Happy Father's Day

This year for Father's Day Syd and I made Ken a candy-gram. I bought a bunch of candy that we used for different words on a poster. Syd wrote all the words herself. The whole time we were working on it, she kept telling me what a good idea it was.

We thought we could tape it to the door for him to find when he came home, but it was too heavy.

Ken reading the sign

Syd being Vanna White and holding the sign for him to read.

I think he likes it!

Early Birthday Present

When Ken asked me a few days ago what I wanted for my birthday in a couple of weeks, I told him raspberry plants. My Gramma Purcell had hundreds of raspberry bushes and I remember spending a few nights with her every summer to help pick. There is nothing better than eating them right off the plant when they're warm from being in the sun all day. I'm sure I ate just as many as I put in the buckets while I was helping :) I don't care about making jam, or cooking with them. I just want to eat them!

Yesterday the weather was perfect and we had time, so we went to Lowe's and got what we needed. We have an area on the west side of the house where we used to lean the canoe. All the grass was already mostly dead and looking scraggly. Ken raked it all up and made a nice little garden area.

We didn't go too crazy, just a little strip of dirt by the house.

Ken thinks he's a farmer.

Surrounded by all the plants waiting to be planted.

Ta-da! The finished product.

We put some of my favorite dune grass in the back, right next to the house. I have some just like it in the front yard, and I love it. I never pay any attention to it, and it thrives! 5 little raspberry plants in the front, and 3 jalapeno plants all the way to the right side. Hopefully by this time next year I'll be picking and eating my own razzies.

A Little Staycation

Ken and I had a little vacation at home yesterday afternoon. We drove to Grand Rapids and went to a botanical/sculpture garden. We've driven past it a few times and I always thought it looked interesting, but we never actually went in. I'm so glad we did! It was much bigger than either of us thought it would be, based on what you can see from the road (which is pretty much nothing). There were exhibits inside and outside, with all kinds of different plants and flowers you'd never see anywhere else. Some of the sculptures were cool, while others were very disturbing. We didn't give ourselves enough time to see the whole thing, since we had no idea what to expect. We will definitely be going there again to see it all.

These flowers were coming straight out of the wall in one of the rooms.

One entire room was all carnivorous plants. Ken's worried about getting snapped by the Venus Fly Traps, but they were so little! (Not at all like they are in the cartoons :)

My favorite room was the Arid room. I never realized cacti could be so beautiful and interesting.

There were so many sculpture exhibits with blown glass. These Red Reeds were planted on a grassy hillside.
We also saw yellow and purple ones in different areas of the garden.

This pond had floating glass balls on it.

Ken and I were both intrigued by this row boat filled with curly pieces of glass. You can see the glass balls floating on the pond, and the big blue ball in the back had 2 foot long spikes all around it. Who thinks of doing any of that stuff and calling it art?

I liked this giant orange steel sculpture , while Ken thought it was a waste of good metal.

This was one of both of our favorites. A form of a man sitting on a rock made of out metal letters all welded together.

There were 3 shapes total, all a little different, but remarkably similar too.

After we got kicked out of the gardens at closing time, we headed for some food. For the first time since we started going to Grand Rapids, we didn't eat at our favorite Spanish restaurant. We tried a fondue place very close to the gardens. It was definitely different, and something we couldn't get anywhere closer to home. We liked pretty much everything we had, but it couldn't take over as the new favorite restaurant.

The first course was cheese, with bread, veggies and apples to dip in it. The apples were the best for me. After the cheese came some lettuce wraps or salad. Then the meat course with lobster, steak, shrimp, chicken, and pork to dump in a boiling broth until it was cooked. It came with several different sauces to dip everything in. The steak and lobster were the best part. For dessert we had s'mores type chocolate to dip strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, brownies, cheesecake, and rice krispy treats in. Unspurprisingly, I didn't love the chocolate part (it would have been better with white chocolate, but Ken wouldn't budge on that). I did dip some of everything and loved the chocolate covered rice krispy treat.

If you have a chance to go to a fondue restaurant, you should do it. It's definitely not food you would make at home.