Exercise, Dodgeball, Movies, Churchiness

Dang!

I just typed a gob of stuff and lost it all on the upload! I hate that!

The two pictures below are from today. The one with snow was from this morning. The other one is from this afternoon.

The picture of the park is Washington Park which we biked to. Not an impressive picture but I pulled the bike trailer there last weekend. Round trip 22 miles so I feel compelled to share. The park is apparently very popular as there are tons of people there.

The boys and I played dodge ball last night. The boys would linger in the hallway or rather dodge from one door in the hallway to another as I would whip the nerf football down the hall. The boys were laughing uncontrollably. They would go to the end of the hallway and whip it back at me and we continued this for about an hour until I accidentally hit Seb in the side of the face with the ball which ended the fun. I let Seb take a pot-shot at me which brought his uncontrolled laughing back.

Cherity is out right now. She's at a restaurant called Little India meeting some new people that have common interests in parenting technique. Hopefully she's having a good time and is getting to know some people.

I have to hit the hay early tonight so I'll have to get the boys to go to bed pretty soon here. I play b-ball on Friday mornings with some work folk. My shooting has really been sucking but I have had a few good blocks. My lankiness is typically underestimated, I think. Cherity and I also have joined an athletic club that has baby sitting services. We're looking forward to doing that. We haven't gone yet. I'm trying to decide whether I want to go in the morning or during lunch. I'm not sure yet.

I talked a little bit in my previous post about a few movies I've seen but I don't know if I have it in me to re-type my thoughts. I feel like I'm being redundant. I have Into the Wild sitting next to the TV and I'm looking forward to watching that because I read the book. It's a story about a 20 something kid who sells everything his own and lives a wanderer and goes to Alaska to live off the land.

I also just saw There Will Be Blood. There's something very intense about the main character that keeps you in to the movie. It's definitely the character. There was also something about the movie that reminded me of my childhood going to a fire-and-brimstone church. I wasn't sure if it was a few emotional church services they had in it or if it was how separate the main character kept himself from everyone including his own son. The church I grew up in followed the motto religiously to keep yourself "in the world but not of this world". I can't tell you how many times I heard that and how I mentally believed that at a young age. The main characters reasons were more due to his competitive nature and his distrust and dislike of people but the feeling I got still reminded me of the loneliness I felt as a kid and I can't blame that loneliness on the church, but I guess I did subconsciously blame that loneliness on allowing myself to take a sermon and allow it to effect how I acted because I wanted to be a good boy.

Well, I think that was everything I typed before in a nutshell.

Me, Trying to get a clever picture.

I'll try again tomorrow and see if I can do a better job.

Aren't the Winona Bluffs Beautiful?

This is a picture of Sugar loaf bluff from our Alley. Inspiring, isn't it?

Scenes from a wintery Winona.

I decided to take a bike ride today and take some pictures of my surroundings. I got as far as just across the bridge and then headed back because my fingers and toes were numb even with the two pairs of socks and the gloves. I'm glad I headed back when I did though because we now have a pretty heavy snow coming down. That's right! Snow!

The Watkins building gate is shown below. This factory sits right in the middle of a residential area (about 5 blocks from our house I can see the idle smoke-stack from our upstairs windows). They make spices and other stuff like that. Sometimes when I'm biking to work I can smell cinnamon. There are these styilized W's at each gate. The place when you see it totally reminds you of Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

This I'm assuming is Wenonah the indian for which Winona was named after. This is on the side of a local Photography store. I'm not sure how they did it but I've always meant to take a picture of it and I finally made a point of getting it.

This is the last part of the bridge going in to Wisconsin.

Below the Winona Bridge

Right across Old Miss. is Latch Island. There is a whole community of boat houses. It's like a suburb full of small floating shacks. It's sorta strange. I'll have to get some pictures of it sometime to give a better idea of it's vastness. As you can see the river isn't solid ice. The below picture is backwater and it's not even frozen.

Messy projects

Owen was all exited to show mom the present that he had made her while she wasn't looking. I guess little boys think glitter on glue on paper is something that mom's like. The second picture shows the wonderful aftermath of the spirit of giving: glitter glued to the floor. Cherity says glue isn't as easy to get out as you'd think.

The weekend.

Being only two blocks from the Mississippi we could hear the Calliope on this Steamboat. We took a walk down to see it. We went to Ferguson's Morningside Orchard in Galesville and picked a small bag of Apples. This morning we did the Church Nursery thing which I don't really enjoy all that much but it is just a once a month thing, so tolerable enough. Not that I don't like other peoples kids. I do. I like them about once-a-month-for-about-1hour's worth :)

View of Winona from Garvin Heights.

Owen's photography and bluff

Sep 23, 2006 - 7 Photos

Testing out Picassa's web album.

This is a new feature. We'll see where it goes...?

