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.

Des Moines Botanical Center

We went to the Botanical Center this week. Here are pictures:

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

Ryan’s Graduation

Ryan had his Kindergarten graduation today. Erin blogged about it, so here is my addition: video! It’s just a few clips of the hour long program, but I tried to get the highlights. However, the really cute things happened after my stoopid video camera stopped working (batteries died). I least I got him getting his diploma and Christian Character award! That was really neat to see him rewarded for being such a good kid in school. I praise the Lord that He enabled Ryan to be a good student, well-behaved, and so kind towards his friends. We are so proud of him!

(sorry the video of him is not that great. The camera takes better closeups than distant shots.)

Yay, Us!

9th Wedding Anniversary!

My Movie Review…

I was going to write a review of the new Star Trek movie that was out this weekend, but I can’t. It was just too awesome for words. So I thought a visual help would be better:

Now it’s time for another good idea/bad idea:

Good Idea:

Casting Chris Pine as a young James T. Kirk:

Bad Idea:

Casting William Shatner as a young James T. Kirk:

A picture says a thousand words…

Jonah and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I’m in a Hebrew module this week, and it’s been awesome and refreshing! We are translating through Jonah and Ruth, and possibly something else will be thrown in there by the end of the week. On Monday we translated Jonah, and on Tuesday we translated Jonah again, and then got about half way through Ruth.

Jonah is one of the most fascinating people in the Bible. As the professor of the class told us, Jonah had good theology, but a bad attitude. To be honest, it baffles my mind how this can be true, but our prof had us consider how many people we knew who went to good, fundamental baptist churches (some of them even in the GARBC! GASP!) but lived with rotten attitudes toward God, their families, or the lost. Turns out I know quite a few…even myself from time to time. This is a small example of what I love about Seminary: the academic challenge that is fully combined with spiritual challenges, and practical application. Well, that and watching the prof get giddy with delight as he explains to us how the Hebrew word for “Father-in-law” takes it’s roots/origins in a word that can also mean “Circumciser”. All I can say is “yikes”.

Jonah through out the book complains, whines, pouts, and questions God. Sure, in chapter 2 he offers up a fantastic psalms-type prayer, but given what he does before and after the prayer, I’m having a hard time believing it was sincere. Maybe it was. It is interesting to see that God prepared this fish for Jonah as a means of his rescue from the ocean that he was chucked into. He also used this fish to bring Jonah back to where he should have been to begin with.

As we got to the part where the fish spits Jonah onto dry ground, someone in class wondered if the fish had to beach itself to get Jonah out, and then it died. Someone than asked, “Yeah, how far can a whale hock a loogie?” Yes, it is deep intellectual questions like this that keep me going to class year after year. Anyway, about the fish possibly dying after spitting Jonah out, we discussed it for a bit, and then our prof smiles and says, “Well, God never claimed to be a card-carrying member of PETA!” The conversation eventually lead us to finding this delightfully fun website about exploding whales.

One of the issues that Higher Critics have with this book is Jonah’s message. They will say that this book is inaccurate because Jonah was a Hebrew and spoke hebrew, while Ninevah spoke Akkadian. Therefore they would not have been able to understand each other. Yup, this is an actual, real argument. Hilarious. First of all, Akkadian and Hebrew are closely related languages, and it would not be beyond the realm of possibility for Jonah to have learned how to speak a few phrases at the very least.  However something they also don’t consider is that people from both Israel and Ninevah probably knew Aramaic, which was a common language at the time. It is possible then that Jonah preached in Aramaic. This is why books of the Bible like Daniel have portions written in Aramaic. The portion that is intended for the world to hear is written in a common language that they can understand. Which then brings many interesting questions to mind about Bible translations and versions, but let’s not go down that road today.

Jonah teaches us many good lessons: make sure your attitude is right in ministry, God is compassionate even towards the most wicked of sinners, and sometimes God needs to go to drastic measures to break the stubborness of our hearts. Don’t be like Jonah; be open to God’s leading wherever it may take you. Be compassionate as He is compassionate. And, if you are running from God, don’t ask to be thrown overboard a ship during a storm at sea. You might regret it!