Week with Mary & Jerry

We had a great week with my sister, Mary, and her family last week.  On Thursday, Mary and I went floating on the air mattresses again but it was a little windy so we ended up doing a lot  more paddling than just laying there!  Bill and Jerry slow grilled pork loin for supper and it was awesome.  I told Bill that I am suffering from withdrawal from his pulled pork since he has not made any all summer!

On Friday, Mary, Jerry, Bill and I spent the day hanging out together.  Bill and Jerry had to make a convenience store run for milk for breakfast...for some reason, "convenience store" and "12 miles" seem to be a little contradictory but it is more convenient than 25 miles to the nearest grocery store! 

We decided to head to Bemidji and do some exploring of that town.  We stopped in Turtle River and had some totally awesome Reuben Pasties at Turtle River Pasties (http://www.summerkitchensupplies.com/).  They had a wonderfully light crust and the sauce had an interesting horseradish kick to it!   I am still working on getting Bill to make pasties!!

Of course, we had to stop at the chocolate store and get a little dessert before any shopping could occur!  It is really interesting that Bemidji has undertaken an art project to put some kind of art on just about every corner of their downtown.  We found this unique knit tree trunk cover and we thought our niece, Jenna, would get a kick out of this.

Since we like thrift shops, we checked out the Goodwill store and the consignment store next door to Goodwill.  I have to say that Goodwill had done a great job of getting their stores organized and well laid out.  I tease Mary about being a "Northwoods Barbie" and she did bring along the black heels in the picture below (but did not have much opportunity to wear them).  We did find the pink boot shoes that exemplified "Backwoods Barbie" at the consignment store.  We had a good laugh over these and, smart woman that she is, Mary did not buy these!

We had wonderful evenings on Thursday and Friday sitting by the fire and roasting marshmallows, eating smores, and talking smart.  We finally figured out that we might as well do the fire earlier in the evening as we do not stay up late and the mosquitoes are not out yet.  They headed back home on Saturday morning and we miss them!

We cleaned our cabin on Saturday morning and then I cleaned a cabin at the resort in the afternoon.  We went to see a wonderfully talented folk singer, John Perkins, at the Edge Center for the Arts, which is a nice little gallery and theatre in Big Fork (about 30 miles from our cabin).   John is a local artist who puts "the poetry of nature and life put to music".  He did all original music that he wrote around up north themes like Ice Out, Maple Syrup, Hummingbirds, etc.  It was very nice to find this venue and opportunity to enjoy local talent.

Bill played bass at church on Sunday with a family from Tennessee that is related to the pastor.  They have six wonderfully engaging young children with a 7th on the way.  The Dad played guitar and several of the children sang songs.  Starting next week, we will be struggling to find musicians and singers but we will see what God provides.  We had dinner with K and D and D's parents who are up visiting.  They brought Peaches and Cream sweet corn from Iowa and it was awesome to have that along with grilled zuchinni, grilled chicken and copper penny salad.  We had not made copper penny salad (carrots marinated in a tomato sauce), (http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1650,156175-237203,00.html), for a long time!

After supper, we dragged out the flat top grill and deep fryer that have been in storage since the restaurant at the resort was closed about 20 years ago!  D is going to see if he can get them going so that we can use them to make pancakes and fish for the inner city youth groups that are coming the first couple of weeks in August.  Needless to say, Bill was excited about cooking equipment and looks forward to the challenge of getting them cleaned up and going!

Yesterday, we headed home as I have meetings at work today and tomorrow and Bill has some giclee printing to do.  We forgot to notify our neighbors who are watching our house so we owe them an apology for causing some anxiety as we left the garage door partially open (as the floor is wet) while we went out to dinner with Haley.  They also checked our doors and heard the dog inside and wondered what was going on.  It was great to sit and visit with them for a while last night and catch up on the news in the neighborhood.  We miss hanging out with all our neighbors in the evening!