Grand Central Station

Our house felt like Grand Central Station this weekend, which was a fun change! On top of having seven extra people in the house (Mark, Karen and gang), there was an unusually large number of people picking apples at the farm. Saturday, the owner's church group came out to press cider and then yesterday, we had five or six families come out to pick apples. After all the cars were gone, the kids ran out to the box to see how much money was there and it was over $40.



The kids enjoyed playing tennis and basketball, picking apples and raspberries, and playing hide and seek. In the evening, the boys enjoyed watching the football game.

My favorite part of the weekend was visiting Kolona again with Mark and Karen (Bruce stayed home and played with the kids). We happened upon a field full of horse drawn buggies, which turned out to be the parking lot of an auction house. We went inside and found out they were auctioning off goats. The smaller goats went for around $35-$80, but the big billy goats went for around $400. With the billy goats, they would read off the animal's pedigree. One of the best goat lines, we found out, originated from the goat Mojo Magic. After one of the big billy's was sold, the auctioneer asked the new owner if he would like the billy pinned up with his nannies or separate. When the new owner said to put them together, the auctioneer agreed that that was a good idea so the billy could get to work right away!

After the auction we went to a restaurant called the Tuscan Moon and sat out in the garden. It was a fancy Italian restaurant, which seemed a little out of place with our surroundings, but we enjoyed sitting out with the rose bushes, hanging flower baskets, and hummingbirds. Mark was trying to decide on an appetizer and the waitress said we just had to get the crab cakes--they were out of this world. So we ordered them and then started chowing down on what we thought would be wonderful crab cakes. Unfortunately, there was no crab in the crab cakes--at least not any we could taste. We dutifully ate them, but renamed them corn cakes, which seems more fitting for Iowa anyway.

Then we headed to the bakery where Karen and Mark got sugar cookies shaped and decorated like pigs for everyone and some cinnamon rolls, which were excellent. After that we checked out a furniture store and then an antique/craft shop that had a whole room dedicated to quilts. There had to be over 100 hand quilted quilts there and it was fun to look through them. The most expensive one had a hefty price tag of $1700.