What is it about American eating establishments and Tea? A rant.

I do not drink coffee. Never have. Love the smell of it, but can't stand the taste.

Tea, however, is a must. We were brought up with it. My aunt use to make it for us kids with lots of milk and lots of sugar and not too hot.

Now I usually drink it black with sugar. But milk, or cream, does occasionally make an appearance.

I almost (99% of the time) always start my day with a cuppa, usually putting the kettle on as I turn on lights in the kitchen.

A cup always leaves the house with me as I go to work (or for that matter, anywhere), all four seasons.

During cold weather tea is a staple all day. In summer, drinking hot tea ends after a couple cups, with me trading off for ice tea or diet soda later in the day.

My go to tea is PG Tips. Decaf most of the time (it is the only decaf I have found that I can call tea).
Many a morning I trade off a PG Tips for an English or Irish Breakfast tea. Twining's usually.
I have also started using a 'Builder's' tea in the mornings when I am out at the cabin.

Famous naturalist John Muir many times went hiking with nothing put a thermos of tea and bread. Perfect!

I have accepted an Earl Grey as drinkable and will sometimes still have one after having it be the only tea that was brought along on an 18 day Grand Canyon kayak/raft trip.
( I had told the man planning the trip that I did not drink coffee, a staple for outdoor trips, and that I was pretty picky about my tea, I offered to get my own so as not to make it hard on him, but he said no, it was okay and not a problem and that he would get a good tea. He proceeded to buy a big mix of different Earl Grey's thinking that Earl Grey was the brand and not the type. When I want to think about the Grand Canyon trip I make myself a cuppa Earl Grey.)

I like my tea strong, dark and with some sugar. And like I said earlier, sometimes with cream or milk.

I don't like "flavored'" teas; raspberry, Jasmine or any of her cousins.
Oolong is okay if I am having Chinese for dinner, but I still check to see if they have something darker.

A perfect afternoon for me is to sit in the one tea room St Louis has and have a scone, a pot of tea and read a book. (It doesn't happen often enough).

You could, and I am okay with it, call me a tea snob. I am after all a beer and bread snob already, so an accusation of another form of snobbery is okay.

With all that said, it probably is not hard for you to imagine that when we go out for breakfast, while my table mates are ordering coffee, I am the lone tea drinker.

I get it, coffee is a morning ritual for if not most, many Americans. And I also get it that there is different coffees and that everyone has their own preferences.

But at most breakfast type places the coffee making is habit, and the pots are emptied so quickly that most pots are served hot, fresh and often.

But if you order tea you are many times treated like a second class citizen.

Most times I have to send the water back to have it 'nuked' to make, I was going to say hotter, but instead I will say make it hot in the first place.

Although not a coffee drinker, as has been stated, I would assume the best coffee is made with real hot, boiling water.

But many, most?, restaurants don't understand that about tea. The water has to boil. (Most friends are surprised at how hot I can drink my tea, not that I try to prove anything by that fact. Just sayin')

 

We tea drinkers are not treated like the coffee drinkers.

Neither in quality or temperature.
And definitely not in quantity.

Most tea served over here in restaurants is Lipton's, or something real close to a 'Lipton' type tea.
Now, don't get me wrong, if Lipton's is served HOT and allowed to steep the whole time you drink it, it is very drinkable, and much better than some off brands. (Okay, till I found a better, it was my go to tea.)

Occasionally you will get a better tea, but in those cases the water is so tepid that the quality of the tea is lost. It doesn't matter how good your tea is if I can't steep properly.

There are some restaurant chains over here that I won't even bother ordering hot tea in because the chain is universally bad at making hot water (Denny's).

Their are some chains where I know the water will be good and hot but the brand of tea they carry is pretty bad. So in those cases I always bring in a couple bags I always keep stored in my truck. I am okay with supplying my own tea after my Grand Canyon experience and I appreciate the fact that their water is hot.


Another thing. While with most restaurants the coffee cup is bottomless, every time the server passes by they either fill your cup automatically or at least ask if you would like more.

With tea drinkers, at best you will be asked if you would like more tepid water poured on top of your already used tea bag.

Most times you have to ask for more water (nuke it please) and another tea bag.
And you really feel bad if you are enjoying sitting and talking to your wife over a late breakfast and she is on her eighth cup of coffee and you have to ask for a third tea bag.

Supply and demand I guess.

But occasionally you will be surprised.

