Zachy's Wacky Faces

He's starting to get an onery look to his smiles and laughs. He likes that wrinkly nose look, too.

Lexington Missouri

We travelled to Lexington just to see the swollen Missouri River, but ended up seeing lots of interesting things. You don't get to see churches complain about the weather very often.

I love the old Schlitz beer signs. Reminds me of many a bar outside the gate of a large factory. Sometimes it was Pabst Blue Ribbon, and sometimes it was Miller High Life, but there was always a nice big beer sign on the wall outside.

Big Brutus

I took a trip to visit customers near Pittsburg Kansas. The whole area around there was once coal strip mines. There was a huge excavator (I would say Steam Shovel, but this one was electric) that was the second biggest in the world. It's been out of production for around 25 years, but they made it into a museum. I had an hour to kill around lunch, and paid the admission and went over and climbed around on it. It is hard to believe that it actually used to move around. It's covered in pigeons now, but it's still pretty impressive.

September's Extremes

We roasted in the beginning of the month and had very cool nights and fall colors by the end of the month.

Joplin Trip

I travelled to Joplin in late August, which would be 3 months from when they were hit by the devastating tornado.

Surprisingly, the town was very well cleaned up already. Some buildings were still standing with partial damage, but all the tree limbs and building debris were pretty well cleaned up.

The Floody Muddy Missouri

The Missouri River was up way out of its banks most of the summer. While flying into the airport, you could see that the river had turned into a sea. The power plant just north of the airport was now on an island in the swollen river, with the employees being taken to work by boat.

We drove out toward Lexington to see just how high up it was. We saw fields over a mile across under a couple of feet of water. The trees on the regular bank of the river were completely surrounded by water. The roads next to the river were closed as they went into the water.

We were enthusiastically greeted by a muddy mutt that showed us by jumping in that the road was under water.

Balloons over Albuquerque

I had heard that there was a lot of hot air balloon festivals and events in Albuquerque, but I was still surprised to see one.

Colors

We were travelling, 5 of us, in a rented Ford Explorer, spending many hours driving. And like most people that drive for hours and hours, we had lots of treats in the car. At some point, I heard Andrea explaining to Zach what the M&Ms were. She was telling him about all the colors that they were, going over each color and showing them to him. He tried the M&Ms and of course, he loved them. For the rest of the trip, when he saw the M&M bag, he would say "I want colors!" And now that's what we call them.