Celebrating Christopher's Birthday at Krape Park

Michael's smile!

thoughtful 12 year old
Mother and son

fishing off the bridge
handsome young man

A trip on the River Doug and Michael heading out in their canoe.
Christine and Jack peddle while Lee enjoys the ride.
Christopher and Mike in the lead.
Jeff and Jen admiring the scenery

Lee in the swan boat...look out Lee...here comes a sea monster!
Jeff enjoying a free ride...catching a few zzzzz's

Searching for the cache

Christopher with the GPS...everyone searching.Trecking through the undergrowth of itchy nettles.

Chris finds his first cache on his 12th birthday!

Adding Jeffnjen's label and signing the log book.

A few shots after finding the cache. Hot and itchy but successful!
Jeff's little sister and family - Jack, Christopher and Michael in front, Christine and Mike in back.
Jen, Jeff and Doug bringing up the end of the line
Lee and Doug having a quiet moment.

Cubs/Marlins game at Wrigley

Jeff's Awesome Photos of our trip to Wrigley field Marlins beat the Cubs - Go Marlins!

Busy Few Weeks

The last couple of weeks have been busy, even a bit overwhelming. The last two days I've basically slept and tried to recooperate from the craziness.

June 23rd-24th ... was our work retreat at White Pines. It was a beautiful couple of days, and we all enjoyed the sisterhood and were able to relax while still getting a lot of work done. We stayed in the Pine Creek Cabins and took time out to hike, and even get a little toasted after hours.

June 25th ... was work as normal

June 26th-27th ... the management team joined a leadership training in Springfield at the state offices. It was a decent training and we had a nice time, but it was such a long week that by Friday afternoon we were all ready to get on home.

June 28th-July 2nd... Jeff and I left for the Wisconsin Dells. We had an excellent time, the Dells were beautiful, and not too busy. We took both an upper river cruise, rode the ducks for the lower Dells area and took in many of the other sites as well. It was a sobering site though to actually walk out onto the lake bed of what had formally been Lake Delton. The locals all seem optimistic that things will be returning to normal fairly soon but it still has to have hurt many of the local businesses, especially Tommy Barlett's water show.
We did take in a couple of geocaches, one of them at a State park called Devil's Lake. It was a beautiful area, and much less commercialized, though the skeeters were like little flying devils. I think they even made away with the cache because we never did find it.
On our way home, we made a stop at House on the Rock. I don't think we will be returning there any time soon. While there were some interesting things to see, it was a disapointment for Jeff and definitely not quite the attraction I'd remembered it being when I was a kid. It was almost creepy in a way, it felt dirty and smelled really bad imho.

July 3rd ... we spent the day getting ready for the Annual Patty Family Picnic. We shopped, and basically loaded everything but the kitchen sink into the blazer.

Sadly however, that day I got a call from my Dad saying my Aunt Shirley (my Godmother) had passed away. She was someone I cared for a lot....I sort of put it away for after the picnic as my Mom wanted to go ahead with our plans for the day.

July 4th ... we hosted the Annual Patty Family Picnic at Centenial Park in Rock Falls, Illinois. It turned out to be a great place to have it (after all the stress of trying to find the perfect spot with the campground flooded.) I think we'd consider having it there again next year even. We took Jack with us, and all the kids had a really great time, as did the adults. There were paddle boats and fishing and lots of yard games and as always plenty of the best food ever!

July 5th ... i was exhausted and basically slept the whole day. I did work on my facebook page that night and stayed up entirely too late (Saturday)

July 6th ... i was still exhausted but Jeff and I managed a short little drive to just get out of the house. He put me in charge and so I just drove...we ended up at the lock and dam near Fulton, then over to Clinton for something to drink. Something to drink turned into Taco Bells and then to Pauls to just snoop around and finally home. We watched a couple of movies, nothing big, I worked on a few odds and ends on my computer and that was it.

