My T-Shirt Era

For us working folk, there's not many casual days in our lives, if you think about it. Saturdays might be an occasion, but there's usually a little dressing up for church on Sundays. After yesterday's fun coincidence of matching my neighbor, this morning I thought, "I'm going to start wearing all these t-shirts I insisted on buying but don't get an occasion to wear."

First one off the pile – King Cone of course! It's a pretty cool shirt, if I do say so myself.

Don't worry, I'm not boring you with a picture everyday. Just had to prove at the same time that I am leaving my desk and getting out walking. A must-do when working at home can keep you chained to your desk. 

I discovered today that 3 laps around the neighborhood "larger circle" will net me 5,000+ steps. So that's a start anyway. Each lap is a nice short break. Just have to keep reminding myself to do it!

Today was also highlighted by military jet training overhead and sonic booms and a nice thunderstorm. All ending before Jim's golf league, naturally.

Also, thanks to the internet and livestreaming, I was able to watch my cowboy nephew Zach compete in the AQHA Versatility Ranch Horse World Championships in Amarillo, Texas. He's doing pretty good. Now I feel the need to watch The Man From Snowy River, which helped fuel his horse obsession as a young boy!

Don't be to jealous of my exciting life these days! 

Building a Mist-ery

Last night was so weird. As I exited work, I could see crazy dark clouds to the north – heading south quickly. As it turned out, two neighbor friends had come up to Stevens Point to meet me for a little experiment.

We got to be treated while taking very serious participation in a "test run" of a new upscale restaurant experience. (Hey, hubby and I know our share of restaurant owners and managers! And he had golf league. His loss.) So here we are indoors and we missed the whole storm, which did end up reaching Rapids and sort of flattening my flowers – and also took down walls of the new Pizza Ranch under construction. Gasp!

The important thing is that my friends have adventurous appetites so, following their lead, I tried new things, too. For the good of the experiment.

The super delicious salad I had was just the beginning with its blueberries and toasted almonds with... kohlrabi (first time trying – new fan), white balsamic vinaigrette (this typically ranch girl is a new fan of this, too), and... goat cheese.

What the heck have I been missing for... ever? OMG. It's so good and light and creamy and wow.

To defend my lack of adventure with the goat cheese... Who among you siblings and Hedberg cousins recall when we'd visit Grandma in her apartment, she would not let us have one of those pecan cups she always made "not until you have some goat cheese."

I don't even know if we ever had to eat it. But my mind saw it as disgusting punishment. 

Oh, Grandma Minnie. Sorry I disappointed you. It's good stuff!

The rest of the dinner – off the charts. When we stepped outside it was sunny. So who knew while we were indulging that things were twisting and turning and down pouring?

The weird thing was that because the asphalt was so hot during the day with nearly 90 degrees again, the cool rain created a weird, fog-like mist to drive through on the way home to Wisconsin Rapids. Some of it was pretty thick. But we all made it home.

Today my foggy mist was my brain and body working together to remember how to golf.

First night of Ladies' League at TriCity. My friend Molly and I were shaking off the rust but had a blast because, well, what's better than golfing with a friend? It's the one thing I am not competitive in because I know my limited skill set. And I don't want pressure. Just fun.

I saved our scorecard so we can see where we go from here. We can only go up... while our score goes down, that is.

I just re-read this all and realize... there's Robyn... typical 24-hour span of life... so much. And I didn't even mention I got to King Cone for the first time in 2026 as a welcome-our-intern social after work! 

#livingthedream #ifyousayso

Charity Combined with Clarity

My company takes our United Way campaign very seriously. So thankfully today, that meant a scoop of delicious King Cone ice cream – for a good cause of course!

It also meant raffle baskets and thanks to our marketing department, an incredible book fair. Oh gosh, if you have a favorite author or book title in mind, you need to let me know ASAP as this sale/fair only goes through Wednesday!

Of course my clarity in life came on the golf course after work today. A bit windy so there were actually waves on the water holes. But not bad versus the super high humidity and temps of previous weeks.

Of course, we're still so blessed we get to golf at SentryWorld and play the back 9 for league just enough to experience an appreciate the Flower Hole.

Still looking pretty in September!

Something my two black thumbs could never accomplish!

Since were into mid-September almost, we've got the bonus sunset views.

And wildlife, too! We loved that they didn't care about our tee shots. There was obviously tasty in the grass by the 18th tee box!

I had a great round – despite some required mulligans to keep me happy. Worked out just fine to cap off a day of doing good for United Way. 

More to come for the next 2 weeks. Hope you all have a chance this time of year to support a very good cause!

Happy Birthday a.k.a. Holiday Eve

Hubby often brags that he ALWAYS gets the day after his birthday off. And well, he does! 

