Nebraska Discoveries 5: Kool Aid!*

*Yes, you read that correctly!

I introduced Kool-Aid to the kids recently.  I guess they'd had it before at birthday parties and stuff, but I never made it for the boys the good old fashioned way: the little packet, 1 cup of sugar (give or take) and 2 quarts of water (give or take.)

It got me thinking (can you smell the smoke?) about Kool-Aid in general.  How much I grew up with it as a kid -- there are dozens of pictures of me as a kid with Kool-Aid mustaches, and I tried to find one, but I couldn't find one easily.  But I did find this picture from April 1977:

From 1977 04 California-to-Hawaii

See? That's how much I must have loved Kool-Aid...

Or was it that my Mom made me so much Kool-Aid, she sent in 50 envelopes for a free t-shirt? I contemplated doing that with Mr. Bubble for my own boys...

Anyway, I got to thinking about the history of Kool-Aid, and I happened across this website.  Go about 2/3 the way down the rather verbose history and you'll see the breakthrough information...Edwin E. Perkins introduced Kool-Aid to the world from Hastings, Nebraska in the late 1920s.

Well would you look at that? Kool-Aid was invented in Nebraska!  The city of Hastings is about 2 1/2 hours west of where I am now. And look what else! In August there's a Kool-Aid Days right there in Hastings! That sounds, um...INTERESTING. Not sure if I'd make the big trip west expressly for that, but I'll stick it in my hip pocket if we're desperately looking for something to do the weekend before school starts...but I'm guessing we won't.

Back at the home front, I broke out my two-quart pitcher and whipped up some grape Kool-Aid for Timmy. He guzzled the first cup down so quickly! In fact, I had to chide him for gulping too loudly! "Glug, glug, glug!" Ha ha!

That batch lasted about 2 days, and yesterday I made fruit punch and even poured some into two cups for popsicles.  I should try to find some legitimate molds, but for now plastic cups and craft sticks are working just fine...

I like the idea of my boys enjoying Kool-Aid. It's cheap to make (20 cents for the packet, about 30 cents worth of sugar, the negligible cost for the water). So 2 quarts for less than the cost of 1 16 oz. soda or Gatorade.  Without the high fructose corn syrup.

The Cat's Out of the Bag!*

Picture by MAYNARD PAUL

Lovely picture, isn't it?  Where could that be?  It's so pretty there...boy...I wish I could live there....

So...those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter already know this, and if you aren't on either of those websites, you could probably just glance to the right on this blog and see the news.

We ARE going to live there**!  Actually, that picture is of sunset in Destin, Florida, which may or may not be where we live (probably not, we're looking more at Navarre), but it's definitely in the area of where we're headed this fall***!

Yes!  We're moving back to Florida!!!!!  Whoo hoo!  Dave got a job as a "Director of Operations" for a weather squadron at Hurlburt Field, which is just east of Pensacola.  So this time we're not returning to the east coast.  That's okay...I'd spent some time at Hurlburt Field in 2008 while training for my Middle East deployment.  It's a great area, plenty to see and do.

Whoo hoo!

Not sure how many of you knew that before we were in North Carolina, where I started this blog, we lived in Viera, Florida from 2002-2005.  Dave and I were both on active duty, stationed at Patrick AFB, which is just south of Cape Canaveral.  Both of our sons were born in Melbourne and we owned a great house just off I-95.  We really enjoyed it there.  Lots of great things to do (such as Washington Nationals Spring Training), lots of great friends and lots of rocket and shuttle launches.  Okay, not a lot of shuttle launches.  There were only 5 launches in the 3 1/2 years we lived there: the 4 that occurred in 2002 after we moved there, then STS-107 which was the Columbia mission that exploded upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere.  It was really cool to see the launches from our front driveway in Viera!

Actually, we had known about this for a couple months now.  But we wanted something in writing first. Dave got his official assignment notification on Friday.  We had mentioned this to the boys back in March, and Jacob's first question was "How far will we be from Disney World?"  Ha ha!  They're looking forward to the beaches and the warmth!

So, if you didn't hear me the first few times on this blog post: Whoo hoo!****

*What does that idiom mean, anyway? Is there some sort of archaic story behind this? Let's find out!


**Boy, I hope I don't jinx things by shouting out all this happiness so soon!


***Technically, we're headed down this fall.  Dave's report date is before the first day of winter, even if it's barely so...


****For those in the Omaha area reading this, please don't feel that we don't love you guys and gals!  We really like it here, but we Vollmers are EASTERNERS so to get to go back East of the Mississippi is comforting for us...