A Broken Bridge

The news has been filled with reports of the 35-W Bridge collapse since August 1. Every day when I turn on the radio or pick up the paper, I'm certain to hear or see some new tidbit. It has become almost mundane...So when John offered to take us to see it I was glad for the chance. As you may imagine, it was overwhelming to look at and think about. I can see pictures in the paper, I can hear about it on the news, but when I actually see it with my own eyes it becomes real. In this picture the sign directing traffic to 35-W South has been covered up. 35-W Northbound, left lane.

I think we were on University Avenue, looking south towards the bridge. This is the entrance ramp onto the bridge.
Three train cars. I must be a little bit Polish (read on for more on that) because even though the fence was only about 6 feet high, I kept trying to take pictures through the holes instead of lifting my camera up and over. The flash would reflect off a wire and bleach the whole picture. I was getting pretty frustrated...I probably took 8 pictures before I saw a man put his camera over the fence and a light clicked on in my head--"Hey! I'll bet I could do that too!!" Duh.

More bridge pictures

I'll let these speak for themselves.

Uncle!

We were priveleged to have my Uncle Delmar come and stay with us for a night before he went on to the Dells Convention. The kids thought it was pretty neat to have him here--he even read them their bedtime story! We adults had a nice visit.

Cousins!

Steve and Audrey were in town for a week...Steve was taking a class for work. One night they came to our house for supper. We loved having them! This is little Cody. And this would be his big sister, Cammie. They're both such sweethearts!

Little Miss Attitude goes to school

Rebecca was so excited to be starting second grade, but when I went out to take her picture she turned into a stinker. Could she be embarrased? For goodness' sake, I was happy to let my mom record the first days of school...I certainly didn't tell MY mom "This is stupid. Why do you have to take a stupid picture anyway? I'm not going to stand here and smile like this (insert cheesy grin here)." I was not happy with her, but I decided that if she was going to take that attitude, I'd take a picture of it and hopefully someday she'll look at it and have the grace to be ashamed of herself. Before she got on the bus, she did apologize to me. But this is the only picture I got.

Clayton loves to go to "Aunt Meena's" house

And is it any wonder? Just look at all there is to do! You can hold baby kitties... walk down to the little creek and fish for trout,...
and do skateboard tricks. Not to mention hold chickens, jump on the trampoline, play with all of Chet's cool toys, ride the tiny four-wheeler....

The old barn

Emily swings out almost over the road. Good thing there's hardly ever any traffic there.
John needed some T-bird parts from the brown car to use in the red car. Jerry helped him get them out.
Brina and I watched for a few minutes.

Stay tuned...

It's 7:16 p.m. and I really need to give the boys haircuts right now. I hate to quit in the middle of my blogging, especially since right now I have an awesome connection speed of 30.6 Kbps...normally I'm running at 28, 24, or even 20 Kbps. The lower the number, the slower the connection. Let me just remind you again that NORMAL dial-up speed is 54 Kbps. For some reason, my computer insists on the "stop and smell the roses" philosophy and let me tell you, it's absolutely maddening!!! One of these days I'm going to convince John that I need DSL, but so far the future looks, well, slow.
So here I go to torture my boys with the electric razor. Maybe after they're in bed I can continue where I've left off here.

Chickens and Roosters

This one has always had a crooked beak. It hurts me to look at her. This is what's called a Polish chick. Now, what I'm wondering is since I've heard it said that it takes a Polock to marry one, does that make me a Polish chick too?
The roosters were constantly crowing. Brina said someday soon they're going to have rooster stew for that very reason. It was fun to try to catch them mid-crow though. Jaina and I were entertained for a good half hour, each of us with our own cameras. I think Jaina won...she got the best picture. Maybe Brina will post it sometime.

Another Polish chicken

Clayton is Polish. And he's a bit of a chicken too. As I've said, he's afraid of loud or unusual noises. Brina's roosters crow all day long (are they Polish too?) and Clayton hated it. If he was outside he'd run screaming to the back door, shouting about an owl. We decided he needed to face his fears and see that the chickens were harmless. After that he had no trouble. Other noises are another matter...he still covers his ears when he hears an airplane passing overhead.

Target practice

John was explaining gun safety to Chet and Joel. I listened as closely to him as the little boys did. I wouldn't want to shoot anyone's foot off. The students.
John is training me to be a deer hunter. I'm still not sure if I'm actually going to go through with the whole bit--sitting in the deer stand, wearing blaze orange...what if I see something move and excitedly shoot and it turns out it was the neighbor? Notice the question was not whether I'd be able to hit my target...I'm a pretty good shot, if I say so myself. Anyway, just take a look at my form. I look like I know what I'm doing, don't I? And that outfit! This is from my special target practice line. You should see what I have picked out to sit in the stand.
I shot the gun three times (and hit what I was aiming at everytime, I might add!) John had told me maybe I should wear a jacket or something...I thought he was worried that I'd get chilled up there in the trees. Turns out he was thinking of something that had a little more padding in the upper arms to protect me from when the gun kicked. Oops. The bruise has faded, finally.

Hot, hot summertime

Rebecca sometimes comes up with ideas to try to sell things to passersby (all two of them). This time it was lemonade. Sadly, there were no takers. She's even asked me if she can sell water...I hate to burst her bubble. Our house has baseboard radiators...we heat with hot water. This means we can never have central air *gasp!* On this particular day our barometer read 82 degrees, with 75% humidity. I was "glowing," as women tend to do when they're hot, sitting still.
We finally installed a wall a/c unit that should work to cool the entire house...unfortunately it's not wired yet. Next year.