LIL' BLUE, BIG TRACTOR

Cora's little bantam babies are all grown up and "Lil' Blue" is her favorite fluffy chick (but not higher on the list than Elsa)

Shortly after her chicken show-and-tell with Grambot, neighbor Jeff showed up with his brother's tractor again to help move some of the giant trunk pieces down to the burn pile (and down into The Kraken). He let Cora "drive" and she was in heaven!

SUNDAY HAPPENINGS

My first (looooong) game of D&D

Drinking like royalty 

Sleeping with mama (I don't remember why...)

It's close enough to October - time to decorate for our favorite holiday!

OKTOBERFEST 2019

Cottonwood hosted it's second annual Oktoberfest celebration today and you know we weren't going to miss a chance to eat festive foods and drink amazing beers!

After lunch, we moved upstairs for some rooftop fun!

James loves that the elevator to the rooftop has a fake grass floor ;-)

There was photobooth posing, there was dancing (that's Cora's old babysitter, Miss Elizabeth, swinging her around the roof), there were more beers, and there was some arm wrestling... We had a great time! We left Jay there for a couple hours while I took Cora to a birthday party, then took Grambot and James home to chill, then I joined Jay again for a bit longer before picking Cora up from her party. It was a great low-key way to start the weekend.

CB's 10TH

Cara Beth is 10! Cora had so much fun at her birthday party filled with swimming and karaoke and candy and cake!

Cora Mae, Anna Paiten, Cara Beth, Julia, Autumn, Presley, and Elle

Their karaoke audience was made up of all their American Girl Dolls! ;-)

OUT OF THE OFFICE, ONTO THE RIVER

There's nothing like being stuck in the middle of the Mississippi River while a pair of barges goes around you because your boat is dead in the water. I've heard the phrase in movies and in Deadliest Catch prior to hearing my boat captain utter it over the radio today, and it was just as scary and foreboding in person as it sounds on TV...

...and it was HOT. Really hot. Thankfully, after about an hour and a half, the calvary arrived (another boat captain/ERDC-CHL employee) with some fuel, some tools, and a new boat for us, just in case. So after some trial and error, we sent him home with the busted boat (after towing it in) and took off down the river in our new (working) ride.

We arrived at the chute where we'd GPS-located our desired sampling points, drove in a ways, then turned around and headed back out while taking water (eDNA) samples every 50m or so.

(Mississippi River main channel behind us)

(and now down into the chute)

We made a curious friend (who followed us to 3 different sampling points before turning back)

We took "grab" samples (2L bottles that I dipped below the surface of the water) and pumped sediment samples (water pumped up over marine cloth from the bottom of the chute, where black carp are more likely to hang out and deposit their DNA), and nobody fell overboard.

(Rick and Matt, two of my coworkers)

SEPTEMBER SCOUTS

Cora's Junior uniform came in and while the hat is a bit big on her, she's happy to look official!

We had a lesson about camping and Leave No Trace at this meeting, so I brought one of our tents for the girls to set up in the hallway and test out (lots of them have never been camping before...)

TREATS FOR HER SWEETS

After school treats from Grambot

(this is one reason they like their grandparents more than us)

FALL REC SOCCER SEASON HAS BEGUN!

And we're so happy to have Grambot with us!