It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It is fall. I love this time of year! It is getting colder, my wife is making soup, and now people don’t make fun of me for drinking hot beverages when it’s 90 degrees outside.

I even like Iowa this time of year, because it has some nice trees that turn colors other than brown or light green. Today, Ryan and I took a walk all around the woods at Saylorville Lake to take some pictures. I think next weekend will be the peak time for leaf colorage, but here are a few pictures of our trip. But first, some snow:

That’s right, yesterday, October 9th, we got some snow. Not the 6 inches that Omaha got, but we did get some. I was happy, but I think I would like more of fall first. Instead of coming early, winter can go late, so maybe next year we can go from winter into spring and then into fall, skipping summer all together. Here is a picture of Rosie “enjoying” the snow (not):

OK, now for fall:

Some more of the woods:

I really like these next two pictures for some reason:

These were taken near the outdoor butterfly garden at Saylorville Lake. No butterflies out this time of year, or flowers, but nice leaves!

Ryan brought our other, less expensive digital camera along and took some pictures with me. It was fun to do one of my favorite hobbies with him! I think Erin might be posting some of them sometime, if not I will soon. Happy Fall everyone!

Sam is 5

Today Sam is turning five, which makes us all feel really old and miserable. But what a blessing he is!

I love Sam’s zest, I love his big smile. When he laughs, he laughs with his entire self, body and soul.

So it came time to make the photo montage set to music of this past year of Sam’s adventures and fun. I was really stuck on finding a good song for him, and then Laura suggested one that I really like, and I think it mostly fits Sam and his excitement for living.

Click here. Watching this video makes me weepy to see how much he’s grown, and exhausted imagining trying to keep up with him.

Tolkien and Chamberlain: a tale of two legends

Howdy all. Check it out, I do blog after all! I’ve been reading some great books, so I thought I would take a few minutes to share some quotes from them. I am mostly doing this in response to a grump I had with my wife concerning how Facebook and The Reader’s Digest Condensed version of Facebook (AKA Twitter) is making us all into morons. (This, coming from the guy who frequently leaves facebook statuses like “I just picked my nose”).

1. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, by JRR Tolkien.

This books is wonderful. I am really starting to like epic poetry. This year I also read Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Dante’s Inferno, Beowulf, maybe one other one. Anyway, this story is Tolkien’s version of some Scandinavian myths. Reading it, I could see a lot of influence that these legends had on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Here are some wonderful quotes:

“If in day of Doom

one deathless stands,

who death hath tasted

and dies no more,

the serpent-slayer,

seed of Odin,

then all shall not end,

nor Earth perish.

“On his head shall be helm,

in his hand lightening,

afire his spirit,

in his face splendour.

The Serpent shall shiver

and Surt waver,    (Note: Surt is the demon of fire)

the Wolf be vanquished

and the world rescued.”

That’s some good stuff right there. And the big epic battle at the end was amazing.

2. Bayonet! Forward: My Civil War Remembrances by Col. Joshua L. Chamberlain.

I got this book off of paperbackswap.com (for free!). It is a collection of writings by Chamberlain, one of my favorite historical figures, about his adventures and battles during the Civil War. He was a fantastic writer. This one I am reading more slowly, as I do have a lot of reading to do for school. But there are some great lines in his book, especially as he is contemplating death or the manly sacrifice the soldiers around him were giving. He came very close to going to seminary to study to be a priest or pastor or whatever they called them back then, and I would be interested in reading what kind of theology he had. Anyway, here is a passage from his chapter on Gettysburg, called “Through Blood and Fire at Gettysburg”. He is describing the pile of dead soldiers and the graves they were buried in. I only wish I could write with this much poetry:

“I sat there alone, on the storied crest, till the sun went down as it did before over the misty hills and the darkness crept up the slopes, till from all earthly sight I was buried as with those before. But oh, what radiant companionship rose around, what steadfast ranks of power, what bearing of heroic souls. Oh, the glory that beamed through those nights and days. Nobody will ever know it here! — I am sorry most of all for that. The proud young valor that rose above the mortal, and then at last was mortal after all; the chivalry of hand and heart that in other days and other lands would have sent their names ringing down in song and story!”

There are critics of Chamberlain who say that the stand he made on Little Round Top during the battle of Gettysburg was not as significant as some historians would make it. But I think those debunkers just try to destroy things that tend to be classified as “legends”. What he did was very brave, and it won him the Congressional Medal of Honor. They don’t just hand those things out,  you know.

So just a few good quotes to whet your literary appetites. Now, turn of facebook, run out to your nearest book store, and get a book. And read it. You might even enjoy it. It will be ok, trust me.

