Allison - Flight Zone Toptracer Driving Range

Super Cool Brides

I get to work with some fantastic people. When I’m working with a couple leading up their big day, I get to know them very well. I like them and we joke around. As we plan, it gets me and my staff excited to see their day to come to fruition. I think this is my favorite part of my job. Many times, I shed a few tears while I watch the bride walk up the aisle. It’s amazing how many different touches people can add to make their day unique. I absolutely LOVED this couple. They were so incredibly fun. Matt & Emily included yard games during their social hour and many other fun touches. They had their rehearsal, ceremony, social hour, reception and following day, their gift opening opening brunch. We joked that we needed to add on the clubhouse, so they could move in! Then, Emily told me about how she found a toad and decided to pose with it! I couldn’t believe it! My first bride who touched a toad AND put it in her bouquet. I have never touched a toad in my LIFE! That put her over the top of super cool bride title! That’s right! There really are toads at Toad Valley!

Jason’s Turning 50 and You’re the One Benefiting!

Family Matters

Yep. On this blessed day 50 years ago, my dear brother was born BUTT FIRST. If you know him at all, you’ll realize that it is completely appropriate that his derriere was the first to make an appearance. My brother is amazing. He’s extremely funny and a very selfless human being. You may not see him much on the golf course. Since he was an air traffic controller for most of his adult life, he has very strange sleeping habits. We decided to stop trying to make him normal (read never going to happen) and put headlights on all of our mowers. Jason typically takes the “third shift” and mows in the dark from about 9 pm until 4 am. This is a particularly good shift in the heat of the season when it’s hard to keep up with the grass growing quickly. For the next three days, we are going to be giving away a free $10 gift card when you purchase a gift card of $50 or more. If you’re lazy, no worries. Just shop online and we’ll put it in the mail. Click HERE to purchase a Gift Card!

Crazy Kitchen Ladies

What's Cooking

Over the next three days, my mom and her trusty sidekick, Kerry, will prepare food for over 550 people. That isn’t unusual for them. They can crank out food more than that old guy from Tennessee who had that cooking show on PBS when I was a kid. I don’t remember his name, but he was hilarious. He would pour in a cup of wine, then drink the leftovers. He was always saying that he would G-AR- ON-Tee! this or that. Anyway, my mom is kind of like him. Minus the wine drinking and red suspenders. Many of our golfers are always shocked when they happen to attend a wedding or another event at the golf course. Since the golfers are used to our hot dogs, they are shocked to learn our skill level goes slightly beyond that. Like our Antipasta Display. Virtually everything we prepare is made from scratch recipes. The homemade bread that is included with this feature is divine! Sometimes, what they prepare is so pretty they can’t help themselves from taking a picture. Since many of our brides get ready for their day in our bridal suite, they often have a lunch catered. The most frequently requested lunch is our bread ring. That’s me taking a picture of Kerry taking a picture of mom taking a picture of the Bread Ring. Say THAT ten times fast! Kerry’s favorite thing to prepare is our fruit or vegetable trays. It seems like every one turns out differently. She has fun creating designs or patterns depending on her mood. She was feeling particularly circular this day… Our trifles are always very popular. I get a kick out of people because they’ll ask what we prepare for dessert and I’ll tell them a trifle. They usually don’t know what one is, then we bring it out and everyone goes crazy over it. These vary depending on what’s in season. Sometimes they feature fruit, angel food cake or Oreo’s while others have chocolate chip cookies and brownies in them. My mom has always enjoyed shopping in bulk. I can remember going to Food For Less when I was kid over near the Park Fair Mall. It was a magical store and we had to use huge boxes to carry home our food because they didn’t provide bags. At this time, my brother lived at home, so we would go through 5+ gallons of milk a week and mass amounts of food. Mom and Kerry have a system in place where they divide and conquer when picking up all of the supplies for the week. One gets the fresh ingredients… While the other is tasked with all of the dry goods… It’s a good thing they enjoy their job. We are lucky to have my mom, Kerry and Julie who are fantastic in the kitchen and keep all of our good intentions of diets at bay. How about you? Do you enjoy spending time in the kitchen or is the microwave your best friend?

