Lycorne With an I instead of the Y it's French for Unicorn. I just like this spelling better.

There is some great news coming but there will be more details on that after the 13th. One great thing that I will mention is that Shane and I will be moving to our own place in the near future. We’ve finally decided that we need some space for us, and without Karen. She’s taken the news on that rather hard, but she’s figured out who she’ll live with next. If Karen has her way she will never live alone, nor would she move into any senior housing. Good luck, Shawnadee.

In July at the Koehn family reunion, Shane’s Aunt Joanne invited us to come out to her cabin again. Joanne is such a lovely lady when she saw that Bob had come with us to the reunion, she make sure to personally invite him out to the cabin as well. With other things planned and going on we didn’t have a chance to take her up on her offer until this weekend.

When Shane told Karen about the invitation and when we planned on going, she decided that she would go as well. She also talked to her sister, Kathleen who lives in Green Lake also and made arrangements for us to stay there on Sunday night.

What actually ended up happening was that Bob, Shane and I left home on Friday morning and did some rail fanning in Madison before heading to the cabin. It was a good day and Shane managed go take lots of pictures of the Wisconsin Southern Railroad which is what he intends to model.

On our way to Green Lake, we found a great restaurant for supper in Columbus, WI. It’s called Capri Steakhouse and they have excellent food. Their placemats give you a history of the restaurant, and it’s intriguing. It also has great food, nice supperclub atmosphere, and reasonable prices.

On Saturday, Bob had a commitment he had made for that afternoon, and then he had to work on Sunday as usual. So he was only able to spend the one night at the cabin and then had to leave after he had had breakfast. After Bob had left, we went to Ripon to do some grocery shopping. The we consisted of: Karen, Joanne, Shane and myself. Karen drove, and I sat in the 2nd row to allow Joanne to sit up front. I received a very quick crash course in why I don’t ever sit in the back when Karen’s driving. While the van has great shocks and such and you don’t feel the side to side driving she does very much, you can see everything from back there, and it’s a terrifying sight. I realized months ago, that I don’t like watching the road much when she’s driving, it’s too scary. But to sit in the back and see it all, along with her speed is down right terrifying.

Saturday afternoon, we went out on the lake for a boat ride. While a critical person would say it was rather cool, and the lake was choppy from the wind, all I can say is that is was a GREAT ride. I certainly didn’t mind the cool or the wind or even the bumps. If anything it added flavor or color to the ride.

The funniest part of the ride though, is when Karen was trying to get on the dock. Her knees were bothering her (as usual), and when she tried to get out of the boat she ended up sitting on the dock. Ok, not so bad there you’d think right? Well, that sounds ok, except for the fact that she couldn’t get up from her seated position. After several failed attempts Shane had to finally get out and help her up.

On Sunday afternoon, we went over to Kathleen’s. When we first arrived, Kathleen wasn’t home so we headed to Ripon so that Shane could pick up the spices he wanted to make the spaghetti dinner with. Kathleen was actually at the farm stand we had stopped at the day before picking up some vegetables. We knew from experience how great the sweet corn there was.

Kathleen’s granddaughter, Mara, was staying with her, so she ws the first one to see the doll houses that Karen had made for the girls. Mara enjoyed hers very much. That evening for supper, Eric, Amy, and their daughter, Arienna joined us. Arienna was given her doll house at the time as well. While Arienna is only about a year so doesn’t quite appreciate it all yet, Amy was amazed at the detail Karen used to create it.

That night we slept in one of her guest rooms, it was the old downstairs office which had been converted to a bedroom. Unfortunately for us it was warm in there that evening. Shane solved the problem though, he found the screen and opened the window, even though the A/C was on for the rest of the house. He did make sure to close it all back up again in the morning.

On Monday we stopped at Aunt Judy’s restaurant in Princeton for lunch. They have some wonderful food, and reasonable prices. After which we went to the Flea Market in Montello. It’s one of those large indoor ones that’s open all summer. They also have a section that holds their outdoor weekend Flea Market and vendors. After we finished there we had to go to B & B’s Country Store. It’s an excellent candy shop and Shane had to pick up some Mint Chocolate Chip Malted Milk Balls, and other things. The rest of the ride home was rather uneventful.

Earlier today we had a party to celebrate the August birthdays in the family. Ok, in the immediate family it’s really only mine BUT since Aunt Mary Ann is now an even a bigger part of the family and her birthday is August 16th. Naturally with Bob living here and as far as I’m concerned a part of this family we also celebrated his birthday which is the 13th. We also tried to include Jordan who’s birthday is on the 10th, but Jason has mixed up dated and said he could go someplace with this friends today.

We had a fairly full house, it was Dad, Mary Ann, Bill, Kathy, Teddy, Max, Andrea, Chris, Mary Jo, as well as Bob, Karen, Shane and myself. Shane grilled brats and others brought a dish, we ate outside and it worked fairly well. The weather was great so it wasn’t a problem to eat outside which was nice.

My birthday for those of you who don’t know is August 8th. Shane and I didn’t do anything really special for my birthday. On the evening of the 7th he told me what he intended giving me for my birthday. He intends on giving me $40 to buy fabric so that I may make some skirts and such.

