Maryland and Virginia

We are headed off to Maryland this weekend. Liesl's uncle passed away this week and we are going to the funeral and to visit with her family. I only met her Uncle Rick a few times. He was a good man. He was wounded in the Viet Nam war and had been in a wheelchair ever since. I really respect a man who gave so much for our country. Since we are going to be all the way out there, we decided to stop in Williamsburg for a day to see my dad and stepmom. It is going to be a lot of driving for the next few days, but it should be an adventure if nothing else. I've also decided to try to blog from my phone via text message on this trip. So the next few entries may be short and to the point, because I have a limited number of characters per text message. Please pray for us, as Liesl is already stressing about traveling, as she always does. Here we go!

Star Trek

I went to see Star Trek last weekend. I have seen every Star Trek Movie released and seen at least several episodes of all the TV series. Let me make this clear, though, I have never been to a Trekkie convention. Anyway, after seeing the trailers and TV spots for the new movie for several months now and looking forward to learning the background of some of the main original characters, I was very excited to see this movie. I am also a huge LOST television show fan, which is directed by the same guy as did this movie, JJ Abrams. So another plus for the movie. After seeing the movie, my impression is this: It was a really good movie, not great, but really good. There are a few reasons for this, but I think to explain might spoil it for some of you, so stop reading if you are going to see the movie. SPOILER ALERT! While this movie is kind of billed as a "prequel" after seeing it, I'm not really sure if it really was a prequel. I don't know how else to explain except to say that the concept of this movie is that Spock has gone back in time and he and some Romulans have changed some things in the past. So what I thought was "prequel info" may not be really true to the story of Star Trek. You don't really find that out, though, until most of the way through the movie, so building up, all this info about the main characters, Kirk, Spock, Bones, Sulu, Checkov, Uhura, Scotty, seems so interesting and relevant and I had totally bought in and was captured by the story. Then they go and throw a major twist that I'm not sure they really had to into the plot. It was already a really good movie, even if they didn't go there. And now I'm wondering if things that happened in the movie ever "really" did, in a fictional sense. I loved the interaction between Kirk and Spock. It was fascinating. The character development was excellent considering they had so many characters to cover. The special effects were flawless. So I was slightly disappointed , but probably only because I had built the movie up so high in my head. Also because I kind of thought there might be some really inspiring theme behind the plot, and there really wasn't anything. But I hope they can keep this group together and make another film.

Where the heck are you?

For those few that have wondered why I haven't posted anything in a while, well, I have no excuse. No real excuse anyway, but I'm going to attempt a cheap one. The past week or so we've had a few visitors to our humble (but slightly bigger) abode. Liesl's mother, Gail came last week during the week. And since the series is over, I'm really glad the Blackhawks won. Gail is from Canada and was rooting against (I don't know how to type with a Canadian accent, but you can hear the word "against", can't you?) the Blackhawks. Well, playoff hockey is another reason I haven't posted. Playoff hockey is almost as good as March Madness in my book. I only wish my beloved Predators were in the playoffs. Anyway, back to my poor excuses. Gail left and Liesl's sister, Audrey, and her two younger sons, Cameron and Jobe, came. Wow, that's 5 kids and 3 adults in our slightly bigger humble abode. it was a little crazy. We went to the Adventure Science Center here in Nashville on Sunday, and celebrated Mother's Day. Somehow in the chaos of getting out the door, I (really we) forgot the camera. Audrey and her kids leave today. Then we have Liesl's youngest Brother coming in another week. I don't want to hear any more of this, "I don't get any adult interaction" stuff out of you know who. Hopefully I can post some random pictures I have on the camera soon and maybe I'll have more grill stories. I seem to have grill story competition.