Slacker

Family Matters

Ok. I just looked at the calendar and realized that summer passed me by. What? Here’s my excuse for not keeping up with the golf course shenanigans. Then, I’ll get on with the show. First up, at the end of April, my dear, sweet, grandma passed away. She was 99 years old and lived a fantastic life. Since she was our family’s matriarch and founder of the golf course, it kind of hit our family. Here are my boys at her funeral. They were pall bearers. Then, in May, I experienced the wonders of my oldest son graduating from high school. This meant getting my house ready for an open house. Not my idea of a good time. I have no idea why I let my kid talk me into this when I should have just had the open house at the golf course. After all, we were host to over 22 open houses during the month of May. My kids were incredibly helpful with cleaning the house. Found evidence by this picture of what happened when I asked them to clean the bathroom. Yes. My kids took the meaning of an open house quite literally when they put a hole in the wall with a pair of scissors. I love them. In the month of May, we also celebrated my mom’s 70th birthday as well as my parents 50th wedding anniversary. We rounded up the Brady clan for a big family picture in honor. Apparently, I got my short gene from my mom. Thanks, mom. Getting a kid ready to go to college is a pretty big job. I traveled to UNI several times throughout the summer for orientation as well as his try out for a music scholarship. My oldest son is Mr. Jazz. He plays the trombone. Let’s not forget my mom duties to my daughter who is a dancer. What little time I had free, I spent at competitions watching her perform. The family spent some time doing some clean up at my parents house. That’s always a good time when the chain saw makes an appearance. July passed by quickly, then August and suddenly, BOOM! Here it is. The end of August and I’ve completely neglected my duties of updating golf course information. Sorry. I’ll make it up to you with a fruitful and entertaining fall filled with lots of input and events.

Least Favorite Job

Golf Course

When you have a family business, you start working at an early age. I started helping my dad change the cups on the golf course when I was two. He always said, “You’re such a great helper. With you, it only takes me two hours to change cups when it takes me one and a half hours by myself.” I would beam with pride. My dad gave me my first lesson is the power of delivery. Since my kids are growing. I decided to bestow all of the fun that I had growing up on the golf course. One of the main jobs that I had when I was younger was washing golf carts. I tried to find some pictures of me washing carts as a youngster, but they didn’t have camera phones then, so my mom never thought to document my torture. Not this mom! My boys were tasked with the job of washing our 72 golf carts. I was there with my phone ready to document. They were only slightly annoyed with my photography. When you have a really wet year, it’s next to impossible to keep the carts clean. The boys had a good system down and got the job done well. Luckily for them, I had them do this once a week throughout the summer. I just remind them that it’s a better job than I had at their age. I was tasked with picking up the garbage on the golf course. How about you? What jobs did your parents make you do that weren’t your favorite?

Golfing with my Sister

Family Matters

I don’t know about you, but my favorite part of playing golf is the people who make up my foursome. I have been playing golf on Thursdays with my mom, sister, and aunt Nancy for about 20 years. In fact, about fifteen years ago, I played golf (best round of my life), then proceeded to give birth to my second son about 10 hours after I left the course. As it turns out, he happens to be an incredible golfer. I’d like to think it had something to do with the activity that I was doing which put me into labor. It doesn’t really matter how I shoot. I always have fun with my sister. One of the advantages of playing with her, is her desire to find golf balls. While we are waiting at a tee box, she always goes into the most obscure places on the golf course to look for balls. Here she is climbing under trees and into the brush. It was worth the scrapes and bug bites, though. She got my favorite kind of golf ball! A Titleist with some sort of logo on it. I’m weird. What can I say? It’s not like I had any chance of not being weird when you have this for a sister! Who makes up your foursome? Do you have a bunch of inside jokes that no one else would understand? Our husbands hate playing with us because we have so many inside jokes that we spend most of our time laughing and not paying attention to playing golf.

