July 2018 – Asbery's Echoes

Weekend Project

Saturday morning I ran across a post on Facebook shared by my niece giving instructions on making a DIY Umbrella Stand Planter. Usually I just scroll on past these type of things but this one caught my eye. I then showed it to Joe and next thing I know – we’re spending our weekend making one for our deck! Dad and Mom kept Drew for us for awhile on Saturday while we ran to get supplies and then out for supper at Joe’s favorite restaurant, Bubba-Q’s. It was a much needed “date” for us as we rarely spend time by ourselves.

By the time we got home from Dad and Mom’s after picking up Drew it was after 9:00 p.m. but we decided to go ahead and get started. We got the cement work done so the cement would be set for the next day. Then yesterday we finished the project. After it was finished and put in place, I told Joe I thought rather than use it as a planter it would be more practicle for us to turn it into a table and he jumped right on it! The next thing I knew this is what we had – a DIY Umbrella Stand Table. I love it! Now we can sit out on the deck, in the shade, and not worry about the birds leaving droppings all over us. We have a tree over our deck which works great for shade but the darn birds like to roost in the tree and they sure do leave a mess!

We have had such beautiful weather here the last couple of weeks and last Sunday was no exception. We invited Dad and Mom over for supper on the deck and then after they left we cleaned everyting up and we sat outside under our new umbrella table until dark. I sewed, Joe had his iPad and Drew kept coming and going doing his thing. We had a quiet, relaxing, productive weekend!

Now I have the perfect outside stitching spot!

And They’re Off To The Next Town

Drew made a welcome sign to welcome everyone!

I don’t know how they do it. They ride bicycles for miles, spend the evenings eating all different kinds of food and drink, party and play, pitch a tent in someone’s yard to sleep, then get up the next morning, get back on their bicycles and ride for miles to repeat the process. All the while being surrounded by thousands of people doing the same thing. Or they drive the sag wagons – those who take a different route away from the bicyclists but heading to the same destination to set up camp and have things ready for when the bikes start rolling in. For seven days straight. But those 20,000 plus people who do it every year love it!

These guys set their tent up back behind the shop – they might have had a racoon visitor camping back there!

The white bus was called Team Good Grief with a Snoopy theme.

This group is called Team Detour. They tend to take breaks and catch up later – they do things like go kayaking at Lake Rathbun for the day. Some teams are diehard, bike every mile, bike the extra loop everyday. But some aren’t quite so serious – they like to enjoy the great opportunities for fun the state of Iowa has to offer. Some are very serious, some not so much but they all bond and have fun and enjoy their week!

I’m not sure how many people we actually had here. I didn’t get many pictures and no good pictures. We had two buses and I think five tents in our yard. The one group all slept in their bus while the others pitched tents and/or stayed in our camper. They ate supper, had some shaved ice, socialized, played bocce ball and ladder ball, had s’mores around the bonfire. We had beautiful weather, almost chilly by nightfall. It was all very low key and totally away from the crowds in town where they had food vendors and entertainment, concerts and I don’t know what all going on. It was great to spend some time with family. Joe’s sister didn’t ride this year but her daughter, son, and two of their kids did so she drove down and spent the night in the camper with them. We sat around the campfire until midnight and enjoyed each other’s company. And they were up and gone by 7:30 this morning. Some were gone a lot earlier than that. Off to Iowa City, their last stop before dipping their tires in the Mississippi River on Sunday before heading home.

RAGBRAI Is On It’s Way

A sculpture set up in town. Each community the bikers go through and spend the night at welcome the bikers with all kinds of fun things to see and do.

This years’s RAGBRAI – The Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, started on Sunday. There are 20,000 plus riders from all over the United States and the world riding across Iowa from east to west. Add in the support teams that travel with them and you double the amount of people involved. They take a different route every year and this year they will be spending the night in our little community of 2,000 people on Thursday. There will be all kinds of entertainment in town along with food vendors and beer tents. And people. So many people! Needless to say I will not be going anywhere near Sigourney on Thursday! Eric has to work 9:00 to 4:00 at Casey’s and he’s not looking forward to it. The bikers will ride right past Casey’s when they roll into town and they will be hit hard!

Even though we won’t be going anywhere near town, we are hosting two different teams of bikers. Our nephew and niece (brother and sister) and their team and a team Joe knows from work. It looks like 20 some people will be setting up camp in our yard. We plan to feed them supper so I will spend today getting ready for tomorrow! I can’t even imagine spending a week on a bike cycling across the state of Iowa but so many people love it. It really is something to see.

