Let the Fall Adventure begin!

The Wanderer is loaded and pointed southeast. Texas here we come!

Can we boast a bit?

After a jam-packed summer our girls are back in school. The pretense of this post is, our families are interested (and maybe they are.) The reality, we are quite enamored and love to talk about them.

After eight weeks of dance intensive, Camille returned to Fort Walton High School last week for her sophomore year.

She will attend classes at the high school 4 hours a day, then she will go to the Northwest Florida Ballet Acadamie for her electives in dance. She will also teach an evening class at the academie.

Today Alison started her senior year at Navarre High School where she is the Brass Captain in the high school band.

Driving her dad's Prius

It was quite an exciting and busy summer for Alison. In June she spent 3 weeks in Greece with her school's AP Science teacher and a group of his students. In addition to exploring and scuba diving they did environmental and marine science research. In July she headed to Belize for a 2 week adventure with the Gold Star Teen Adventure program where she did more scuba diving, hiked and camped in the jungle and survived a hurricane.

What is the GSTA program? I'm glad you asked. From the GSTA web site: The founder is Kent Solheim, a special operations service member and father of two that was very seriously wounded in combat in Iraq in 2007 ultimately losing his right leg. (Our note, Kent is a truly remarkable man that is an excellent role model for the teens. He is a hands-on example of succeeding in spite of adversity.)The program promotes healing, mentorship, opportunity, in addition to leadership and character building to the children of the fallen special operation comrades. It is truly an awesome organization for which we could write a lengthy accolade and description (and probably get the facts wrong,) so why not click on over to their web site and read it for yourself. After reading it, make a donation if you are so inclined or do what we do, designate them for your Amazon Smile recipient and they will receive .05% of your Amazon purchases (and you will be a patriot.)

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Our 4th Annual Texas BBQ is now in the books.

In spite of the heat and humidity, 40 of our friends joined us on the patio and carport for our annual Texas barbecue on Saturday evening. This is an event to which we look forward every year. Yes, it is a bit of work to spruce up the outdoor living space, load and unload tables and chairs, prepare food and clean-up. But it is worth every bit of the time and energy we spend to see our favorite people all together. (And we do have a little help from some of our friends.)

We like to think we are bringing folks together from our different social circles so they  can become acquainted. In reality, we have found birds of a feather flock (or sit) together. So we have tables of church friends, tables of former co-worker friends, and tables of bicycling friends.

After an interruption by listeria, we were happy to have Blue Bell (the official ice cream of Texas) back this year. Folks had a choice of Homemade Vanilla, Rocky Road, Cherry Vanilla, Butter Crunch or Cookies ‘n Cream. (Sadly, Blackberry Cobbler is not yet available.)

In an earlier blog post, we shared our recipes for the barbecue menu of beef brisket (with Captain’s barbecue sauce,) macaroni and cheese, and Jean’s beans. Since we often get requests for the recipes, we are adding them to a separate blog page (see tab at top) to make it easy for folks to print.

The Wanderer is out of storage and being readied for our next road adventure. Stay tuned!