A Visit To The Strawberry Festival

We decided to have some fun at the Strawberry Festival in Plant City to see what it is all about. Turns out to be something of a county fair atmosphere with 4H animals shows, food, pictures, paintings and sewing judging and anything related to strwaberries. They have strawberry shortcake everywhere, and every kind of 'carny' style food you can think of.

This Raggedy Ann doll is actually 100% cake, everything is edible and sweet. Obviously, this one was registered in the professional category.

Here are a few more cakes in the professional category.

Next, Katrina and her friend Andrea try on a few rides. Oh, did I mention Dean and Brenda (the newlyweds) came along? They decided to hit the heavy duty rides with the girls too. They make up the 4 sets of legs on the left side of this 'Big Ben'ride.

Next followed a quick turn on the Himalaya-style ride, then...

Then the girls decided to take a spin on the Round-Up while Dean & Brenda went off to experience a different ride. You can see the girls in grey and black T-shirts at the top of the 'wheel'.

Had enough? Nope! Time for a 'spin' on a ride we had named as kids "The Regurgitator". The legs hanging out of the red section on the lower-right are the girls.

A quick turn on a ride called the 'Zipper'...

And the girls needed a bit of a rest. (I have been sworn to secrecy as to why the color of their T-shirts have changed).

So we sat at a table for a while then walked over to the racing stands to watch...

Robinson's Racing Pigs.

As you can see, the sun was going down, so we decided we had a busy day (and an empty wallet) but we all had a bunch of fun and it was time to go home.

We Have The Quail Dick Chaney Missed

We got a couple of neat gifts from Andrew and family. Andrew is Luann's brother. The one for Luann and I is a cute little statuette with a family of quails. I can understand why there is sand in the globe instead of it being a snow-globe, I mean c'mon, this is from Phoenix! What I can't understand is why the Daddy quail is INSIDE the globe. I guess he's inside the globe to protect him from Dick Cheney. As such, I have decided that the quail in the globe should be named....Dan.
Hmmm, I've heard of pheasant under glass, but not quail under glass...

By the way Andrew, if you look close, you might be able to see the pottery on the second shelf in the corner. Thanks for that too. As you can see, the dining room is kind of like our little piece of Arizona.

Katrina got a nice circular picture frame with Asian text around it too, but I couldn't get a picture of it in time before Katrina squirreled it away in her bedroom.

Just Cruisin' And Stuff

Hello everybody, sorry we haven't been updating the page lately, but busy really isn't an appropriate word to describe the things that have been happening lately.

To catch up, we've been having something of a fight with the flu and (for myself) strep throat. Just when we seem to be over it, a whole new batch of symptoms start popping up. The latest is me with a bad case of sore throat with flu-like symptoms and Katrina has a cough that sounds like she's a smoker, but we're on the usual meds (again). This has been going on and off since Christmas.

As for work, I finally got this large, million-dollar project into the final stages of delivery, but it has taken a huge mental toll out of me and the family. I have been working hard in an effort to make sure that things were done on time and as I said it would, in spite of things that would endanger the timeline. There were several times that I had to stay at work until the early morning hours for weeks on end to make sure that my promises to the customer had come true. Whew! One and 1/2 years sure flew by... and the hits still keep coming on.

Around the house, Katrina helped me put the trailer wiring harness in the Magnum and then this weekend, we had to replace the clutch in the truck. Thankfully, the truck is so old, it is easy to find parts for it and the job was relatively simple and inexpensive. And Luann won the "Who is going to get the first ticket in the Magnum" contest, courtesy of the Florida Highway Patrol. It wasn't bad because the officer was kind enough to knock the ticket down to 9 miles over the limit. Well, no comment from me because I was made a recipient of the 'involuntary tax' award a little over a year ago in the pickup truck. Only, I didn't get a reduced sentence like Luann's. I think it was that rally stripe (that I finally finished) on the Magnum that caught Officer Friendly's eye. Yeah right...

This weekend, our neighbor, positioned behind our house, decided to trim his oak tree that is butted up against our back fence and had an "oopsie" or rather, several of them, so now we need to replace several sections of our privacy fence. We know he didn't mean to do it, he's a nice guy, it's just that a couple of the bigger branches got away from him on the way down. And besides, the wood fence is about 15 years old, so it needs freshening up anyway.

Speaking of oak trees, any of you guys have oak trees? We have six of them in our yard, (not including the one that was just trimmed next-door) and they all just decided to dump their leaves in one shot over the past week. We don't have a green yard anymore, it's brown from all of the dead leaves. And now, the trees have put out pollen tassels that are coating everything in a heavy, yellow dust. It's weird looking and I'm sure it doesn't help the allergies.

A friend at work told us about a little asian grocery store near our house (thanks Chiu) and it was neat because we found that they also have Indonesian foodstuffs. Among the usual sambals and soup mixes, I also found Kecap Manis and Kecap Asin. The Kecap Manis is like a cross between soy sauce and teriyaki sauce but as thick as molasses, it's great when used like a barbecue sauce or a stir-fry base. The Kecap Asin is just like regular soy sauce, except it's not brewed like a beer so it has a hearty roasted soy flavor without having that 'overtone of beer' taste. There were some neat tea pots and some great teas too. We even saw a chinese bakery in the shopping plaza and you just know we had to stop by. Man, they have some neat stuff!

Since Luann had a special coupon, we decided to try our hand at a little go-kart racing. We started in the middle of the pack but after 3 laps, we were leading 1, 2, 3. We're thinking about having Katrina's birthday party here in May, or at least some place that has a serious go-kart track like this one.

The final part of the weekend was spent by driving over to a boat ramp and watching people trying to load their boats on trailers during a strong wind and choppy waves. It was very educational for us, as we learned the best way (and wrong ways) to load our future sailboat onto its trailer.


Then, when we saw the lights turn on over the bridge, we knew it was time to head home.