Arcadia Valley

 

    We drove south today to visit Taum Sauk Park and to hike a trail that led to the highest point in Missouri.

    The foliage was absolutely gorgeous along the windy two lane roads we drove as we got lost tried to find the park.  We drove to lookout tower first and got an amazing view of Missouri’s wooded rolling hills.  Then we took a short hike to the highest point in Missouri which is 1,772 feet above sea level.  We then had a picnic in a lookout area where we could see hills up to 15 miles away. 

    This area used to be a large mining operation-some of these hills were known to be nearly 100% iron ore and folks from the St. Louis area would take the train to “the valley” for a nice break from the city.  Scientists from all over the world would also come here to visit to see the mining operations.

Fox

   Benjamin found this fox in our backyard-which in its self is a rarity, so to catch it on film was very exciting.

Yes, More Dancing Videos!

  We got to the dance a little late yesterday, so I don’t have all of the dances on video, however I did bring two camcorders to see if having more than one shot would turn out or not.  With two different angles I was able to cut around some mistakes, add some camera movement and show off the particular highlights of each dance.
    Let me know your thoughts about these new videos or and if you found the cutting back and forth between shots distracting
Juice of Barley
     This was my family’s first time doing this dance and it ended up being a pretty fast moving dance that kept you on your toes (or if you want to be technical the balls of your feet.)  There is only just enough time to do the moves and no more, so you have to think ahead about your next move.  Speaking of ahead….you’ve got to love how on-beat we all are when we clap!  I’ll have to count out the beats next time to make sure that I clap at the right time.



Hull’s Victory
       This is now officially one of-if not my most-favorite dance IF you are a #1 couple.  The moves are fairly unique to this dance (I mean of the dances in my limited repertoire) and it’s very fast moving with no time for a break.  Very, very unfortunately I was not a #1 couple so I almost fell asleep this dance, but it was fun to watch others do it.

Virginia Reel
      Jeremy did mess up one time when he skipped the do-se-do, so a few of the groups are one step ahead of the others.

Computer Back Up!

It's been down for a few days and it feels great to have it running again. I'm looking forward to posting a few new things on this blog.

Courageous

    We’ve watched the newest Sherwood Pictures film, Courageous, in theatres a couple of times since it came out last Friday.  It’s a fantastic movie about how important fatherhood is to a child’s future.
     They did a fantastic job of showing how the root of much criminal activity is fatherlessness, but they take it a step farther and illustrate how a Christian father takes the wheel and guides his family.   They covered so many topics like dating, unemployment, death and the grieving process, forgiving your failed father, integrity in the workplace, drugs and crime, friendship, divorce, etc.
     There were also a lot of laughs in this films-even more laughs than their past films and there are also some times when it’s great to have tissues nearby.
      I think that this movie was absolutely fantastic, but it also has a significance to me when I look at what I’ve experienced in the last few years.   While my Dad was out of work for months on end we really had to trust God for provision that was shown in the film when their house is on the line.  In the film one of the main characters experiences the tragic death of a family member and how he struggles with regrets and lost visions of the future.  Maybe to those who haven’t experienced much death the grieving may have seemed a bit odd, but this is the process that we had to go through when our Dad died last fall.  Forgiving a failed father was also a key lesson to not use fatherlessness as a crutch for mediocrity.
  Anyways, it’s a great movie and I highly recommend seeing this film as soon as you can!

Can Anyone Say, “Time for a Haircut?”

   I also need to get my glasses bent back into shape after last week’s football.

Back Bathroom Flooring

    These photos were taken just a couple of hours after the grout was placed so it dried out lighter than this and we’ve been able to clean up the excess grout.

Mike Riddle

This evening we listened to a few lectures given by Mike Riddle from Answers in Genesis.  His talks were about apologetics and about addressing the most common challenges to the infallibility of God’s Word and to a literal 6 day Creation week.  Mike Riddle has always been one of our favorite AiG speakers and he’s a lot of fun to listen to.
   My brothers and I learned some new things about the Carbon 14 dating and how the evidence does not support the evolutionary theory, but actually dates the world to be less than 30,000 years old.
    He also spoke about the gap theory and how Christians are willing to compromise their faith to squeeze their evolutionary ideas into the Bible.  However, good Bible hermeneutics cannot allow for a “gap” of time between Gen. 1:1 and Gen. 1:2.

¹In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
²And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Among other things we learned that the word “and” in verse 2 is “waw” in the Hebrew and is used to link immediate sequences of events.