June Moonrise

Though the state of Illinois set a June rainfall record, Peoria fell just a little short of first place.  The Illinois River crested today (7th or 8th highest crest).  I had a meeting in Morton tonight, so I stopped by the riverfront on the way home to take pictures.  The weatherman says the haze in the sky is from smoke from wildfires in Canada. I assume that lent color to the moonrise.

Karen's Birthday Weekend

The Illinois River is still rising.  It is supposed to crest soon, but we have heard that before.  The state of Illinois has now set a record for the wettest recorded June.  On Friday night, we visited our friends new house in Springfield.  On Saturday, we all came to Peoria and watched the Peoria Chiefs play. We also saw fireworks and a concert by Jason Gray, making it a long but enjoyable day and night. Sunday was Karen's birthday, and her dad stopped by to visit on the way up from a class reunion in Nashville.

Father's Day and Summer Solstice at Matthiessen State Park

The Illinois River is still rising.  I have been chopping away at one of the wood piles produced by cutting down the walnut tree in our backyard last fall and I am thankful to report that the wood in the pile has been split and/or redistributed to other piles. Yesterday, we retrieved Kris from choral camp at Eureka College - she enjoyed it and her concert went well. Today, the family went to Matthiessen State Park, one of my very favorite places in Illinois.  The recent rains, including last night's thunderstorms, have closed the trails along much of the bottom of the dells, and it looks like the Vermillion River has flooded into the lower dells.  However, we found a safe trail area and got to visit some of the many waterfalls in the park.  I am glad my family went in and mucked around and enjoyed the beauty with me. I really like the last picture in this series.

Ride by the River

With all of the rain lately, the Illinois River is starting to flood.  It is predicted to crest on Saturday at 25.5 feet, which will put in in the top 20 historic crests of the river here.  With the Steamboat Festival running Thursday through Saturday, the city is taking measures to contain the flooding.  Tonight, Katie and I biked around by the riverfront to look at the preparations, which include a sort of wall of sand in canvas with a triangular cross-section..  We also saw lots of fireflies along the walking and biking trail in the grassier areas away from the downtown.

Katie's Birthday Party

The stormy weather continues this week - including last Sunday, we have had over 6 inches of rain in our gauge at  our house.  Thankfully, no damage at our location so far, but we have seen tree branches down in the area and the local creeks get swollen.  Today Katie had her birthday party at Jump Start Gymnastics and had fun.  One of the presents Katie got last week was a badminton set, which gave me a challenge on a serve a couple days ago.

Bluegill Fishing and Strawberry Jam

This weekend was free fishing weekend in Illinois, so Friday evening I took Katie to Jubilee College State Park to fish for bluegill in a pond there. It is a nice little pond just teeming with life, including some loud frogs. She did a pretty good job casting and caught and released two bluegill.  On Saturday evening, Kris, Katie, and returned to the pond.  This time Katie caught three bluegills and Kris caught four.  All but one of the fish were returned; the littlest we brought home to put in our rain barrel to eat mosquito wrigglers.  It was still in there today, despite a few inches of stormy rains throughout today that seems to have washed tall the wrigglers out of the rain barrel!  Another major event this weekend was making strawberry.  Our home strawberry crop peaked last week, and I think that raccoons helped deplete them.  Yesterday, the family went to Schaer's Farm on the other side of the river to pick about 14 pounds of strawberries.  Today we made them into about 8 pints of low-sugar jam and about 10 pints of regular jam.

May Interim Ends

Whew, I guess the last few weeks have been busy:
- School ended at St. Mark's for Karen
- School ended at Peoria Christian for Kris and Katie
- I had a three-week May Interim class and summer research
- BIG NEWS:  My sister got married (congrats Tina and Chris!) in Chicago.  Katie was a flower girl and Kris sang and my brother officiated  - all did well.
- Kris and Katie stayed with my parents for a week in Wisconsin.
- Katie had a soccer camp.
- Kris started a summer job at a local restaurant.

Lots of pictures to share, so maybe I will just show a few wedding-related pictures for now.