Peanut Rescue!

We were expecting to have a puppet from Jeff Dunham.com to be delivered from the Post Office today, but it was such a screwed-up experience, that I just have to tell you about it...

You see, I had ordered a Peanut puppet for Luann so she could take it to the Jeff Dunham comedy show tonight, but when we went over to the post office to claim him, they couldn't find the box. After one hour of wrangling, we were told that the box was most likely on the mail truck in our neighborhood. When we headed home, Luann called Katrina and told her to keep an eye out for the mailman and make sure he delivers the box with Peanut in it.

Here is a shot of the post office counter that I took with my cell-cam while we were waiting. Eventually, we headed towards the house and we saw 4 mail trucks parked at the local Whattaburger restaurant so Luann decided to go inside to see if one of those guys might have the Peanut puppet. Her idea was to march the letter carrier out to his truck and give her the box. When she grilled the guys, she found out that none of them were her intended victim and that the guy on our route was named, "Old Man Tom", who was still on the route, delivering the mail. They all seemed to heave a sigh of relief when Luann left to get back into the car. As we were backing up the car to head into our neighborhood to hunt down Old Man Tom, Katrina called to say she got the box from the mailman. The funny thing is, she actully had to chase down Old Man Tom, because the only thing the guy did was drop a couple of catalogs in the box and drove away. When Katrina caught up to his truck and stated that she knew he had a box for us, Tom simply stated that she must be from "that crazy lady that Dispatch told me about".

So, we got Peanut just in time for the show and we hope that we might be abe to get him to sign his shoe (how cool will that be?)

As a post-script, Old Man Tom dropped off the rest of our mail that had been reserved for us to pick up from the post office after we returned from vacation, but they said we didn't have any mail at the office. It looks like Tom must have kept the backed-up mail in his mail truck instead of dropping it off. With that in mind, why didn't he drop all 27 pieces of mail when Katrina spoke with him on Monday, instead of bringing the mail back out again on Wednesday? Oh well, and 'Snail-Mail' is wondering why we complain about higher stamp prices for their poor service, and choose to use UPS and Fedex instead...

Alright! Peanut has arrived!

Nothing Like a Geo-Event To Have Fun!

We made it home in time to attend a geocaching meeting with a bunch of our new geocaching friends. We even went hunting for caches with a veteran member, known as Captain Biggins.

Ahhh! Now that was fun!

We're Baaack!

We just rolled in last night at 11:30 PM. Let me tell you the story about the barrel-roll flip we were almost involved in on I-94 while going through a serious snow storm in Wisconsin. This one will be etched into our memories for a long time...

We were headed on our way eastbound when we noticed this guy driving a dark blue Mitsubishi Galant erratically in front of us. He kept driving into the built-up snow areas, then would swerve back into the safe areas for a while. Luann told me to stay away from him in case he made a mistake that might collect us. With this in mind, I decided to carefully pass him in order to keep him behind us. about 3 miles down the road, I could see that the traffic ahead of me had stopped, apparently for another on-road wipeout. When I tapped the brakes, the guy behind me in the Mitsubishi stomped hard on the brakes and started skidding to the left, so he yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. This, in effect, caused him to swerve off the road and down the steep shoulder to our right. When he slid off the shoulder, there was a bunch of snow, so he ended up rolling the the car side-to-side for several turns, until the car caught on the nose and the Mitsubishi flipped once, end-over-end.

We tried to stop the car so Luann could run back to see how the guy was doing, but by the time I got our car stopped, we must have been about a half mile down the road. I told Luann that since he wiped out while in the middle of a 'conga-line', there would be better equipped people able to help him if he needs assistance. This near-miss did nothing to put me at ease, and we continued counting the number of cars that had either spun out, crashed, or flipped over in the snow. We actually counted 31 such incidents until the snow thinned out to nothing. I'm just glad we made it home with no problem whatsoever.

