VBS finale

Last night of VBS at St. Anthony's tonight. We had fun but are tired out, especially Karen who had lots of wired little kids to deal with.

Kris has done some neat song work in collaboration with Grandma and Grandpa Campbell. See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sddBauAanPc

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvY5QDkDcnw&feature=related

Crossing Jordan

Got back from my conference at Indiana University tonight. It is a big campus, but also a pretty campus. There is a creek running through the middle of the campus called the Jordan River. Stretches of this creek are rather parklike, surrounded by trees and trails and featuring footbridges. There is also a small, old cemetary right next to the student union. My talk went pretty well I guess and I got to see some people that have not seen in long time. VBS is still going well for Karen and Kris.

VBS pic and an older

Here is a pic of Kris at VBS from Sunday night. She is raising her hand near the front of the pic and sporting denim shorts and nerdy glasses. (Why are scientists stereotyped as having nerdy glasses and goofy hair)? VBS is going well: Kris is enjoying herself and Karen is handling the class and the demos quite well.

I'm at a conference in Bloomington, IN, at Indiana University. We got here at 5:30 pm (forgot about the time change) after the registration officially closed, but someone was there to take care of us. This is a huge campus, and the direction signs typical of these meetings were maddeningly absent. Also included is a picture from the Mt. Baker, WA, area from a year ago. Southern Indiana is prettier (more hills and trees) than I thought, but not THIS pretty! My colleague's and my talks are tomorrow morning, so I should get to bed soon.

'Nother Dells Pic

Here is another pic of Wisconsin Dells. One things I was not able to find there was a good foot tour of some of the canyons. I have this dim childhood recollection of a walking on boardwalk down a narrow canyon and encountering an especially narrow point called "Fat Man's Misery". Maybe I am mixing memories. Most of the rock formations seemed to be associated with private property or non-walking tours. We did try to get to Stand Rock, but access closed at 6 pm.

Second night of VBS tonight. Things are going well. Tuesday and Wednesday I will be at a conference in southern Indiana, so in addition to leading a group of 14 little kids, Karen will also be doing the demos!

Big cabbage

A plant company gave little cabbage plants to a bunch of schools last spring - some sort of cabbage growing contest. Anyway, Kris got one and as you can see the cabbage now (the ruler is a foot long). Any ideas what we could do with that much cabbage? LOTS of cole slaw? LOTS of corned beef? Feed an elephant?

Tonight was the first night of Vacation Bible School at St. Anthony's. The theme is Power Lab, so Karen and I are doing science demos. Tonight we added water to Alka-Seltzer tablets in film canisters to pop the lids off. Some of the kids wanted to know how to do the demo, but did not know what AlkaSeltzer was. I told them to ask their parents.

Tall sunflowers

The first of our sunflowers has opened up. They are the variety called "Russian giant" I think, and giants they are. The top of the flower is nearly 11 feet off the ground. The first pic also shows zucchini plants in the background. The second pic is the view from our living room.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I won a prize! When we went to the fair several days ago we went to a booth hosted by a farmer's bureau. We spun a wheel to answer a question to win a prize. My question was to look at a table and pick out two grocery products that came from a dairy farm. The milk was obvious, but I missed the butter and instead selected mayonaise! How embarassing! I think I need to go to Wisconsin more for additional diary farm training. My consolation prize was a small towel. Karen's question was much harder, but they gave her a coupon for free ice cream. Anyway, yesterday out of the blue I got a $20 gift card for Wal-Mart from this group as part of a drawing.

Last thought: tonight Peter Pan was on TV. I was surprised and dismayed that the racist stuff was still there. It seems to me that "Why is the red man red?" could have been edited out without changing content.

Bush visit

The pic of the day is one my favorite of many Dells rock formation pictures.

