Tinsel Toe 5k

Kim, Jess and I thought it would be a great idea to run a 5k on the worst day if the year so far...  It was the tinsel toe 5k in battle creek - very cool nighttime race with all if the Christmas lights and snow it was great - there was judging for your costumes as well so we put on our crafting skills and made these beautiful Christmas sweaters ... Sadly we missed the judging but Phil's Christmas whale was a hit and Phil, Randy and John all finished in the top ten and came back to Finnish running with us!!

Summer @ FLW

Hey All,

It's summer and of course we have some projects going on - first off we needed a trailer so Craigs list here we come.... 

Before...

 After... :-)

 Trevor and Cindi and the kids grew sweet corn so one day we froze hundreds of ears of corn - here's dad and Ty hanging out

 Lexi labeling the bags

 Filling.... careful

 A short nap - dad and Ty were worn out from playing

 White dog is loving summer - here she is on my new chair (She thinks its her chair)

 Jodie, mom, Jess and I made peach salsa and tamales one day and didn't bother to take any pictures... (I blame Jodie for that)

 Christine and I spent her birthday canning - here's what we started with :-)

 Here's what we ended up with - a toast to the canninators...

With all this canning it was time to attack the pantry

Here's a before picture...

                             

 Jess offered to lend a hand...

 Closer.... 

 Even Closer...

 and a chalkboard door for the grocery list

 Whew now I can can more - I was running out of shelf room

 Final pantry...

 We found some time to catch a few fish with Mike and Tammy on the river

 Bill found this red tail hawk at our house - it has west nile but he found a place to take him and they were confident they could get him back to normal :-) 

 Took time for a little camping (note the cool new trailer in the picture with Trevor's 7 minute gate)

 

 Ty is loving it this year

Hope you all are having a great summer!

~B&T

Canning Time....

It's that time of year - the garden is producing more veggies than we can eat or give away (hint hint family and friends come over here and pick pick pick)

it all started with some strawberry jam at my mom's (can't take credit for all these jars - Linda and my mom did most of them.... they use the recipe here on the Sure Jell box

One day of picking from the garden - yikes so I called Christine and we got to work - had to go to my mom's as my power line was down in my driveway... (don't ask how I got out)

here's our finished products - all from the garden how beautiful (July 20th)

Cole and Lexi even stopped by to make some pickled banana peppers that they grew

 This weekend (July 28th) there were more veggies including some ripe red tomatoes

 So Bill picked and I canned

 Blackberry's in Chambord 

Tomato Jam from Food in Jars website 

Bread and Butter pickles from Ball Bread and Butter Pickle Packet 

 and some bread and butter banana and jalapeno peppers from the same Ball packet

 22 Beautiful Jars - all from the garden :-)

The Garden 2013

Hey Blog Readers, Bill and I decided to retire from flower gardening like we did at 10th street and instead plant a garden... its big enough to feed the neighborhood so if you need veggies just stop by.  We started most everything from seed in a little pop up greenhouse we bought and as you can see things continue to grow and grow...

 A turtle who stopped by just before planting to lay some eggs....

Yes that's me - taking a break from all the weeding - the garden is organic so there's a ton of weeds... 

Solar powered fence to keep out the deer 

me in the tomato patch - they are over my head now 

for those of you who have been here before - check it out you can see the meadow from the yard after much landscaping... 

Not the garden but some nice landscaping improvements at FLW

Ireland = Done

Hey Blog readers - as many of you know Ireland (and Fremont California) have been my homes away from home over the past 2 years.  For those of you who were wondering what I was doing flying around the country - here are some highlights.

This is a something my team and I have been working on since the end of 2010.  The project was to integrate a newly acquired company which included 3 manufacturing sites and over 1100 employees into our organization.  After hours of planning and more conference calls, meetings and post it notes than I can ever imagine we are finished and are manufacturing product in all 3 sites with Cork being the final phase that just completed.

This part of the company we acquired manufactures coils which are used for the treatment of brain aneurysms.

For those of you who think I'm just in the pub drinking Jameson - here's some proof of real work happening.

 Here's the employees in the brand new cork facility on their first day of work

The team getting ready to prep the cleanroom after the building was handed over

 Me in the cleanroom in Cork Ireland

 The team - deploying systems to get ready for day 1 after 2 years of planning for this moment

 day 1 - me at one of the command centers

Really happy to have this project completed - very proud of the team for what they accomplished and looking forward to staying off of a plane for awhile.

Mile Marker 0

 This winter I finally convinced Bill to go on a real vacation - he picked the Florida Keys so off we went to Cudjoe Key which is @ Mile Marker 22.  

The Keys have iguana's everywhere - this is a Key Deer - they are super small and they are not very shy as you can see.  

 We rented a house complete with pool and fishing right off the sea wall

Just a few of our many fish friends...

 Mallory square was great at night - during the days we fished right here were Blue is juggling fire on top of a huge unicycle - crazy... even crazier we met this guy at our house and talked with him.... 

 There are old bridges and roads everywhere that people fish from... the scenery is beautiful

 Tarpon were in season...

 For some odd reason there are chickens everywhere - this is a parking lot at a grocery store - no kidding...

It was an awesome time - can't wait to go back!