5:20am CST

To the east…

and to the west….

Have a wonderful day! 
Today is my Friday – YEA!

Word-less Wednesday

A few more flood pictures

We went for a drive this afternoon to take a look at the flooding.  Yeah, we’re nosy that way.  We were also trying to find an alternate route for me to go to work in the morning so I don’t have to wait in line to drive one at a time through the water standing on the highway(See earlier post).  We encountered many roads that were closed so I would either need to go 8 – 9 miles west or 8 – 9 miles out of my way to the east so it looks like tomorrow morning I’ll be waiting in line.

Below are a few more flood pictures.  For most of you, the road names will mean nothing but for the locals who read my blog it will help them place where the pictures were taken.

Double curves on Bolton Road southwest of Freeport
 

Most of the corn is over 7 feet tall right now, so you’re looking at approximately 6 ft of water in the field.

East side of Bolton Road double curves.

Loran Road 

The bridge on Carter Road behind Lake Carroll.  The creek here is usually 8 foot wide and nowhere near as deep as it is now.

Most places you could see where the water has already started to recede.

Never in my memory….

Never in my memory do I remember getting 15” of rain in 36 hours. This “little” creek is usually about 5’ wide and maybe 1 ‘ deep at best. 

Above is from Yellow Creek near Freeport, about ten miles north of where we live.  During spring rains this house may get some ponding but not quite like this.  I’ll bet they have water in their basement as many do.  Our son had a few inches and DH’s sister had 3 feet!
Alot of main and secondary roads are closed due to either water on the road or parts of the road being completely washed away.
Below, in my almost 50 years, I have never seen.  This too is Yellow Creek and I have never seen water across Illinois Rte. 26 such as this
or like this.  The water has encroached slightly before but never flooded the buildings and parking lot that I can remember. Logan’s is a popular area bar.  I would guess about now the poor sap that maybe drank too much and didn’t drive (thankfully) his vehicle home on Friday night is wishing now that he would have not drank so much.   just assuming…

However, we walked out of church last night to a stunning sunset!

For a few more flood pics, stop over and look at my friend, Joyce’s blog. 

Being resourceful

When you live in the country and the power is out, sometimes one has to be resourceful.  
Last night our area received 6 - 8 inches of rain between 11pm & 9am this morning.  We woke to no electricity this morning.  I was ever so thankful that today is my day off and I didn’t have to get ready for work.  However, I still needed to get a few morning “chores” accomplished.

Face and hair washing.  I was also very thankful for a nice warm rain. DH catching water to flush the toilet.  When the power is out we have no pump to pump water from the well.  At least we could pour a bucketful in.  Not ideal but it works!

We do have a gas stove, so could light that and make breakfast.  We opened the fridge really fast as to not let the cold out since we didn’t know how long we would be out and it was supposed to be in the 90’s today.  We boiled water to make coffee and I fried up some eggs but DH decided he wanted toast as well.  Hmmm…no electric toaster either.  He was resourceful and grabbed a marshmallow fork from the closet.

Our electricity was only off 3 hours so we were lucky.  It could have been all day like some other areas around us.

This is what the aftermath of all that rain looked like.  Beautiful!  We really needed the rain but maybe not quite so much at one time and it sounds like more thunderstorms and heavy rains are on the way tonight.

I just may be washing my hair in the rain again tomorrow morning.

 

Intruders!

We have intruders, I say, yes intruders!  The pesky varmints!

Can you see them?  See them poking their little yellow heads up out of our patch of oats? 
There they stand completely clueless that this great hunter was ready to risk life, limb, bugs, heat, humidity and even snakes to capture them.  
And I got ‘em!  By golly, I did!  Lots of ‘em!

Some hunters mount their trophies on the wall.  I prefer to display mine on the table.  :)    
Hope you’re having a “successful” Sunday as well!

Mad City Madness

At 6am this morning 7 women from my church small group left for a 2 hour drive to the Madison, Wisconsin Farmers Market.  Yes, we defected for a day and crossed that Cheddar Curtain to the north. 

Madison’s market is huge,especially by my small town standards, and was voted one of the top 30 markets in the nation.


The Market fills the streets on on all four sides of the Capitol building.  They have everything from fresh produce,
baked goods, gorgeous fresh flowers,
herbs and grains,

organic meats but best of all Fresh cheese curds! 
The ones I bought were just made yesterday.  Nice & Squeaky!  Did you know that the sign of fresh cheese curds is if they squeak on your teeth as you bite into them? 
The sad part is I bought two bags, the plain(above) and dill garlic flavored.  The dill garlic bag is already gone between just DH & I.  Oooops!

I came home with fresh Door County cherries, garlic, green beans, portabella mushrooms, cauliflower, patty pan squash, apples, bread and beautiful red raspberries.

Even the butterflies liked them!

