Stormtastic

Pictorial footage of the video I shared the other day...

The sky darkened quickly, and pretty soon there was only a little sliver of light yet.

And as the cloud moved in, so did the rain.

And with rain, there came wind.  You know what doesn't go well with wind?  Beach supplies.  Because, oh yeah, THE WIND BLOWS THEM!

Then a beach umbrella came tumbling down the beach, and I don't have any pictures of this because we were trying to be Good Samaritans and yell to the man who was in the umbrella's way.  It didn't work.  I don't have any pictures of that, either, because I am sympathetic to human pain and I was watching my brother and dad run down to help the guy.

But then like twenty people rushed out of their houses just like us, and we were the furthest away, so they came back.  We later realized that everyone was just running out to get their beach floaties, which were flying away.  We think he was okay, though.

Well, there was an ambulance that went down the street a couple of minutes later.  But we tried.  Oops.

After that, everyone left the beach.  It was pretty dumb that they hadn't before.

This poor Easy-Up was a victim of the storm, though.  It looks like a crab.  Crabbity-crabbity-crab.

Mom and Grandpa were pretty tired after that exciting storm, though, so they took a nap.  It was pretty cute.

--
All in all, I miss our vacation.

I miss our beautiful beachfront house.

I miss our kitchen, where we made pancakes and eggs and bacon and homefries for breakfast every morning.  And I miss our table, where we played lots of board games and I got schooled by an eleven-year-old.

I miss my room, where I read lots of books and watched Say Yes to the Dress.  And BLOGGED, of course.

I MISS OUR PORCH SO MUCH!  Our big porch, where we could sit and look at my father and grandfather be stubborn and get sunburnt on the sand, or where my mother could hope that I wouldn't drown in the surf because obviously I'm five and can't swim.  Not.

Or where, at night, we could look around with my uncle's night vision goggles and watch the rocking chairs creepily rock back and forth in the wind, like there were ghosts!

Damn, I miss that porch.

I don't miss this sliding glass door, though.  It was really heavy.

Yup.  I miss vacation and family and seeing this silly look on Jonathan's face.  Way to be ready for the camera, little bro.  Have I taught you nothing?

Tomorrow, it's back to the daily grind of exercise balls, interns, and TechDP newsletters.  See ya, Fo'Schiessl Fest 2010.  Suggestions for 2011???

Love and No-I'm-never-unpacking-are-you-crazy?,
Courtney

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

As Fo'Schiessl Fest comes to a close, it is time to pack up and leave our lovely place on the beach.  However, the Forces of Nature that I grappled with earlier in the week decided to give us a parting gift, as documented above.

Full farewell entry to come... after I pack my clothes.  If someone had told me I would spend every day in my bathing suit, I would have packed far less.

Love and five perfectly clean (aka, unused) shirts,
Courtney

Arghh, Mateys! We be FO'SCHIESSLIN'!

I haven't posted in a couple of days.  But I'm on vacation.  What's your excuse?

Of course, we all love swim-swim-swimming every day, but for those of us with sunburns that won't go away (aka, ME!), we can't spend all of our time our in the sun.

As I typed that, I walked into my room and checked my sunburn.  Sources confirm that it has faded slightly.  When asked if it looked tanner, my mother tried to tell me that burns very rarely tan.  I pretended not to hear her.

Back to the original topic.  With the monstrous mound of board games that we all brought along, that seemed to be the activity of choice for the afternoon.  Which one did we pick??

Why, Pirates of the Caribbean LIFE, of course.

The object of the game: Make your way through the treacherous Caribbean course, looting and pillaging, to try to have the most money at the end.  And don't get caught in Davy Jones' locker!!!

This was my ship.  Black, like my heart.

...just kidding!!!  I'm too sweet for that.  Right?!

Here are the competitors.  Me with black, Jonathan with yellow, Uncle Kenn with blue, Nick with red, and Aunt Ralene hiding with the green.

Half of us started as landlubbers, and half of us started as pirates, but we all started on our way through the waters.

Note: There really is no half and half with five players, for you picky people.  So if you want specifics, two were landlubbers and three were pirates.  Happy?  I know I am.

We all eventually met up at the shipyard to choose our ships.  By the time I picked, alas, the Black Pearl was gone, so I ended up with the next best thing (in my opinion)...

Meet the FRIGATE, with Captain Will Turner.  I love Will Turner.

I'm such a child.  FRIGATE!  FRIGATE!  FRIGATE!

