Kinsey's Party Pics

Friday night, we had a combined birthday party for Kinsey and her cousin, Katie. Thankfully, the rain held off and we were able to keep 30 7- and 4-year-olds occupied. A big part of keeping them occupied was Safari Greg. Safari Greg has animals, does magic, and tells jokes, and really what else do you need. He did a great, great job and was able to teach the kids about the animals as well. He brought out a king snake, a leopard tortoise, a ferret, a cayman (miniature alligator), and a 12-foot-long Burmese python. He did a great job and kept all of those kids occupied and laughing for a full hour. It was a really great party.

Kinsey reacting to the king snake.

Connor touching the cayman.

The 12-foot Burmese python

Connor touching the Burmese python.

Kinsey with the python, but not happy about it.

Kinsey, behind her cake.

Kinsey blowing out her candles.

On Saturday, we headed back to Mom and Dad's (where the party was), since there was family in town and Connor got to play with my uncles David and Bill. I think all 3 had a really great time.

Connor playing with Bill and David

A more "artistic" picture I tried to take... Didn't turn out as well as I hoped.

The kiddos.

12 Years

Yesterday, Sheryl and I celebrated our 12th anniversary. It was filled with exciting things like church, lunch with family and friends for Father's Day, mowing the yard, small group, and catching fireflies with Kinsey and Connor as the sun set and watching bats fly over our yard.

Twelve years is how long my mom and (bio)dad were married, so this one has always kind of been a weird benchmark for me (not that Sheryl and I have ever contemplated divorce or separation). It was almost like I HAD to make it there and then... well, I don't really know what then. I don't know if that's a characteristic of children of divorce, but it's one of mine.

I've said before in all the other anniversary posts that I've done, that I'm really very blessed to be married to a woman like Sheryl and that I've changed for the better as a result of our life together. I can't imagine anyone I'd rather spend 12 hours in a van with, or that I would rather see the Badlands or the Scottish Highlands or Big Ben. Or rather crawl into bed with, at the end of a grueling day of kid-wrangling. And that to me makes for a Happy Anniversary.

Friday...

Being on vacation and rather busy over the last little while, I haven't had/taken the time to write much about spiritual matters. I will definitely have more to talk about next week, but for now, here's a thought: in much of the news media coverage of the election (which I know will bring up issues of its own, but let's leave that alone for now), I'm seeing some talk about how "younger evangelicals" are not using abortion and gay marriage as the benchmarks by which they judge candidates or even their own politics. In fact, they are looking at issues like poverty relief and environmentalism/"creation care" and other such issues that have been more associated with "liberalism."

Is this something others of you are seeing in your local congregations? What do you think the implications of it are?

Caption This Picture!

Be funny or at least mildly amusing!

Movies...

I've seen a few movies recent that I thought I would offer my thoughts on. Spoiler ahead if you haven't seen them.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I've got to admit that I was a bit disappointed by this one. I'm not sure if my expectations were too high or what, but this movie didn't thrill me. I enjoyed it well enough and having Indy back on the screen was really cool, but something about the whole thing just felt off to me. Maybe it was was the whole alien storyline, but honestly, I think one of the biggest things that disappointed me was the obvious CGI that they used for the special effects. I'm of course not naive enough to think that they wouldn't use CGI, but the difference between the feel of the "normal" shots and the CGI ones was starkly different. The rest of it was fine, but I wasn't put into dumb grin at any point during it. Three stars out of five.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

I will caveat this by saying that we saw this in Kansas City after a long day of travel and with Connor in the theater. I loved this movie. I thought is was at least as good, if not better than the first one. And it was little things that really made this movie for me. Peter having trouble adjusting back to the "real" world from Narnia where he was not only a grownup, but also the High King. I loved Edmund's more mature and slightly snarky nature. I LOVED the scene in the cave where the White Witch was brought back for just a moment. I knew how that turned out, of course, but even during it, it was well done. This was a really good movie and I can't wait to see it again when it comes out on DVD. 4 stars out of 5

The Godfather

Somehow, my movie education has missed out on watching this movie completely through. I'm not sure how that happened. I feel like I've seen a lot if not all of it through broken bits watched in various forms on TV. I've enjoyed it and Sheryl said I needed to see it, so to the Netflix queue! I finished watching it last night and I really liked it a lot. I thought that the characters in the movie were well portrayed, both from a writing standpoint as well as acting. The scope of it seemed so constrained and almost quiet, minus the multiple murders. I started Part II last night as well and am only about 30 minutes into it, but I can already tell that it seems more ambitious than the first, which I like, but I'm also curious about how it gets pulled off. I'm looking forward to it. 4.5 stars out of 5

