Skip to main content

Home in the Heartland


This past weekend, we took a trip to Iowa to celebrate Bruce's mom's 90th birthday.  The majority of the family was there totaling approximately 30 people, all from the single couple of Ken and Ann Bratney. Ann turned 90 and we all came near and far to help her celebrate.


Ken and Ann have been married for 66 years


and they had 5 children (one being my husband, Bruce).  All the children have had children and now our nieces and nephews have children.  The siblings, cousins, and second cousins all have a lot of fun together on these special occasions.



It has been a joy to see all the nieces and nephews grow over the years and turn into such wonderful, fun-loving adults.




To celebrate, we had the most appropriate - Iowa beef.


The brothers did an excellent job with the barbecue.


Iowa is such a fun place to visit with so much farmland everywhere and "farm" being the theme where ever you go



something I never tire of since I have my own little mini farm at home.


This was a time to reminisce over Grandma Bratney's 90 years and all that she has accomplished.


Next year, it will be Ken's 90th and we're already talking about what we will do for his party.


What an accomplishment! Happy Birthday, Grandma Bratney.







Comments

  1. Beautiful job detailing the celebration! It was a fine weekend-Joni

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, it was definitely a weekend for the memory books.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meatloaf by Mark Bittman

Once again, I turned on the television yesterday and saw that Mark Bittman was on the Today show and was making his version of  meatloaf .  This must be meatloaf season.  It was surprisingly similar to the  Pioneer Woman's version  who was also recently on.   I was a little surprised of his version because Mark Bittman is into healthy eating and has lost a lot of weight and improved his health by changing his diet which he writes about in his book,  Food Matters .  His meatloaf recipe also included bacon and cheese!  I must be doing something wrong.  The thing to remember, which he writes about in his book, is that you can eat healthy without going extreme or changing your whole life.    If you don't know who Mark Bittman is, he is a food writer and a four star chef with multiple cookbooks who loves to eat but changed his food philosophy to improve his health.  He tells his story in Food Matters and provides a plan for responsible eating that covers a no-nonsense rundown on

Trader Joe's Gluten-Free Oatmeal, Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

I don't have very many gluten-free cookies on my blog because quite frankly, I usually don't like gluten-free.  But occasionally, I do find a good recipe and this is one that is from the back of the Trader Joe's oatmeal and it's a good one.  My friend brought some over to our house last weekend when Nick and family were here for our birthday celebrations  and we all loved them. My friends lives a few blocks away and we walk the neighborhood together on weekends.  We can easily go 5 miles in no time, talking non-stop.  She loves exploring our neighborhood as much as I do and we discover so many favorite little spots.  We even found a property with a horse (or more like a pony, I should say.)   The views are always quite lovely, too.  Bruce and I had our thirty-ninth wedding anniversary on July 18th and I made a point of walking past the house where we had our wedding reception.  I told my friend, "Thirty-nine years ago today, there was a big party g

Spinach Stuffed Cod

Last night, I was in the mood for a healthy dinner so decided to experiment with a recipe I found from a blog called Creative in My Kitchen . Lauren and Ari brought us French cookies back from their trip to Paris and I basically inhaled them. They were so good! We were cat-sitting their two cats while they were gone. They liked lounging in the strangest places...  I found one of their toys while I was cleaning so Lauren stopped by last night to pick it up on her way home from work. I was experimenting with this recipe which originally called for chicken breast but I thought it sounded good to substitute fish instead since I'm always looking for good fish recipes. We all thought it was totally delicious. When I went to the grocery store, they had Icelandic cod on sale so I bought about 2 pounds of that. You could use any white fish for this recipe such as:                                                                   true cod or other cod rockfish halibut had