Having an eleven year old child, over the last couple of years we have gone to a Disney theme park a few times. And once you do that, at least for a little while, you get all kind of mailings from Disney. Being big fans of anything Disney we are for the most part okay with that.

In every issue of one of their bigger magazines they usually talk to someone who helps make the park special. In one issue they talked to one of their head chef's. And he made a very fine point about treating tea drinks as well as drinkers of other beverages. Even going into the best way he believes it should be served. Another reason to love things Disney.

Another surprise I have found is that on rare occasions you will find a good tea in surprising places (it doesn't happen often).

Case in point, Waffle House. Breakfast is my favorite meal to eat out, especially if you have a favorite place to get it. While Waffle House does not fit that bill, I do enjoy their biscuits and gravy, and omelets. So once every couple of weeks, or when I head out early to the cabin, I will stop in at one of three Waffle Houses I have to pass on the way to the cabin (or work).
99% of the time their water is good and hot. And I am also surprised that they use a pretty good brand of tea. At least the ones near me use a brand called Royal Cup, and I have come to look forward to it when I visit a Waffle House near me.

Rare indeed is finding a place with hot water and a good tea.

I will always keep tea bags in my truck. I will order something else at the places that just can't get it right. And I will savor the places that do get it right (The London Tea Room, St Louis and Waffle House).

But please, you may not love us tea drinkers as much, but try to treat us the same.

There . . . . I got that out of my system.

As a Tea lover, I can believe this. . . .

THE YEAR BRITAIN BOUGHT UP ALL THE TEA IN THE WORLD

Published on June 23, 2016

by Peter GW Keen

No one example captures how deeply tea drinking was embedded in the fabric of British everyday life than the decision of the government in 1942 to buy up every available pound of tea from every country in the world except Japan.

Britain faced defeat by the Axis powers of Germany and Japan. Its troops had been forced to make a complete withdrawal from Europe, leaving it open to an expected and narrowly avoided invasion. The “impregnable” fortress of Singapore had fallen, essentially ending Britain’s colonial dominance of Asia. Britain was close to broke, as its reserves were drained to keep imports flowing in as Atlantic convoys were hunted and often destroyed by U-boats. The US had not yet mobilized its massive manufacturing capabilities, post Pearl Harbor.

And Britain was buying tea!

In huge amounts. One estimate is that the largest government purchases in 1942 were, in order of weight, bullets, tea, artillery shells, bombs and explosives.

The German High Command fully understood the importance of disrupting the tea chain. One of the primary targets for the sustained bombing of London in 1941, known as the Blitz, was Mincing Lane, “The Street of Tea.” This had been the center for the disgraceful opium trade that pumped masses of the drug into China to obtain the silver that was the only currency the Chinese government would accept for purchase of tea: feeding an addiction to fund an addiction.

Mincing Lane did not store tea but was the repository for just about all the records of 30 million tonnes of stocks, trades and finances destroyed by the bombing. That is when the government moved into action. Almost all foods and clothing items were rationed; this lasted until 1952, seven years after the war had ended. The weekly allowance was two ounces of butter and cheese, eight of sugar, four of bacon. And two ounces of tea, enough to make three cups a day, a far less stringent ration than cheese, for instance.

BRITAIN’S SECRET WEAPON

One historian summarized tea as Britain’s secret weapon in the War. It was certainly one of its most visible symbols of national unity. Like such patriotic images, there were many strands of sentimentality and myth in the stories of how tea was a social binding force in the days of the London Blitz where, night after night, fires blazed from bombed buildings, women and children huddled in the underground railway tunnels and the air raid sirens were a daily threnody. The cheery Cockney and famous stiff upper lip were by no means as evident as folk memory and films suggest.

That said, tea was powerful symbolically and practically. Churchill is reputed to have called tea more important than ammunition. He ordered that all sailors on ships have unlimited tea.

Its perceived value in boosting morale not just in Britain is illustrated by the Royal Air Force dropping 75,000 tea bombs in a single night over the occupied Netherlands. Each contained one ounce bags of tea from the Dutch East Indies and was marked “The Netherlands will rise again. Chins up.” Every one of the 20 million Red Cross packages sent to prisoners of war contained a quarter pound package of Twinings.

Tea helped restore at least a semblance of calm and normality in turbulence and danger. Its essence is that it is warm and comforting. It also provided an egalitarian sharing space in a society of rigid class distinctions. In the air raids, local Air Raid Wardens and Auxiliaries, mostly women, served tea to anyone, forming huddles, bringing strangers together, and providing a center for medical help.

