Biker Momma

There are two kinds of bikers. Those who have crashed, and those who are going to crash. My wife is now among the first group. While taking the Riders Edge course at Worth Harley Saturday morning she laid the bike down....on her foot. She told the instructor she thought she'd broken her ankle, and about an hour later the E.R. doctor confirmed it. So instead of a motorcycle license she's getting a cast.
I'm gonna be honest. I laughed a little bit. Since she works for Harley I know she's going to have a rough day tomorrow as her co-workers pile on the jokes. Besides that she's doing great. No surgery should be needed and she'll get the cast on in a few days. I just gotta keep her from crashing on the crutches.

My trooper

Come Together

James/Anderson '10 was this past weekend and went over with flying colors. This family reunion consist of my dad, his sister, and the kids and grand kids. The yearly gathering used to always be at Thousand Hills State Park, but lately we've branched out a bit. Last year we hit St. Louis, the year before was Tan-Tar-a, and this year found us back at Lake of the Ozarks. Instead of the usual hotel or cabin renting we opted for a house....a really big house. This place was great, and allowed us all (20 total) to be within close reach. (kinda the whole point of getting together.

Let's face it. You can not get together with family and not eat...so we always eat good. Saturday was "bring your own meat" night and Dave was nice enough to cook it all up for us. After downing a Texas size t-bone and chasing it Sunday morning with biscuits and gravy, I'm pretty sure I need a few weeks of close dieting.

Shopping....ho hum. This house was about a mile from an outlet mall. My brother-in-law and I did find a knife store to keep us occupied for a few minutes. We thought it a bit odd to have tactical military knives right across the isle from Precious Moments dolls so.... we took a picture.

I'm pretty sure the kids had a blast. The property had it's own covered dock equipped with a couple kayaks and a paddle boat. This is a picture of Macy on her maiden voyage. She did rather well considering she's never paddled anything in her life. She only yelled "daddy come save me" once.

And when the four foot and under crowd got tired of playing in the lake, they could go to the side yard and jump in the pool. (a polar bear would have got chills in that water)

Great food, fun, and family. Not a bad way to spend the weekend. The coming week has us looking forward to a carnival. Tomorrow is the opening of bow season. (woo hoo!) And I'm trying to put together a "four states in one day" bike ride for October. So goods things are yet to come.

The Pose

I wish I had a picture for half the time he does this. His comfort pose.

Soaking up Sunday

A short time back my wonderful sister informed me that my blog has been lacking in updates. I can't deny it...and even devoted a blog to the topic a few post back. So I've decided to attack September with a vengeance. This effort may fall on its face right out of the gate as my three day weekend will soon be over and life at full throttle will resume.

I left the doves alone this morning. I'm still a little punch drunk from them slapping me around yesterday. So today we loaded up and went to Backfire BBQ for lunch. I'm a bit of a biker fan, gear head, and foodie, so this place was begging for me to try it out. I kinda figured the food would be lacking because of all the attention put into decorating. Thankfully I was wrong...the food was great and the service too.




After lunch we headed up to dads to celebrate his 63rd birthday. The girls were more than willing to help grandpa open his gifts.

We grabbed some grub at a deli and headed to the park to enjoy some perfect picnic weather. (which turned out to be much better than the food I might add)

He earned every one of those gray hairs.....pretty sure I account for at least half.

And then we finished the evening off with some ice cream. A day well done.

And to keep the party going, tomorrow we'll be hosting my mother-in-law for her big 60. Next weekend will find us at Lake of the Ozarks for the annual James/Anderson family get together, which always proves to be a good time. Hopefully sis won't mind if I don't blog again until then....have a great week folks!

Beat down by the bird of peace.

It may still be summer but my official fall indicator arrived this past Wednesday...the opening of dove season. I personally think they should change it to dove day, for the sure fact that opening morning is about the only time you're going to remove a tasty morsel from the air. Our group didn't get out until this morning (Saturday) and five guys with around 400 shells fired exactly six times for zero dove. Complaints were few and far between as we enjoyed being in the great outdoors while the sun came up on a beautiful day.

Missouri has one of the nations best conservation departments... hands down. The men and women who manage our public lands do a great job, and the ones I've met are extremely helpful and passionate people. Now I could lie and say that Shane is just getting the inside scoop on some good dove hunting spots in the picture below....and actually it wouldn't be a total lie because the two agents pictured gave us a map and some good info and where we might have better luck. They also asked to check our guns and permits. That was all fine and good until Shane realized he was about nine months late updating his hunting permit. The rest of us had a few minutes to grab a water and laugh our butts off while he was receiving his ticket.

Macy welcomed us home and promptly wanted to know where the birds were. I hate admitting defeat to my kid but that's exactly what I did. She didn't seem all the disappointed after raiding the cooler for a gatorade though.

We may not have doves, but we've got good times aplenty.