The Talented Miss Gracie

Some of you may have seen this video already, but I wanted to post it on my blog but I forgot. So here it is, Gracie doing her amazing talent: being cute.

In this video, she shows how she can be cute and attempt to eat her bunny, make faces, and stick out her tongue, sometimes all at once. Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/works_of_art/3750843542/

I am now speaking with an English accent.

I have come to the conclusion that the BBC is absolutely and utterly brilliant. I’ve been trying to find some tv shows or movies to watch while I am giving plasma, because I can barely stay away anymore if I read, even if it’s a really really good book. I relax so much when I donate that I can barely keep my eyes open. Visual entertainment still seems to keep me awake, however, but it seems that there are about 46 million versions of the same tv show on right now, and our local library has them all on dvd. Yawn. I was excited when shows like “Lost” and “24″ came on, (“CSI” was always pretty cool, too) because this was some honest to goodness creative thinking by Hollywood. But now just about every single show copies this format in some way. Now, I like these originals, but I don’t want to watch all the copies because they are not as good. They are a cheap imitation, like instant coffee: it’s not as good as the original.

So I decided to start branching out, since our library does have an amazing video collection (the books, however, leave much to be desired). I watched a couple of things from the BBC, and they were brilliant. So I kept watching different BBC shows, and they continued to be AMAZING. They are everything many American shows are not: interesting, intelligent, and CREATIVE. Awhile ago my Brother in law posted a blog about books he’s been reading over the summer, and I think I’ll do that too (I am in desperate search for a good book…I’m running into similar problems in literature), but here are a few reviews of some shows from the BBC that I’ve been enjoying.

1. Around the World in Eighty Days with Michael Palin. Yes, THAT Michael Palin, the “It’s…” guy from Monty Python. This is what American reality shows should be. In this 7 part mini-series, Palin decides to see if he can go around the world like Phileous Fogg from the Verne book. And the trick is he can’t use airplanes. So he goes by train, cargo ship, even a dhow. It was interesting to see different cultures and different methods of travel. I think what made this show fantastic was Palin’s sense of humor (not completely over the top, but a normal sense of humor) combined with his ability to find interesting people. He didn’t focus long on the areas he visited, his main focus was on the people in those areas. Of course, being a comic, he can’t help himself and put in a few sight gags, puns, and subtle references to Monty Python (One of the highlights of this show was watching him slowly slip into insanity during his cargo boat trip across the pacific. Hilarious!). I highly recommend this show if you catch it on PBS or a cable show or something. This was filmed around 1989, and since then has made several other BBC travel shows, which I am excited to say our library has most of them. He has also written books about his trip, and you can read them online free on his website.

More Briefly:

2. “Spaced”. This is from the “Shawn of the Dead” team, and I have decided that Simon Pegg can do no wrong. A short, two season long show about a guy and a girl who pretend to be married so they can rent a really cool flat. The awesome twist is all the subtle sci-fi and other nerdy references they work into the show. They parody so many shows, that you really have to know some obscure movies to understand a few of the references. It’s brilliant. And hilarious, especially the paint ball episode.

3. Other comedy: “Blackadder” and “Mr. Bean”, starring Rowan Atkinson. I don’t think I need to say anymore about this. These shows are brilliantly funny on an absurdist level. And, Christmas just doesn’t seem right without watching the Christmas episode of Mr. Bean.

4. Doctor Who (the new series, haven’t seen the old one): quite possibly the best sci-fi show I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. Fantastically acted, incredibly well written, great special effects, and just Brilliant.

5. The Inspecter Lynley series, about an aristocratic Scotland Yard Inspector Lynley, and the lower working class sidekick, Sgt. Havers. What’s great about this show is that the two main characters will most likely not be falling in love, and it’s refreshing to see a guy and girl work together as friends (although she really really hates him at first, but in a funny kind of way.)

More Fun with Sam

Today was the day that Sam and I planned to do Something Fun with Daddy. Being that it is July 3rd, and a Friday so nobody was at work, I was not particularly looking forward to going anywhere. But he was excited to do something, so off we went. Along the way, we formulated a plan of fun.

We thought it would be fun to go on a nature walk, so I stopped off at DMACC, a local community college, as I knew they had some nice landscaping. Our first stop was the epic DMACC Trail. We saw some geese, a few fountains, ducks, and some nice flower beds.

Along the way, we stopped for a rest…it was getting hot and sticky out!

The Trail eventually turned into the DMACC Prairie Trail or something like that. It was more interesting then the one they tried to put up near where we live, because there are actual flowers alongside of the trail to look at, not just green grass and weeds.

We were seeing so many flowers, I decided I would teach Sam the fine art of pressing flowers. He picked several types of weeds (and possibly a few flowers from the flower beds, but I’m not telling) a dandelion (his all-time favorite flower) so he could try and see which flower worked the best in the flower press.

