Memorial Weekend in Pictures!

The first part of our weekend was spent in Killbuck, a small town in southern Ohio, at Kevin's brother's log cabin in the woods.

The driveway, or should I say the rocky trail to the cabin is treacherous. If it's rainy you don't get out at all. You can get in, it's all downhill, but you can't get out.

It was built in the mid 1800's, does have electricity does not have running water.


It overlooks a large valley with a creek running down the middle but the trees are so thick that the view is only trees.

The kids had fun on the four wheeler.

The apple does not fall...

The oldest brought his airsoft guns and destroyed many pop cans.

It's a good thing no bunnies ran by.

Then they brought the big guns out.

Must go check out the target.

Yep, we hit it!

If you notice, this used to be a whole tree but much target practice has caused it to come apart at the seams.

Uh oh, he brought along electronics to pass the time.


A tour of the cabin...

the kitchen,

the living room...

and the bathroom. Yikes!

The distance to the cabin from the bathroom...pretty scary in the dark



This is Paul, the owner of the cabin and he needed a rock moved.

First he managed to break into manageable pieces.

KERRRRRRR

SMASH!!!!!!!

Then they loaded it up on the front of the four wheeler.

It's easier to hold a giant rock and drive a four wheeler at the same time if you stick out your tongue.

They moved them over to the artesian well so that you don't have to walk on the wet ground to get to the spring.

The spring.

They put a tube in the end of the pipe and fed it downhill into a barrel to collect water.

Behind Mike (Kevin's dad), you can see the trailer that he fitted with a large piece of black plastic. He filled it with water in order to heat it up for his morning bath. A really hillbilly hottub.


The other half of our Memorial Day Weekend.

Started with a picnic at my sister's house and Rascal had fun!

So did Tom, don't ever leave him alone with your camera!

He wasn't drinking either.

Tom and Amy.

This is Norm and he is the MASTER BUILDER! He built his own house, the really cool shed in the background and a beautiful little fish pond which I of course neglected to get a picture of. My mom and dad in the background.

Then we moved to the lake at my mom's house for some swimming fun and beverage fun at the Tiki Bar (Which Norm and Tom built, I helped too.) My beverage is ice tea but some of the others like the brew.

The guys are out at the raft playing Water Wedge. It's a game where somebody hits golf balls at a big tub on the raft, trying to hit the tub and get a hole in one. It's only happened twice, once last year and then on Memorial Day (actually it was Sunday) Tom got one! The guys and girls on the raft dive for the ones that miss, you could try to catch one if you wanted but it would hurt!

Lee was hitting the balls for them and he did a great job!.

The oldest and his girlfriend had fun too!

Little Charlie slowly moved in to get onto the picture.

The Lake crowd.

If you were looking for Kevin he was mostly fishing.

Til the sun went down and mosquitos came out and we went home.

Til next time,

Beth

Say Hi to Laddie!

Say Hi to Laddie!!!!

He came to live with us today. He's very skittish, not being around kids very much and all of our commotion so it will take some time. He and I sat on the swing for awhile tonight, watching the kids swim and I think he is going to be fine.

And of course I've been hatching eggs!

I chose mostly my Cuckoo Maran eggs because they are a beautiful dark brown. I also chose a couple of Americanas that were crossed with my Maran rooster. Two years ago I crossed Americanas with a Barred Rock rooster and got hens that laid really cool olive eggs and some even had brown speckles.

I hatched a couple of those too. Here are the empty shells that hatched. The two olive ones are from those Americans/Barred Rock crosses that I love so even though I only got nine to hatch I'm very happy.

Here's the first one hatching but it was upside down in the egg so I had to help it a little. It cried and cried til I opened it up a little. It was a little too bloody to open all the way so I was going to wait til the morning but when I got up it was out! Very cool.

The only bad thing is that now I can't tell them apart.

There is one that is definitely smaller so it has to from the pale blue egg.

Fishing Report!

Kevin started fishing in earnest out at my mom's lake and he has been catching some good ones. This was a really big crappie. At first when I saw the picture I thought it was a largemouth.




My BIL Tom caught this nice bass. The beer can is for a size comparison. Of course they took no measuring tape with them. The crappie was definitely a Fish Ohio fish.









Kevin caught this nice bass too. Don't know how big, again no tape or scale.

He was really surprised when he reeled in this northern pike. He didn't know that they have had a stocking program there for the last 30 years.

He, of course, didn't keep the bass or the pike or even the giant crappie but.....

He did keep some from the next trip last weekend. A nice perch, I made him put it back together so I could take a picture, he had already started cleaning it before I took it.

And I think he said that this was a black crappie.

Bunches of fish for dinner.

And if you notice, he is cleaning them on the table in the kitchen. Don't tell my mom or my sister. My mom thinks it is against the law to clean fish in the house and the table that he is cleaning them on is my sisters. He put down plastic and plenty of newspaper so there was no mess at all.

I think one time my dad cleaned fish in the house and he scaled them. The end result was a kitchen full of mess. Kevin filleted his so no resulting scaly mess.

Yummy!

Til next time,

Beth

PS. Hopefully I'll get off of my lazy behind and post more often. I have a post all ready with pictures of the rock wall progress but never got the energy to sit and write the words. Some of the pictures were out of order and it's hard to change them around so I got discouraged.

(Here's a picture of me that Kevin just took while I was working on this post, check out my helper.)