Mill City Museum, The 'Human Habitrail' & The Mall Of America

All of us headed over to downtown Minneapolis to visit the Mill City Musuem and then took a long jaunt to the "Candy Store" via adjoining walkways between the buildings in downtown Minneapolis that Jody and Jenn call the "Human Habitrail". Afterwards, we stopped off for pizza before heading home. The next day, we visited the Mall Of America. Boy, is it huge! Let's take a pictorial stroll, shall we?

So, here we are at the Mill City Musuem (http://www.millcitymuseum.org/) This train car is located inside the Museum, and is right next to the coat rack where we hung up our jackets (a very important item when you live in 'Snow Country').

Next, we went on a video ride and guided tour of the old flour mill and the guide talked about the fire that burned down about half of the mill.

This placard explains about the mill fire.

After the guided tour, we were let loose upon the museum to see what other possibilities were available.

This device is a roll mill, where a pair of knurled rollers are used to break apart the wheat kernels, rather than using grist stones that need constant attention to keep the stones in good shape.

In the water room, there were different demonstration tables that showed how old flour mills used to harness the river for power to run the machines in the mill.

At the upstairs area, you can see the river and water ducting systems that the mill used.

This image shows the ill-fated 35W bridge that had collapsed and the reconstruction work.

When we finished up with the Mill City Musuem, it was time to find 'Candy Land', via the Human Habitrail.

As we were going along, we stopped by the Wells Fargo building to see the displays they had put out for visitors. The kids tried out this replica stagecoach.

Meanwhile, this fine example rests in the main lobby, safely out of reach of the children.

There was even a place where you could see what the stagecoaches were all about and what the bank tellers used to work with in the days of Wells Fargo's beginnnings.

Yep, it looks like Treesie has just about had enough of the children's 'chaos theory'...

Here is a view of one of the habitrail "Skyways", taken as we were walking down another one.

Hey wait! I wanna visit Candy Land too!

Ahhhh! The object of our desires...

After satisfying our sweet tooth and making the long march back (for some of us), it was time to head out for some real food. We decided to stop by the Broadway Pizza Station.

Time for some chow!

So Jody, is it good?

Whoa! It looks like Dad had an allergic reaction to the pizza!

On the next day, it was time to visit... the Mall of America...

Time for lunch. Always something of a logistical nightmare due to so many family members in one place.

With lunch over, it was time to start the exploration. We broke off into groups with everyone having their own specific mission to accomplish.

Man! There is a Ferris Wheel in the middle of the mall!

Actually, it's a complete theme park in here...

Kaylee, Katrina, Luann and I decided to play a round of goofy golf.

And here is a shot of my world-famous, "Butt-Putt" technique. There isn't any other way to score that ever-evasive eagle.

So, we had a bunch of fun running around, seeing several nice places in Minneapolis with Jody & Jen working overtime to be gracious and generous hosts. We are very thankful that they welcomed us into their home as they decided to take on the small army we call: "Family".

Merry Christmas, Everybody!

We are up here in Minneapolis, visiting with the family as we are having something of a holiday family reunion. The way the story goes, is that I had to perform a training session for work in Indianapolis the week that we were planning to drive north for vacation. So, this meant that I took a rental car to Indiana and when I was done, Luann & Katrina flew from Tampa to Indiana so we could start our holiday drive from there instead. Starting in Indianapolis, (we stopped at a Cracker Barrel for dinner and a cache first) then drove up to the Indiana/Illinois border to stay overnight at a 'Stop-N-Flop' hotel. Afterwards, we made our way into Chicago to visit the Osaka Garden Park (http://www.hydepark.org/parks/osaka2.htm) because it has a special attachment to Osaka Japan.

And, well... there were a couple of caches and some great photo opportunities nearby. After this, we headed north to West Allis, Wisconsin to stay overnight with relatives of Luann's (can you guess that we looked for and found a cache while we were there?). Next, was a brutal 300 mile drive to Minneapolis, Minnesota. There was a strong wind (gusting to 50MPH) and lots of driving, blowing snow to deal with. It was a treacherous drive, and we passed many, many accidents and 'off-road' excursions.

