Monday, May 4, 2009

Chloe in Hannibal Missouri


Chloe posing on a rock at the base of Hannibals Light house.
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The city of Hannibal from Lovers Leap
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View off of Lovers Leap

A view off of Lovers Leap in Hannibal.
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Lovers Leap


These two needed to hear my pastor's messages on the dangers of dating....
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Java Jive the first coffee shop west of the mississippi


My wife and I are huge fans of coffee, we like to try coffee shops everywhere we go. You may have read our post on that really good shop in Davenport. This lil' shop is in Hannibal Missouri just yards from the Mississippi river in Hannibal's historic district. We stopped there this morning for a cup of coffee... well latte, before we started our day of site seeing.

This was a very comfortable sitting, lounge like atmosphere.

The owner of this shop is from Springfield Illinois.... and a guy I spoke with at the counter comes here often to sell antiques.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Long time no post

I have more time now than ever and am posting less than ever. Thankfully I am a master of excuses and can justify just about anything. Ok here it goes. My laptop was down for about a week and a half, charger died. Then this week I got a new charger and now the battery wont charge, My dad showed up and is visiting for a couple of weeks.

The weather is starting to make up it's mind that it wants to be warm. So we're doing more out doors stuff as a family. We were wanting to go camping in Missouri this weekend but the rain stopped that. My wife and I are now officially hooked on an online farming game called Farm Town.

Here's some pics.
Me and Grandpa went in on some outdoor fun for the kids, a go-cart and a mini dirt bike.... look closely and you can see that the "new" go cart is being pulled with a rope... good investment.
Gage Chloe Hunter and I planting the first apple trees of our wannabe orchard. Lord willing one day we'll have the land for a real one with room for some animals.
Rissy enjoying something fruity!
Jamie today, we went bowling at a Christian Center in Peoria, we were the only ones there. It was great!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

I'm this April's fool

Ok, so I haven't been updating this thing very often. I had an excuse for the past few months, I was working overtime almost every night at work. Well it's spring time and I'm done with OT until it gets really hot out so now I must get back to this.
I'll start with an update on my chickens. I've been selling our eggs just as fast as my girls will lay em'. On a good day I'll get 18 out of them. I ordered fifteen more and am hoping to buy 30 more before the year is out, just have to find a place to put them. I picked up a tip from another blog about increasing the size of my chickens eggs. The secret... Peanuts. I guess it's the extra protein. I buy a five pound bag of crushed peanuts from a feed store I go to and use it as a "treat". I throw a handful or two in every night and my customers have already noticed a difference.
Now to the part about me being the fool this April first. I've been sick for the past couple days with the flu or something, so I've been in a funk. Well this morning I started out the door 15 minutes later than I should have and in a hurry. To make things worse the I get stuck behind 3 cars, of which the lead car can't decide whether to drive 60 or 45 so tries them out over and over again. The car in front of me leap frogs around the two and makes it safety, godspeed friend, I on the other hand didn't want to pass two cars at once and didn't want to leapfrog when the lead driver was so erratic. So for the next ten miles I waited patiently, accepting that I was just going to have wait for the interstate. Well that didn't happen. The lead car decided she wanted to turn... like right now, so she slams on her brakes and that makes the guy in front of me slam on his and swerve to the right, half way on the shoulder and half way in the lane. Oncoming traffic kept me from moving left and the car in front of me kept me from moving right, so I slammed on my brakes and hoped for the best... I didn't get the worst at least. I was in my "first" accident today. I've been in plenty before but I was never the driver. I lost two dozen eggs and cracked the grill on my minivan.
There's more, so I get to work (late) to find out that there has been a sewer back up on half the first floor. I had to shampoo the carpets, which is no big deal but first.... The sewer in the kitchen backs up sending hundreds of gallons of greasy, smelly, and chunky water ( not toilet water) all over the kitchen and dining room. Did I mention that I'm sick. I think all the maintenance men are taking next April 1st off...

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Romantic Getaway of Two ..... Plus one

So this past weekend was my wife's birthday on the 13th, valentines day on the 14th, and our anniversary on the 15th.... and I didn't do a thing for her! I barely even said happy birthday or happy anniversary. Usually I get her a collectible thingy (willow tree) or flowers or something, and we usually at least do dinner somewhere. I didn't get her a thing. We couldn't really afford much this year anyway, we have to wait a few more weeks before we can even file tax returns, and we have doctor bills to pay. So she wasn't expecting much.

But.....
I did have a lil' extra money on this check from some overtime. So I asked her mom to watch the kids yesterday through today and I snuck her off. It was neat she didn't even know what was going on really. She thought I was taking her out for a date, we made it to the Library, where I pulled up a map on my laptop and asked her where she wanted to go. I had four or five spots picked out all within 3 hours or so from the house. She picked the Quad Cities. We'd never been there before. The city you might know there is Davenport Iowa, the others are Rock Island, Moline and Bettendorf. We stayed in Rock Island right off the river. Our hotel had a great view of the Centennial Bridge crossing over into Iowa. There was a really nice little coffee shop right across from the hotel called Theo's Java Club that we went to this morning. Cool thing was that all the postings in the shop were... conservative! Like the bulletin board had news clippings that talked good about America and bad about socialism. I was pleasantly shocked.
There was quite a bit of sites to see but I took the advise from a friend and just planned on one or two things. My wife and I both love to just drive around and look at new places, as in places we've never been. We just drove around the city for at least 2 hours, taking pictures along the way. The kinda big thing we did that took up about 3 hours was the Putnam Museum and Imax theater in Davenport. For twenty bucks even we got to watch a 3D show on a screen that was over 70feet high by 100 feet wide. It was Deep Sea 3D or something like that. Worth the money and I plan on taking my kids to see it but be sure to debrief your kids if you do. The show is laced with subtle liberal propaganda and some very blunt liberal propaganda. Lets put it this way, Al Gore would give this movie one thumb up for effort. It was neat though, 3D done right. After the show we walked around the museum, there was maybe 30 people in the whole place counting staff.
I love this picture, there were lots of animal displays like this through out the museum.


This one I'm not quite sure how to take.. I want to know how they booked the Apostle James to speak at their church!