Some Activities

Pix of Kristine in a concert and play rehearsal, and Katie's bridging ceremony from Brownie to Junior Girl Scout.  Karen did a similar bridging 35 years ago. We are past peak color, but there are colorful leaves on the trees.  We got some much-needed rain, but now it is warm and sunny again.  I moved a bunch of hostas and rocks around in the yard this afternoon.

Fall Foliage - Part 2

Last weekend, my parents visited for Grandparents Day at Katie's school.  Yesterday, our friends the Blands stopped by to visit.  In between, we have all been busy at our respective schools.  Katie and Kris have also been busy with the high school play, and Kris has still been doing a lot of singing (and getting accolades for it).  The weather has been mostly warm and dry, but we have had occasional cold snaps (even with frost) and relatively rare rain.  The leaves in the area seem to at or just beyond peak, producing many photo opportunities.  Today Kristine and I took a hike in the woods at Lauterbach Park to look at the leaves.  We found a few fossils and a bottle that appears to be from 1946.

Fall Foliage

Bradley's Fall Break is wrapping up.  Activities this weekend included clutter control in spots around the house, attending a student's wedding,and working on a science fair project with Katie.  Today I stopped by the Terraqueous Garden in East Peoria for a little while. The trees are starting to turn colors and drop leaves.

Tina's Baby Shower

This past weekend we made a very quick trip up to Green Bay for a baby shower for my sister.  Fun was had.

Nearby fire

Yesterday afternoon, a house about a half mile to the east of our house burned spectacularly.  From our house we could hear sirens and explosions and see and smell smoke.  Bits of burnt cardboard landed in our yard and at one point I could see bits of paper tumbling in the sky like confetti.  We had to travel to town not long after this all started and we wound up driving within a half a block of  the house engulfed in flames - never seen a house burning that hard for real before.  Even three hours later the road was still blocked off.  We found out later that a woman died in the fire - an article describing this is posted on the Peoria Journal Star's website: http://www.pjstar.com/article/20150926/NEWS/150929462
I stopped by the house today, not surprisingly, there is not much left. While I was looking, a cousin of the woman who died stopped by and we talked a bit.  The woman who passed away was a widow who had lived much of her life close by to her house,  she had a child and grandchildren, and she loved doing crafts.  It is ironic that the bright red fire hydrant so very close to the house was useless because when the fire department tried to use it, a water main broke.  The news tonight says the woman apparently died of smoke inhalation.

PCS Homecoming 2015

Kristine and her friend Jared went to the PCS homecoming dinner tonight, and there were pictures in the gardens at Illinois Community College.  We took pictures of other family members, too.  Here are some of my favorites.  One very sad note:  the mother of one of Kristine's classmates passed away from cancer tonight.

"Fishing" Trip

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy for all of us, but today Katie and I made another foray into the woods in our neighborhood.  Our primary mission was to catch little minnows that I have been seeing in the streams to see how they will fare in our little fish tank.  Turns out they were pretty hard to catch!  We caught a couple of six-inch long fishes (released), a frog (released), a tiny minnow, and a tiny crayfish.  We made it to the little waterfall that I think is so neat.  We also found some sizeable plant fossils in the creek bed.  Note the carbonized log pieces extending from Katie's feet in the picture.