built by friends of Wooden Nichols, Jan and Art Marcy, who are also consignors. Art made this as a gift for Crystalie, but she also told him we would need him to make some more of these soon! To sell at Wooden Nichols.

So any name idea's for this guy?

Let's see who can get creative with a name...

Our lives at Coffee Lake Farm revolves around some of the many things we collect, Crystalie has numerous collections of things.

Coffee Tins, old scales, certain prints, various books, blue bottles, green bottles, stuffed llama toys, old wooden blocks that all kids had, tea cups, dishes with pine cones in their pattern, chickadee items, stain glass snowflakes, old buffalo china ( the kind used in old cafe's) and numerous other ones. I do collect some buffalo images and statues and other buffalo stuff, but her collections far outweigh mine, and it makes it easy for me to find gifts for her!

But maybe one of her more unique collections is little miniature outhouses and also her little picture book of outhouses.

So when ever we go somewhere or she does, and she sees an old outhouse she takes a picture or two of them and I then take the digital file to Walgreen's and print off a copy of it to put it in her little postcard size photo album,

So the two outhouses you see are new additions to her collection. These are both located on lots on Round Lake just to the NW of Wooden Nichols. She was touring Nancy Lehman's flower gardens and noticed her outhouse and her neighbors outhouse. So of course she snapped these two pictures for her collection.

Yes,with all the rain our grass is growing so fast. usually this time of year, we are drier and the yard is brown in many spots.

But not this year, I mowed Wooden Nichols tonight and a big part of my yard at Coffee Lake Farm. At wooden Nichols I even raked up some of the grass, because it was so thick int eh front yard.

It looks really nice and but mowing every week is getting old! Well, at least there is lots of grass in the pasture for the llamas, and Bucky!

What you see above is last night's supper, marinated chicken drumsticks, and zucchini slices with olive oil on them and grilled till tender. Broccoli, and some onions, and also some fresh peach halves, all grilled on the gas grill.

Needless to say it was delicious!

Well, the first day all summer I have been home with no work at R and no deck project to work on, just my own chore list...

I spent part of the day mowing doing the weeds in my llama pasture lots, cleaning them up and making them much nicer to look at.

Then I also sprayed some roundup to kill off weeds and such around hard to reach areas for the mower..something I do a couple of times a summer.

Then I went down to our garden and did some major weeding and also pruning back some of the spreading gourd vines...I also picked some more cucumbers and a couple of zucchini. There is more stuff to pick in a couple of days, like beans and some more cukes and
some zucchini.

We have lots of tomatoes setting on the vines now and the peppers are starting to grow it looks like there will be lots to pick in a couple of weeks.

After all this I even worked up the driveway and did some grading with my blade to move some dirt into the potholes, and also replace the dirt washing out from some of the rains. I also had to drag some of the rough spots out with the drag that I have for the driveway.

Along with getting some gas for the mower and also stopping by Colette's to see if she had any problems with the heavy rain yesterday. It looks like their will be some projects to do at her house later this fall!

So needless to say a busy day here at home but it felt good to work on some of my project list!

Saturday August 6th, we awoke to a beautiful morning with some sunshine. We enjoyed coffee out on the deck, with the dogs and a nice visit, and talking about some projects around the farm now that I completed the deck project.

Crystalie, got ready to go to work and I unloaded the load of scrap lumber from the trailer I hauled home from the deck project completion. I then got ready to leave for the anniversary party back in the cities.

I headed over to brother-in-law Mitchell's house to return his saw, the clouds had moved in and the rumbling started. Just as I left Mitchell's it began to rain. I drove out of it south of Mille Lacs Lake. But it was pouring very heavily when I went by Wooden Nichols on highway 169.

It turns out yesterday morning we got 3.25 inches of rain. The dock on our lake is half submerged under water! This is the most rainfall we have gotten in one day for quite sometime.

Everything is very lush and green this summer due to all the rain!

Happy 25th Anniversary to my brother Bill and his wife Kathy, they had a celebration party at their home yesterday in Prior Lake!

Yes this is the house where my deck project has been on going for the last 2 months, and I completed earlier this week. I attended the party on Saturday and got to enjoy the fruits of all of our labor, spending most of the day on the new pool deck, and taking a leisurely swim with friends and family.

It was a beautiful day and warm but not to hot, and a nice breeze at times. They had a great Bucca Pasta buffet with salads and of course later lots of desserts and cake!

The new deck and landscaping projects, were enjoyed by all who attended, which was of course a lot of family and friends and neighbors of theirs.

So Happy Anniversary to Bill and Kathy!

Well, I spent the last day on the deck project today! We have it finished, and I took a little video of the project once it was done and things were picked up and all the tools were put away.

Here is the video link to the complete project!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5dNDf1YqoU&feature=player_embedded

It is hard to judge the size of this but the video helps, the pool is 27 feet across, and the deck area when you first walk up is a section that is 14 ft long by 8 ft wide, and it fans out all the way around the pool. With the narrowest deck surface only being about 4 ft wide, and there are 7 steps up to the deck surface. It sits along the entire pool edge which is about 50 inches off from the ground.

I have to thank, Bill and Kathy for allowing me to do it for them, and also all the friends of theirs who pitched in when they could through the process, and also thanks to my brother Neal for also helping out for a few of the 7 1/2 days it took.

We came in under the projected budget and with a minimal amount of waste, which I removed for them, as we have wood burning stoves for the small scraps, and also other fix it projects for some of the larger pieces left!

Also thanks to my wife, Crystalie for putting up with me being gone, and taking care of things here at home..love ya dear!