Quick Question

What's memorable about July 4th, 1976 (other than it being the bicentennial)?

Clever Clue of the Month

Yes, your vote counts here. We've never had a problem with hanging chads. Vote now. Check back Monday evening to see the winner.

Pecking order? ..............................KISSME
Abbr. with a ring to it? ....................MRS
Brief, for short: Abbr. .....................SYN
Garfield's head? ............................LITTERBOX
Board of inquiry? ...........................OUIJA
Injection into the vain? ....................BOTOX

Are any of these confusing you? Explanations here.

PAUL Happy Birthday!!

We all want to say Happy Birthday to Paul today. Is this the BIG 50? The iris is in memory of the fortys while you can still remember them.

Chuch Noblock

We've been going through some boxes of Peter's old stuff, sorting for things we want to keep. Here's an entry from a journal he kept when he had just turned eight. I wasn't much into sports at the time and he had just discovered the joys of baseball the summer before. For that particular day it's the only thing he wrote.

I believe these days the "comed down" would be spelled "calmed down". By the way Peter is seriously thinking about changing majors and schools from Statistics at Winona to Surveying at St. Cloud. Anybody know any surveyors who might have words of wisdom?

I know I haven't been posting much lately but I think maybe I'll get more down soon: for example, finish the Yukon trip and get back to work on the Stynsberg slide scans.

Anacortes to Alaska

Here we are sitting in John and Heidi's stairway. Hidalgo the dog just licked my bald head to say goodbye.

We arrived home in time to have Ralph and Jean come by for a few days of visiting.
We're down on the beach at 9pm looking for heart shaped rocks. It has been a long day and Ralph cannot find the camera.

Bloomin' Roses in Roseau

Faith & I celebrated our silver anniversary the last few days. The kids threw a surprise party for us at the church on Saturday.

Faith and I then headed to Winnipeg - where we spent the first night of our honeymoon 25 years ago. We stayed at the Hotel Fort Garry (with the 'best breakfast in Winnipeg'), enjoyed a play at the Celebrations Dinner Theatre, saw the IMAX thriller: Wild Safari 3D, enjoyed The Forks, Assiniboine Park, and ate at Mongo's.

When we returned home we noticed the roses are already blooming!

grandmajean

Ralph and I have an opportunity to go up to Alaska with our friends, Tim and Chris Johnson, June 8th-16th. Chris grew up in Waterloo and Travaille's were their family friends as well as Pastor and wife. The Johnson's invited us to go with them on Saturday evening, then during the night, their son in law had to have emergency hernia surgery. He has an unusual condition that effects the elasticity of his skin. When he is opened up his organs are kind of in a jumble. Anyway, Ben, cannot work on his own home while we are up there so Ralph and I will be doing some physical labor to help them out.
Mark and Lois Ann are returning from Washington on the 11th when we will be there. We hope to make arrangements to visit Mark and Lois, too. We can only afford this trip on such short notice because Tim works for NWAirlines and we can fly standby with them and Tim is so appreciative to have help that he is also helping us out.
I'll will try to get my name and password information cleared up at a later time. Thanks, Dan.

Ericka and Joe

Wow!!! How does one respond to such news? Here are some tentative thoughts I've had.

1. The round robin probably isn't the place. It isn't the place because it's open to viewing by anybody. It isn't the place because this tragedy requires more personal contact - phone calls, letters, e-mails.

2. If this isn't the place and life goes on, I would propose we continue to use this space to chronicle the everyday things we have been doing and thinking. The thing I hope and pray for is that Ericka and Joe will be able to come to the place where they can see that life goes on even after something like this. The Bible provides hope here in that it chronicles the lives of all sorts of people who made humongous blunders and still went on to be heroes of the faith. (e.g. David and Peter)

3. When I think about how we can help them, there is, of course, communicating our love and forgiveness and support in any way we can. But one huge thing that comes specifically to mind is money! Joe is out of a job. There are huge legal fees. Their home is newly bought and probably has no equity. The point being. . .if anybody has any idea how they could get some help in the form of a gift or a loan at convenient terms. . .check it out.

I Love the Macro Setting

Remember when you would take a picture and wait a couple months to see if it looked good? I took this picture a few minutes ago. I took about half a dozen shots - this is the only one that turned out. (It was windy.) We should have roses in a week or two...

Speaking of emergent/emerging church - Moody radio had a good program on the subject recently.

Clever Clue of the Month

I always appreciate your input here – even if it's often different from what I would've chosen (which it often is). Vote on what you think is the best one today. Check the Clever Clue page on Saturday to see the winner.

You may get it to go ........................BRAN
Last word before someone is shot? ...........CHEESE
Flush formation? ............................EDDY
Digital tool ................................NAILFILE
One trying to stay up when going down .......SKIER
Development sites? ..........................UTERI