Bed frame craziness

Our friend Brad graciously gave us some bedroom furniture he needed to get out of his house after adding several people to his family all at once (thanks Brad!). It is nice furniture, it all matches, which is a totally new thing for us. It includes a long dresser, a short chest type thing, a desk with hutch, a night stand and a bed frame. Wow, a bed frame! It's a nice light wood, maybe maple or something, I'm not too sure. I'm obviously not a furniture aficionado. So the bed frame has a headboard, a foot board and wooden side-rails. The side rails fit in different slots depending on if the frame is for a full or a queen sizes mattress. While it was in Brad's house, it held a full sized mattress. So we finally get the time to set it up. I take off our queen sized mattress and box springs, take apart the old metal bed frame that came with the mattress, and bring in all the pieces to the new bed frame. I lay them out on the floor, and start putting them together. Everything so far is going well, it's a pretty easy job, the side-rails fit into the slots on the head and foot boards. Great. Now time to get the box spring and mattress. I get Liesl and we lift the box spring up over the frame and gently place it into the frame... oh, wait it's a really tight fit. OK, I guess we need to drop it straight down instead of angling it in. Huh?? it doesn't seem to fit. What's going on? Out comes the box spring, and I measure. Nobody ever told me that a full sized mattress is shorter than a queen! The side-rails were made for the full, the head and foot boards can be used for either. Now I'm faced with using the old frame with just the head and foot boards. The old frame has no spot for a foot board, so that's out now too. So I focus on the headboard. There are screws included to fasten the headboard to a metal frame. Great. I'll just do that. I pull out the screws, remove the foot board, and the side rails, re-assemble the metal frame that came with the mattress originally and get to work on the headboard. The screws, however, also seem to be made for a full. The place where they go through the headboard is thicker at the queen setting, because they are going through the posts. Foiled again. I go to Home Depot (they should know me by first name now) and I look for screws. Would you believe that they did not have really what I needed? Because the screw head goes right where the mattress sits, the screw head needs to be flat (I guess it's more of a bolt than a screw)So I get some weird, I forget what they call them screws (bolts) and nuts. Not really sure if this is going to work. Then I think maybe I can find some queen sized side rails at a mattress store. I go to some discount mattress store and find some plain metal ones. not the nice wooden ones. But I'm still not sure that's what I want and this mattress store is going out of business so all sales are final. I'm not dropping $60 on something I'm not sure will work. So I go home, mope around because, once again, a project that should have taken an hour has now taken way longer. I discuss this with Liesl and we decide to go for the metal rails. I measure and make sure I know how long the rails should be, I go back to the store and measure them in the store. Bring them home start assembling the head and foot boards to the rails. I hook 3 sides on and the fourth just doesn't want to go in right. The hook has to fit into a slot on the foot board and it is slightly bent outward. so it doesn't quite go in the slot. these things are hardened steel so there's no bending either. Finally, with Liesl and I pushing as hard as we can, it wedges into the slot. and hooks onto to foot board. At last. A bed. A real bed, Liesl is very excited. I'm exhausted. We put the box spring and mattress on. Finished. Forgot the dust ruffle, take off the mattress....ughhhhhhh

It's done, I'm done

The playroom/guestroom is finally done! This weekend I finally tackled the last of the pieces (the ones I could actually do instead of our friend Chris). I swapped out several electrical outlets that were that "tan" color in favor of white ones. I also got white outlet covers, and a new garage door button. The big project was the window unit air conditioner. I brought it home and started immediately thinking that this was going to be one of those projects that should take 30 minutes but will turn into one that takes 4 hours. Apparently my windows were not made for window unit AC's. So with lots of weird screw placements, white electrical tape and loads of weather stripping, with several trips to Home Depot, it is finally installed. As you can see from the pictures, we have no decorations on the wall. But after spending all that time and effort on that AC unit, I am done.

Play Room Almost Done

If it weren't for my procrastination, we'd be starting the decorating process in the play/guest room. It is now painted, carpeted and has furniture in it. But I have yet to change out the few outlets that are the old tan color for the white ones we bought. The kids are loving having another room to go into while they are running around the house. Before we put furniture in there, it was also used as a handball/soccer room. Keeley loves the soft carpet. She doesn't much like to be held by her big brother...

Easter Extended

The Easter story is a great one with Jesus rising from the dead to redeem his people. But sometimes it is hard for me to really grasp the beauty and perfection of it all. I think that God tells me that same story in other ways to point me back to Jesus.

First, Bryce and Rece are in a home school tutorial, where they get together for a few hours each week and get taught some stuff with other kids that are home schooled. They had a science project of bringing home a caterpillar and watching it make it's cocoon and then become a butterfly. It has been kind of a long process, but they both yielded beautiful butterflies this past week.

They boys were so excited. We released them both to the wild but had to get a picture first. We also grilled for the first time this year. I know, you're probably thinking how does that tie into Easter? It reminds me that spring is here after being cold and rainy, there is life again all around. We enjoyed several different kinds of food, this is only about 1/3 of it.

We had our friends, Brad and Rachel over with their girls. Another picture of redemption for us, as their marriage is one of two tragic stories coming together to make something new and full of life again. We also had all the kids enjoy a little wrestling match against me, it's amazing to me that I can be a dad and someone that is fun and has a little bit of a child-like heart. Yes, that's me on the bottom.