Seven in Twenty-Eleven!

Today is my sweet niece Riley's birthday! I can't believe that she is seven already. She is growing up so fast. She was such a cute, funny baby with her dark hair and bright eyes. I wish we could be there to celebrate with the family, but we know you'll have a fun party! Happy Birthday Riley!!

Randomness

Ever since Greg and I brought a box of my files out here from our last trip to Utah, it has been Tiger Lily's new favorite place to sit. It seems like it wouldn't be very comfortable, with all of the little tabs sticking up, but she loves it. Maybe the tabs rub her belly? Anyway, it is so cute how she sits there guarding my files. Who needs anti-virus when they have Lily to protect their files?

Not too much has been going on here lately--except that I get to see cool stuff at work. This is the regimental flag of the 10th Illinois Cavalry from the Civil War. Greg helped me take a picture of this very, very cool flag today for the Lincoln Home. They are doing an exhibit about Lincoln's neighbors who served in the Civil War, and three of the neighbors were in the 10th Illinois Cavalry (including the Lincolns' across-the-street neighbor who was the chaplain for the regiment). The Illinois State Military Museum has hundreds of Civil War flags--most of them are pretty tattered and worn. It is SO NEAT to see them and know that these flags were in the heat of every battle in the Civil War. It's amazing that any of them survived!

I think Greg especially enjoyed seeing the flags and some of the other artifacts that are stored at the Camp Lincoln military base. We have so much cool stuff! Here is Greg with a German officer's hat from WWII. So that's the latest from Illinois. We are grateful that our friends who live in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania all survived Hurricane Irene! And, we are also grateful to everyone who helped Mom and Dad move to their beautiful new home in American Fork! We just wish we could have been there to help. But we're glad that they are getting settled and can't wait to come see the new place.

RetroSpeak

For the past couple of weeks I have been working on something that I have wanted to do for a long time--make greeting cards! A few years back, I ordered some old photo albums on eBay for some projects I was working on, and some of the pictures were SO funny. That's when the idea to do the greeting cards was born. You can check out my new line of greeting cards, RetroSpeak Vintage Greetings, at www.etsy.com/shop/retrospeak. The card pictured at the left is one of my favorites. The picture is so funny and random. A sign on the cemetery gate in the picture says "Car Washing Not Allowed in Cemetery." So the caption on the front of the card says: "The car has been looking a little dirty . . ." and the inside caption reads: "It's your birthday--break all of the rules!" If the cards start selling, I'll probably add some more card styles (I have many more funny photos). Even if they don't sell, it's something I've wanted to do for a long time, so it's fun no matter what happens. Be sure to tell your friends!

Home Improvement

Since it has "cooled off" a bit outside (meaning it no longer feels like 100+ degrees), Greg and I decided to get some house projects done that we've been wanting to do for quite a while. In this "before" picture, you can see that things looked okay outside, but our shutters were getting really faded, and the dark wooden blinds that were in the windows when we bought the place made it kind of dark inside (and some of the blinds were broken). Also, our front porch light was looking pretty bad.

So, we went to town on the house, and now it looks GREAT! We painted the shutters and the door frame, and we installed a nice new front light. It's amazing what a coat of paint can do! Also, while I was in the State Fair Parade last week, Greg installed some nice new white plantation blinds which really brighten the look of the condo inside and out. Greg also put a new faucet on our kitchen sink, which looks very nice.


And, we installed a new light on our back porch. It is a really cool carriage-style light. It looks a lot better that the spotlight we had back there before. Now, if it would just rain here, maybe our dead grass would come back to life!






Though we have been busy working on things, we have also had time for a little fun. On Monday night we went to a Peoria Chiefs baseball game. It was neat because during the game they announced that Jim Thome, who plays for the Minnesota Twins but is from Peoria, had just hit his 600th home run--the place went wild! He's a hometown hero there in Peoria, so that was cool. Then, on Tuesday, we went to the flag-lowering ceremony at the Lincoln Tomb.

Every Tuesday night during the summer, the 114th Regiment, a regiment of Civil War re-enactors here in Springfield, lowers the flag at the Tomb. It is a really cool ceremony, and it was especially fun to see our friends Richard and Don from the museum participate in the event. It's been a busy but good week!

A Fairly Great Time

The Illinois State Fair has officially begun! Fair time is always exciting, but it was especially fun this year because I got to participate in last night's Twilight Parade, which officially kicked off the festivities. Here I am all geared up for the parade. As in the 4th of July parade, I once again got to ride in the Jeep with the really big cannon mounted on it. It's crazy that I get paid to do this kind of thing, right?

Here are all of the vehicles getting ready to leave for the parade. We made quite the procession driving through the city on our way to the parade route! We had about 25 volunteers and employees in the parade, either riding in the vehicles or walking alongside handing out candy to the kids.

Here's the view from the Jeep as we pulled into the fairgrounds. The entire parade route (about a mile long) which ended at the fairgrounds was absolutely PACKED with people--I couldn't believe it! It was a beautiful evening and a really fun experience. My favorite part was waving to the kids along the route--they were so cute. One little girl looked up at us and said, "I love the Army and I love candy!" The Jeeps did great until the very end of the parade when two of them died. Fortunately the Jeep I was in did not break down. The Humvee and one of the other trucks ended up having to tow the broken down vehicles back to the museum. At least they made it to the end of the parade!

Today at work I received some free passes to the fair, so Greg and I decided to go check things out there this evening. We only live about a mile from the fairgrounds, so we were able to just walk over. (Our proximity to the fairgrounds is good for walking there, but not so good for road closures and fireworks noise--they have fireworks every night--but I suppose it's all good fun.) Here is this year's butter cow! She wasn't quite finished, but we thought she looked pretty good anyway.

I found some delicious sweet potato fries! Yummmmmmy.










This year's "fad food" was fried Kool-Aid. It sounded so bizarre that we had to try some. So this is what fried Kool-Aid looks like. The closest thing I can compare it to is a cherry doughnut hole. It was quite tasty.




And here is Greg eating his fried Milky Way candy bar. He says that if heaven was a type of food, it would be a fried Milky Way. We also ate some yummy Jamaican chicken, but my favorite thing we had all evening was the watermelon lemonade--it was so delicious and refreshing.





We had a great time just walking around and seeing all of the animals and displays. It was a perfect evening at the fair.









And the walk home wasn't too bad either--since we got to enjoy this amazing sunset. I'd say the last couple of days have been fairly great.