A Teakettle in a Tank

Tea was a key factor in weaponry, too. In WW I, the “Tommies” were known to fire off their machine guns in a nonstop stream of bullets to get the barrels hot enough to immerse in water to get that hot enough for tea. The Germans noticed this, of course, just as they did the easy target made by tank crews leaving the safety of their vehicles for a brew-up. (Typically, they made an improvised “Benghazi burner” from empty fuel cans.)

The solution was to incorporate a BV (Boiling Vessel) inside the turret. Yes, that is indeed a Teakettle in a Tank. It has been a required feature in all UK (and Indian) army AFVs (Armored Fighting Vehicles) for the past seventy years. The latest is designated as “FV706656.” It is still standard practice for a junior member of a vehicle crew to be unofficially appointed “BV Commander” with the duty to make hot drinks for the crew.

The decision to upgrade the Challenger in 2014 maintained the BV requirement. This is one of the most successful tanks in military history, the best protected and with lowest battle losses. It served in combat in the Balkan, Iraq and Afghanistan – with the BV in daily use.

This all sounds like the spirit of Monty Python and British fuddy-duddy, but it made strategic sense. Tea was a social necessity, especially for the working class. And it was important to the war effort. The Army at rest was groups of soldiers around a metal tea bucket of, typically, six gallons. That applied to all ranks in all units.

“Gunfire”

Tea played a critical role in the British Army, with many historians attributing at least part of its success in the almost never-ending military campaigns, many of them small colonial policing actions. One of the keys that distinguished it from every other European fighting force was that its embedding or tea in its routines greatly reduced the reliance on alcohol to calm troops as they prepared for battle, relax them at its end and keep them sober and alert while they sat around waiting. One of the slang terms soldiers used for their morning tea was “Gunfire.”

The tea itself was not quite gourmet. It was very strong, all from Assam, Ceylon and Africa. China and Japan were not sourcing options; by the end of the war, China’s exports that once comprised almost all the global market were close to zero. Japan had been the leading supplier to the US but obviously was no longer a preferred supplier.

Army tea came as part of the soldier’s composite rations kit. Compo tea was in a tin, with milk and sugar pre-added. The food components of compo are best summarized as somewhat strange, with no further comment. The tea was basic and bulk shipped. There were constant rumors that bromide had been added to it, to reduce young males’ erotic interests; that gives a sense of what it tasted like. Soldiers reported that when hot it was welcome and pleasant but the surface took on the appearance of an unskimmed pool when it was lukewarm.

Napoleon famously said that an army marches on its stomach. His own military needed to transport loads of heavy wine. They also had to forage for food, a euphemism for looting. Tea had the advantage of being light and portable. It contained important nutritional minerals. Sweetened by sugar, it was heartening and provided an energy boost. Caffeine combined both a pick me up and calm me down effect.

One of the central reasons for the explosive growth in tea consumption in the UK in the 1700s was that water was such a danger that it had to be avoided. Figures show a strong correlation among the general population between tea and reduction in dysentery and bacterial infections. It also reduced infant mortality, since the antiseptic properties of tea were passed on to breast milk.  

War in Assam: the Kohima turning point

There was a hidden price for the morale-boosting benefits of tea in World War II. It was mostly paid, somewhat ironically, by the workers of the tea gardens in Assam and ordinary Indians. Production in Assam and Ceylon was boosted to meet the needs of Britain, with heavy reliance on US merchant ships. India’s political organizations were split on the issue of supporting the military effort, with nationalist strongly opposed. However, the population of Assam was pulled into the conflict once Rangoon, the capital of Burma, surrendered to the Japanese. (Now Yangon, Myanmar). Throughout 1942, it was expected that Japanese troops would invade Northern India via the only two narrow passes through the Himalayas. Tea workers were conscripted to carve a supply path. Thousands died.

The Indian Army of 2.5 million was the largest volunteer force in history. Assam was also the base for the most dangerous air route in the world: the Hump that transported US supplies to China’s army fighting the Japanese. It was also central to the large Burma war theater and the site of the Battle of Kohima, which marked a crucial turning point.

The complex and protected Kohima-Imphal campaign led to the annihilation of the Japanese forces and reconquest of Burma; half its hundred thousand troops were casualties and it lost every single tank and artillery gun. The nature of the terrain is indicated by the deaths of 17,000 mules and ponies.