Today President Bush visited Peoria to speak at a fundraiser for Aaron Schock, who is running for the U.S. House of Representatives (see: http://www.pjstar.com/homepage/x2109423342/Attendees-thrilled-by-brush-with-president). Karen and Kris saw Air Force One at the airport, and all three of us saw more state police cars around than usual, but that is as close as we got. Some of you may have heard the story about when we had some adoption paperwork hung up in the Illinois DCFS a year and a half ago. We contacted Aaron Schock's office because we heard that he could help and a person at his office helped clear the blockage.

Local weather

Monday's morning storm in Peoria knocked little branches and lots of unripe walnuts off our tree, but about a block away much bigger branches (and some power lines) were downed. Kris's orthodontist held a party at local waterpark, Splashdown, tonight. The high today, about 70, was some 15 degrees below normal. Kris still played in the water, I played with the time exposure settings on the camera.

Happy Trails to the Dells

Last day at Wisconsin Dells today. We used the City Pass one last time to go miniature golfing again; there has been a remarkable lack of improvement on my part. After that we went on a one hour, three mile horseback ride. Kris and I have never been on full size horses; Karen has not been on one for a couple decades. Karen's was called Jet, which fortunately did not take off running like the last time she rode a horse. Kris's was called Charlie, also a well-behaved horse. It was not until many hours later that we made the connection to "Charley horse." Mine was called Aries. According to Wikipedia, Aries is compatible with Leo, and the horse got along with this Leo just fine. In fact, the horse got hungry and used most of its resting moments to eat whatever was available - certainly a kindred spirit (I'd get hungry carrying me for 3 miles)! The scenery was OK, but the view of Lost Canyon was rather disappointing. We all enjoyed the experience, though when we got off the horses we understood why cowboys walk so goofy in the movies.

After this, we briefly stopped at Mirror Lake State Park. Kris and I biked and walked to Echo Rock (looming over Kris in the picture). On the way back to Peoria we stopped at a drive-in root beer place in Oglesby (you can see our bike rack on the van in the background). It's not far from I-39 and the root beer was good. Overall, we had a good whirlwind vacation.

Still more Dells

Today we continued the use of the City Passes to spend the day at Mt. Olympus, a combination of an amusement park and water park. We enjoyed the day and are wiped out. Our favorites included the wave pools and for Karen and Kris the water slides and for me the roller coasters. Can it really be more than a decade since I have been on a roller coaster? I rode the park's 4 wooden roller coasters (they don't have any looping ones). They were all a bit bumpier than I remember. The biggest one, Hades, dives under a parking lot twice. I've been in roller coaster tunnels before, but this one' s tunnel was PITCH BLACK and bucked and turned. I enjoyed them all.

More Dells

A very busy day in the Dells today. I have lots of pictures to sift through. By the way, I guess "dells" is adapted from "dalles" which is described by dictionary.com as the rapids of a river running between the walls of a canyon or gorge. This makes more sense, though a dam submerged much of the rapids.

We got a "city pass", which, for for one heavily discounted fee, allows us to do a bunch of particular things. So today we:

-rode a ducks on the lower Dells (pretty good...after all, it is a duck, but it had too much city driving for my taste...it might be that the Lake Delton mishap changed the route)

-rode a jet boat on the upper Dells (I think that was the overall favorite for the family as a whole)

-visited an upside-down White House (a lightweight haunted house/fun house - Kris wanted to do it)

-visited a deer park (I thought it was pretty cool to pet a deer, especially one with velvet on the antlers)

-rode yet another boat ride on the upper Dells (slow boat ride, but it covered almost the same thing as the jet boat ride and even used the same corny jokes-and I know about corny jokes)

-had an old-time picture taken of us (that turned out pretty nice)

Things are going OK weatherwise and I can tell that we are not going to have near the time to do all the stuff we would like to do (we would love to kayak in the lower Dells), but we are enjoying our stay.

