August 12, 2011

We were off to Omaha for a long weekend to visit with Jo's oldest sister, Mary, and her family.  Two of our nephews live in Omaha and our niece came in from Arizona with her husband and our grand niece.  Jo's other sister, Kathy also drove in from Madison with her son.  So a crowded house but it was a nice to be able to catch up with everyone all at once.  The pool out back was a centerpiece for the weekends activities especially given the warm, humid weather.  Jo and I particularly enjoyed jumping in after our morning run - in our running clothes.  Was a great way to cool off fast.  I also enjoyed pool games with my nephews although they have all grown so much that I'm dwarfed in both height and size.  We also got to visit our two nephews new homes.  Jo and I were quite jealous of all the closets and the fact that the walls were straight and there was an electrical outlet every 6 feet.  The weekend came to too quick of a close and it got us talking about fitting a pool into our backyard - sure is nice when it is hot.  Understand that an inflatable kiddie pool from Target would fill up most of our backyard, so it isn't likely to happen soon.

One interesting note, was to see all the flooding around Omaha especially from the airplane on the way in and out.  Amazing that it is still that flooded this late into the summer.  Apparently it will be another month or two before it begins to go down.  Almost in time for it to begin filling up again with the winter snows.

We came home to the beginning of our home renovation project.  I will begin posting pictures as we gut our 2 main bathrooms.  It has been interesting to see what lies behind our 100 year old walls (lots of bobby pins in case you were wondering is our biggest find so far - yipee).  The downside is we now have to use the bathroom and shower on the third floor so quite a trek especially in the evenings.  But afterwards we will finally have "modern" bathrooms and plumbing.  I'm especially looking forward to mirrors that aren't so tarnished so you can actually see something in them.  For the rest of the week, I've been continuing to tackle my painting and have finished the majority of the third floor.  I now to figure out what I can paint without getting in the way of the construction crews.  I also thought it was time for some vegetable photos.  This is one of the two tomato plants on our back patio and as you can see some of tomatoes are beginning to get ripe.  Although we are experiencing a lot of spots on our tomatoes - might be that disease that was hitting all the tomato crops recently.

Unfortunately, we aren't the only creatures enjoying our fresh tomatoes.  I found a tomato hornworm on each plant.  These are really large caterpillars and really squirt when squished.  I'll will admit that I put on gloves before I was willing to grab one of them.  They are voracious eaters and really did a number on the leaves, before I found them.  Jo and I are wondering how they knew that we had tomato plants back there, but I'm guessing nature found some way to provide them a clue.  I passed another birthday milestone this week and my sister came up from Chicago to help me celebrate.  She treated me to lunch and we toured the Milwaukee Public Museum as I took a day off from renovating.  I do want to point out that my sister didn't volunteer to grab the hornworm off the plants - the love of of a brother only goes so far. 

This weekend we are looking forward to a visit from Jo's old boss at Pfizer, Sylvia, and our first visit to the WI State Fair in over 25 years.  Can't wait to eat all that decadent food!