Time Flies (?) when it's Hot!

 It's been a long time!

I dug out my smoker and smoked ribs for Father's Day.  We were hosted by D#2.  They turned out very good!  As was all the other food that day.  I rarely use the smoker, but there are definitely some recipes that I would like to try sometime when I am motivated and have time.

Ed and Peggy came for a week long visit as part of a much longer trip out to the east coast.  They stayed with us part of the week and at Steve and Renee's the rest of the time.  We had Denny and Emily and Lee and Alice (cousins) over one of the evenings.  It was good catching up with everyone.  

We ate at the Pickled Radish one of the evenings.

On the last Sunday afternoon that they were around, we had planned for a picnic so they could spend some time with our whole family.  Son#2 and family came from Iowa, so all of our kids and grandchildren were here.  It turned out to be a very hot and humid day, so we were able to rent the Walnut Creek Family Center for our gathering instead of the park.  It was much more comfortable, but I think our 15 grandchildren were a little overwhelming to the company!

Back in the 1970's, I put together an expensive, high quality stereo system.  Today, everyone just has all their music on their phone or an iPod.  But I still like the old system and want to keep it alive.  My CD player stopped working last year, and I finally got around to finding a place that repairs old stereo components.  After getting an repair estimate from the small shop in Chicago that I found, I wasn't sure if it was worth the money.  But the repairman told me my Pioneer CD player was one of the good ones that was still made in Japan and that I wouldn't find that quality anymore.  So I bit the bullet and I again have a fully functioning system.

Our big family vacation was back in the Ozarks this year for four days.  There were several niece's and nephew's families that were not able  to make it, so the turnout was a little smaller than usual.  It was hot and humid, so I didn't spend a lot of time outside.  It also rained a couple of the days, but it didn't seem to slow the grandkids down much.  They still got in a lot of swimming, and several of the older ones learned how to water ski for the first time.  We tried a new resort this year.  It wasn't first class, but the price was reasonable and it fit our needs with enough rooms and a large room to gather in and eat together.

We had a very good cherry crop this year, with all the cherries our family wanted.  The peach and pear crops look like they will also be good.  Sweet corn has been good, with all of our families getting what they needed for "putting up".  Picking and shucking all that corn was a hot, sticky job.  I can still find a few eating ears, but the majority is getting too hard now.

I walked a fair amount of soybeans this year to cut out volunteer corn.  I don't know why I had so much.  We had a very dry spring and early summer, so I snapped a picture of the cracks in the soil while walking beans one day.

Since then, we have had an abundance of rain and the crops all look lush and beautiful.  This is in spite of the fact that the month of July has been very hot and extremely humid.  It is very hard to get much work done outside these days.  It's been "three-shirt days" and it isn't even August yet!

Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.                                                  II Corinthians 9:11