After we tromped around the market for a couple of hours in 90+ degree weather, we were ready for a reprieve from the crowds and a lunch break so we went to the UW-Madison Student Union  We sat under a nice big shade tree on their outside terrace.  (Thanks Shelly for this suggestion.)  The food was good and very reasonable.  I had a salad with grilled chicken and a drink for $5.00.  That works for me!
The terrace overlooks Lake Monona.
It was a beautiful spot to sit and relax after walking all morning.

Of course, we had to take a group picture in the “big chair”.
Being 6 foot tall,  I’ve never sat in a chair where my feet dangled.  I kind of felt like Edith Ann off the old Laugh-in shows.

On the way out of town, we stopped at Whole Foods which was a real treat for us.  Some had never been in one and others had but it’s not something those of who live out here in the sticks, hours from a large city, get the opportunity to do very often.


Today was definitely a “foodie” kind of day.  Isn’t that the best kind of all???


Thanks to all of you ladies... Judy, Ami, Lucinda, Joyce, Sue & Shelly for a great day that seemed to be the break a number of us needed. 










Sorry for any goofy formatting that's coming through on this post but I'm done trying to work with Blogger anymore tonight.  :(

And the winner is…..

We just returned home from a wedding and drew  a name for my 300th post giveaway tonight.  We didn’t use any fancy number generator or big fish bowl.  I counted the entries and hollered at DH, who was in the other room, to pick a number.  Nothing sophisticated but then that’s how we roll around here.

And the winner is OSAGE BLUFF QUILTER!  
Drop me an email with your mailing information and I’ll get your prize in the mail the beginning of next week. 

Tomorrow my church small group ladies and I are heading north across the Cheddar Curtain to the Mad City’s Farmers Market.  It’s a huge farmers market around the capitol square.  I can’t wait and am headed to bed as we’re leaving here at 6am (yawn!).  Hopefully my hands aren’t so full of purchases tomorrow that I can at least snap a few pictures.

Have a great weekend!

Mystery solved…

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting anxiously, couldn’t sleep and fidgeting in your seat since this post.

What was in the trailer???

drum roll………

There you have it ….. mystery solved!

 

Now to backtrack a bit….
a very good friend of ours was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer two years ago this summer.  She’s recently had a recurrence.  Judy has been an incredible spokesperson for breast cancer screenings, awareness and research. 

 
To support that, an idea was birthed to take one of these machines, a CanAm Spyder, paint it up pink, use it in parades and at car shows and pass out literature, collect donations for research, etc. on Breast Cancer.

Side note:  The Spyder in the above picture was actually purchased for me and two days later Judy purchased a nearly identical one.  The jury is still out on whether we will be keeping mine or re-selling it.  I’ve been riding it to work and around some but it’s nearly impossible for two people 6’ and 6’5” to ride two up on it.  It’s just not long enough.  I love riding it single though.  It’s a whole heck of a lot of fun with one person.  We also still have our GoldWing so we have to make a decision on which one we are going to keep and use.  We rode the GoldWing again the other day and I hate to say it but the Wing is winning.  It’s a way better two-up ride and an easier long distance bike.  The Spyder will not work for us those types of trips. 

Anyway, back to my friend Judy’s Spyder.  My son, Joe painted her up REAL PINK!  We went to pick it up last night at his shop in the Northern Chicago burbs (2 hours away).

You are the first to see this, other than the four of us and Joe’s shop co-workers.  Aren’t you excited!?!   Don’t you feel privileged?

Ta-da….

 Judy, our warrior on her new toy, Joe (left), Kevin(middle) and Chuck(right)

PINK!!!!!

Joe & Kevin do the paint and body work in the shop and Chuck is the shop owner.  The hot pink color is a custom mix from their shop(Nice job Kevin!) so it can never be exactly duplicated.  They’ve dubbed the color “Judy pink”.  The Spyder will now be taken to a graphics shop where a large breast cancer ribbon will be added to the hood with other graphics and striping to the lighter pink parts.

We’re pretty excited about this whole project as was Joe.  When he called that it was done, he sounded so pleased with how it turned out, we couldn’t wait to see it.

Just try and wipe that grin off of both of their faces!

Joe explaining to Judy how the paint was mixed.

DH getting ready to load it. 
It takes a pretty secure man to ride a pink bike –
REAL MEN RIDE PINK!

Judy says she doesn’t know if this is insane or going to be her way of staying sane. 
Time will tell but she sure is going to be having fun in the meantime.

 

Word-less (almost) Wednesday

Are you sneezing yet?

