House on the Rock and famly time

Today Jeanne and I drove to see the House on the Rock.  It was about an hour drive away.  www.thehouseontherock.com.  What a fun place.  Alex Jordon (a guy with more money than he know what to do with), built a house on a chimney rock.

A wide variety of sculptures, and unusual collections of every conceivable thing.  

A lot of Tiffany lamps, wood screens from India.  Huge fireplaces, places to sit. It is a maze.  Hard to explain.  So much to see.  

eggs

masks

ivory

carousels.  One section is a street scene of the past with stores, cars ...!  One room had a huge whale.  A lot of it was too dark to take very good pictures.  But we kept trying.

an infinity hall, quite an optical illusion. 

What the infinity hall looks like from the outside.  

The worlds largest working carousel.  It all ended at a Japanese garden.  

It took 3 hours, 6,694 steps and 295 pictures!!  It was an amazing place.  

Then we went to the Country Kitchen for lunch.

We split a chicken cordon bleu sandwich.  No pictures, we were hungry.

We got back in time to relax for a little while before the kids came home from school.  After snacks we headed off to a miniature golf place.  18 holes in half an hour.  We place a few rounds of Frozen Uno.  

Liam

Once Laura got home, Wilhelm made a delicious dinner of mashed potatoes, wax beans and pork steaks.  Yummy.  

s'mores

Friday night movie night.   

To Oregon, Wisconsin, Sept 7th, 2017

I thought I would put in a picture of the blood moon a few nights ago.  We are having so much smoke from the fires.  What a mess.  The ash is falling on our tomatoes.  

This morning at 6:30 am we left the house.  George dropped me off at the MAX station so that I could get to the airport for a 9 am flight.  Everything was on time. Though I found out later that my second flight, from Minneapolis to Madison, had changed both with the number and the time.  So, Jeanne, did not have the correct information.  Luckily she was at the airport early so it all worked out. I never did get an email from Delta with the change.  OH WELL.  

When we got to Laura's house, the kids were home from school.  Tristan is in 2nd grade and Emmet and Liam just started kindergarten.  I had a nice tour of the house.  I had not been here before.  Wilhelm was working in the yard.  What a nice house.  It feels like it is out in the woods.  This is a view of the side porch.

We had a chance to relax.  Laura got home from work in time for dinner.  Wilhelm made a delicious rice, chicken and vegetable dish with gravy.  Yummy.  Nice view of the sunset.  

After a rabble rousing game of Uno it was bath time, story time and bed time.  Then I think I am ready for bed!! ;-).  Laura had to go to a meeting.  

Then we all got to relax.  

Sunday, August 13, 2017

We did not have to be out of the house until 11 am so we just relaxed.  We also came up with a plan for the drive home.  The idea was drive to the Lawrence Gallery, then one winery then lunch about 1 pm - ish then a couple more wineries on the the way home.  Best laid plans.   We left earlier than we had planned and went to the Lawrence Gallery with a quick stop at a coffee shop, the Java Depot, on the way.

They have one of the "original copies" of Michelangelo's Pieta.  I guess there were a few numbered copies which were made and only a few places have them - 2 of them in the Portland area.  They have to go through some approval with the Vatican.   

After the gallery we went to Maysara Winery.  We had gone there in 2008 when they first opened.  They expanded since then.  A very nice place.  

The building is with rocks from the property, the wood table was also from a tree on the property.  It is a biodynamic vineyard.

These are the wines we tasted.  

A large Persian tapestry.

A very pretty place.  

While we were at the Lawrence Gallery we were talking with one of the artists and she told us about this other winery which was very close to the Maysara.  She talked it up so much we decided to check it out. 

They were setting up for an event.  It was supposed to start at 1 pm with music and pizza.  We decided that we would just do the wine tasting.  We were there maybe 12:45 pm.  We did not leave there until after 2 pm and they still had not started the music and the pizza did not look that great.  Our wine tasting was VERY SLOW!!! I was starting to get grumpy.  Being hungry does that to me. 

We drove to McMinneville for lunch at the Golden Valley Brewery.  It was very good.  It is not typical brew pub type food.  

I had the BLT, Kris had the Schnitzel, Barbara S had the fish and chips, Joyce had chicken pot pie and Sharon had 1/2 turkey sandwich and salad.  Finished lunch at 3 pm.  So at this point we were all tired and decided to go straight home.  Joyce got me back to my car at Sharon's.  Barbara S dropped Sharon and Kris off there as well.  

I got home in time to take a nice long walk.  

Dinner was quite a production

In the morning before we left the house Sharon got the meat into the slow cooker.  We came home to delicious smells.  We were having beef burritos.  It was quite the production.

Refried beans and shredded beef were placed on the tortillas.

Sharon gave instructions about rolling them.

Kris and Olivia helped

Once they were in the pan, Sharon put the sauce and cheese on.

Ready to go into the oven to heat.

All done!!

All the toppings were ready.

Joyce made a salad.

What a delicious meal.  Sharon did it again.  

After dinner we watched a Rick Steves DVD on Spain.  This house did not have a DVD player up in the living room.  It was down in the family room where Barbara S and Judy were sleeping.  We took over the area anyway. 

It was a challenge, but we managed.