Soccer, Rocks, and A Baptism

Katie's first soccer game of the season was this morning.  They played hard but lost 3-4.  Later in the the day we went to the annual rock , mineral, and fossil show in Peoria.  It was all right, but I have found that the rock show does not change drastically from year to year (the shows do vary across the country, however), and we kept our expenditures under control :*).   Still later in the day, after evening Mass, we attended a baptism and associated party for the newest member of the Bland family. Karen and I are now Nathaniel's godparents.

School Begins, 20th Anniversary, and a Birthday

Karen, Kris, and Katie all started school on Monday with a half day.  Things went pretty well, so initial jitters seem to be calming down, now we are just pretty busy.  My classes start next week, so I am still busy with prep work.  On Wednesday was Karen's and my 20th anniversary.  It's both hard to believe it was so long ago, but at the same time it does seem like it was another lifetime.  It blows my mind to think that I am now the same age now as my parents were when I got married.  Karen and I had a nice dinner (also celebrated my birthday), and then later at home we watched the wedding video.  It was more interesting to see all the friends and family faces from 20 years ago than my own.  Kristine was quite amused at my attempts at hip-hop dancing from back then.

End of Summer, 2013

Katie has been going to soccer practice - her games start next weekend. On Tuesday Kris had friends over for a campfire and to burn the remnants of the wooden bridge they competed with last spring.  Both Kris and Katie start school on Monday; some schools started up this past week. On Thursday and Friday, Karen attended meetings at the school she will be student teaching at starting Monday.  This past weekend, the Bland girls stayed over and picked apples from our tree (made a yummy apple pie), went fossil (and toad) collecting, had water wars, and hung around in our maple tree.  They and the Bosmas and we had a campfire on Saturday night.  The leaves are starting to fall a bit.

Changes in the Community Solar System

With the Lakeview Museum changing to the Riverfront Museum, the position of the "sun" for the Community Solar System had to be changed, and with it, most of the major features of the world's largest complete scale model of the solar system. The model also got bigger - the Earth is now 5" instead of 4" in diameter. Yesterday, the Jupiter model was taken down in Olin Hall, because it is now out of scale and out of alignment, see: http://www.bradley.edu/about/news/article.dot?id=707b0dc1-9ec7-42ee-bb9b-92e0ab49ce08.  I'm a bit sad about that because I used to show that model to campus visitors. Today, Katie and I visited the inner planet models of the solar system, now conveniently located in about a 1.5 mile stretch of riverfront pathway.

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

Friday, after my research students presented at an end-of-the-summer research symposium, my family and I traveled to Valparaiso, IN. Along the way, we traveled near the town of Aroma Park, IL.  A history of its name is posted at http://www.firstnerve.com/2009/09/whats-in-name.html.  On Saturday, we drove a little further up to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.  One of my main motivations was that I like for the girls to do Junior Ranger stuff with the National Park system.  Our travel budget was limited this year, so I took to the web to find a location close by. (Kris has already done Lincoln's home.)  This place was not only close, but it also let kids up to age 15 do the program.  One aspect of the Junior Ranger program is that it usually pushes the people filling out the booklet to explore quite a few areas of the park.  In addition to the badges, the park also gave out patches to those who participated in smaller programs. We attended a wildland firefighter presentation where the girls had a chance to dress up and pump water on a "fire".  The little package that the fireman is holding in the first picture is an emergency fire shelter - thankfully nobody has had to use one in the confines of the park. Then we walked on a trail over some same dunes to learn about ecological succession - the sand was hot by late morning and I'm not convinced that Kris's strategy of running on the sand was entirely successful.  From the dunes and the nearby beach we could barely see some of the tall buildings of the Chicago skyline over 28 miles away (best seen on the horizon on the picture with the lifeguard station). We could also see some steel mills, which were much closer. After lunch, we went to one of the beaches and played around for a while. I did not get to Mount Rushmore like I really wanted to do this summer, but at least I got to a place that had four sculpted faces in an area protected by the National Park Service! The girls and I also found a beautiful mermaid on the beach. After that, we visited a couple of historic homestead areas.  The girls were "sworn-in" as Junior Rangers after 5 pm, and though we would have loved to stay another day or two, we headed back to Valparaiso to eat at a Red Robin and drive through Valparaiso University.  On the way back to Peoria from our marathon day I saw a couple of collapsed electrical towers in northwestern IN, here is a link to an article about that:  http://posttrib.suntimes.com/news/porter/20715574-418/portion-on-indiana-2-will-remain-closed-for-three-days-due-to-storm-damage.html Today was less eventful, I got stung by  wasps a couple times from a couple nests while mowing the lawn - getting to be that time of year.  Kris had a get-together with friends tonight, and Karen went to help prepare her classroom for student teaching this fall.

Chiefs beat the T-Rats

The girls got tickets to a Chiefs game (and we got discount tickets) so we went to see them play (and beat) the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers last night. Today Kris set up her high school locker.

Trip to Eastern Wisconsin - Part 3

On Sunday after church we shot a family portrait, then some of us went fishing at a trout farm (easy fishing, but Katie caught bigger fish than I ever have).  Then we hiked up the Big Rock by my parents' house (I never picked blueberries and blackberries at the same time before) and then we went to play at the beach at Chute Pond.  After yet another yummy, filling meal at my parents' house we had a campfire and closed out the evening looking at the stars, satellites, and meteors from the dark of the northwoods.  On Monday we headed home, but stopped in Milwaukee to visit some friends who used to live in Peoria.