Amazing chicken and knee update

First the chicken part …

We had the most amazing chicken for supper tonight. 
It’s called jalapeno chicken.  You have to try it!  I’m not a huge fan of jalapenos but this wasn’t hot at all. 
My friend, Joyce, turned me on to it.  You can find it here on allrecipes.com.  I love this website and use it a ton.   I like that I can put in the ingredients I want to use, do a search and wallah!  with a click of a button and recipes show up.   Anyway, back to the chicken..we grilled the chicken and paired it with fresh lemony steamed green beans and sautéed garlic new red potatoes  Pure bliss I tell ya!  It was hard to not eat two pieces but I knew how good it was going to taste tomorrow in my lunch so I restrained myself.
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Now for the knee update…
(not that DH should be in second place, but a girls gotta eat, don’t she?  If I don’t eat, I might get weak and be unable to blog!)


By late last night, DH’s knee was really swollen.  I doubt the motorcycle and boat rides yesterday helped that any but they sure were fun! 


DH was able to get into the ortho doctor this morning and it appears as though there was a little more to it than just a strained knee.  


He has a torn anterior ACL and a possible torn meniscus.  He is scheduled for a MRI on Wednesday to confirm the diagnosis and rule out any other issues.  He did have an x-ray and nothing is broken.   Praise God!   If it’s only the ACL, no surgery is required.  If the meniscus is torn and the doc said it’s probable that it is, that will require a day surgery to repair with a relatively short recovery time.  So in the grand scheme of things, he’s darned lucky that he only came home with a knee brace and not a cast.
Thanks for your comments and emails with good wishes for him.

Gilligan’s Adventure & a 300th post GIVEAWAY!

Let me start with saying I love the water so any opportunity I get to go out on a boat, I jump at the chance.  DH on the other hand, not so much, in fact not at all.  If he could put a life jacket on each extremity, he would.  But he tends to humor me when these rare occasions arise.


Some friends called us yesterday afternoon and asked if we wanted to meet them at a nearby lake and go boating.  Ummmm….let me think about that for a minute – YES!!!   


I wasn’t at home when I got the call and DH was home with ice on his knee(he majorly twisted it on Saturday falling into a 3 ft. deep hole) but I thought of course, he could go along in a boat.  He could sit there with his leg up as well as at home, right?  Why not?


As our luck would have it, on the way there we hit a few sprinkles and the sky was darkening to the west.  We met lots of boats leaving the lake.  Maybe that should have been our first clue??  DH was really starting to question the wisdom in what we were doing about now.


We met R&J and K&K at the marina.  As we were putting the boat in, the rain started in a little heavier.  Pretty soon the skies opened up and the faucet turned on.

R&J’s boat at the dock looking a little like the SS Minnow. 

R (red shirt) being the good guy he is and helping others who are trying to get off the lake in the monsoon.  Can you see the sheets of rain coming across the lake?

DH trying to get situated and prop his leg up.  K trying to help. 

K(above) & his wife K(below) – We’ve worked with both of these servants for God’s Kingdom through our church activities and feel blessed that we’ve been able to get to know them.

R&J, the boat owners.  What a great couple.  We’ve just gotten to know them in the last year and enjoy time and conversation spent with them so much.

We finally left the dock in the rain, the canopy never came off because of the rain, we rode around the lake for over an hour in the rain, got extremely wet because of the rain but we laughed and laughed and laughed some more.  There is definitely truth to the statement that “Laughter is good for the soul.”  I haven’t laughed this much or this hard in a long time.

Skipper R checking and “Yup, it’s still raining.”

Giving it up and guess what?  We weren’t home an hour and the rain stopped.  Go figure! Rain or no rain, it was still a great afternoon out with some wonderful people!

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And guess what??? This is my 300th post!  Oh my goodness, I started this a couple of years ago as a temporary experiment while in a Web Design class.  300 posts later, I can’t believe it myself.  I’m hosting a giveaway to celebrate 300 posts! 

I’ve decided to focus the giveaway on “quilting” type items as that was one of my main focus’s when I started blogging.  Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to quilt as much as I would like.  I did just finish one project though and am to the quilting point of another one.  However, I can’t show either one yet as they are both for gifts in the next couple of months.

Back to the giveaway…I have a Moda Cotton Blossoms charm pack (I love the prints in this line of fabrics), 2 patterns, a book – Quilts from Heaven by Lucinda Secrest McDowell and who knows what else I might throw in.

Here’s what you need to do:  

• Comment on this post or any of my posts
• 
  
• Tell me how you found my blog.  There isn't a right or wrong answer, just simple curiosity for me.  It doesn't matter if this is your first time visiting me or if you've been with since I was just a wee blogger.
• 
  
• Mention the giveaway in your comment so I know you want to enter and I’ll add your name to the drawing.  

I’ll draw the winner this Friday night, July 16th at 9:00pm(CT) or whenever I decide I’m done for the night and sit down at the computer to do it.  My blog, my prerogative, right?  


Feel free to pass this along to whomever you’d like.

Make sure to check back on Saturday to see if you’ve won. If you did, email me with your contact information.  It seems a number of my commenters are “no-reply bloggers” so I will need a way to get your mailing information.

Best of luck and have a great week!