2008 Phi Sig Bird Hunt Reunion

This past weekend, Steve went bird hunting for the first time with his friends from Northwest. In all there were 9 guys that stayed in a log cabin in Grant City, MO at Timberview Sportsman. Hopefully we can make this an annual event.

Arkansas Winery's and Two Years Later

Today is our 2nd Anniversary. Since we are looking for a new home, we decided this year to save our money and not do a week-long vacation to a tropical paradise. Instead this past weekend, we made a short drive to Altus, Arkansas where there are 4 winery's. It isn't Hermann, but a fresh alternative.

We stayed in Eureka Springs, Arkansas on Saturday night. On Sunday, we went to Turpentine Creek, which is a sanctuary for Big Cats.

We finished our trip at the Onyx Cave. Steve was at this same cave with his family some 25 years ago.

One other piece of good news from the trip is about 15 minutes after Stephanie bought a statue of St. Joseph on eBay to bury upside down in our yard, we got a call from a realtor wanting to show our condo to a young guy for the second time! We are keeping our fingers crossed. It is down to our condo or 1 other and he will be making his offer to one of us in the next couple days.

5 months Later

To pick up where we left off with the birds, 5 baby starlings hatched, the mother bird flew away, 2 died, we named the surviving 3 Huey, Dewey & Louis, Louis died, we nursed Huey & Dewey back to health feeding them cat food and meal worms in the warmth of our garage, put them back outside in a box two weeks later, and low and behold the mother bird came back & fed them until they were ready to fly.

Just when we were looking forward setting them free ourselves and watch them fly away, we came home to find this note sitting inside their box written by our next door neighbor. Thanks a lot Carol…

We spent a couple weeks cleaning, painting and storing things so we could put our condo up for sale. Here is the listing. Maybe the fact we don’t have a basement and seeing Johnny Rowlands on the news flying 1,000 feet above your house with the camera filming a funnel cloud forming above our condo and watching said funnel cloud on LIVE TV tends to make you want to move to a place that will provide shelter. In the process of getting the condo ready to sell, Stephanie became quite the Horticulturist. It really is quite impressive. In June, Steve played guitar in a wedding for our friends The Cleveland’s. Here is a recording of that song, Songbird. On vocal is Lindsey Klein (no relation). Songbird (originally by Fleetwood Mac & re-recorded by Eva Cassiday) We spent the day and night in Weston at the winery’s and stayed at the Inn at Weston Landing. We spent the 4th of July at Barb & Veryl’s. A couple days later we went to our 2nd Miller Family Shindig in Leon, IA, where we got to ride in a 2-seat airplane (1 for the pilot and 1 for the passenger). At dusk is the state of Iowa’s (and possibly the entire country’s) largest fireworks display. This is no joke. Take this video clip, and put it on repeat and watch it for and hour and 15 minutes to get the idea how long and utterly insane this display is. You think I’m kidding? It’s sick… We both were summoned by the same judge in the same court with the same lawyer (different day) to take 8 hours of defensive driving as a probation agreement for keeping points off our driving records for speeding on the same road, going the same speed, being pulled over by the same cop (different day). But on the bright side of it, during lunch on the day of our driving school we discovered a wonderful Jamaican restaurant in South Kansas City called G’s Jamaican Cuisine. To close out the summer, we made the annual trip up north to Wisconsin to visit Steph’s Oma & Opa (that’s German for grandma & grandpa). Where we golfed and visited with family.

Aunt Mary

We finished our trip on the beach at Lake Michigan to stay with our friends the Sypkens. Some of the concerts we went to were The Steve Miller Band (in the pouring rain), Colective Soul & Live (it was free) Filter (free too), Foo Fighters (awesomely free), Beck (loved it) and, Xavier Rudd which we both thought was unbelievable. I promised Concert Chris I would post a couple pictures and a video clip of Green Spandex, since he personally requested it from Xavier earlier that day at an in-studio performance at 90.9 The Bridge, so here you go Chris.
Green Spandex (by request

Fall is here and it will be our 2nd anniversary in a couple weeks. Until then stay safe. Oh, and our condo is still for sale.

Steve & Steph

Xavier Rudd - Shiver
Beck - Timebomb