We are here now in Minneapolis and things have been much nicer. Driving around in the snow has been interesting with a rear wheel drive car, but not impossible. The only trouble we have had so far was when I got the car stuck in the snow, trying to pull into my brother's driveway after the snowplow trucks had gone by. It took a little bit of forward-reverse rocking and I quickly got the car loose. For the next try, I backed up to take a little faster run at the driveway and made it with no problem. Well, I guess I should tell you about the pictures...

We drove up from Indianapolis and stopped at a hotel for the night. When we awoke the next morning, we stopped off at the Osaka Garden to find 3 caches hidden in the area.

The Osaka Garden, even while in the throes of winter, was still quite beautiful...

We could barely understand Katrina, as she kept chittering away in Japanese.

We made short work of the other two geocaches, this one being a magnetic keyholder on a rail of the bridge.

And there was a small container located within the granite base of this statue.

And this is Katrina's first time in snow in West Allis, Wisconsin. She decided to faceplant nose down in the snow first (the marks to the right) then she flipped around and made a snow angel.

It's about 2:30 and the fog is closing in.

We even went geocaching while in West Allis. We were lucky enough to find a geocoin we had released in Tampa that had traveled all the way up here to Wisconsin.

Next, we had to drive through this nasty snow storm with driven snow blowing at about 25-40 mph and a temperature of about 7 degrees. It was a bit scary...

We stopped at a gas station somewhere along I-94. It was cold and the whole area was loaded with snow. We barely made it in and out of the plaza with our base-model, rear-wheel drive rental Magnum.

On the way up to Minneapolis, we came across over 2 dozen accidents, with cars down in the ditches, upside-down or smacked into something. It took all I had to keep our Florida car on the straight and narrow.

Yep, somebody wasn't up to the task...

When we finally made it, Katrina was in snow heaven again, as she frolicked with her cousins in the snow. These are the younger kids, working on their snowball skills.

In order to combat the teen-aged boys, it looks like Katrina and her cousin Kaylee decided to bring out the heavy artillery. I sure wouldn't want to get hit by one of those!

As the kids were playing around, my brother Jody was clearing the driveway and the walkways.

On the other side of the house, the teen-aged boys are lying in wait to pummel Katrina and Kaylee.

After a bit of shoveling, Jody decided to use something with a bit more power.

Some time afterwards, we worked on taking family portraits. On the left is my sister Treesie (spoken like; Tracey), next is Jody, then his wife Jennifer.

Here are all of the cousins, squeezed into one picture. From the top-left is Kaylee, then Katrina, then Warner (in Katrina's arms), Willem, Kyle, and Kevin. The little ones down in front, from left-to-right are: Michael, Linda and Ella. Hail, hail! The gang's all here!

And here is a picture of our hosts, Jody and Jennifer with Warner, Willem and Ella. As you can see, it's hard to get a nice picture of the family when you have young boys to deal with...

Here is a shot of Treesie's bunch, to include her husband, Bobby. I was hoping for complete sets for each family group, but my HP camera fell off a wall into the snow in Chicago and the lens drive motor died, so I was working with Luann's camera and I'm not too familiar with it. Needless to say, the shots of Luann, Katrina and myself didn't come out for use in the blog.

Well, it looks like it snowed again, because Jody is chucking more snow off of the driveway...

Instead of just watching this time, I got in some much needed exercise too.

I call this shot, "Sunday Morning Coffee", even though it was taken Wednesday morning. Hi Mom & Dad!

Time to get dinner going for the army! Every meal was a major affair when you have 17 mouths to feed. Somehow, Jody and Jenn got it done. Thanks guys, we all appreciated it.

And you know, we just had to find at least one cache while we were in Minneapolis. Thank goodness for this huge ammo box by our hotel...