Rose Fest!

My fiancee, Joe, is from State Center, a small town about 45 minutes away from here and every year the third weekend of June is the towns Rose Festival , and since we had Mal we thought we might go this year and see what kind of photo ops we could find. Turns out there were none. Huh. Well, anyways, we did get the chance to meet up with his little sister Amanda, and her 4 month old daughter, Layla, and her and Mal just hit it off! Which is good since Layla doesn't quite know what to think of me or her "goofy uncle Joe and his bright red Willy Wonka hair".

Be wery, wery quite...

We couldn't hide it from him anymore. We were walking in the door the other day and I forgot to put Mal in my bag and he saw...*gasps*...our rabbit Chuck!

Don't worry though, he was a brave bear and was willing to hang out about five feet away from him so I could get a picture, after much assurances that Chuck couldn't get out of his cage unless with let him out, and we don't let him out very often since I have developed a horrible rabbit allergy. Yeah, I didn't know they existed either. With our reassurance, Mal feels very safe, even though he now knows there's a big floppy bunny in the house.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho.

Well, Mal has been sitting around the house for three weeks now, and has grown quite bored. So much so that he begged me to take him to work with me!
He was amazed at how fast the machines can run! Up to 1200 RPM! Here he is watching a run of hats for a local restaurant so I could work on some hand embroidery for a different swap :)

Dave's Guitars in La Crosse, Wisconson

So, Joe bought an amp all the way in Wisconson! Today we decided, since it's a long weekend, that we would road tip up there to pick it up, and of course we took Mal! It was a 4 1/2 hour drive up there, then we hung out at the store for about 45 minutes. Mal really wanted to try his hands out on one of their many custom guitars, but everything there was so pricey that even Joe didn't try to play one. All fear the you-break-it-you-buy-it rule. However there wasn't a total lack of photo ops for us there.

Then we decided to walk around historic downtown La Crosse. However we got there too late to go into any of the shops. :(. But it was beautiful none the less.

Not to mention the scenery! Mal was amazed by the Mississippi river and loved watching all the people in boats. We got to see a river boat, several fishers, a few speed boats, and even saw a guy eat shit water skiing. It made us giggle a little. :)

He's Here!

So, I got home from work and went to work on a project when Wally started barking. Odd. Wally isn't really a barker. Someone must be at the door.


Yes, indeed, Mal has arrived in Iowa after a long journey from Texas by way of the east coast. I know, we're confused to. We thought we'd make his first few days easy, so he's just been lounging around the house and watching us get ready for the move. He seems a little upset that we don't play WoW or have a wii, but we have givin him full access to the interwebs and our Xbox 360, and we also insured him that after the move he'll be able to play Rock Band and DDR, too.
He doesn't know about Chuck, our rabbit, yet, but we're trying to keep him in the dark on that one. He and Wally however have become buddies.