When you're born on July 3rd (that's today, folks!), it's pretty much true for a least 90% of us, I imagine. So how are we celebrating the big day – er, July 4th Eve?

Well we both worked today – but I did manage to sneak some King Cone into the freezer last night. His favorite – Pirate's Booty – and of course, a small serving for me, too!

Tonight he had golf league so he was doing what he loves best. And I was shooting pictures at the waterski show. Probably a good thing we have the Day After Jimmy's Birthday Holiday tomorrow so we can just relax!

God, bless America! And my husband. And ice cream! 

Different Kind of Fall Colors

I'm ignoring the sporadic fall colors popping up before it's even mid-September. But today I got to enjoy some different fall colors. First it was the 44-degree wake-up temperature accompanied by fog on the way to work.

Fog and a sunrise that is. So that was pretty cool!

My mid-day color was a bit more conventional. As part of our two-week United Way campaign, King Cone made an appearance in our parking garage. Yes!!

After work, the clouds were a dark gray before opening up just about our tee time on our last night of golf season! So we commenced to meeting at the 19th hole and enjoyed a little time together. When the rain stopped, we all headed home.

And there was more color on my way home. Just over the businesses on Division Street in Stevens Point. 

Then, when I turned onto Deer Road to make my final leg home, there was more color.

When I got home, I thought I'd share one more color scheme from my visit to my hair artist last night. Definitely can't compare to nature's beauty. But also definitely not boring.

Find the color in your week, my friends!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day for all you special ladies who have made the world a better place by being in it! It's fun to celebrate how awesome we are, isn't it?

My day was a little centered around food! I'll comfort food since my baby texted at 6:30 a.m. that they were officially leaving Wisconsin on their way home to Raleigh. 

Jim's usual tradition is to make me Eggs Benedict for Mother's Day. This year, since we saw a commercial that iHop had a variety of Benedicts, we figured we'd give that a try. We both ended up getting the "classic" anyway. And honestly, Mr. Austin makes it even better! 

And although we were full, it just so happened that after a stop at Menard's, King Cone was open!

Hello, Blueberry "Yes, Please" Cake ice cream! Good stuff. I was super full and couldn't finish it.

But Sylvester helped me lick the bowl clean later!

My other Mother's Day treat was going to be golfing. We had a tee time and it just kept raining all day. It stopped now but it's only in the 50s so I sent Jim along with a buddy. It's not a "treat" for me to be cold and miserable.

Plus, this way, since I'm done with Queen Charlotte, I can jump into season 2 of Firefly Lane on Netflix and all that mushy stuff! 

Hope you all had a relaxing day and were treated like the queens we all are!

My Current Royalty

I love that the letter R fits so nicely with the concept of Royalty. My current royal situation has nothing to do with my R family or my Assumption Royals, for that matter.

First today I dealt with this announcement. OK. Not quite dealt, but am processing...

If you need reading glasses, the bottom line is that King Cone will NOT be reopening in its Wisconsin Rapids location! I guess I should've gone there even more!

I know that there have been struggles getting hired help – like there are in most service industries – so it's not exactly surprising. But still. Give me a minute to process this. 

For once I count myself lucky that I pass through Plover (one of their other home sites) three times a week! I will not abandon you, King Cone! I am your loyal servant!

Thankfully, I have other royal happenings to distract me. Oh no. Not King Charles, but Queen Charlotte. Now that I am done watching The Diplomat, I can turn my attention to the Bridgerton pre-quel on Netflix. One episode in and I'm pretty curious. 

That helps on the days my favorite Royals – obviously from Assumption – are center stage!

Long live King Cone! Long live the queen!

Off-Season Signs

After last night's Assumption boys' loss to the top-ranked Wausau Newman team last night, it's not officially the off-season for all Royal sports. And this photographer.

We got the game late since our fish fries at Bullshead Tavern on the way took forever. But we didn't miss the drama or the excitement that made the second half seem like a potential Cinderella story. Our boys fought hard but just couldn't close that final gap. Dang. 

Stopped out afterward and got home after Cinderella's coach would've turned into a pumpkin! So tired. Ha.

With not playoff games today for boys or girls, our schedule opened up. And my high school bestie just happened to text wanting to come up from Madison to meet for lunch. She had an important yarn delivery for me. We'll use any excuse! So Jim and I met Julie and Mark in Plover at O'so Brewery. They have one of their walls painted with that phrase above. Right away we knew we were in the right place!

That's us in a nutshell! So good to catch up with them. I feel like I haven't seen Julie in a year but that can't be right, can it? Sometimes it works out better to be spontaneous! And meeting up in the same town where I introduced her to King Cone doesn't hurt either.

It's March Mint Madness there if you haven't gotten around to visiting since they opened a few weeks ago. 