July 7th ... is today. Today I slept late, and am doing a bit of cleaning and posting to this blog. When I finish it's off to shower and get dressed for my Aunt's visitation/funeral. It's going to be a tough day. She was my mom's last living sister and they were very close. Before Aunt Sirley went to the nursing home a couple of years ago she had moved within blocks of my mom and dad and they spent lots of time together. My mom is 84 or will be at the end of this month, so it doesn't matter how strong you are, just being 84 can really kick your butt at times. --bleh

I'll add photos later,
Jen

Busy Busy Busy

Last weekend was Memorial day weekend - 3 days off. Saturday we worked on flower beds and the "courtyard",

Sunday we pretty much spent the day inside, resting up, working on normal weekend stuff, and in the afternoon we finished up some outside projects including putting together the patio furniture and finishing up planters and such.

Monday Jeff and I visited the zoo. I've mentioned several times that I've always enjoyed the zoo, and so we went!

The day was beautiful, warm and sunny. We did a lot of walking and gawking at all the awesome animals.

The animals were awesome and it was an extra special way to end our three day weekend.

Swinging Bridge GeoCache

PICT8646, originally uploaded by j9patty.

Us on a swinging bridge in Poniac, Illinois while looking for a GeoCache during our Route 66 Red Corridor Road Trip

The Second day of Our Road Trip

Here are a few photos of vintage cars, taken along Route 66 at a car show! Ironically, across on the opposite side of the road was an auto "bone yard" full of rust and broken glass. We ended up taking some great photos there too.

Road Trip - Route 66 Red Carpet Corridor

Home tonight from our latest road trip. The Route 66 Carpet Corridor. We've spent the last couple of days traveling from Joliet, Illinois to Lincoln, Illinois, along the Historic, Old Route 66.

We began with a quick stop to Joliet Area Historical Museum. After a few photos there and a stop at the gift shop we moved on to the little towns that are ever 10 miles or so along Route 66. We stopped at yardsales, sidewalk sales, garage sales and driveway sales. There were several little fleamarkets and craft shows also along the way.

Late in the afternoon Saturday we made it to Pontiac where we visited their Historic Museum which included works of photography by Michael Campenelli, 3 swinging bridges, we did a geo-cache, had dinner, fed the ducks at the park and spent the night at the beautiful Three Roses Bed and Breakfast.

We are really looking forward to a fun weekend!

We are going to explore a section of the famous Route 66, and stay the night at the Three Roses Bed and Breakfast.

Maquoketa

Today Jeff and I spent the day with his Mom and Dad. We went to Maquoketa for a big yardsale at the fairgrounds. Starting the day at the fairgrounds, we each found a few small treasures. Nothing huge and between us we probably spent less then $20.00 total, but it was a lot of fun.

After that we did a quick geocache at a local dam. The water wasn't frozen anymore, though there was still a lot of ice and snow at the rivers edges. We walked around looking for what turned out to be a very small cache. Doug was the one who actually found it, which was fun since it was his first time doing a cache. "A round peg in a square hole" was the name of the cache and it certainly fit.

Next we had lunch at Bluff Lake a very out of the way place Doug and Lee had heard about. We had the all you could eat chicken and shrimp. They brought to our table big baskets of fries and shrimp a platter of chicken and the meal also included homemade coleslaw and bread, it was excellent. I don't think i've ever eaten so much shrimp at one meal. We all left very full.

The very first picture of Jeff and I and the windmill were taken outside the restaurant.

Next we went to the Maquoketa Caves. What an awesome place! We began climbing down a flight of snow and ice covered stairs. I was a bit nervous after that, but then the view and just being outdoors on such a beautiful crisp winter day just really made any nervousness disapear. We walked across the frozen river, taking plenty of pictures as we made our way. Here Doug is looking at a large crack in the ice where you can see the river flowing beneath. We even saw a couple of groundhogs which Jeff was able to take some great pictures of.


We took some excellent pictures throughout the day including some of little one room school house and just some wonderful scenes of the park. Here in this last picture is the four of us posing for a timed shot. I think I hit my head in that cave twice before I remembered to duck.

While I'd seen the park many years ago, being with Jeff and his parents today was like experiencing it all again for the first time. It was a totally different place and experience today and again I was reminded of how much my life has changed and how blessed I am.

If you've never had the chance the park is beautiful this time of year, you are able to view a much different perspective then when the grass is green and the leaves fill the trees and block the view of the clear blue sky.