Back from Beantown

Boston is a GREAT town! I was there for a 6 day work trip for the American Society of Microbiologists tradeshow. It was a long and exhausting week. We flew in Saturday. All day trip with a long layover in Charlotte (yuk) with the same story back on Thursday. We were on the go non-stop between setting up the booth, working the booth, group dinners, more booth duty and tear-down. But, I was able to get an afternoon and take a quick bus tour of the city. As whirlwind as it was, I was able to capture a few cool pics of some key places. Thank goodness I have an awesome camera that can capture a decent photo moving at 20mph!


First, a pic of our booth.....pretty snazzy...


A view of Boston Harbour from dinner on Monday night

Not sure what church this is, but it's old and gorgeous. One of a few historical churches in the area.

The old State House. The first reading of the Declaration of Independence to Bostonians happened here from the balcony.
Cheers! (or at least the exterior shot from the show) The inside isn't really the Cheers bar.
And you can't leave Boston without seeing Fenway. Gotta bring Gabe back for a game here.
I couldn't resist taking this pic of the famed Boston Fire Dept.
What a great town. Reminded me a lot of Europe. We did a couple of other cool things like eating dinner at the oldest restaurant in the US - Ye old Union Oyster House (est. 1826), experiencing The North End and Little Italy (by far the best cannoli I have ever had) and partaking in some local fare such as baked scrod (scrawd) and clam chowder (chowda). But as great of a time as we had, I was very happy to get back home. Six days on a business trip isn't my cup of tea, and Gabe liked it even less. I hope to get back to Boston in the near future with Gabe. The history buff in me just didn't get enough and I know Gabe would love to see a game at Fenway (if we can get tickets before 2015)



On a whole other note.... we performed another animal rescue today. Maybe we need to start a show on Animal Planet! Animal Rescue Midwest Style....

A co-worker of mine discovered a very large snapping turtle stuck in his window well. He wasn't sure what to do with it, so I helped him out by taking it off his hands. I figured it might like our pond. Of course, that was before we found out it was a snapping turtle! But, we took him anyway. I don't expect him to stick around long. Turtles tend to wander a lot. And hopefully the animals are smart enough to stay out of his way!

It was a fun ride home with him. About half way home, he started to get pretty restless and starting trying to climb out of the bin. EEEEK!! Its hard to drive when you have a snapping turtle trying to run around in your car! So I had to pull over and put him in the trunk. HA! What a life! :) Anyway, got a nice pic of him and a video is his release back into the wild.

He measured about a foot in length and about 6-8 inches across. Not nearly as cute as a regular turtle He had a lot of spikes.

And freedom!...

Memorial Weekend Hodge-podge

It is Monday evening and I am wishing I didn't have to go to work tomorrow. These long weekends are always too short! We didn't do anything spectacular. Just hung out and did our usual gig.....clean, garden, shop, etc. We did meet our friends Mark and Meagan for dinner and a movie on Saturday night. We hadn't been to the movies in a while so it was great to get back to the theater. The price went up to 10.00!! Good grief! (Saw the new Indiana Jones flick...it was good but not awesome). Gabe was a good husband and accompanied me on a clothes shopping excursion for my upcoming business trip for which I needed to buy a suit. Mission accomplished and it only took 1.5 hours, so it wasn't quite torture for Gabe :) Sunday we stayed home and cleaned the house and worked on the yard in preparation for a small BBQ soiree we had today.

During the weekend, we had a few kodak moments that we thought would be great to share on the blog with you all. So here is a random glimpse...

Here is Angel with her new 'Summer Look'
Had a large turtle cross the yard Friday. Cookie didn't know what to think. You can barely see the turtle, but he was a big as a dinner plate.
Gabe put up these bird feeders a few weeks ago, and since then we have been amazed at all different species of local birds that have dropped by for a bite to eat. Here is a great pic that Gabe took of a cardinal.Brody loves the bird feeder too :)

An early b-day present from my Mommy. A hand-made Afgani carpet she lugged back from Saudi. Go mom! :)
Another view....It matches perfectly.This was taken today. Barbie, Chris and their two sons came out, as well as Mark and Meagan. It rained most of the day, but the sun came out and gave us just enough time for Zachary to take a ride on our tractor. Great pic of father and son gittin' 'er done! Some cute video of Zach's big ride...

Graduation week

Finally, a blog post about something OTHER than animals and flowers!
We had a busy weekend with family. Our nephew, Josh Schnelle, graduated from Richmond High School. So we spent the weekend celebrating his big event. Gabe's parents, Bonnie and Rick, and his aunt Phyllis came up and stayed with us. We always have a great time whenever the fam is together.