To the Dells

Today we traveled to the renouned tourist trap known as Wisconsin Dells. According to dictionary.com, a dell is a small, usually wooded valley. Would the ravine behind our house count as a dell? Maybe farther downstream. We checked into the hotel, swam for a while at the hotel, then we drove to the remains of Lake Delton, and then went miniature golfing.

We were really surprised that the remnants of homes destroyed by the breach of Lake Delton's shores were still standing. For more details on that event, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Delton and videos of the homes being destroyed are scattered across YouTube, for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guBo0FQhjaM&feature=related.

Summer Flowers

This is part of a native flower demo outside of Olin Hall on Bradley's campus. I think it would make a good puzzle.

This morning we helped set up for vacation Bible school at St. Anthony's. The theme is "Power Lab", a science theme, which should be interesting.

Tonight we drove 20 miles west of our house to the town of Farmington. Since we have lived near Farmington Road for over nine years, we figured it should be seen. Alas I did not have the camera, but there was not really anything that I saw to photograph on this historic trip.

Awww... (and ouch?)

Fuzzy animals pictures from yesterday. The first is of our rabbit Bugs inhaling a carrot top. (In the cartoons, Bugs Bunny often discards the top; our rabbit seems to prefer them.)

The second picture is of a mother and 3-month-old kangaroo at a petting zoo at the Heart of Illinois Fair yesterday. Very cute, but it looks uncomfortable for both the mother and the baby. The head, the front and hind paws, and the tail are all sticking out of the pouch!

A fair experience...

Went to the Heart of Illinois Fair tonight. It was nice. We liked the elephant show (especially the elephant playing the harmonica) and the tiger show. By the way, deep fried Oreos are like chewy chocolate donut holes.

Balloon pix

From Balloons on the Prairie on the north side of Peoria on Sat, July 12.

Rambling already...

I don't plan on posting everyday, but I thought I would continue to test things out.

No new pix to show, but here is one from a year ago today of a heron at Union Bay in Seattle, WA.

I looked at some of the other blogs on this site and was amazed to see the diversity of languages.

Hot day today. We grated 12 cups from our first batch of zucchini tonight. My attitude about growing zucchini has been similar to that about owning a swimming pool - it's better to know someone who has one than to have one yourself. Nonetheless I opted to give it a go this year. I enjoy gardening as long as I don't take it seriously - I can't imagine trying to make a living from it. I have an culturally "organic" garden at this time in that it is artificial fertilizer and pesticide free, not because I am averse to "chemicals" (I am a chemist after all); it's just that I am too cheap and lazy to put anything like that on the garden. :*) I'm not a huge fan of lots of vegetables anyway - I'd just as soon give the stuff away as eat it. I do like to watch stuff grow.

Here is a link to a YouTube video that my sister Tina sent to me. It is Feist's version of "1,2,3,4" that she did for Sesame Street. The original that was part of TV commercials is at http://youtube.com/watch?v=9D0aTSkslWY. The Sesame Street version at http://youtube.com/watch?v=9fciD_II7NI is very cute and the lyrics ("chickens just back from the shore") are less bitter than in the original song.

Testing...1,2,3

I'm sitting in my backyard enjoying a summer evening by concentrating on a computer screen. Here is a picture I took last night of the sun setting behind Starved Rock. The intent of this site is to make it easier for people to view the pictures that I like to take (and throw in some random stuff occasionally). I hope you enjoy the site!

I biked up the Redbud hill for the first time this afternoon to get home.

By the way, looks like Mt. St. Helens is back to normal. :*( From a USGS website:


"MOUNT ST. HELENS VOLCANO (CAVW#1201-05-)46.20°N 122.18°W, Summit Elevation 8363 ft (2549 m)Volcano Alert Level: NORMALAviation Color Code: GREEN

As discussed in yesterday's update, the more than three-years-long, lava-dome eruption of Mount St. Helens that began in autumn 2004 and paused in late January of this year appears to have ended. Earthquakes, volcanic gas emissions, and ground deformation are all at pre-eruptive background levels."