February for the Rest of Your Life

"Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's coooold out there today."

Yup, February. Lots of snow, lots of sledding. It was not a bad month, as Februaries go. A good month for reading books and planning home improvement projects.

Goodbye to the old Sinclair meatpacking building... that was a good photography spot. One more dilapidated landmark gone. We happened to be a few blocks away when it caught fire and took some cool video of it, too.

Boston

Last weekend the Buchheits came over and we celebrated Jolene's birthday. We sat around the fire and ate cake while the kids went nuts jumping into the leaf pile.

Then on Tuesday morning I flew out to Boston. Leaving the CR airport:

The hotel where I stayed was in the suburbs which meant I ended up doing a lot of driving. Over the past few days I've spent roughly 5 hours driving around Boston because no one else in my group wanted to drive. The map looks like someone took a handful of cooked spaghetti and threw it in a heap... the streets are a tangled mess and there is no grid at all. Even the GPS in my van struggled to keep up! But it is a scenic area and the fall colors are at their peak right now, so I guess there's an upside.

Flying back to CR:

There's 380! I feel like a significant part of my life has been spent driving that boring stretch of road. At least I can crank the tunes and make the most of it.

Fire Pit

A few weeks ago we built a new fire pit in the backyard. We used 32 landscaping stones and 1 tire rim from an 18-wheeler and – voila! There it is:

Fires in the Backyard

Ah, Summer

Independence Day

For the Independence Day weekend we went up to Independence a day early so that we could leave off the girls and go on a date. We saw Jurassic World, which was awesome, and then came back and sat around the fire in the backyard.

In the morning we went to the parade along Main Street. Independence actually pulled off a better parade than the Freedom Festival parade (way to go small town!), although there could have been fewer tractors in the lineup. It used to seem so weird to see farm tractors in a parade, but it almost seems normal now, heh.

Some kids who sat next to me:

Now that's a snow thrower:

Hey, it's Joe Winters!

Can you see Emily?

After the parade there were some bands playing in the park along the river and small plane rides (see previous post), so we skipped the music and went on a plane ride. Later in the afternoon Rose and I went to the Wapsi and skipped rocks for a while and watched the water going over the dam. In the evening we watched the fireworks:

Last Fire

Last night we had what was probably the last fire of the year. We had some old dried out wood and some newer stuff and it really took off! Using dry leaves to get it started worked out well. I tried taking pictures, but even with a good fire going it was still too dark to get any clear shots.

Rose read us awful jokes and we roasted marshmallows and made faces for the camera. Only one of the funny face pictures turned out, but it was fun anyway.