Saturday: BBQ Party with a Schnelle family portrait. I obviously had a smear on the lense. Right over Josh's face. Bummer.


Amanda and Hannah
Gabe and Randy in their usual political debate.

Sunday: Graduation. Myself, Gabe, Josh, Bonnie and Phyllis

New pup in town and a geese update

Well we have yet another addition to the neighborhood canine club. A chocolate lab named Cooper. I think he is only 3-4 months old. He lives right next door, just across the pond. He is old enough now that his parents let him out to play. And boy, does he play! They played like this all day Sunday. Cookie was exhausted at the end of the day. Cookie's other young friend, Bandit, comes and joins in on the action. Angel smartly stays at a distance but voices her opinion. :)

Ok, so now for the geese update. As some of you know we inherited a male and female goose with the house. The female disappeared and Gabe and I bought three more females for our lonely male. Sadly, 2 of the females were ambushed by coyotes so we were back to just the male and one female. The female laid eggs last fall and did what she could, but without the proper shelter, the eggs were quickly eaten. Not long after that, they decided to move to our neighbors pond (I can't say that I blame them!) and have been there ever since. They have a pretty nice set-up at their new home and are well cared for. The pond is nice and protected, and they were allowed to bunk with the chickens in the chicken coop at night. A few weeks ago, we got a call from the neighbor who said they finally had babies. So Monday night we went over to see them. Unfortunately, they are no longer babies. But I took some pics nonetheless. :)

Here they are following mom and dad. 5 babies - although they look like adults. Mom and dad are in the front. Mom has the orange beak and dad has the white neck.

Its quite amazing they are all still alive and have not met their fate with the local predators. We are told mom and dad are very good parents.

We are about to enter our busy season, with lots of activities. So the dry spell on the blog should be breaking soon. Hope you are all doing well. Stay tuned for more antics on the Schnelle farm!

Flowers, more flowers and hair

Sorry for the delayed posting. Our life has been pretty uneventful lately. But, in the interest of keeping to my blogging comittment, I am posting this fairly unexciting recap of our activities of late.
It all comes down to house work. With the lack of semi-nice weekends without rain, any nice day you will find us outside working on the property. The story of my life lately is planting, weeding, planting and more weeding. Oh and I work in cleaning here and there too. Gabe's life is mowing and caring for the newly planted vegetable garden.

We inherited a sizeable perinneal garden with this house. And I have been reluctantly thrown into gardening. So far, its more like weeding. It can get pretty overwhelming given the amount we have. I am learning as I go thanks to a lot of help from my stepmom Linda and mother-in-law Bonnie and Cindy. Slowly, I am starting to get a little more confident with the garden. The last two weekends have been spent cleaning up the flower beds.

This past weekend, Gabe's parents, Bonnie and Rick came up to stay with us. Saturday, we went to our nephew Lucas' baseball game and stumbled upon a terrific greenhouse. I had never seen anything like it! It was HUGE! We were there for 2 hours and we didn't get through it all. They had every flower, plant and vegetable imaginable. And the quality of the plants are awesome. You pay for it too. We came home with a few perinneals. So this weekend was spent planting. I really hope they make it.


A couple of mum plants and a new cala lilly. The rock was an anniversary gift from Cindy. In this picture, it looks a little like a tombstone! HA!

The latest completed section of the flower bed. I have no idea what this bush is. I really want to get rid of it. Maybe next year. We probably use about 10 bags of mulch. I love this mulch because the color doesn't fade over the year. Scott's Naturescape Mulch
I thought this was a neat and unique ground cover. Dancing Clover
I just can't stop with the Columbines. These were too pretty to pass up.
Cindy and I spent time cleaning out the dead hens and chicks a couple weeks ago and since then they have been going crazy! I love these because they are so low maintenance and look so pretty! Like little artichokes.
This is the next big project. With the exception of the day lilly plants, this is all weeds. Its one big mess. We will have to dig all of it out and start over. The weeds are even taking over the grass! EEK!

Ok, now to the hair. I finally got sick enough of my hair and built up the courage to chop it off! I was pretty nervous about it. This is the shortest I have ever had it. But I really love it. I finally have a hair style and its very easy. This is what they call a stacked bob. And before you ask, yes, I have a shot of the front, but it won't ever be posted here since I hate pictures of myself. At least here you can't see my face. You will just have to see it in person :)