CAUTION: THE FOLLOWING PICTURE IS RATED X

Yup, the coach lost power at the bottom of the on ramp and we made it to the side of the freeway. It took us about four hours to travel from the south side of the Twin Cities to the fix-it shop on the north side of the Twin Cities. After attempting to troubleshoot the problem on the side of I-494 (20 minutes on hold with Monaco who eventually returned the call five hours later and Cummins who gave us good ideas but told us we probably couldn’t do it ourselves), we called the tow truck. It took forty five minutes for the tow to arrive and a good hour and a half to get the coach ready to be towed and hooked up. After the long trip around the cities because of construction on the I-35 bridge and construction on I-694 the coach arrived at Cummins North. Now it was wait for someone to be able to help us and then possibly a two hour diagnostic, and then a five hour fix it schedule.

In the meantime the tow guy says to me, “Is your last name Mitchell?” “Yes,” I said thinking he needed to double check before I signed the tow charge. “Well, Mrs. Mitchell, you were my sixth grade teacher. Do you remember me?” And I did, so we had a nice little conversation catching up on 18 years! It’s a small world!

Waterfront Bistro, White Bear Lake, MN

When there’s nothing left to do, one finds a nice harbor side restaurant with sailboats in the background and orders a wonderful seafood dinner and a bottle of wine!

When we returned to Cummins, they informed us it was only a fuse (which did take two hours to find--but they couldn’t tell us why it blew) and they did repair a bad Monaco job on the air filter hose (or something like that!) So $300 later (and it was only 8:00 not 11:00) we headed for our destination--the venison sausage making house of Carol and Jim--up north!

Venison Sausage--UMM UMM Good

The sausage making has become a summer occasion--after all we have to do something with the deer that was taken last fall and has been stored in Jim and Carol’s freezer ! We purchased 42 pounds of pork and Mitch ground all the pork and the almost 40 pounds of venison. Then Carol got out the spices and she and Mitch took the recipes for summer sausage, breakfast sausage, and pizza sausage and worked their magic.



Of course we had to try out the results before we packaged the sausage so we nibbled our way through patties from about 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. In-between we were packaging, forming rolls and wrapping.



Since summer sausage making is a two day process, the second day involved baking, unwrapping, smoking, rewrapping--and of course taste testing! (Click on the picture of Mitch to get a good view of the summer sausage!)


If you have already checked the Addy, Addy, Addy pictures, go back and reread them. I forgot something that was really cute!

Brayden Update

Congrats to Caryn who has just joined the workforce outside of the home. She took a job with a family owned paver company in Ft. Lauderdale as an estimator, but their interest in Caryn was her experience in design, hoping she can develop a design segment for the company. So Caryn goes to work and Jason takes Brayden to "school". The first day was successful, Brayden enjoyed playing with all the kids.

A couple of lessons to learn from Brayden, however, are shown in a couple of pictures I borrowed from Caryn's blog (BRAYDENandus.blogspot.com):

1) Just kick back and view the world from a different angle, whether it be clouds, butterflies, birds, or "copcas" (helicopters--four news choppers were flying overhead covering a burning building), and 2) Take time to smell the rosemary! (After playing in the dirt!)

Pat and John

Guess who we ran in to in Minneapolis? How fun to see Pat and John in our neck of the woods! They have been traveling with their friends Marilyn and Bill and the six of us went to Canterbury Downs Race Track. John and Pat shared their "racing" expertise, we had lunch, and enjoyed the outdoors. We learned a lot about racing, but we didn't win in the wagering department!

Addy, Addy, Addy

We spent the day at Shayne and Sarah's and had a chance to play all day with Addy. When I took out my camera Addy said "camra" and smiled so pretty for the picture. I showed her the picture and she said, "Addy," and kissed the camera. Then she said, "One more," and posed so I took another one, and she said, "One more," and posed again. I think she has learned to love the camera.

Addy in the swimming pool

Addy just loves to play, and she says "pool" "swimming". We will certainly miss her and her antics when we leave Minnesota.