Trip Recap

So just for a quick recap of the trip (Google Maps link)


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Sunday, May 25: leave church drive to Kansas City, KS - 558 miles
Monday, May 26: Spend day in KC. See Prince Caspian, go to zoo
Tuesday, May 27: Drive to De Smet, SD - 454 miles
Wednesday, May 28 - Spend day in De Smet, do the Laura Ingalls tour, visit the homestead Part 1 Part 2
Thursday, May 29 - Drive to Hill City, SD; en route, visit the Badlands - 372 miles
Friday, May 30 - Do the 1880 Train and Bear Country USA
Saturday, May 31 - Custer State Park and Mount Rushmore
Sunday, June 1 - Did free stuff around Rapid City, SD that we didn't take any pictures of
Monday, June 2 - Drive from Hill City, SD, to Independence, MO - 741 miles
Tuesday, June 3 - Drive Independence, MO, to Nashville - 546 miles

Total miles driven: 2,672, which doesn't count the local driving we did, so probably closer to 3,000 miles

Yes, we did the whole trip back in two days. In the 36 hours from 7 am Monday to 7 pm Tuesday, we drove 22 hours. And we thanked God for a portable DVD player for the kids (mainly Kinsey) to watch.

It really was a fun trip and the kids did very well over all. We got some great pictures and some wonderful memories that I know at least Kinsey will have. And now, back to the first full week of work in 3 weeks... yay...

Mount Rushmore

Check this post later tonight for pictures. Sorry for forgetting to do it last night. I was tired for some reason. :-)

And here the are. Sorry for the delay. These are the last pictures we took on the trip, last Saturday at Mount Rushmore. All in all, a great, fun trip.

On the Road to Rushmore: Custer State Park

Last Saturday was our day to go to Mt. Rushmore. To get there we decided to take a rather circuitous route through Custer State Park. Here are those pictures. Btw, the lake is the one that appeared behind Mt. Rushmore in National Treasure 2. It is NOT behind Mt. Rushmore. It's 20 miles away.

South Dakota Trip: Bear Country

Outside of Rapid City, SD, is a place called Bear Country USA. It sounds lame but it's kind of awesome. Here they've got habitats where forest animals can roam (within reason) and you can drive through and see them... up close. (Note: All these pictures were taken from our van.)

Reindeer

Bighorn Sheep

Mountain Goats (shedding its winter coat)

Mountain Lions

And Stephen Colbert's #1 Threat to America... Bears

More Bears

Bear on a Log

And Timber Wolves

Timber Wolves and Bears together, intimidating each other over food (the wolf got the bear away from the meat, amazingly enough)

And another bear

Kinsey with a bear (not a real one)

This was actually pretty fun and a nice way to spend an afternoon in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

South Dakota Trip: 1880 Train and a Happy Birthday

Sorry for the lack of updates since last week. Once we got to the Mount Rushmore area, my motivation for updating became less for some reason. At any rate, pictures below, but first I want to wish my sweet now-7-year-old Kinsey a very happy birthday. We all just had a really good time out in South Dakota and while it's very easy to remember the pit in my stomach when Sheryl and I went to the hospital at midnight and Sheryl was induced into labor, it's hard to imagine that it's been 7 years since then. Happy birthday, sweetie.

Back to SD. On the first day that we arrived, we indulged in Connor's "Choo-Choo!!" obsession and boarded the 1880 Train in Hill City. It's an authentic train that follows a rail from Hill City to Keystone and back again and we had a lot of fun doing that and seeing the countryside. It was a good break before doing all the Mount Rushmore stuff.

Going around a curve with a good look at the two engines pulling us that morning.

Another cool shot

I love this view of the train and the mountains behind.

Some horses running in a field beside the train.

The green engine that pulled us, switching sides of the train to take us back to Hill City.

The 1919 engine (used in movies and TV) to take us back to Hill City

Connor holding up "Ruff-Ruff" for his picture.

The Wilsons

Tomorrow, Bear Country USA, which sounds lame, but was actually really cool.