Jan 26

 Peter's brewing experiment yielded excellent results.  

However, this has opened a can of worms.  (Not literally.)  

He now wants to duplicate the recipe but with purchased hops, 

as opposed to his home grown hops.  

To do this, we needed to make another trip to Wyoming, RI, for supplies. 

Following that, we drove south to Watch Hill.  We had a "car picnic" with a nice view.  

As we drove home, we passed the Watch Hill Fire Department, 

where I noticed a large number of fire hydrants to the side of the building!

I quickly Googled it and found that they will be in the Guinness Book of World Records, 

with over 226 fire hydrants in their collection!  

They are hoping to reach 300.  We turned around to take a closer look.  

It was so cool and interesting to find this little gem!

The Watch Hill Fire Department's Multi-Colored Hydrant Collection - WESTERLY RI

The Watch Hill Fire Department's Multi-Colored Hydrant Collection - WEST... While not yet, perhaps someday the Watch Hill Fire Department’s unique and colorful collection of fire hydrants ...

It was nice to get out on a sunny day, 

even though we couldn't be outside of the car much due to the cold and wind.

Not much else going on as I await my turn for a vaccine.....which will be a while!

So I'll end with a smile for today:

Geologist Finds Rare Formation Inside Rock That Looks Exactly Like Cookie Monster on Sesame Street

Geologist Finds Rare Formation Inside Rock That Looks Exactly Like Cooki... Geologists have found a rare formation inside a rock that looks just like the Cookie Monster character from Sesa...

Take care,

Barbara

Crazy times

 Here is a video to watch when you think everything is going wrong.

https://media.rainpos.com/4417/cheeryouup1.mp4

Holidays 2020

 We made it through Christmas!  Welcome 2021!

We actually had a fun Christmas after the stress of distributing gifts and food to everyone.  I cooked a spiral ham, made skillet potatoes, gluten free rolls, and gluten free pierogi (with Peter's help).  We portioned out some frozen veggies.  Add to that my gluten free fruitcake and biscotti.....and I finally managed to snag some Torrone, with a combination of Amazon and Stop and Shop.  

On Wednesday, we drove north to bring food and gifts to Katie.  She gave us gifts for others.  

On Thursday we dropped stuff off for my brother, George, then drove to John's, who gave us a gift for George, so we then visited our good friends in Newington and dropped off their gifts, then went back to George's to give him the gift from John.  

We were home with time to relax before watching Mass online.  

The good part in all of this is that on Christmas Day there wasn't much cooking to do!

I assigned the virtual celebrations to the kids.  On Christmas Eve, John hosted.  We ate dinner together, then he gave us a virtual tour of his house (now pretty much set up).  After that, we opened presents.  It was all fun although a bit difficult to see everyone's presents very well.  

On Christmas Day, Katie hosted our "brunch."  We weren't very hungry yet so we settled for cheese and crackers.  Our Newington friends, Marcin and his daughter Vivienne (6), joined us.  (Gosia had to work.)  

Katie treated the whole thing like a virtual classroom....and we began by creating 5-minute Christmas drawings from a simple angular line.  Here's what mine looked like:

And here's what Peter "drew."  It shows how children have reached a new record "excitement level" as Christmas approaches.  You can see that there was a low in April, presumably from Covid.   As always, additional research is needed on this....

We also played a Christmas movie trivia game and cut out snowflakes.  In the end, we had little packages that we had to smash with our fists.  This set off a chemical reaction inside which generated a gas.....probably CO2, and the package POPPED.  Out came an inflated ornament!!!

All the while Katie had on her "teacher hat" and coached us.  It was fun to see her in action!