Wheaton Cardboard Regatta, July 4

It's so much fun to see this race every year.  The boats are made out of cardboard and a lot of duct tape.  The Gennette's are going to have to enter one of these years.....

Gotta love the Roadrunner!

Always ready with a sharpened pencil....

 The German U-33 Sub beating the gators

 The Narwhals

 The fate of the gators

 A crew of Harley brothers.  Crafted like a pro!

Celebrating Freedom with the Fam

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Finale

 

After all this time......

I remember picking up the first Harry Potter book

 in the summer of 1999 

and loving it so much 

that I immediately read the next one.

The rest is history.

I started having everyone around me read them after that.

Then the movies......

Like Star Wars, I grew up with this. 

And just when you think it couldn't get any better

Jim Dale recorded the audio books.

His reading makes listening a true delight.

He gives life to words and heart to characters.

Yes, I've listened more than once.

They're that good!

I miss sharing these with my Dad so much.

We had such a ball reading the stories and going to see the movies together.

It's a memory I'll treasure.

Dad loved the battle between good and evil

and he instilled his love of literature in me.

For 13 years we've grown to love this story, 

the Hogwart's world

and

the truth that Love does Conquer All!

I'm sad to see it end,

Thrilled to have been a part of the phenomenon,

and I think J.K.Rowling is bloody brilliant!

3 Cheers!!!

If you haven't read them yet, it's never too late to start, right Drew?!

U Go B4 Me

There is a song, called Signature of the Divine by Need to Breathe and tonight I just realized anew the beauty of the words I’ve been singing for months now.

“Great is Your Glory when You go before me.”

Isn’t that exactly what God promised to Moses as He guided the Israelites through the desert?  He would lead the way.  All they had to do was follow the Leader.  

Exodus 13:21-22

By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.

Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.

I wander, but He hasn’t.  I forget, but He is still there.  I get busy and yet, He remains waiting for me.  I stagnate.  He calls to me ready to get going and guide me again.  He gives exactly what I need by day or light by night.

“Take me, and pull me through.  Cause I can't move without you.”

Isn’t that the truth?  When I boil it down to the bottom-line, I really have no direction without him.  My desires aren’t all worth pursuing.

So, I’m submitting to His Leadership again.  I have to renew this commitment a lot.  Over and over I have to come to the place where I acknowledge who is Lord and my desire to follow the Leader.

Life on a Military Base

So, at the start of school this year I asked how many of my students had a parent deployed.  It turns out that that 15 of 24 had a parent in Afghanistan and they've been gone for a little over a year.  Over the past 2 weeks they have been arriving home, with the final troops coming home this week.  Needless to say, my kids are pretty excited.
We have some fences that are just covered with "Welcome Home" signs.  I thought I'd show you a few.

Zwiebelfest, Sept 19, 2010

Onion Fest!  This festival was right in the center of Bamberg in a secret location. There really wasn't a lot to it. Just a cute fest with music and one of our four local breweries: Mahrs Brau.

 What the pictures sort-of show you is that there is this

gigantic field right in the middle of downtown 

and you would never even know it's there!

 Here are some shots of the neighborhood

right outside of the entrance

 That's the entrance to the left

Korb (Basket) Fest in Lichtenfels, Sept 18, 2010

 We were some of the first there on a Saturday morning and we had a great time looking around in a charming town.

 Korb kaffebecher

(coffee mug)

 Caning

 We watched several artists at work that day.

 What German brats look like.  They're not fat.

They sort-of look like foot-long hot dogs.

You get 2 on a small, crusty roll with Dijon.

(this roll is a little larger than usual)

 And my personal fav:

The basket top hat.

 Purchase #1:

I know it's not a basket,

but we used to have
a really large macrame owl when I was little,
so I couldn't pass it up!

 Purchase #2

It was a wooden bottom which I really like