Shepherd’s Pie

As the night went on, the beer and whiskey were flowing and we all had a great time.

Tab and Pritee

‘Deep’ conversation

Ish even broke out the green turban for St. Pat’s!

On March 17th we went to Kansas City for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade! It’s always the biggest city-wide celebration. The weather was warm and several of us got a slight sunburn, which was quite a change for usual St. Pat’s weather. The parade lasted a little over two hours and was really cool.

Ginormous inflatable St. Patrick!

Mom was so bundled up, you could barely recognize her.

Me and my little brother, freezing our butts off.

Dad rode in the parade with Toys for Tots and Keegen got to ride with him (that’s him in the Santa hat)!

My brother and sister-in-law were having a blast.

Our niece, Paige, was so good all day and this is the first year she really got into opening her gifts. It was fun to watch.

Our nephew, Keegen, started out having a BLAST, but at some point he got very tired and it kinda soured from there.

He loved the guitar we got him!

You get kids all these great gifts and what do they play with? The BOX!

Doug and I had a great time too, but he somehow dodged the camera all weekend!

Our Christmas Tree next to the fireplace.

An up-close and personal with some ornaments.

We even have some presents under the tree and its not even the 24th yet!

Its Fall again, and this year the trees around our yard have been fantastic! We had lots of rain these past couple of months, so the leaves have been slow to drop and have beautiful color. Friday afternoon, it was bright and sunny, so I grabbed our camera and started walking around the yard to see what I could image. My walk just made me even more satisfied with my decision to move out here.

We had our normal type of display with the majority of our money being spent on the mortar-launched aerial bombs. We like those a lot! Not all of our stuff was up in the air, though. We also had a fair assortment of fountains including one that we really liked from last year called Lava Lamp. Similar, but bigger, than the Lava Lamp is the Solar Storm fountain. With a SOHO image of the Sun at solar max, how could I not get it? All of our fireworks this year, and for the third year running, were purchased from the Fireworks Supermarket in Odessa. They have demos of their stuff on-line if you’d like to see a video of the fountains.

The following weekend, Higginsville had its fireworks display at the Fairgrounds Park. Being a small town with a smaller audience, they can do more than just the standard aerial bombs that you typically see, although they have plenty of those too. They have a lot of large fountains and roman candles, and their finale is just awesome! Unfortunately this year, the wind was blowing straight toward the crowd, so we had to endure a lot of smoke and cardboard shrapnel. It was worth it!

The Belleek pieces can be easily dated by the nature of the stamp on the bottom of the piece. Our two vases have the 2nd and 3rd Green Mark. You can learn more about Belleek Pottery and the meaning of the marks at Marion Langham’s site.

 

We haven’t done enough reading to know how to date the Wade pieces we have, but they are from Wade of Ireland factory which is no longer around. You can still find Irish Wade being sold, though, so it will be easy enough to grow our collection.

Here’s the bathroom before the fix (notice the lack of any bathing apparatus).

Here’s a shot from the same angle as the one above. We put in a 48″ shower stall and moved the washing machine downstairs next to the dryer.

The old vanity didn’t fit with the new shower, which was fine because it was old and water damaged. It needed replacing anyway.

Best of all is the new sign on the door. …not that people will need a sign to know what the room is once they open the door.