Water Balloon Toss

Events

As evidence seen here, here and here, we like to have fun with our junior golfers. Since it’s summer, that means it’s the perfect time for some water balloons. Thankfully, my children are old enough to be able to tie these balloons, so I put them to work. This was at the point before their fingers started hurting. Poor Carson got wet. All of their hard work was put in for the junior golfers who come every Monday and Thursday night in the month of June. After their lesson was over, the golfers got lined up to begin the competition. Next up. The balloons were handed out to all our Junior Golfers. Then, it was bombs away. We run the contest like an egg toss which is really hard for many of the young ones to resist. They desperately want to just throw the balloons. Once the winners have been declared, we turn them loose with all of those water balloons. Since Lance, our youth instructor, is well loved by the kids, he is chased on a yearly basis by water balloon wielding junior golfers. It’s all in good fun. If just isn’t summer until you’ve throw a water balloon (or two…maybe three).

Making Carrot Cupcakes!

What's Cooking

We are lucky enough to have a cake decorator on staff. She claims that making carrots on cupcakes is easy! Let’s see if you agree! First of all, she made carrot cake in the cupcakes. Next up, she made a cream cheese frosting in white, orange and green. She begins the process by piping on the white frosting in a circular motion. Voila! A white backdrop for the carrot that will go on top. Next step, is to make the carrot. That is done with a small tip on the decorator bag with a quick squeeze and release. When the carrot is completed, it’s time to add the grassy top. This requires a “grass” tip on the decorator bag. It’s basically a tip with a bunch of holes in it. This also follows a quick squeeze and release! There you have it! Carrots on a carrot cupcake! Who’s hungry?

Printer Problems

Project List

Please tell me I’m not the only one. I had countless printer problems today. As in, I finally kicked the printer (literally). Although kicking the printer solved the problem that it wouldn’t close, it did cause a small piece of it to fall off rendering the printer completely useless. Sometimes, I fantasize pushing the entire printer out of the second story window in my office. As soon as I left my office, I was also greeted by the printer in the Golf Shop. Yep. It’s apparently possessed and spends its entire day chopping the receipt paper into tiny shreds. Throughout the day, we can hear little slicing noises while the printer is busy doing its thing. Never actually printing a thing. What I’m trying to say is that I’m having a lot of printer problems. Anyone want to come push a printer out the window with me?

I’ll Take Two of Those

Events

We have a tasting that we hold every year for all of our couples that are using our facility. It is probably the hardest event we do all year as far as organizing goes. First step, we take requests from every couple we have at the golf course. Couples are allowed to invite up to six guests and can request either two entrees or five hors d’oeuvres options. Once our kitchen has all of that information, they start organizing what to make, when it gets put in the oven and timing everything out, so that all of the food can come out on time and in its freshest state. They made nearly 20 entrees and over 30 different hors d’oeuvres. Since we make our food from scratch, this is no gentle undertaking. I’m honestly not quite sure how they do it, but they do and make it look easy. When I walk into the kitchen and see them not hustling around, I question if everything is ok. Everyone gets nervous when there is time to stand and laugh. Once the items are prepared, they are all labeled behind the scenes, so our event staff can serve them. Our stuffed mushrooms are always a big hit. I don’t even like mushrooms and I think they are divine! We also had BBQ chicken wings which we kept warm under the heat lamp keeping friends with the stuffed mushrooms. Here are our taco cupcakes. They come with a variety of fixin’s and are a big hit for hors d’oeuvres only receptions. The kitchen cranks out an amazing amount of food. Once it comes out of the oven, it has to be displayed. The room is prepped as though we are hosting a reception. Each table gets iced tea and water. Everything starts coming together as the food gets placed. We make a mean bruschetta. Several years ago, we started making it self-serve, so the bread stays crisp. We also had bacon pops. Each table was decorated with items that we have available for rental. We supply pencils, the food requested and menu options on each table, so couples and their families can discuss what foods they enjoyed the most. It’s a fun evening and a great way for all of our couples to get to see us in action and get a huge sampling of food. It’s usually everyone’s favorite prep night in the wedding planning! We even have a fake cake with our signature toad bride and groom on display. How about you? What’s your favorite part of wedding planning?

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