So Much Happening, So Little Time to Blog

Summer has flown right by us this year. It seems like we've done so much, but I can't remember it all to blog about it, so this will be a little rambling post today. Last weekend, Lisa and I dropped the kids off at Nana and Papa's and headed up to Ann Arbor for the annual summer art festival. The festival is pretty much all over the University and downtown area and is packed with vendors and would be shoppers. The festival is a nice mix of upper end items (in excess of $5000) and the very affordable items as the ones you typically see at craft fairs. We ended up walking for about 3-4 hours taking it all in and also purchased a few of the craft fair variety items. Along the way my hop detector went off when I spotted the Arbor Brewing Company. I had a couple of pints of their cask conditioned IPA before wandering around the rest of the festival. After the festival, we headed to IKEA and bought a french press and then had to a bite to eat. I wasn't feeling all that well that evening so we called it an early evening and crashed early.

Sunday, I was just crabby. That's really all I can say about that other than sorry Lisa...must have been the hormones.

Last Tuesday, I took the day off and went golfing. Shawn tagged along but didn't golf other than the occasional putting practice or hitting a few shots when we had time to kill waiting for the group golfing in front of us. Shawn was pretty good until he began getting tired and bored and wanted to take a nap in the golf cart.

This weekend we packed up the kids and Nana and headed for Cincinnati for a visit at King's Island. I hadn't been to King's Island since I was Shawn's age (decades and decades ago). On Friday when we arrived in Cinci, we stopped by a very unique market called Jungle Jim's. Jungle Jim's was crazy. There are groceries from all over the world, a huge beer and wine section, specialty meats and cheeses and just about the best seafood selection I have ever seen that isn't in a market within a few miles from the ocean. I picked up a few beer selections, some nice chopsticks and if I had more time and room in the car, I would have picked up all kinds of crazy food items to try.

Saturday (King's Island Day), didn't start off all that well. We got to the park around 9:30am and it was pouring rain, along with thunder and lightning. We waited in the car until about 10:30 or so as the rain began to slow and decided we would take a chance and just buy rain ponchos and see how it went. Other than probably a total of an hour or so of additional crappy weather, the day turned out prefect. We spent a lot of time in Nickelodeon land riding the kid rides but, that's really why we were there. Both Katelyn and Shawn were great pretty much the entire time except for the short time we attempted to eat lunch. Katelyn went on her first roller coaster and Shawn couldn't get enough of the white water river style ride where we both got soaked. He loved it so much we went on it four times.

Sunday we headed back toward home by way of Columbus with a quick stop at Easton to find out that the Lego store wasn't open yet (opens this week) and a quick stop at Marc's. Lisa has a Marc's problem!

On the beer front, I kegged a really nice pale ale which is much less hoppy than my typical homebrewed IPA. I also have a berry wheat beer in the secondary fermenter that will be ready for kegging this weekend. I may brew another IPA with Simcoe and Centennial this weekend so I can have 3 homebrews on tap.

Today I bought a burr coffee grinder from Kohls that was on sale. I'm hoping that it makes a difference when grinding beans for my french press.

I can't believe Shawn starts school in three short weeks. Then, it's back to cross country practice every night and piano lessons. With those things comes the dreaded continuous pleading to practice the piano, run faster and running around trying to get out of the house on time in the morning. Parenthood....it's for the ignorant and masochistic.

Here's a few pictures:Where's Scooby?