There were some near collisions into the rocks.

I had just found the macro setting on my camera.  I liked it.

After all of that hard work, we did take a couple of breaks for some chocolate milk...

...and Whoppers.

But the best part always came when someone landed on this RAID symbol.

"RAID, RAID, RAID!!"  We shouted like barbarians.

When someone lands on a Raid space, they must challenge someone.  Usually, they challenge the Black Pearl because if you beat the Black Pearl, you win the Black Pearl.  You also win money.  In this case, it was Nick versus his own father, Uncle Kenn.

Pirates of the Caribbean LIFE severs all familial ties.

Nick spun... a high number.  Uncle Kenn spun...

Looks of shock and awe crossed everyone's faces!  Could it really be...??

NICK WON THE BLACK PEARL!

It took Uncle Kenn a little while to get over that one.

But pretty soon it was time to add mascots to our crew.

Hello, Dog.  I will name you Tucker.  I've always wanted a dog named Tucker.

So here was the motley crew.  FRIGATE!, Mr. Turner, and Tucker the Dog.

Now, may I direct your attention to this pile of LIFE tiles, belonging to no one other than my own brother.  He just kept getting them and getting them, and if you know LIFE, you know that you want tiles at the end.

It's like buried treasure.  HA!  Get it??

What's that?  I'm not funny?  Thanks a lot.

He was like a shark waiting to attack when I tried to swipe one.

But then, my luck changed!  Aunt Ralene had to switch captains with someone, and after reminding her that I had given her a CHARITABLE DONATION of one thousand dollars, she gave me Captain Jack Sparrow.

So here was the new gang... FRIGATE!, Cap'n Jack, and Tucker the Dog.

In the end, we didn't win the war.  Who did win??

My little stinker cousin Nick, who evidently conned us all into losing on the pretense that he's little and cute!

I think this picture says it all.


Love and pirates,
Courtney

A Very Schiessl Birthday

Note: This entry is not very funny.  Sorry.  But it is lovely and familial.

Today, F'SF celebrated a birthday.

Our wonderful Grammy, the birthday girl, turned twenty-seven.

Yes, I said twenty-seven.  The candles say 2 and 7 and together they make 27, so it's official.

Last night, we stealthily decorated the house after Grandpa got Grammy to go to bed.  Thanks to my aunt, uncle, and cousin, we had every birthday decoration you could want.  Streamers and cakes and hats and even...

 Balloons!!

 

I decorated this mantle all on my own, and yes, I was pretty much responsible for the fact that we used eight rolls of streamer ribbon.

We even got the tall guy, Jonathan, to hang our big banner over the sliding glass door.

Oh, what?  You like our view, you say?  Why, thank you, we quite enjoy it as well.

Of course, birthdays require a cake.  So naturally, I volunteered to make one!

While I was taking pictures of my cake, I also found the "digital macro" setting on my camera.  These are some blueberries.  We've been eating a lot of blueberries.

 I was very proud of my nom-nom cake with a whole package of candles.

I tried to use the technique from Hello, Cupcake to make a piping around the edge of the cake.  In this picture (digital macro setting, again) it looks nice.  I decided not to post the picture that shows that it, in fact, kind of stunk.

The cake was a vanilla butter cake with a dark chocolate cream cheese buttercream, decorated with a vanilla buttercream.  I'm not sure how I feel about the cake recipe, but I know it was slightly overcooked.  As for the frosting, I could eat both of them with a spoon, but I would add a little more cream cheese to the chocolate frosting.

Then, it was time for family pictures.  We posed with our cake, first.

And then we had to get all of the grandkids in with Grammy.  It's weird that there's only three of us, right?  We don't like sharing the spotlight.

Jonathan wasn't cooperating, so I had to get him in line.  Sometimes, you just have to show the younguns who's boss.

The ladies of the house also posed with the cake, and I'm sure all of them will kill me for posting post-beach pictures on here.  I spared the men from having their picture all over the Internet because two out of three of them are ragingly sunburnt.

The verdict on the cake?  Delicious.  We also got personalized buckets, courtesy of Aunt Ralene, Uncle Kenny, and Nick.  They're so sneaky... they even had fortunes.

Mine said: A white Christmas is coming your way.  I.  Effing.  Love.  Christmas.

Grammy certainly got a lot of nice things for her birthday this year.  But her best present...

...was this!


 Happy Birthday, Grammy!

Love and cake batter,
Courtney