Favorite Flowers

I think zinnias are my new favorite summer flower. They come in so many different colors and they just keep blooming and blooming. Some are tall, others are perfect for borders. The more you cut them the more they bloom so you get beautiful bouquets for the house that last for days and yet they keep blooming outside. And they’ll keep blooming into fall. I’m loving them this year!

Family Fun

The annual Houseal Fish Fry was this Sunday. As usual it was a day of fun! Lots of food, yummy fried fish, swimming, fishing and catching up. Thank you Uncle Terry and Aunt Judy for hosting everyone every year! We all took pictures so lots to share!

Fair Time

Friday afternoon – let’s run into the Expo and walk through the barn. It won’t take long and then we can come home and have supper and piddle around here. Well, that turned into walking through the barn, checking out the tractors, walking through the barn again with Jeremy and Abby and the grandkids, then watching the Mutton Bustin (the boys refused to do it this year!), taking the kids to the bouncy houses, then staying for part of the concert. It was after 10:00 when we got home. It acutally got chold but we had a great time and Drew LOVED the concert. Only in a small town can you let a seven year old stand front row at a concert. And he was so excited – they gave him a guitar pick!

Scary Day

Joe sent me this picture today. He took it after he left Vermeer, the manufacturing plant in Pella where he spends the majority of his days as they are an account of his for work. He was actually home when he sent the picture to me and I got it as he was walking in the door. We had no idea until his sister called to see if he was okay that a tornado had actually hit Vermeer. We were watching the weather here as there were storm warnings out for our area. She had seen that Vermeer had been hit on the news.

Joe said his car was parked directly to left of what is left of this building.

I do belive God was watching over everyone at Vermeer when this hit. There were seven people injured and sent to the hospital and they were all released by evening. There were a handful of people treated on site and released. There were no fatalities. It was Customer Appreciation Day which means there were over 400 extra people, dealers and customers, from all over the world visiting and over 2,000 employees on site when the tornado hit and yet no one was severly injured. I’ve seen reports of people being thankful for Vermeer for preparing them all for a situation like this with drills that were practiced and designated places to go during a tornado. And stories just like Joe’s of people who just felt they needed to leave and go home before the tornado hit.

There are I think seven plants across the Vermeer Mile. These are just a handful of the multiple pictures flying around Facebook showing some of the damage. We are so very thankful – Joe worked for Vermeer at one time and as I said, he spends the majority of his time there for his work now and he has many dear friends who work there. I’m not always a fan of Facebook but today it was wonderful to be able to get on and see that our friends were okay. Some were there when it hit and others had already gone home.

Tornados also went through the towns of Marshalltown and Bondurant in our area of the state and left extensive damage. Our nice and nephew and their kids live in Bondurant and they were also lucky – houses were destroyed less than two blocks away from their house. Seth could see the tail of the tornado from his house. The damage a tornado can do is beyond comprehension. Vermeer is shut down until further notice. At least one of the seven plants was totally destoryed. Others suffered extensive damage. But the fact that all that were there walked away from this is a miracle. I know I said an extra prayer before I went to bed last night thanking God for keeping Joe, our extended family and everyone at Vermeer safe.

Spur of the Moment Adventure

We decided spur of the moment to take Drew on an adventure. I casually mentioned to Joe that we should take Drew to Columbus Junction to the swinging bridge. I didn’t think he would say yes as we have so much worget done around here but the next thing I know we’re in the car and headed to Columbus Junction. And then onto Muscatine and Wildcat Park, and then across the Mississippi River to Moline, Illinois so Joe could show us where one of his accounts is located. Then back through to Walcott and The World’s Largest Truck Stop, back through Coralville for supper at Popeye’s and finally home. (We discovered none of us care for Popeye’s!) What was going to be a relatively quick trip and then home ended up being an all day adventure! We had lots of fun, Drew really enjoyed the day and Joe said it was a much needed getaway. Sometimes you just need to take off for the day and have fun!

It had been years since I’d been on this bridge. It’s approximateliy eight stories high and it is impossible to walk across it without it swinging.

Drew was okay with it until the young girl in front of us started making the bridge really swing. Then he was not a fan!

On our way through Muscatine we ran into Santa Clause!

Wildcat Den State Park – we had been here before with Dad and Mom but we didnt venture down to the Grist Mill. What an amazing structure. We spent a little time exploring this building from top to bottom and all around outside!

I would have loved to have taken this home with me!

