Karen's Birthday

Friday was Karen's birthday.  Friday night we went to the Faith and Family night that WCIC hosted at the Peoria Chiefs game.  Karen had her birthday announced, which surprised her.  After the game (the Chiefs won, by the way), there were nice fireworks (Katie was thrilled), and a concert by Jamie Grace (sample of her music is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISgr8SgCYbY).

Church Picnic and Another Windy Storm

Yesterday St. Anthony's Church had its annual picnic. Good singing at Mass, good hog roast, and good games for the kids, but one unique feature this year was the mortgage burning for the church building.  Today  that family went to see Monster's University (and we enjoyed it).  We joked on the way in to the theater that most times we attend that venue there is a rainstorm, however, there was none forecast for today.  We walked out of the show into the tail end of a thunderstorm!  Spectacular lightning on the way home, and our house/yard was fine, but when I drove to Bradley University's campus a little while later I found a fair number of broken branches and trees down, along with deep puddles and a car in the ditch.  One tree on campus fell partway into the street (if you look closely at one of the pictures, you might see a glimpse of the gray parked car (ahead of the dark blue one) that the tree has engulfed.

Start of Summer, 2013

Yesterday my parents stopped by on the way back home from an epic, nearly 6000 mile driving trip from northeastern Wisconsin to Seattle to the Grand Canyon and back, with lots of cool stops along the way.  They headed for home this morning.  This afternoon we got a little rain and a bit of wind in Peoria.  This evening we went over to the Blands' house to chase fireflies (lots of fun) and make s'mores.  What a great way to wrap up the summer solstice!

Father's Day 2013

Katie continues to grapple with her sore throat but she is improving.  Last night she was awake a lot with discomfort, making for a long night for her parents, too.  This afternoon, Kris and I had fun at Lauterbach Park bushwhacking up the creek and hunting minnows and fossils.  This evening we all went to dinner at Steak n'Shake and a stroll along the river.

Bunny Picture

Katie returned home today.  She is still trying to get on track with respect to pain, nausea, and sleep, but she is making headway.  We found 3 or 4 little bunnies in our back yard, making lawn mowing a bit of a challenge. I gather they have a pretty strong sit-still instinct, but I would have thought they would be a little more flighty than they were.  I caught the one in the picture pretty easily with the towel. Of course it might be fun to keep them inside, but we settled for placing a board over the rocks where they were hiding and setting out some rabbit food for them - we have our own much-bigger indoor rabbit, after all.

Katie's Hospital Visit (continued)

Katie continues to recover in the hospital; we hope she can go home tomorrow.  At least we have a good view of the helipad.  Our friend Dr. Andrew Bland gave us a nice tour of the Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center.  They have amazing medical simulation capabilities!    Karen is in the far right window (in Katie's room) in the picture of the hospital windows and roof.

Katie's Surgery

Katie had some surgery on her throat to help improve her speech.  She is in a bit of pain and pretty nauseous but she has been getting pain meds and watching a lot of Disney on TV.  Our room has been moved around a bit throughout the day, so we have had a number of vantage points from the windows.  We saw clouds forming little anvils that did not blow up into big storms like up north, but one looked liked a mushroom cloud.  We spotted and reported some smoldering in the wood chips near a main road (probably a cigarette in the chips fanned by the winds in the area).  A fire truck came and put it out

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Turkey Festival

Saturday I noticed that most of the bean plants in our garden had their leaves bitten off (I blame the local rabbits), so I spent much of the day putting up fencing around the garden. (I had removed it before the sabbatical - it looked ratty). At least our strawberries are doing very well - I think the rain helped.  I also administered and graded the final exam for my online course.  Saturday night we had a campfire and cooked hot dogs.  Karen and Kris were amused that I dozed off by the fire.  Today we drove to the Tremont Turkey Festival.  It was the end of the the festival, so I cannot really gripe about them being out of turkey sandwiches, but I really expected the festival to be more focused on a diversity of turkey-based food (sort of like the Morton Pumpkin Festival).  It was a lot like other small town fairs: crafts, overpriced rides, etc.  The parade had possibly more fire equipment than any other parade that I have seen, and we got a bunch of candy.  I amused my family by continuing to wave, sort of on auto-pilot, while there there was a gap in the parade.

Girl Scout Event

Katie went to a girl scout family summer kickoff event.  She  impressed people with her hula-hooping and beat her old man in a relay race.

Soccer Camp and Baby Blackbirds

This year Katie did soccer camp in East Peoria for Peoria Christian School - Kris has outgrown it.  Katie had fun.  After tonight's camp we went over to the nearby pond (next to Splashdown Water Park).  Just a couple fish "nests" visible among the water weeds, but among the cattails we saw multiple red-winged blackbird nests.  A couple had babies on the verge of flying, and one had babies that have hatched within the last couple days (since we saw just eggs in that nest on Tuesday).  It is fun watching the adult birds skim the water.