Good time, good friends

Oh, which to choose?  

 Elizabeth wanted the prettiest one

 

Adelaide chose what reminded her of the "naughty" bear from the new movie Brave.

 How can anyone be anything but happy on a carousel?

The city we were in is called St. Joseph.  Every summer the businesses sponsor a curbside art exhibit centered around a theme.  One year it was cows and almost every corner had a sometimes tongue in cheek decorated cow on it. One summer it was carousel animals, one summer it was fish. Last year it was farm animals and this year it's pirates.  In front of stores and on street corners there are pirates, dolphins, sea turtles, sea horses and on one corner a pirate ship kids can pose in.  We stopped at the visitor's bureau for maps that showed the locations of the statues. 
We are a map family.  Every trip we've taken we have pictures of Patient Husband standing on a corner with a street map unfolded in front of his face to help us get our bearings.  My son is now a geographer.

 When I turned and saw  Adelaide and Grandpa, I couldn't resist the photo op.

 Elizabeth:  "Adelaide!! They have Crush here!!"

"Come on!"

 "We found him!"  this sea turtle was decorated like Crush from the movie Finding Nemo and has Dorrie and Nemo painted on his shell.   What do you know!

Keeping up when you're 2 1/2 can tire a little girl out.

Last night....

Last night we had friends over that we haven't seen in years.  Time, moves across country, life...it all gets in the way.  But we did it last night. 

Friend Harry - far right in the hat - has a tradition going back 10 years with his sons of finding an obscure pre-prohibition long forgotten by the masses beer and having a tasting/judging on the 4th of July.  He brought with him last night this year's selection for the guys to try. 

 Each of them got their own can, a special glass to pour into and directions.  "On the count of three we all open, pour and taste together...."

 One!

 Two!

 Three!

 What is this stuff???

Patient Husband (in stripes) told me this morning that it was declared "old fashioned...passable" by the guys. 

 We made two paellas.  One with chicken and sausage...

 ...and one with shrimp. 

PH and I like having paellas when we have a crowd.  It's a crowd pleasing one dish meal that always gets it's picture taken!

My gosh we had a good time last night.

As you can see from this busy week, I haven't gotten much quilting done.