Moving Out

Tonight is our last night in this old farm house. The movers come in the morning. (We just got that confirmed today! yikes) The bummer of a deal is that they won't deliver it till Tuesday so it will be homeless and home-cooked-food-less till then.... Eating out gets really old really fast! It sure doesn't seem like that when you are young. We will be driving over to Huron sometime on Saturday. Keep us in your prayers. I feel "all in", bushed, cause ennui, done in, exhausted, fatigued, growing tiresome, head achy, indifferent, jaded, kaput, lackluster, malaise, no more, overworked, pooped out, ready to settle, spent, tired, up-to-here, vexed, weary, (worn down, worn out), yawning and zonked. (Notice I used almost every letter of the alphabet :) I am not sure when we will be able to blog next so I will bid you adieu.

Frogs and Mangoes

These topics have nothing to do with each other, other than that I photographed both of them. :) These little guys keep hopping on our window to get cool because this is the window with a window air conditioner which naturally is wet on the outside and cool. I really liked how the pictures turned out! (Even though it is hard to take them with my broken camera now...)You may now be wondering what mangoes have to do with anything. Lately, Andrew and I have been having lots and lots of fruit smoothies. In fact, the other night our blender blew so now we have another blender. The smoothies have been turning out fantastic. I have been finding great deals lately on fruit. (Mangoes for .98 cents or less; blueberries for 1.00 a box) Anyhow, mangoes are challenging to cut! I finally succeeded in cutting one almost perfectly and so I had to share. It is kinda photogenic if you like still art involving fruit :)

Tornado Aftermath

We were invited over to dinner by some elderly women from the church on Monday night. These ladies used to be our back door neighbors. We found out that they did not have a basement and that they were all looking out their windows. (yikes)They shared some of their photos with us of the tornado that came through/over their apartments. I decided to post them since J & A weren't able to see the previously posted video and they have been to our house before. The first photo is from the weather channel about Spicer's tornado.

This was our old back yard.This was our next door neighbor's backyard. They lost at least 6 large trees in their yard alone. (Notice the one on the right in the foreground that is almost touching the ground now.)Here is a closeup of the tree behind their other fallen tree. This one was ripped straight out of the ground.This was another tree lost by our next door neighbor. They also lost their skateboard ramp but have already rebuilt it. (you can see the frame here that was left)This is the gas station behind our house, next to the grocery store that was also damaged. Another random thing the tornado did was pick up a port-o-potty from the ball field across the highway and deposited it in the parking lot of the grocery store. This is the front yard of the elderly church ladies apartments. They are trying to save the tree on the left. They have it tied to keep from going over all the way.

Due to the recent tornado I decided to look in to how many others have come through anytime recently. On June 11, 2001, our county got 4 tornadoes! (1 in Willmar, 1 in Sunberg, 1 in New London, and 1 in Spicer). On July 11, 2008, this F-3 hit right outside Willmar. Now that is a scary looking tornado! (Can you imagine an F-5?)

This latest tornado was on July 14, 2009.

Cleaning Corelle

I really wanted to clean up my Corelle dishes in preparation for our move. There were a few silverware marks on them and when they were washed they sometimes got a strange black stain on them. I know several of you reading this have Corelle yourselves and so I decided to research how to make them look new again. It is SO simple: take your dish, wet a rag, sprinkle the rag with baking soda, scrub dish with rag. It really was that easy! My dishes are sparkling clean now. Since so many of us like to find extra dishes for our sets at Goodwill,I thought this would come in handy. I know several times I almost bought a dish there and then decided it was a little to marked up or stained. If for some reason your Corelle is super stained, you can soak them in a mix of 3 Tbsp. vinegar to a cup of hot water but I didn't need to use anything but the baking soda.

P.S. I decided to try using B.S. to clean a few other things that had been bugging me. Most of our mugs were getting horribly coffee/tea stained to the point that I was not wanting to get them out for guests. Problem solved. Clean as new. Then I decided to clean our little stainless steel sink because the water here stained it and I wanted to leave it nice when we move. (Not to mention it was really bugging me!)

Before:

After:

Spicer Made National News

Yesterday:


We were getting ready to head back to Spicer from S.D. when we heard the news. It did not touch our farm house. It did however hit our local grocery store, as well as the neighborhood where we lived 5 months ago.

C.A. Trip Part 3

The next morning we woke up and headed up the coast on Highway 1. We were headed toward Grandpa Balsley's house but stopped a lot along the way to see the sights. While I was taking photos I was charged by this:The sign said not to feed the animals... we didn't.... but it seemed like this little guy was going to take some food by force!

Andrew and I decided to take a self portrait with the flowering shrub.Here is a shot of the highway along the coast. Do you see it? It is quite the road cut right in to the mountain.
These Monterrey Cypress make nice photos.We stopped off as a place where we found some tide pools. This is where my camera got wet (along with Andrew and I) and now doesn't work right... This was the last picture taken before it got wet.
We also stopped off at this beach full of Elephant Seals. They seem to fight a lot using their noses. That is attractive..This is McWay Falls and beach in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. (The falls are hard to see here but it is the white line down the black rocks that hits the beach.) The only way to get there is by kayak (as you can see by the kayak and two people on the beach) but you are really not supposed to be on the beach so that it can be preserved. More to come on the next post :)

C.A. Trip Part 2

After our visit to Hearst Castle, we ventured over to Morro Bay. This was a planned overnight stop by my parents and we just so happened to know our friend Bradlee from college who had moved to Morro Bay. This is my great Aunt Bea, then mom, dad, Brad and Andrew.Andrew and Bradlee The family, Andrew, Bradlee and I went out to eat and then we went for a walk on the beach. Andrew found some seaweed to whip around.

This is Morro Rock. Apparently it is illegal to climb this but once a year the city allows some native americans to climb it for some reason. Morro Bay at sunset. This is the quintessential California in one picture: Surfer at Sunset.Morro Bay at dusk was so pretty. It is a much different place than the heavily populated cities like L.A. and San Jose. You can actually still feel the laid back atmosphere here in Morro Bay.

More photos to come. I am sick today and don't feel like posting any more now.

C.A. Trip Part 1

Andrew and I spent a nice week in California with my family. We flew in last Tuesday morning. We had to wait for Dad to get off work so mom took us to the local farmer's market. It is a little more established that most farmer's markers. It had it's own clock tower. Of course I found a strange statue to stand by in Farmer's Market. We then went across the street to an outdoor shopping complex with some nice fountains. This little kid fit right in with the statue fountain. After Farmer's Market and the shopping square tour, we picked up Dad and stopped at a local park and then returned home. This is mom standing next to the plant that the Crandall Family (particularly Jan & Alan) gave to my family when my grandmother passed. The next day we began our 2 day journey to Monterrey. We drove a half day and then stopped at Hearst Castle for a tour. This church looking structure was the main house. The Hearst view of the coastline. Here are some of the gardens on the Hearst property.The Hearst outdoor pool........and indoor pool. (you can click on this one to see a larger image and see all the detail!) The interesting thing about the indoor pool is that there are stars in the floor of the pool and fish on the ceiling. After the Hearst Castle tour we headed to Morro Bay where we stayed for the night. More on that tomorrow.