My cousin and his wife Karen (i.e. Family) are visiting us this weekend. My cuz is an artist, an ice sculptor and he also works with sand! This is the second year he has visited us while doing work up in Niles MI, but the first time Karen has come to visit us. In fact, its the first time Karen and my wife have met :-)

Anyways, one of the means I used to entice Karen to visit us, was my incessant twittering about food, mwahahaha…

Tomorrow Natalie is working, and Stephan is exhausted, so we’ll miss church this week while I get things ready for a big lunch.

I’ll probably be getting up at around 7am to start the smoker(s) (I’ve converted my grill to a smoker too), and be occupied with that until close to 2pm when Nat gets home from work, and hopefully the food is ready. I’m making ribs! St Louis cut spare ribs and baby back ribs!

Karen was gracious enough to help me with the rib prep today. Cutting the spare ribs down to St Louis style ribs and making the rub and then getting all the racks and extra bits seasoned and in the fridge. We (well me at least) had a great time hanging out, talking about everything from their “MONUMENTAL WEDDING!” to when Natalie and I were thinking about starting a family.

Since moving to Indiana Natalie and I have become very very close, but we haven’t made too many friends, so it was really nice to talk to someone else at length, and just hang out all day, being silly, going on road trip with the dogs (four of them!) to see Stephan, and of course working on the ribs together.

Well, I’ll make sure and post tons of pics tomorrow! I’m really looking forward to this!