Gays Mills Orchard Weekend

Sep 24, 2006 - 10 Photos

I took this picture of the sunrise last week when I was taking Molly for a morning walk. It was coming up over the Mississippi.

I'd have blogged more lately, it's just that I've been busy doing other meaningless stuff that I should've put off to add to my blog. I had to work on Saturday so the weekend was kinda sucky but I had Monday off for Labor day and since I worked Saturday I took Tuesday as a comp day and had a belated weekend. We started packing on Sunday morning and finished up after church. After berating my wife for a while about her time management she put me in my place by explaining all the things she was doing that I wasn't. Luck, WI was beautiful as usual. Many bonfires and conversation were had. I Got to see baby Fletcher for the first time. I also took Rick's canoe and put it on my car to test it out. Owen and I did a little conoeing expedition and I realized that the my muscles and my car weren't man enough for the canoe's weight. Seriously! It looked WAY easier when my 260 pound brother in law was throwing it around like a toy! Also this weekend, Sebastian got bit up by every mosquito in the Luck area. They could smell him from a mile away and he looked like Quasimoto (sp?) with his left eyebrow swollen shut by the end of the week. The swelling has gone down now which is good. He of course needed bandaids, so I complied and used the colored bandaids the Palmer's had at their house and Sebastian looked like an Indian with all the colored stripes on his face.

As for today, I came home and it looked like there was a murder in our house because Seb knocked a table over on the dogs tail and left a puddle of blood. Since it was her tail she swished the blood all over the upstairs walls as well. We then took off to the church and went to this Family night worship thing that was mainly for the kids but was also meant for parents so the kids could see their parents in a worship atmosphere. Seems like a good idea, but I'm a white guy who no longer dances to the music very well or knows any of the motions to the new songs. It was funny to watch. Total Chaos and exhausting to watch. I could never be a youth pastor.

I have way more to write I'm sure but things are getting a little crazy here with two tired boys so I better head out before I hear it from my partner who is taking the brunt of it right now.

I wish we could take credit for the flower garden but the people before us did a great job of planting things that would flower @ different times throught the year. It was a nice suprise the first time everything came up and bloomed. This is our meager little garden. Rhubard, Lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, string beans, tomotoes and pepper plants.
Future Salsa.

Pet bunny or Albino wild bunny?

Saw this bunny not too far from our house after I finished a run. My father-in-law has seen an albino buck up in Northern Wisconsin. He's had a motion sensored camera stuck outside and has all sorts of pictures of wildlife but no albino buck. This I the pedestrian/urbarn version of the great white buck. I'm not so sure it wasn't a pet though. I kept creeping closer and closer to it, without it taking off on me. I was probably within 5' of it at one time.

Red Green

If you keep up on my blog at all it shouldn't be a suprise to you that Owen likes The Red Green Show on PBS. We were watching the show last night and there was a segment where Red Green was constructing one of his crazy (and thought ingenious) inventions out of things you find in the garage and duct tape. Owen was very intrigued and said out of the blue "That guy has lots of ideas of projects he wants to do. He needs to just pick one thing."

So true...but, needless to say, I think Owen has found his hero.

Having watch the show in the past with Owen it is evident that what is seen as humor and crazy to us, looks to our 4 year old inventor as a great idea. To him it all makes perfect sense.

Co-authored by Cherity

Taxidermy can be cute!

Is this sick or cute? I've always said that if I got a dog it would be cool if it could stay a puppy cause they're so cute. I guess this is taking it a little too far. I found this picture on the internet. I have no idea what taxidermist thought this was a good idea. Kinda morbid huh?

I through the worm in the water for Owen's pull for him and I sat there and watched this painted turtle scurry up to the worm, take it, and turn around and take off. I pulled him in and I could get the worm out at all. My hook was ben in to a curly q trying to pull it out with my needle nose pliers, so I cut the line and set him back on his belly and he spit the hook out took off. The bass isn't huge, but it's my biggest of the year. Probably a little over a foot and maybe 2 lbs. Owen is going in to touch the bass in the last picture.

First springtime activity was...

Flying a kite. I actually got it up in the air without the tail. I handed it over to Owen as soon as I got it as high up as I had string for. It was back on the ground within 3 minutes.

I was pretty impressed by the craftsman ship of all the animals on the Carousel @ Lark Toys in Kellog, MN. There's a baby otter on the back of the otter along with some seaweed and a boat bumper on the back. The moose also has a fish in his antlers. If you look at an animal long enough, you find more things.

Dirt is a little boys friend. This was a Saturday expedition in the backyard with Mom. It was over 60 degrees.
... and just one week earlier owen had made a snowman (by himself). Cherity went outside to see exactly what he was doing and he said "It's Me!" Can you see the resemblance? ... and this is some sort of fort Owen built in the backyard.