Happy Halloween

Dan and Katlin's carvings for this year. Katlin's was supposed to be a cat but turned out looking more like a raccoon. Cute however.

Cider Making and Hay Ride

Our last hurrah of summer. Saturday we made fresh apple cider and had our annual hayride. In spite of the rainy forecast we managed to get every thing worked in and stayed mostly dry. Dan had some friends come up from Missouri who had never made cider. Here Ronnie is having his hand at turning the crank. Louie had already had his turn. Not as many apples this year. We made two years ago and had pickup loads. But the cider was very tasty.

Mike, Craig and Gary are working the press and Dan was helping Jeanine , Geri and Donnie strain and bottle it.

Not sure how much we ended up with, around 10-12 gallons I think. Never really counted. It sprinkled just a few drops when we were cleaning up before the hayride.

Making cider is hard work as Larry and Marley found out. They decided to have a short nap before the hayride.

We had two hay racks this year. Probably could have gotten every one on one rack but wasn't sure how many were coming. It was the shortest hayride in history. Up to the corner and back. I think Donnie, our weather man knew it was going to rain or he may have just been really hungry. Who knows.

We went down to the gully for the wiener roast. Here is Donnie helping Mary off the wagon. I was sure he was going to drop her!!! But she was safe and secure. We all had a few laughs. Notice the nice fire. Thanks Gary and Amie for being our fire starters.

Everyone got into the act roasting the hot dogs. Dan didn't have time to put a longer handle on his roaster and was getting pretty hot but Gary fixed him right up with and extension.

Here it is a long stick and a clamp of some kind. It worked really well. Thanks again Gary. Food was good and way to much as always. And for the first time in history the cup trick didn't work. . We packed up and headed back to the house for some picking and grinning. Just a few feet away from the house it really started to pepper down with rain. but no one got too wet as we scurried in to the basement.

Here we are warm and dry picking away. Sorry for the blurry picture. My camera dial got changed and it didn't turn out very good. But we had a good time playing. I gave out about 10 as I had worked the night before and not slept much in the morning. But I'm sure everyone had a really good time.

Fall Family Campout 2010

Our fall camp out had an Hawaiian theme this year. We started out Friday night with a Spam throw down. Spam being very big in Hawaii. We had escalloped potatoes and spam, several spam pizzas, spam enchiladas, hominy and spam, sweet potatoes and spam, pasta salad with spam, bacon wrapped spam with mustard sauce,
and spam won tons with duck sauce. Actually most of it was good. But then I like spam. Dan said if you couldn't taste the spam it was a winner. But actually Connie won the prize for the best dish by an unbiased group of voters (her family) She won a can of spam. Saturday we had our Hula lesson as you can see. I guess it was pretty funny.

This is a 4 generation picture of some of the Hula girls. Grandma Angie, Mama Kirby, Little Marley and Great Grandma Connie

We had a limbo contest, Connor John won that. We had our volcano lesson, as you can see the bright lava flowing down the side of the volcano.

Jeanine opened the coconuts for us with a drill, and we all tasted coconut milk. I could drink it if I were dying of thirst. One of the coconuts turned out to be a rotten coconut. Ugh!

We had a luau for supper Saturday night. We roasted a pig (aka pork roasts) in a pit. Dan had that honor. The other guys disappeared. He started about 1:30 and put some coals in the pit and covered it with some dirt and then put the meat in and covered it with more dirt and built a fire on top. He was just starting to dig it up here about 5:30.

This is what it looked like. kind of raw. New lesson learned must take a lot longer or have a much hotter fire. I think he was afraid it would burn if he got the fire too hot. He ended up finishing it on the grill. It was good once it got cooked.

We had music both nights and lots of laughs. The weather was good. Cool at night but nice in the day time. We are hoping for one more nice week end so we can do our hayride. Left Sunday afternoon about 2:00.

Fall Festival 2010

Fall Festival couldn't have been any better weather wise if we had ordered it ourselves. Nice warm days and cool clear nights. Connie and Dennis went on Tuesday and Dan and Jeanine brought their campers down on Wednesday evening. Connie had supper for all of us. Dan and Jeanine entertained us for a while with music then they both drove back as they had to work the rest of the week. Mary and Donnie came about noon on Thursday. After a quick lunch we went to Cantril to the Dutchman's store. Didn't buy much but both Connie and I got big beautiful mums for $3.50 each. Came back and played some games. Friday morning we went garage saleing in Keosauqua and while were were there Doris Jean called and said she was coming to spend the afternoon with us. We cooked a hot dog for lunch and then played games again.

Connie and I worked on our volcano for the Hawaiian week end coming up. Here it is drying in the sun. Looks better now that it is painted.

I think this is Bow I can't keep the two of them straight but I think she is the quiet one. We had awesome music both nights although different groups played each night. Friday night and Sunday morning Keota, a group from the Macon Mo area played with us and Saturday night Gary and Millie Vannoy and Ed Long (from Possum Trot) came and played

Donnie was star struck with Ed Long.

As always we had good food and way too much of it. We all kept remembering last year when it was so cold we couldn't get two feet from the fire without freezing.Everyone had winter coats and gloves. This year was much nicer. We almost got kicked out of the park. We were suppose to quit playing music at 10:30 but all our neighbors were standing around listening so they just kept playing. About 11:45 the park ranger came and shut us down. He came back Saturday night to make sure we knew that quiet time started at 10:30. Dan told him we would quit at 10:29. But actually we quit before that as the Vannoys and the Longs were driving back. Left about 1:00 Sunday afternoon and noone really wanted to go yet. Hope next year is as good.

Mr. & Mrs. Corey Hickenbottom

Charissa and Corey were married on October 9th 2010. Here they are cutting the cake. They had a small ceremony for just family and then had a reception. It was a beautiful day. They looked so happy together. The tables were decorated with vintage linens and at each place were handkerchiefs as favors.

Here they are with Gary and Amie.

Mr and Mrs. Hickenbottom are honeymooning in the Northeast for a couple of weeks.

Punkin Patch

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and we all met at Sass Family Farms near Riverside. This is part of their petting zoo. Some miniature goats. They also had a potbellied pig, a Shetland pony, some rabbits and geese and ducks and chickens. The goats were the only ones who actually allowed petting . So maybe they should just call it a little zoo?

We went on the hayride and the kids really enjoyed it. Kyann kept pointing at things. They had big round hay bales decorated as a spider and a pig. They had lots of cut outs of different things. A grave yard. On their pond they had the loch ness monster and a couple of fishermen who had stay out too long (they were skeletons)

They also had a few moving monsters. The "thing" in the middle of the picture was alive!

Kyann's favorite thing had to be the corn bin. It was like a big sand pile of corn kernels.

Katlin liked this too. She was almost buried alive!

Before Cindy's got there. Katlin and checked out the haunted barn and decided it was too scary for Kyann. It was a fun time. We bought a punkin for each of the girls and then went to Texas Roadhouse for supper.