Of course we had to stop because Sylvester loves mint-chocolate ice cream! Well she loves licking the container. If I leave any for her, that is. 

King Cone is king and the females in this house are definitely his princesses!

The rest of the day was pretty laid back. Posted the last sports pictures I'll have for a month. A sure sign of the off-season will be free time for me. Jim will resume coaching baseball and be busy with that in another 10 days so we'll just enjoy a bit open-agenda down time.

That's a good sign to me, too!

The Sweetest Things

In case you didn't know... purple is one of the colors of fall! Ask Viking fans and we know this. But for everyone else, there's the magical combination of my favorite colors in the M&M's Halloween Ghoul Mix – purple, orange, and lime green! 

The perfect touch to the 10 dozen Little Monster Cookies I had baked before noon today. And that's a half-recipe! Just needed enough to send some with Jim for his boys weekend in Portland next week, plus some for my sister weekend next week, plus some for a few others. They do freeze well if I have any leftover for that nonsense.

But that wasn't the sweetest part of the day.

Hubby got me this sweatshirt for Sweetest Day plus some other goodies. Obviously after a quarter-century together, he knows me pretty well.

Tonight I returned the favor and took him to dinner. We decided to go somewhere new – for us anyway. We tried out Avocados, a relatively new Mexican restaurant in town, and it was so good! Super delicious so we'll definitely return.

Since we were already on Highway 54, we headed to Plover for dessert!

Oh yes, King Cone is open one more day for the season and then it'll be back open on the next romantic holiday – Valentine's Day. Go there Sunday if you can. I had the Pumpkin Pie ice cream and it was amazing.

What a sweet way to end the day with my sweetie! 

Sunday Day of Rest (Mostly)

Wasn't too buzzy or busy of a Sunday. Had a nice relaxing day with my sister. Pretty much. I mean we went to church, then scouted a few senior photo shoot locations.

She was my designated senior (citizen, that is). Beautiful, right?

Since it was a gorgeous day – not too hot or muggy thanks to a breeze – we headed out to Anchor Bay to enjoy lunch by the river. Yummy food per usual and nice scenery!

And breezy! Did I mention that?

After lunch we relaxed around the house and the neighborhood – visiting the ones Rayna's met before – and it was after 6:30 p.m. when we both realized we forgot to do something very important during her visit.

Yup. Go to King Cone!! How that slipped our minds, I'll never know. But we got there before it closed and tried to resist eating it on the way home since Jim was bringing us supper. Spoiler alert: We didn't completely resist. But did enjoy some pizza for supper and had room for the rest of our dessert!

Priorities!

Rayna heads out tomorrow on her way to another sister's house in Minnesota for a few days. I'll still get to see her again in a few weeks before she heads back to Arizona. Was awesome having her here even though it seems like the weekend flew! 

Guess we'll have to visit her in the desert. Sometime when it's 10 degrees here and ice cream honestly is the last thing on my mind!

The Gasoline of Life

Love when local businesses have inspirational or just plain factual signs. This is 100% what I needed after church today. And it was actually cheaper than a gallon of gas! That's telling you something!

We haven't tipped the $5 mark for regular unleaded gas here – yet. But it's so close. I wish coffee would fuel my car as much as it fuels me. Did you know a gallon of gas only cost 31 cents in 1963? A cup of coffee – 35 cents!

Why do we care? Because also in 1963 a certain someone came into this world. On this very date!

Yup, someone is spending his last year in his 50s. I was just wiki-researching his birth date and it turns out Jim was born on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. The fact that that is a reference point on his birthday seems way too historic for my taste!

Probably the coolest fact was the day before his birth. On July 2, 1963, baseball pitchers Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants, and Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves faced off against each other in a National League baseball game that one author would later call "the greatest game ever pitched". Tied 0-0 after nine innings, the game was won in the 16th by the Giants on a home run by Willie Mays. A perfect stat for my baseball-loving man!

Of course what he enjoys about having his birthday on the 3rd is that he always has the day after his birthday off! Thank you, America!

He didn't exactly whoop it up today, though. He had to be the lector (or something like that) at 5 p.m. church so he was well-behaved all day, relaxing on his recliner with some John Wayne on TV and listening to his Reds baseball on Sirius radio. I offered to take him out after church, but he was fine with just staying home. 

So I went to King Cone myself in observance of his special day. After all, ice cream is the gasoline of life when the coffee shop's closed. And sometimes even when it's open.

No Rest for the Wicked

You know it's going to be an interesting weekend at Camp Crop-a-Lot when the first sight that greets you is the outline of a dead body.

Oh yes. Like they say: What happens at scrap camp stays at scrap camp!

Just kidding. No way 2 dozen women can keep a secret! Not this group anyway! In truth, every year, the two organizers have a theme. This year it revolved around the game CLUE. Which I am clueless about. Never played it. Never saw any of the movies based on the game either.

