The Move Part 2

Today was a short day on the road. We drove from St Louis to Nauvoo. We started out the day by trying to find the St. Louis Temple. That turned out to be and adventure in pain as all the roads that led there were closed. If we wouldn't have had the GPS we never would have found it.

We then drove through some really pretty country up to Nauvoo. We drove through Hannibal MO, the birthplace of Mark Twain. We didn't stop there because I had been told it was lame. We did stop at the Missouri welcome center. It was very exciting. We even took Barjona out for a picture.

Argggh Matey!

The printing press in Nauvoo was very interesting. They gave a short Demo. It is amazing to think that someone invented this machine and the way it revolutionized th world. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how they set the type backwords.

I think the kids enjoyed eating dinner at dairy queen as much as anything we did today.

We spent the last part of the day at the Nauvoo Temple. I took pictures of the temple, flowers, the sunset. It was a beautiful evening.

The Sunset over the Missisippi was incredible. I only posted 1 picture here but I oohed and ahhed about it and took quite a few pictures. That sunset was incredible to behold. It was fun to see a sunset that filled the sky like this. The kids were very patient as I snapped pictures of the sunset over the river. I thanked them for their patience and Katie said "It's OK. We're used to it!"

Project 365 excerpt from Chicago

I have started a photography project that I heard about called "Project 365." It is basically that you take a picture every day. I is a photo journal of your life as well as a way to work on improving your photography. I started this while I was in Chicago and I have included here the pictures that I put into my "Project 365" album along with the commentary. I will put a bit more from Chicago up as soon as I get the rest of the photos organized.

8-11-08 Chicago has a personality unique from other large cities I have visited. It is hard to articulate the essence of what it is but in some unutterable way this photo is to me a visual "articulation" of this wonderful city.
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8-12-08 me at camp with some of the pictures that the girls drew. I am going to try the same project with my kids at school if I have a group with sufficient perceptual skills.
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8-13-08 This was a fun picture to capture! It is the underpass of Hyde Park Ave and Lake Park Blvd. It is a regular, old, grungy underpass with the exception that the supports are arched and white washed. I was excited to find serendipity in the form of a great visual perspective and cool lighting. This is one of the things that I love most about photography; making an ordinary, uninteresting object into something enchanting.
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8-14-08 Architectural tour of Chicago on the Chicago River
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8-15-08 This is one of my favorite spots in Chicago. It is formally named "Cloud Gate" but it is commonly called "The Bean." It is a sculpture designed to reflect the skyline of Chicago. People are drawn to it en mass. It is fun to see and photograph the varied distorted reflections of the city but it is also fun to see the varied distorted reflections of yourself. I, and two fellow travelers spent a long time lying on the ground laughing and thinking of ways of posing to create interesting images in The Bean.

These two people in the photograph were are are strangers to me but their colorful clothing and their apparent mesmerized state to me is very reflective of the experience of The Bean.

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My friend, Robyn, took me to her favorite building in Chicago on my last day in the city and I loved it so much that I needed a picture of her and I in front of it. It is not an unattractive building from the outside but it is much shorter and less "shiny" than others in the area and therefore perhaps easy to miss in a section of the city with so much demanding your attention.

I expect that if I attempted a description of what I and we loved in the building it would be both inadequate and too lengthy. But what I loved beyond the beauty of the building was the wonderful reminder of how friends enrich our lives and expand our horizons. The people around us have so much to offer, both in joys and intellect, in growing our perceptions and understanding of the world around us.

Canton MISSISSIPPI & the Cypress Swamp

Today I left Canton, MARYLAND and flew to Jackson MS.

After I got settled into my Hotel House, I went for a little hike at the Cypress Swamp. Someone told me that there are alligators in the swamp and I was a little worried about meeting one. Being from Idaho I have no skill for wrestlin' gators. I had ALMOST talked myself out of being nervous (self talk: "No way could they have a state owned marked trail without warning signs if people were routinely eaten alive by alligators.") when i came upon this sign.



About that same time I realized that since I had no food for the alligators, but apparently had an abundance of food for the GIANT mosquitos, I was worried about the wrong predator! (there are more pictures of the swamp below, but i can't move them around ... sorry). I don't know what made the holes in the tree - it was dead and the only tree I saw with these holes - i thought they were interesting.

After I was done hiking I went on a Pig Trail toward home (thanks Dad for teaching us that Pig Trails are the only way to go!) ... and I found Canton MISSISSIPPI. I loved it ... I even noticed that my little brother (well if you trade a "v" for the "l") has a law office there. The picture of me is in front of an enormous magnolia tree. How can you not love the coca cola sign painted on the side of the building? My favorite thing about Canton MS, was the very friendly citizen who pegged me and my camera as tourists and pulled his big old truck over to tell me about his town. He was an older gentleman and very proud of "his" Canton, including the Mosley brothers, heroes of "The War" (this means the Civil War ....) when i admitted to never having heard of them I was politely reminded (bless my heart) that if I am going to hang out in the South, I'd best learn my history.

The coke sign says, "The package that gets a welcome at home" and the ice cream sign next to it says, "you eat it with a smile"

Jayling Crawling

These pictures are worth a 1,000 grandma words.