One regrettable aspect of writing on the history of “English tea in India is that it very much tends to showcase the English and overlook the Indian.                

”The simple act of being able to share a mug of tea”

Tea branding and marketing has always played up the peaceful side of its history and social context: medicine and health, spirituality and contemplation, and refinement and snobbery. These are real but a whole book or two can be written about its martial dynamics.

Tea and war have always gone together. The origins of its trade routes and its becoming a de facto currency for a thousand years comes from the urgent needs of the Chinese army to obtain horses from the tribes of Nepal and Tibet. In turn, they sought out tea for its immense value as a beverage that could help nourish them in their harsh climate, rather like Bolivian Indians chewing coca to suppress hunger pangs and give them extra energy in the high mountains.

A quote from an article in the UK Daily Tea in 2014 captures this dual nature of tea. It’s from a soldier reminiscing about his service in the early 2000s: “When you’re wet, cold and miserable, and feel that you need to curl up and die from tiredness,… you may be covered in mud, stinking from not being able to shower for days or weeks, cold and tired, but a brew seems to take all that away. The jokes will start and morale gets better. The simple act of being able to share a mug of tea with your mates, who look and feel just as bad as you do, is awesome.”

1942 was a pivotal year in history. Britain survived. Tea helped.

The pie that saved the world. . .!

Yum!

Keep working on that bucket list. . . .

20 best over 20

The price of love in the UK

The average English pint cost about $5.20 American.

About the same as here.
Our average wage tends to be a little higher, so .  . . . . .

Just keep a few open till my next visit!

The perfect pub: is there one left in Britain?

Villages with pubs at their heart enjoy greater community spirit, a new study finds. We report on our obsession with finding the perfect local

Twenty years ago, John Major was ridiculed when he promised that, 50 years hence, Britain would “survive unamendable in all essentials”, with “old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning”. He was, of course, quoting George Orwell, having cut out the section of the essay England Your England in which Orwell talked about the clatter of clogs in a Lancashire mill town and the rattle of pin tables in Soho pubs.

Read more: London's best historic pubs

Major was wrong – even 30 years before his self-imposed deadline. Most features listed by the great essayist are extinct or in severe decline. Lancashire manufacturing and attendance at Church of England services are de minimis to national life. And the pub, be it a Soho den or a country inn, is struggling.

But Orwell was spot on. There is something special about a pub. It is here that you will find the true England – a communal establishment in which an individual is at liberty to drink and say what he likes.

Indeed, in another essay he wrote about his “favourite public house, the Moon Under Water”, he listed all the attributes that make it so special, before finally admitting it didn’t actually exist.

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The decline in pub numbers does not make for pretty reading. In 1980 there were 69,000. Now there are 48,000 – fewer than the number of supermarkets in the country. In 1979 UK pubs sold 29.2 million pints of beer a day. In 2013 this had fallen to 10.9 million. The mythical “perfect pub” possibly matters more now than it ever did in 1946, when Orwell wrote his article for the Evening Standard (see below).

New research from Newcastle Business School (part of Northumbria University), has tried to prove what many of us have long suspected: pubs are good for social cohesion. A study of 2,800 rural parishes across the country over a 10-year period found that those areas which had a pub enjoyed a greater sense of community. There was more likely to be local football or cricket teams, charity fundraising events and branches of the Scouts and Brownies.

Dr Ignazio Cabras, who led the research, said: “The presence of the pub was statistically far more relevant than a village hall or a sports centre.” A variety of causes have conspired to kill off pubs. They include: supermarkets selling cheap alcohol; the ban on smoking, which was the main reason why some regulars went; the increase in rents, rates and costs imposed by pub companies and local councils; and the rise in duty and VAT set by the Treasury.

Above all, however, a subtle but distinct change in consumer habits has taken place. Britain just does not drink as much as it did. Pete Brown, a leading beer writer and the author of Shakespeare’s Local, says: “Alcohol will always be part of British life, but drinking in big volumes is falling. People woke up and realised they wanted to be fitter and healthier.”

Ten years ago (which was the peak), the average Briton drank the equivalent of about 418 pints of beer – both at home and at a pub or restaurant. This has fallen to 343 pints, with young people, in particular, drinking far less than their parents did. But of those pubs that survive, many are flourishing, because they provide buckets of one of Orwell’s key stipulations: atmosphere.