He got excited when he saw these flowers growing along the Prairie Trail. He called them Black-Eye Susans, which I think they are. We were at Walmart this morning and they were selling some. So we picked it for the flower press.

We got home, and I built a homemade flower press by stacking several of my gigantic school books into a big stack. That’s the kind of high tech guy I am. So now we get to wait and see if they turn out ok or not.

When we were at Walmart this morning, Sam picked out a thing of Impatiens to plant in our yard. I think he really liked the name of these. He told me they were called that because they were impatient to grow. Here’s one of them I planted alongside of our sidewalk. This was my first attempt at actually planting something, so hopefully it won’t die. If it did, I’m out .25 cents. (Walmart was selling 6 of these little things for .25 cents!)

And here is a picture of our Begonia’s that Jan planted for us. Photographic proof that they are still alive, and possibly thriving.

So we had all this fun for only .25 cents. This afternoon, Sam wants to paint a picture of some of the flowers and trees that we saw on our walk. I think we might have a couple of Lewis & Clarks in the making!

Sam, the Silly Sailor

A few weeks ago I took Sam out for his first trip in the boat, and of course we had lots of fun. We went to Saylorville Lake and puttered around for awhile.

Here he is waiting for the boat to fill with air.

And off we go! He thought that thing behind him was a whale, but after further investigation, it was just a large stick that could pop our boat. What danger! Yikes!

Surviving the hazards of floating sticks we made our way around the lake (Well, not the WHOLE lake, it’s huge). Here’s the only good picture of Sam and me that I was able to get: those are my feet:

When we got back to shore, Sam had fun playing in the water and the sand.

And the good news is, we survived!

In which my brain goes all wibbly-wobbly

Gracie has the most adorable smile. Lately, she has been smiling a lot, and crinkling up her little eyes when she does it. It’s so CUTE.

A few days ago I was feeding Gracie while I was reading “The Wizard of Oz” to the boys. I looked down at Gracie and she was looking up at me with a big smile on her face. So I stopped reading and made the appropriate baby noises to her, and she started laughing! She did it about three times. It wasn’t a real big and hearty laugh of course, but it was a cute and adorable baby laugh, like she was just learning how to do it. Yesterday when Erin was feeding her, she started laughing again, a little better this time. Of course by the time I got the video camera out she pretty much stopped, but I did manage to get a few little chuckles on film. Please ignore Erin’s voice as she babbles incoherently at Gracie. But I think it’s safe to say Gracie is laughing.

I find that when I see her smile and laugh, my brain goes all wibbly-wobbly and melts all over the floor. It thrills me so much, I can’t explain it. One thing is for sure…as she gets older and cuter I am in BIG trouble. Something about her adorable smile just makes me want to do anything for her. Erin tried to warn me about the dangers of having a little girl, but I did not heed them .  Oh well! Here’s a video of her, it’s very short, about 6 seconds long…more to come, I hope!

If you click on this fun linky thing here you can see her video on my flickr account.

Writer’s Block Rears it’s Ugly Head

I’ve been wanting to blog for a while, but I cannot think of anything to write about. So, I will leave you only with this quote that I saw online yesterday.

“There is a fine line between genius and insanity, and I have erased that line and replaced it with a trout”.

It almost makes life worth living again.

Pirates of the Big Creek Lake…ARG!

This morning I got to FINALLY do something I absolutely love: I went boating! Sure it was 60 degrees and threatening to rain, but boating is so much fun and relaxing. Yesterday Erin found a bigger inflatable boat then the one that I had, and the bonus was that she found it at a yardsale for only $10. It had only been used once, and since I had oars already, we were in good business. This morning I took Ryan out for a boat ride around Big Creek lake (don’t ask me why Iowans called a big lake ‘Big Creek’. ) Here are some pics:

 

 

 

Ryan finally got to check out what a buoy looked like, although I thought he kept calling them buubies (yes, I misspelled that word on purpose

I let him have a turn at trying to row. However, having learned the hard way when I was a teenager, I made sure that we were really close to shore in case the paddles fell over board. Believe me, you don’t want to try and wait for the tide to bring you in.

We had fun! Next time, I hope to take Sam along. I believe that will be his first time in a boat with me.

Ryan decided the name should be “The Puppy II” since my first inflatable boat (which has seen better days and is currently in dry dock, i.e. lawn mower cover) was named “The Puppy” for reasons I won’t go into here. I was hoping he would pick something cool like “Titanic”, “Endeavor” or even “TARDIS” (my personal favorite, but since he doesn’t really know what ‘Doctor Who’ is, I guess I can’t blame him.) Oh well. Whatever we end up calling, we had a successful maiden voyage.