But of course I solved the crime because I'm competitive that way! It was a fun little distraction but mostly I just scrapbooked pages for my 2016 album. I realized sometime Friday that I made a rookie mistake and forgot to print out some pictures. So I put an order into Walgreens and ran into Stevens Point Saturday morning to pick up pictures for myself and two other veterans who made the same rookie mistake!

It happens to the best of us. I still got plenty of pages done – including lots of kayaking ones from that first summer of paddling! 

I also managed to watch the Assumption girls in the regional championship game Saturday night. It was a stressful nail-biter to have to watch on my phone and try to see the tiny score! In the end – the very end – they won by 1 point and are regional champions for the second year in a row. Well done, Lady Royals! I'll miss their sectional game this week but hope they make it to the final on Saturday.

If you wonder why I talk about "packing" for scrap camp for so long, it's because we all bring a lot of NECESSARY stuff! This is my work station for the weekend.

Pretty much all look like that, as you can see from my friend at the facing table. It's a sign of a creative mind.

And a tired one. Very low on sleep but managed the 50-minute drive home with a much-needed pit stop in Plover.

Yup. King Cone is open there! What a nice treat for a hard-working weekend! Got home and unpacked. And then packed again.

Leaving tomorrow for Arizona. Will be staying with my sister Rayna this week. My mom is there visiting, too, so I'll fly back with her to Minneapolis on Friday. It just happened that this is back to back. For once, I may actually sleep on the plane! 

Or on her Mr. Deck Chair. That's one thing I have a clue about!

Gratitude Challenge Day 3 :: Food

Let's dip right into it. Here's the scoop on today's Gratitude Challenge. 

Day 3. A food you love.

Really no surprise here. I mean you know I love ice cream – whether it's 95 and humid or 20 below windchills. (By the way it truly is never too cold for ice cream!)

While I enjoy it – a lot – I hadn't ever thought of being grateful for it. But I guess I am.

Sometimes it's a reward for doing something good. Sometimes it comforts me (not necessarily a good thing). Other times it leads to socializing (a very good thing). Or even meeting new friends (awesome). So I suppose I am grateful. 

But mostly I just love it.

And no, I don't have ONE favorite flavor. I do like most varieties of mint chocolate, blueberry cheesecake or crumble, coconut, caramel, and on and on. As with all the things I'm grateful for in this challenge, I'll include the disclaimer that this list is not all-inclusive.

And as far as food goes, I also could eat these every day:

• Pizza
• Popcorn
• Buffalo chicken anything
• Fiber One Cereal

Just seeing if you're paying attention. I'm just grateful for food on the table (or in the freezer) every day and never having to worry where my next meal comes from. 

Except when King Cone and DQ are both closed for the season!

#gratitudemonth

Last Call

In case you didn't know, King Cone closes for the season tonight at 9 p.m. Our Wisconsin Rapids branch, not Plover. And yes, I'm serious. I never kid about ice cream.

Anyway, I had to stop by after date night pizza at Tri-City Golf Course. That was tasty and it just feels good to support small businesses, right? So really, it was my duty to swing by the Cone and stock up on 3 pints. Two Carrot Cake for me and one Pirates' Booty for hubby.

I'm still too full from the pizza to taste any, but I'm sure they all pass inspection! 

There were more highlights to this Labor Day – and not just cleaning my Scrap Cave and shooting senior pictures. But I'll share another time. I gotta publish this important public service announcement so you have time to get there!

Enjoy. Happy Labor Day to us all!

Getting Cheesy AND Corny

Had a full and fun family day today. Had to show these Minnesota kids what a good time in small town Wisconsin is all about.

But first we had a few more gymnastics in the front yard – with my good camera...

Doesn't this shadow look like the Air Jordan logo? I think so. And this is what a back flip looks like...

That air time is crazy!!

Then I taught a little photography class with my camera securely fastened on top of a tripod. They each got a turn taking a picture or two of others... Say "cheese"!

After that, it was time to go rural fun and check out the Kellner Corn Fest. Yup, they were convinced we'd just be in the middle of a corn field but the little wide spot in the road known as Kellner had a some games (including BINGO, which we did not win), a dunk tank, some bouncy houses, and... corn!

Caryn was the only one to dunk someone!

Why yes, that is a tractor-shaped bouncy house!

I need some sunglasses! But so nice to have a sunny day with temps in low 80s.

Some of the fundraiser was for the South Wood County Humane Society.

CORN!!

After a grueling round of mini-golf at White Sands Beach, I took them to my favorites spot!

We've got new King Cone fans! Who wouldn't be?

The crew headed back to the Twin Cities tonight. Such a nice visit! Love all the branches of my family!

And this old lady is also exhausted. But a good kind of tired.