Paul Moody, who co-wrote The Search for the Perfect Pub: Looking For the Moon Under Water, says: “Some of Orwell’s stipulations are obviously a bit dated. Nobody wants to drink beer out of a china mug, and his idea of a great lunch – boiled jam roll – sounds a bit unappetising. But there is a sense that this is a place where the community comes together; even back then he was concerned that the different classes were not mixing, but in a pub they can come together.”

One pub that is very much thriving is the Rose & Crown in Snettisham, Norfolk, which was named as this year’s Good Pub Guide pub of the year. Jeanette Goodrich, who runs the pub with her husband, says: “We value our locals. While it is very nice that we have done up our rooms, the heart of the place is the drinking side of the pub. The great majority here are regular drinkers.

“The staff know the regulars, and the regulars know they can walk in and that there will be one of their mates there to talk to.”

Another successful pub landlord agrees with Goodrich that great pub staff know their customers (even if they shouldn’t call them “ducky”, as Orwell stipulates). Richard Binks, tenant of the White Horse pub in Tilbrook, Cambridgeshire, says: “We remember what they drink. Ideally, we’d see their car pull into the car park and we will have their drink ready and waiting for them on the bar.” To encourage regulars, the pub offers a loyalty card as many coffee shops now do.

Though pub numbers have declined, the number of small brewers has grown substantially over the last decade. And the quality of beer at most pubs has shot up, most experts agree. But knowing locals’ names and serving good beer is just one of the secrets to a “perfect pub”.

“So many British pubs are corporates, run by managers,” says Brown. “Orwell understood that a great British pub is where the personality of the institution is dictated by the personality of the landlord. 'My gaff, my rules,’ as Al Murray [the comedian who has made a career out of playing a pub landlord] says.”

But good pubs can and should step beyond the threshold of the saloon bar and into the local community, as the Newcastle Business School study suggests. The Rose & Crown in Snettisham, for instance, sponsors the local football and cricket teams – and not just for altruistic reasons. It guarantees that a group of young men come in after training for a pint. “They are good drinkers,” says Goodrich.

And persuading an 18-year-old to buy a pint of Adnams, costing £3.30 in the pub, rather than a can, costing £1.40 from Tesco, is a battle landlords need to win.

Many good pubs conspicuously court families with children – not something that every beer drinker agrees with. Binks says: “We think that if we can get the kids to convince the adults to come to the pub, then it’s a job well done.” His pub even has an animal-petting area at the end of one of its large gardens, where the children can gawp and prod a few goats, sheep and chicken.

This, curiously, would have won Orwell’s stamp of approval. He did not agree with the (then) ban on children entering pubs. “It is a law that deserves to be broken, for it is the puritanical nonsense of excluding children — and therefore, to some extent, women — from pubs that has turned these places into mere boozing shops instead of the family gathering places that they ought to be.”

Orwell, socialist but libertarian, understood that a great pub was a symbol of English liberty. This, despite the smoking ban, still holds true. “This is why Nigel Farage likes to be pictured outside a pub with a pint in his hand; it is a crucial part of his appeal,” says Moody, who argues that nobody can be that objectionable with a pint in their hand.

As in Orwell’s day, it will be impossible to find the absolutely perfect pub. The one with a roaring log fire in winter, a welcoming landlord, smiling staff, with good food and better conversation. But the search is one worth making. As Moody says: “Sometimes the perfect pub is just one that’s open.”

George Orwell’s ideal pub

In 1946, George Orwell, the novelist and essayist, wrote an article for the Evening Standard about his ideal pub – the fictional Moon Under Water.

For him the pub would have the following 10 attributes:

1 On a side street, to keep out the drunks or “rowdies”.

2 Most of the customers are regulars and “go there for conversation as much as for the beer”.

3 Its look is uncompromisingly Victorian – “everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the 19th century” – and there is a log fire in winter.

4 A dining room upstairs, where you can get a good solid lunch. Only snacks are served in the evening.

5 Downstairs there is a public bar, a saloon bar and a ladies’ bar.

6 No radio, no piano. It is always quiet enough to talk.

7 The barmaids know the customers’ names and call them “dear”, but never “ducky”.

8 It sells tobacco, stamps and even aspirin.

9 The beer (including a “soft, creamy stout”) is always served in a glass with a handle. Ideally, a pewter or china pot.

10 There is a garden, with a slide and swings for children. It is “puritanical nonsense” to ban children.

He wrote, at the end of the piece, that he had only ever found a pub with eight of the 10 features.

Source

Sign of the times. .