Dad called to wish me a happy birthday, which I appreciated very much. It was great to know he remembered. When he first called I was still asleep. Shane had let me sleep in because it was my birthday, but I was able to talk with him when he called back later.

Bob took Shane and I out to North Country Steak Buffet for my birthday.

Today we got to a bit of a late start. W were suppose to meet Sandy at Lakeview at 7:30 for breakfast, but for various reasons it was about 7:40 before we left the house. Karen and Sandy were already at the restaurant, but had a table big enough for everyone thankfully.

When we left we were on our way to the Peoria Western layout. I did the staging and ran Rail Ops. Shane decided to be the GYM (General Yard Master). Bob was in the pool, running the trains rather than doing a specific job, but that was what he choose. The session while slightly light on people, ran smoothly.

Dennis is falling to a pattern of ordering pizza for his Friday night sessions, and having Shane cook for the Saturday ones. As this was a Saturday session Shane cooked. He make Pulled Beef BBQ and there chips to go with it. He used his “normal” recipe as when he makes it with pork. (There was a better buy on shoulder roasts yesterday so that’s what Shane bought). Now it would be hard to ask Shane his recipe since it’s a bit of this a touch of that, and some of the other. But it tastes wonderfully as always.

After the session was over most of the people there went to Paul’s. He’s working on his N scale layout, and needed some heavy traffic track work testing. While we were there testing for several hours at one point there were seven trains in his three level, double tracked helix. Now that was quite a site. But don’t worry not every train was following one right after another. There were a couple of people, Shane being one of them, that thought the rows of trains needed some opposition.

For a while he took over the yard and decided that was where he was going to have fun. He was moving cars to various industry tracks and spotting cars. Also asking the trains doing main line runs to drop of some of their cars. Of course when he wanted them to drop off freight they were through trains, and when he was tired of seeing all the freight roll right by and went out to work more industry that’s when they dropped off cars for him to work. Shane was definitely in his element, having a lot of fun and causing good hearted hassling for all.

It was after 7:30 when we finally left there, at by this time we were getting a bit hungry for supper. While talking about various options for supper, fast food included, Papa Murphy’s was suggested. It had been quite a long time since Shane and I had had a pizza from there. On the way home, we stopped and picked up a stuffed pizza and cheese bread. The made a great supper one they came out of our oven.

Today we had company for supper. Sandy Antcliff (not sure on the spelling), a friend of Shane’s family from Illinois was here for supper. She was in the area to judge the cat show this weekend at the Onalaska Omni Center.

Shane made his Stroganoff for supper. He makes it from scratch using a slow cooker. It was wonderful, but I still say it would be better over rice than over the egg noddles. (I HATE egg noddles myself.) It’s really delicious, and I’m getting used to it over egg noddles, but I still think it would be so much better over rice or something other than egg noddles.

We all have a a few good laughs during the evening, one of the best was at the dinner table when Sandy confessed that she had told a friend that she friend she thought she would be having Hamburger Helper for supper. She knew that Shane was planning on fixing Stroganoff for supper, so thought the only way tha was possible was if he were to make Hamburger Helper. Everyone agreed this was much better than the Hamburger Helper version.

It was a great evening.

Last weekend on Saturday, Bob, Shane and I went to New Richmond, WI. A friend of Shane and Bob’s had died and Saturday was his funeral. The morning trip up there wasn’t too bad, but my the time of the funeral at 11 it was quite warm. On our way home we did some exploring and riding. We ended up coming back via Winona, and the temperature gauge in Bob’s Ford Explorer read 101. All I know for certain is that by the time we got back I not only wanted but needed AC.

I also vowed that I would not step foot outside on Sunday. I didn’t. On Monday, I braved the heat just enough to walk to the mailbox to check the mail. When I got back inside I was definitely not going out again.

Thankfully later on Tuesday the temperatures broke some. Definitely not soon enough in my opinion but break they did. I for one was certainly tired of the near 100 temps and higher real feels (or heat indexes) that we were having.

On Wednesday, we went to Happy Joe’s for lunch. And then that evening we went to Dairy Queen with Andrea and Chris.

On Thursday afternoon, we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Definitely a great movie, and sets things up so well for the third movie. After the movie we ate at Hungry Peddler for their T-bones. An excellent supper as expected.

On another note this morning was the second time in the last 2 weeks I was up before Shane (besides going out of town). I have been rising around 9 in the morning lately. Though some morning Shane has chased me back in the bedroom by watching things on the DVR in the family room that I will not remain in the presence of like the Simpsons or Family Guy. I can’t stand the even stand the sound of the Simpsons on the tv. If I happen to be in the bathroom and he’s watching them, I’ll turn on the exhaust fan, JUST so I don’t have to listen to the sound of their voices, that’s how much they bother me. The sound of any of the Simpsons characters is worse than fingernails on a blackboard for me. I keep hoping that one of these days tv stations will wise up and take that **** of the air completely. (Yes, I also mean absolutely, positively NO more reruns.)

Oh, and I’ve also added the AccuWeather to my home page. It will give you an idea of what the current temps are here.