Happy Independence Day!

I am pleased with how these pics turned out. Instead of just pulling my phone out to take pictures of the fireworks, I decided to use my camera that Kurt got me for Christmas. I used the 'fireworks' setting. We have a golf course down the road from us and they always put on a great fireworks show on July 4th. We usually just drive down the road and watch the show from the car! Tonight I drove down there by myself with my camera and clicked away! I came home with 58 pics, there's only about 23 here, so they didn't all turn out so great ;-)

Adam's Memorial Day

Adam spent Memorial Day with Nate, his roommate from this past year. Nate is in the Navy ROTC and was on assignment for a few weeks, one of which included 'Fleet Week' in New York City. He got a tour of Nate's ship, they went to the new 911 Museum that just opened, and went in to Little Italy.

This is Nate's ship:

This is called the Sea Whiz and is a weapon for detecting short range incoming missiles:

Also a Sea Whiz:

These are missile launch tubes:

These are torpedo launch tubes:

Just a shot from Staten Island looking into NYC:

New York Stock Exchange:

Some other building:

Panoramic shot of a quilt in the 911 Museum with all the names of those who lost their lives:

This is an elevator motor:

 This is a butterfly valve that was used to hold back water from the Manhattan River:

The bull at the New York Stock Exchange:

Happy New Year!

Kurt's out like a light, I'm watching All-American New Year on Fox, responding to all you kind people who have contacted me regarding my job loss, googling job openings and Adam is at a party with friends in Nazareth. Think I'll go break open a bottle of wine.....

Alyssa and Jesse are with Chris, Sam, Holly and Alyce at The Melting Pot:

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have no idea what I was thinking.  I made enough food for an army!  And none of us are that crazy about leftovers :-(  Fortunately, Adam really liked the stuffing that mom made (it was a new recipe using loose sausage) and he loves green bean casserole, so actually offered to take most of those back to school with him tomorrow.  I, however, have about 8 lbs of turkey left to do something with.  And I really don't like leftover turkey...LOL!  I have ingredients to make turkey potpie, but sheesh, how much turkey potpie does one need!?!?

You'll notice there was someone missing in the above picture (besides me, who was taking the picture).  Miss Alyssa had Thanksgiving dinner with Jesse.  She texted me this picture after supper.  I questioned her on it; said she forgot to send me a pic of her plate full, thus this instead ;-)

This was the exciting news of the week!  After me complaining for years that Adam was driving junk cars that constantly broke down, Kurt finally decided to look at a car for himself with the intention of passing his Audi down to Adam.  This whole process moved quite quickly in Kurt time; I think he started looking less than a week ago.  This is quite unusual; he's been 'looking' for a truck for the last 6-8 months.  I wasn't convinced when he found this Mini Cooper that anything would ever come of it....but, lo and behold, as of this AM he's now the owner of this cute little buggie.  It's a 2003, but only had ~67,000 miles on it and the price was right (believe me, if the price hadn't been right, he'd never have bought it!)

It's so tiny, though!!  Kurt said with the seat back, Adam can actually drive it and supposedly it's even more comfortable for him than driving the Scirocco.

Now I can rest easier knowing that Adam is driving a more reliable car :-)

Happy Father's Day!

Just a portion of the Dad's Day gifts from me and Alyssa.  She picked on up his comment when we were visiting in Delaware last month that he liked the coffee Troy and Kim were serving.  She picked some up at Starbucks for him.  In addition, she got him a tape measure.  That may seem like a boring gift, but there's a story attached to that :-)  For years, she got him a tape measure each year for Christmas.  It got to the point, it was getting old, so she stopped.  And he noticed.  So she picked one up for him today.  He was happy :-)

Many years ago, Kurt and I ate at the Cascade Lodge below Easton.  We had a bottle of wine from Sand Castle Winery.  We loved it.  At the time, we didn't realize it was a local winery.  For quite a while, we searched for the wine at many of our local liquor stores.  Last month when Alyssa and I went to visit Erika, we went to a shopping center very similar to the Promenade Shoppes in Center Valley.  Didn't they have a Sand Castle wine tasting store!!!!  I nearly died!!!  I mean, it was probably close to 20 years ago that we had been at the Cascade Lodge and tasted that wine!!!  I bought three bottles of wine, two wine glasses and one bottle of strawberry balsamic vinegar :-)

Marinated flank steak, rice pilaf, tossed salad for lunch today.  Kurt loves marinated flank steak!

Happy Mother's Day!

The kids decided to whisk me away on Saturday for a day of fun. I had no clue where we were going....well, until Adam was driving out in the country....and I saw the sign for Franklin Hills winery.  LOL!  We had so much fun!  We went to six different wineries...one of them in Bangor, the rest in the Breinigsville/New Tripoli area.  It turned out there were some special winery events going on at most of them, so it was busier than expected.  Fortunately, the busloads that pulled in, were doing their own thing, thus for the most part, we didn't have to wait to do any tastings.

This was our first stop:

Notice the wine is blue!  It's blueberry:

 And look how orange this wine is:

This was our stop at Woody's Sports Bar in Forks Township for lunch.  Our chauffeur was resting up for the remainder of the trip:

Stop 2:

They were hopping!  Most of the folks there were given a little foil cup with chocolates in them and they paired the wine based on the chocolate.  We didn't get the chocolates, as we were just there for the tasting:

Stop 3:

It was kinda busy here too:

The wine was starting to work :-)

Stop 4, our least favorite:

They had a $5/person tasting fee, but if you bought something they waived it.  Most of their wines were dry, which none of us are crazy about, but these were quite tasty.  It's powder, you add a bottle of wine, then some water and throw it in the freezer.  You can drink it almost any way...slushie, or just cold.

I think I was getting to my limit!  Unfortunately we still had two wineries to go yet...LOL!

Stop 5.  

We also had to come back to this one, when we got there the first time around, there was a bus that had just pulled in and was emptying out.  We couldn't even get in to the parking area!

I really like the inside of this winery:

Stop 5.  Blue Mountain Winery.

Our final stop.  We got there a bit after 5 pm, which was a bad thing.  They had a candlelight and wine event that started at 5 and the place was packed!

Our purchases!  Not too bad for six different wineries :-)