The Moneymakers Arms: Pub sign artist's business is booming despite the recession

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
UPDATED: 07:00 EST, 19 July

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016209/Pub-sign-artists-business-booming-despite-recession.html#ixzz47tbGI8BZ
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Hanging proudly outside, the traditional pub name sign is as important a part of a British pub as the bitter and pork scratchings served inside.

And for one man the naming of pubs - and the signs outside - is big business.

Pub sign artist Andrew Grundon's business is booming, despite the recession claiming 25 bars and inns every week.

Impressive: Artist Andrew Grundon designs another sign for a local pub, with business booming despite the recession

Intricate: Andrew applies the finishing touches to his sign for the Masons Arms

Andrew, 43, worked as professional painter for 12 years before applying for a job as the sign writer at St Austell Brewery, Cornwall.

He now runs his own company, Signature Signs, and uses the traditional method of hand-painting pub signs which dates back to the 14th century.

It takes Andrew and average of eight days to complete each sign.

And despite an average of 1,300 pubs closing in the UK every year, demand for his skills is at an all time high.

Detailed: Each of Adam's signs takes around eight days to complete

Colourful creations: Andrew shows off a selection of signs from his collection, which are created using methods dating back to the 14th century

Andrew, from Wadebridge, Cornwall, said: 'I think that pub signs are starting to come back.

'They had been dying off, but there seems to have been a resurgence lately.

'I'd always admired pub signs for their artistic merit - I don't think people always realise how much work and detail goes into them.'

A Royal Act passed in 1393 made it compulsory for pubs and inns to have a sign hanging outside, allowing official ale testers and a largely illiterate population to identify them.

Source

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016209/Pub-sign-artists-business-booming-despite-recession.html#ixzz47tb7H3Za
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Let the celebration begin! My wife should have no trouble filling my stocking!

15 of the Best Holiday Beers for Seasonal Sipping

Story here.

That's what I'm talking about - 20 Country pubs.

 20 Country Pubs

You may (or may not) find this interesting.

My daughter and I go toWaffle House fairly often (my wife, not so much).
So I though I would share some stuff I learned from another blog I follow.

10 things you may not have know about Waffle House.

The summer keeps rolling along. . . .

 Meet number three. . . 'chillin' 'tween' races.

 Rainy Wednesday to the Art Museum.

 Daughters class had spent a lot of time this past school year studying Native Americans so she found that display fascinating.

 Young artist at work studying the masters.

 Just have to get the perspective just right.

Daughters favorite, Norman Rockwell.

I love her!

 They even had crafts.

 Studying Monet.

 Wife, "Okay, in this period of paintings, if you notice, many of works will flow in some sort of figure eight."

 Daughter, "Nope, just not seein' it."

(Okay, okay, I made that up.)

 Posing partners, a Degas and a Daughter.

 No lion, no witch, just the wardrobe.

Out front.

 Namesake of St. Louis.

 Back in town, daughters first red tomatoes of the season. Just a few days after July 4th.

 Yea!

 Another day, a farmers market.

 Saturday, pool party with friends.

Sunday, the last softball game of the season.

 Yesterday, meet number four, 'chillin' 'tween' races.













I call this one, 'Sunset at Swim Meet'. We finished at eleven p.m.

Easter week 2015

 Easter week was a busy week.

First we started with our schools Tech Fest!

The kids worked in teams and showed us parents all the modern tech. that they were learning to us.

 This way mom and dad!

 Next was Friday Easter Egg dyeing.

 Pretty colors.

 Saturday found us heading to first of the month building project at Home Depot.
And you just have to pose with a pretty truck.

 Finished project.

Teaching grandma how to use the IPAD while waiting for breakfast.

 Another pretty truck on the way out to the cabin.

 Getting dirt ready to do some planting.

 Elbow deep in dirt.

 Look how dirty I got mom!

 Grandma helping out.

 A little of this, a little of that.

 Finished project with plants.

 Time for a selfie.

 Time to do some sketching.

 Grandma enjoying the sun.

 How do I get back across!

Learning to tend the fire.

 Stylin' high time.

 and again.

 Wild flowers are starting to come up.

 Good form.

 Tending the smoke.

Waiting for the tube steaks.

 You can eat on the trampoline also.

 Photo bombing grandma.

 Easter morn.

 What can I say?

 Fun with cousins.

 Go-cart driving with ears . . .

 . . . without.

Even a little time left for a zip-line run.