This guy loves exploring and he couldn’t wait to go up the stairs and down the stairs to see what he could find!

A view out of the second story windows at the back of the mill.

It is amazing what our forefathers were able to build without all the modern conveniences of today.

You cross this bridge to get to the water behind the bridge.

This little guy kept me company while I took pictures!

An old schoolhouse that sits up the hill from the mill. The doors were locked so we couldn’t get in.

Next we headed to the trails at Wildcat Den. The rock formations are amazing.

There was so many pretty wildflowers and ferns growing.

Another trail led to a quiet out of the way area of the creek.

And then onto Moline. This was the bridge we crossed to come back home to Iowa.

And our last stop – The World’s Largets Truck Stop.

And Drew finally got to see the inside of a semi. He thought the truck stop was the best part of the day. I thought the mill was the best and Joe enjoyed the hiking.

And Drew’s souvenir. A little wooden snake he bought at the truck stop! He plans to scare Grandma with it!

We had such a great day together. Drew started calling us the Three Muskateers! Spur of the moment was great but next time we’ll plan a little better. I’ll wear tennis shoes instead of flip flops (which aren’t good for climbing trails) and we’ll pack a lunch, drinks and snacks. We left home around 10:30 and got home around 7:30. It was such a beautiful evening – we fed and watered the chickens then sat out on the new deck and chatted about our day. It was nice to do something fun and then come home and enjoy the deck, something we had been working so hard on!

A Few Frugal Happenings

I try to work at being frugal as much as I can but I always forget to keep track. When I do keep track I usually find myself trying even harder or I realize some of the things we do that are frugal that I don’t think about. A few frugal things from the past few days –

We trimmed one of our trees instead of hiring it out. Trimming trees means lots of clean up work but it sure saves money to do it yourself if you can!
Lots of dead branches gone from our tree.
Mom gave me a bunch of green peppers from her garden. I chopped them all up and froze them. They will taste so good in casseroles and Sloppy Joe’s and such later.
We took advantage of Menard’s 11% off sale. You get a 11% rebate on all purchases, even those that are on sale! That’s when we bought our decorative fence supplies.
Drew found fish sticks on sale at the local grocery store – he loves fish sticks! I hate to buy them at regular price as they are so expensive. I then made some homemade tartar sauce to go with them. It tastes so much better than what you can buy in the store and I can make just the amount we will eat!
I was wanting a star to hang on the chicken coop but wasn’t really wanting to buy one. Then I had a “duh” moment – I used twigs off the branches we trimmed off the tree and made my own primitive star using twigs and twine. Perfect! I just might have to make a couple more!
We built our privacy fence ourselves. I can’t imagine what labor costs would be. Joe always does these things himself so we’ve never had to pay for labor. Between what his dad taught him and what he learned working construction for a local company years ago he can pretty much do anything except electrical. That he won’t tackle.
When I want fresh flowers in the house I go outside and pick what I want. This year I planted a lot of zinnias from seed. They come in so many colors and are so easy to grow and the more you cut them the more they bloom!
Beautiful bright cheery colors!
Joe’s been drinking lots of sun tea. So easy to make and so frugal.
We had a friend drop off some homegrown sweetcorn. That along with some fresh green beans from Mom’s garden made for a yummy supper alongside hamburgers from the freezer.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. I’m slowly working on building up my pantry. I put it on hold while we’ve been busy working outside and I thought this week was going to be really busy but plans have changed. (I’m very thankful!) Next week is Ragbrai – The Register’s Great Ride Across Iowa – and we will be having 20 plus people camping out in our yard Thursday night. There will be an extra 20,000 plus people in our little town of 2,000. Needless to say I will not be going to town on Thursday. But more about that later. For now I can relax the rest of this week and keep being frugal!

Toad Time

No Drew was not licking this little guy – he just wanted to stick his tongue out for some reason!

I’ve always loved toads. I remember having a pet toad when I was little when we still lived in town. It lived in our sandbox. My boys always wanted to scare me with all the creepy crawlies they would find but along with toads, I’m not too squeamish with anything creepy crawly. I looked at that as a positive but they were always disappointed that I didn’t scream and run away! Drew loves to catch frogs and toads and anything else he can get his hands on. Right now the crickets are out and he’s having a great time catching them. I’m thankful he’s finally outgrowing wanting to keep all his finds as pets and putting them in jars and trying to bring them inside but he still has to show me all of his finds. He’s getting more and more willing to catch and release – which is good for the house and for the little critters!