Happy Birthday Nater Tater

Nate celebrated his birthday with good friends and steamed Maryland crabs ..... He's still our dimpled doll 22 years later.

Nate is in Maryland, where it looks like he will finish school as soon as he has surgery on his knee (ACL) tear. It's hard to be a grown-up, but Nate's doing OK in the real world :-)

Love you big baby!

The Move Part 1

OK. We are started on our move. Getting out of town on friday night was zoo as we kept forgetting stuff and having to go back to the house. We finally left at about 9 PM. We are driving both cars and all the kids elected to ride with Crystal. Mom said it was because I was making them move and they didn't want to talk with me!

The best part of any road trip is of course staying in a hotel! The kids think that hotel breakfast is the best thing ever!

We stopped for lunch in Paducah Kentucky. The first time I ever drove through Paducah with Mom and Kristie we made fun of the name for about 30 minutes. I learned today that this is where the Ohio and Tennessee rivers meet.

Chas had lots of fun with his root beer at lunch.

This is the view from where I was sitting. We have short range radios so we are able to talk back and forth. We even have our own CB Names. I'm Moose Caboose and Crystal is Queen.

The kids all picked sea world names. Katie is Baluga1, Emma is Shamu12 and Chas is Dolphin13.We finished up in St. Louis today. The kids really enjoyed the arch. I thought it was absolute pandemonium. The top of the arch was crowded and very noisey. I asked the kids if they enjoyed the arch, they said YES, I said 'good, because I'm never taking you again!'. We actually went up at sunset and also saw a beautiful moonrise.

As I laid on the ground to take this picture we had lots of people watching me take the picture.

Happy birthday Nate

Happy birthday Nate and if my math is correct you are turning 22 today, man that's old!!!!!!! for a nephew anyways......

And the baby is.......

......healthy, growing right on track and kicking up a storm. Ha! You thought I might mention its gender, didn't you? All of the kids went with us to the ultrasound today and that was a really fun experience. They oohed and aaaghhed over each kick and movement. They got to see the baby wave and wiggle its toes and really loved watching it open and close its mouth! But all they really wanted to know was who was going to share a room with it; so the girls have been hoping for a boy and Chas has been talked into that opinion by his influential sisters. A month ago he said he would like to have a little sister because "baby girls are sweeter". It looks like he will get his first wish and remain the sole little prince in our family. I won't post the picture that definitively proves that this pretty profile belongs to a baby girl or the awesome 3D picture that Dan says looks like a creepy character in the movie, Nightmare Before Christmas!!!!

I know it seems like we have been hogging the blog but you all are being too quiet and it's a girl!

Jekyll the Freckle

We spent the second half our vacation on Jekyll Island. It was a 3 hour drive up from Orlando to the Island which is just barely in GA over the FL line. Jekyll is unique because commercial development has been stopped circa 1980. The Island is a state park. There are no new hotels on the island and no new homes have been built for 30 7ears. The result is a fabuously uncrowded island with lots of public access. We had talked about hosting the Doug Ward family reunion there the next time we hosted it. (I doubt that will happen as we will live 3000 miles away next time we host it!) We camped there on spring break as well. This time we stayed in a beach house. Our friends had a meeting there, rented a beach house for the week but could only stay til wednesday. We got the house the rest of the week! :)

Sunset. We called this the sound side of the Island. I don't think it is technically a sound as it is not very wide.

Another mighty atlantic ocean wave rolls in. At low tide the waves were pretty boring!

This is a sand bar on the island. At low tide you can walk a quarter mile out into the ocean. The tide was just starting to come in when we went out. By the time we turned around the water was a foot deep in spots. That made Emma a bit nervous.

I love this bridge. It is a massive suspension bridge that spans the river coming into the sound. I think that Chas took this picture.

The fishing peir. We went crabbing for blue crabs. We didn't catch any blue crab but we did get one hermit crab! As you can see it was kind of windy that night.

We had a lot of fun!!

Leap of Faith

Matthew's favorite thing to do in the summer is to jump off cliffs. These are jumping into lake Coeur D' Alene. We have also jumped into the Spokane river and Medical Lake this summer.

Sea World Part Deaux

We made our second trip to sea world to get the most out of out annual pass. For any of you thinking of going to Orlando in July, I have one word of advice: DON'T. It has been sort of hot here this week but we have had a lot of fun even with the heat. We have made the most of shows with splash zones and air conditioning!

In the evening they have a 'Shamu Rocks' show. While waiting they play loud music show people from the crowd on the big screen. They made our kids dreams come true by putting us up on the screen. I'm the dork taking a picture of himself (really my kids)! Chas isn't in the picture because he was on the front row waiting for the full spash effect.

Shamu in action. It is amazing to see these huge animals get out of the water like this. They are so powerful and beautiful.

After the show. We were all soaked and happy for it! The BIG Shamu came out and splashed us this show. The other show we watched he didn't come out. The trainers say they never tell shamu what to do, they ASK. He just flipped water with his tail but when he does so he sends gallons and gallons of water out into the crowd. Chas got his money's worth on the front row.

I will post more pictures later as I took a ton. Sea world is a great place to go. They really do a great job showing off the animals talents while obviously showing care for the animals.