Adventures

Adventures at the Air Zoo

We went to see the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo at the beginning of October and it was really cool! They had everything on display ranging from huge engine pieces, restoration jobs, declassified stealth planes, and a bunch of other exhibits. For a smaller museum, it was packed full of things and they had two buildings. We went with K2 and J and the boys had a blast (no pun intended) wandering through the museum.

The helicopter below was climbable for kids and I will admit to debating with K2 if I was short enough to qualify! Sadly, there were actual kids there, so I had to be good.

These are resorted planes from WW2. It was cool to see the stories behind the nose cone art.

I appreciated being able to read the pilot stories too. They had a wedding dress that was made from parachute silk of someone who had been shot down. It was beautiful!

They didn’t just have planes there either. This is a rocket engine. 5 of these power a rocket! Can you imagine?! I’m pretty sure we all could have fit underneath it.

It was super neat to see the restoration work going on. They had a declassified plane and two planes that they had recovered from Lake Michigan on display. The two downed looked really good for having been dragged from the bottom of the lake. The silver plane is one of the Lake Michigan planes and then black one is the declassified one. The green one was also a wreck somewhere, but I don’t remember where it was from.

They had a lot of exhibits about different war time things as well. The WASPs were featured. Sue Parish was one of the founders of the museum actually. She had a pink flight suit! My camera was done by this time, so I think K2 has the end of the pictures for the museum.

They also had a Willow Run exhibit, which was cool. My Dad told me that my Grandma Florence worked there, which I either hadn’t known, or had forgotten. I knew all four of my grandparents were involved in the war somehow, but not entirely how.

This was the Husband’s favorite part, I think, although it was super hard to get pictures of because I am very little and it was not. It is an SR- 71 B Blackbird.

It was very interesting to learn about all the airplanes and fun stuff associated with them. They had a lot of hands on things to play with although we didn’t play with too many of them as there were a lot of germy children running around snotting on things. The amount of sneezing.. *shudders*

I really enjoyed it though and a lot of the exhibits were Michigan based, not surprisingly. I’ll leave you with some outside shots that I’m particularly proud of. I hope you enjoyed this mini tour!

Crafty · Life Posts · Recipe Roundup · Sewing

Recipes and Adventures!

I only made two new recipes last week and then we went on an adventure! I did help make a new ice cream recipe on our adventure, but our friends did the cooking, which was so nice.

I have one picture of the three recipes I made before we left. I redeemed myself from the chicken potpie that we don’t speak about, using leftovers from a roasted chicken.

The chicken recipe was from The Family Recipe Keeper. We had roasted potatoes from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I threw some carrots in with the chicken.

Here’s the potpie and Fancy, being so jealous.

We also had Meatball Marsala, from one of the Food Network magazines. I’ve misplaced it, but when I find it, I’ll post the edition number. It was good. I made fancy mashed red potatoes to go with it. It wasn’t a very pretty looking dish though.

Fancy was very concerned that we were leaving her behind and started laying on our bags or sticking like glue to one or the other of us. She also didn’t let me finish the quilt I needed for this weekend.

I ended up attempting to car quilt, which just made me a little car sick and then finally finished it while everyone else was napping.

I believe it’s a split 9 patch from Bonnie Hunter, but set on point instead of regular. The pattern has something funny with it, but still looks okay. Baby S loved it and spent at least a half an hour rolling around in it. This is what happened when I first attempted pictures.

Fancy loved her time with the tiny human and was so concerned about him that she spent the whole weekend following him around and whining when he cried.

She was very gentle with him, although she did try to chew on almost all of his toys. She shared hers, for the most part, but did very nicely take the ball back from him when he grabbed it. She was a spoiled dog and got a tennis ball of her very own, but chewed some holes in it instead of playing nice.

K made some lovely baby and dog friendly treats and S didn’t like them cold, so he shared them all with Fancy. She quickly learned that his highchair  meant delicious dropped things from up above.

The Husband and I ate very well too. There was beef stew waiting fir us when we arrived. We had homemade butternut squash ravioli and beef and parm ravioli for lunch.

The squash were cooked in butter and sage and the beef had a homemade golden marinara sauce over it. Mmmmm…. K gave me  ravioli maker to play with, so I might be making some pasta on Friday.

We had the traditional dinner of corned beef and cabbage, with roasted veggies and carrots. Traditional soda bread too. It was all delicious!

We made Irish Whiskey Salted Caramel ice cream for dessert. One of the coolest things about K and A is that they have chickens and ducks! We got to use extremely fresh eggs for the ice cream. Guess which egg yolk is a duck egg yolk…

The ice cream was a little soft and a lot boozy! It was delicious though. Had it been harder, we probably would have made ice cream sandwiches with the giant homemade cookies that were made for the Husband. 🙂

I think we used a Pioneer Woman recipe for the Caramel sauce.

We had a great time and it was fun to meet the baby. He definitely helped wear Fancy out. She slept for most of yesterday.

Now she’s out basking in the sun. If we would let, her, she would probably stay there all day. 🙂 Hope your day is as sunny as her day!