Jelly Belly Time

Jelly Bellies are awesome! Amy and I prefer Starburst jelly beans ourselves but when I had the opportunity to cross state lines last Friday and tour their facility on the Cheese side of the Illinois Wisconsin border we went for it.

It was one of those tours where you were not allowed to take pictures. What did they think we were going to report their latest accomplishments to Slugworth?

Oh well, the tour was free, the kids enjoyed themselves, and of course there was the two words every jelly bean lover lives for: free samples.


I was able to take these pics after the tour . . .

Here are a few tidbits learned on the tour.

• Jelly Bellies were very popular with former President and California Governor Ronald Reagan. In fact, the blueberry jelly belly was created for Reagan's Inaugural in 1980 so they could make a special red, white and blue assortment. Reagans's favorite flavor was licorice.
• Jelly Bellies take almost a week to make.
• The current most popular flavor is Very Cherry a distinction formerly held by butter popcorn flavor ,which, by the way, my daughter Emma does not much care for.

Next Time: Washinton DC Trip Day 2

Washington D.C. Trip Day 1

It's Six Word Saturday time.

My 6 Words: My journal from our Washington Trip


Dos semanas pasado (not sure how I remembered how to say 2 weeks ago in Spanish) We left on our trip to Washington D.C. I wrote in a journal every day while we were gone. Over the next few weeks I will


Today was a fast paced high stress day. Had a 110 or so last minute details to attend to before heading out of town at 3 p.m.

Among other things I/We . . .

• Drove Amy to work so we could pick her up at the end of the day and head out of town.


• Put brake fluid in my car fir the first time ever.


• An hour before we left, I received 500 baseball cards I had won on Amazon. Not enough time to even begin to wade through them. Oh well, they'll be home waiting.

I was about 10 minutes late for picking up Amy. otherwise all went off without a hitch. So far we have only forgotten thing of little consequence. Drove about 5 1/2 hours to Dayton, Ohio.

Ate dinner at KFC, had the buffet. We would eat at that KFC again, but the buffet was a little pricy and with the time constraints we were up against, it wasn't the best choice. Although they did have Okra, vegetable of the gods.

Got to Dayton about 10:30 Eastern time. Our Motel 6 lights were burnt out, so we are pursuing litigation against Tom Bodett. Heading towards Walton Museum area tomorrow.

That's Day 1. More to come in the future. For more 6 word Saturday head on over to Show My Face Dot Com

Next Time: Jelly Belly Time

Things Fortnightly

Time once again for our biweekly thing festival. SO many things so little time. Let's get to them shall we.

Thing #1. Blog Insider - A look at the widgets, gadgets, and what nots of Home School Dad.

Tonight's Episode: Here but not here.

My family was visiting the Washington D.C. area last week. We had a wonderful time. I took plenty of pictures and even kept a trip journal. I will be sharing from both of these sources in the posts to come. While I let my face book friends know I was gone, I didn't want to announce on the blog my absence just to make sure that no unscrupulous types took advantage of our absence from our home. To that end, I used one of my favorite features of blogger and wrote and scheduled 4 posts that appeared the week I was gone.

If you click on the post options menu while writing your current post, you can schedule your posts in advance. This not only helps when you are warning to post date a post, it also helps if you start a post and save it and want to have a current date on it. If you save a post without changing the date and then come back and publish it later it will retain the original date and often get lost behind whatever you published in the interim. If you post date your work and save it, then you can change the date to the current date once you have made your revisions.

Thing #2 What's on my screen saver

Charlie is playing soccer for the first time in an organized league. He really enjoys it. His first game is Saturday. He is looking forward to it.

Thing # 3. Chock full of Chuck.

It wouldn't be Thursday if I weren't telling you about the awesomeness that is Chuck. As I have mentioned in the last few times here Chuck VS. the Beard was the Best Episode Ever. The 4 episodes that followed it and ended the current story arc all were very very good. I would have to say that Monday's episode Chuck vs. The Other Guy was the second best episode ever. No Spoiler alerts here, but many things transpired in this episode that would have been impossible to even fathom less than a season ago. But every plot point seemed to fall in place and seem very genuine and most of all immensely watchable. Chuck takes a 3 week hiatus until the end of April. This means that in the next things fortnightly, I'll have to fins something else to go on and on about.

Thing # 4, Something to count on.

Last year right around Thanksgiving time I applied for a temporary job with the Census Bureau. I worked with them in 1990 and was hoping to do so again this year. I got 98% on the test and was thinking I should have heard from them one way or another by now. They called and I got a job as an enumerator. I have 4 days of training in late April and then a number of weeks of collecting census data form the field. This is my first paying gig in 2 years and I am just excited that I'll get a W2 next year. Besides the training, I'll be able to work my schedule around the kids homeschooling. It is a real answer to prayer.

Well that's all the things I have for today. If you have some things you'd like to share please click on Mr. Linky below.

Next Time: DC Trip Day #1

As Another Begins

I posted earlier this week about the end of college basketball season. Major League Baseball was getting into full swing (pun intended) as the NCAA tournament winded down. The tournament , anation obsession, is giving way to basbeball, the national past time.

Hopefully it will be a good season for both sides of Chicago. The Sox have started 1-1 and the Cubs have faltered out of the gate so far at 0-2. That's 2 down and 160 to go. Much too early to draw too many conclusion. I will be posting my musings each week as the season progresses.

Remembering Keith

They say dead men tell no tales. It's been a year to the day since by brother died and his death had written a chapter in the story that may not have been written otherwise. My brother died a few minutes after midnight on April 7,2009. It was literally the longest day of my life. My dad woke me up about 3 a.m. with the news. His death still seems surreal to me, but at 3 a.m. the day of it was the most surreal.

I had seen Keith less than 72 hours before and at that point, it seemed like he was getting better. The phone call from my Dad, said otherwise. I was in a haze when I got off the phone and went back in the bedroom and told Amy. The death of a loved one is the ultimate alarm clock and once I told her we were both wide awake.

Amy took the day off work and later that morning we told the kids. We knew how the girls would take it, it would zoom over Lucy and send Emma into a fit of tears. Charlie was the wild card, we did not know exactly how he would react. It turns out he was much more upset than we expected him to be. He ran out of the room, very angry.

Time stood still for a while. Because Keith died the week before Easter, there was 1 week between his death and the funeral. After that the days slowly passed into weeks, the weeks turned into months, and before long it was Veteran's day and I was commemorating what would have been Keith's 39th birthday with a memorial here on the blog.

Now almost another 5 months have passed and we are at the 1 year marker. I still miss Keith fiercely. It also still feels like the whole thing was a gigantic hoax. I fully expect Ashton Kutcher to come out any minute with Keith by his side and tell me how I've been punked. Alas, that probably isn't going to happen. Keith never had the impulse control to keep a joke that long. As much as I'd love to have him here with me again, I know he's with the creator, and having the time of his life.

One Season comes to an end

Today signified the end of Men's college basketball season. What started as a field if 65 a few weeks ago was down to 2. When the tournament brackets were announced, My wife and I filled out our brackets as we do every year. We were pretty surprised to find out that her pick to win it all and mine were squaring off in the final game.

That's right, my wife picked Butler to win the NCAA tournament. She picked a 5 seed, whereas I went with perennial power house and #1 seed Duke.

What a game it was. If Butler would have made that desperation half court shot, they would have won. The shot was very close. It seems like every other year, I pick Duke to win it all, it just so happens that this year I was right.