Northern vacation part 1

Taking advantage of my massive vacation allotment, we just took a 2 week vacation. The first week was a near re-creation of our 2003 bike tour of MI, except that this time we had a baby with us and drove the entire route. On the bike tour, our relatives were amazed that we could ride our bikes so far and pampered us. For this trip, Clara received most of the doting.

The first stop was Athens, MI, where we visited Great-grandpa and Aunt Kevin and Uncle Terry. Clara swam in a pool for the first time in Uncle Terry's pool. She even dipped her face in the water a couple times. The big outing was a trip to Turkeyville for a turkey (no kidding!) lunch and mini-concert by a band playing Johnny Cash songs.

Then we moved on to Jackson (birthplace of the Republican party!) to see cousins Beth and Brent and Amy and Aunt Jan. Clara enjoyed playing with Josh and Alli's plethora of toys. I enjoyed Wii sword fighting with Alli, though she more often got the better of me.

Jill's childhood friends put on a shower for Clara. She loved the chocolate ice cream cake.
We took a day trip from Jackson to Bowling Green, OH, to see Todd and Leigh. Clara enjoyed playing with their son Jack, who is 3 months older than her, and his toys.
Penultimate stop was Evart to see more Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and great-grandma. We watched the cows, birds at the feeder, and the Tigers beat the Twins on tv. If you're wanting to become a Christian but are afraid of losing too much of your Sunday at church, consider joining the Free Methodist church in Evart. The service was 45 minutes, including a nice performance by some dulcimer players in town for the festival.
Finally, we headed down to Zeeland. Here we are at the top of Mt. Pisgah, a 200+ stair-step hike, that overlooks the big lake and Lake Macatawa (fun fact: the property taxes for some houses along Lake Mac are $40k per year).
We took a few short bike rides, once pulling Clara in the chariot and a couple times without her when she was napping (fun note: we didn't leave her home alone). Favorite place was Evart with nice rolling hills, ponds and a river, and dirt roads. I'd love to explore that area more.

bug picking

Last fall, David and Heather told us that some bugs were attacking the spruce tree in our yard. I thought little of it. A month later I got around to picking pine-cone shaped objects off the tree, but no bugs were seen.

This week, I noted that the spruce budworms were back. Wanting to get on the spruce tree's good side, I picked a few hundred and threw them on the ground. The next day, the other David told me that the bug/pods can crawl back to the tree from the ground. Rats! I broiled the next round on the grill, but then settled on drowning them in soapy water. After 5 days of picking, they are harder to find on the tree, but they aren't gone. I probably picked 1000 off the tree.

The worms live inside those mini-cones. Like turtles, they hide inside when startled. Unlike turtles, they are creepy and gross.

On the other end of the cute-ugly spectrum is the happy baby of the house. She's climbing up onto everything she can.
Thankfully, since we haven't locked the cabinets yet, she has only opened one drawer so far. That would be the drawer with q-tips in bulk that can happily be dumped on the floor.
Sunday afternoon church picnics took place all month. Clara did her best to entertain the brethren.
Finally, in competitive sports news, our softball team is playing mediocre ball. We, including me, could hit in a more timely and frequent manner, but our defense is good. As for bike racing, I skipped the 2 races I did last year. One would think that with a nearly perfect angel child such as Clara, Jill and I would never feel worn down. Alas! My fitness went south, and I didn't want to spend the time and cash to race at a sub-optimal level. This Wed, I did join the team for a training ride and even got a shout out in Paul's blog. Thanks, Paul!

a case for small zoos

We took a road trip to nearby Bloomington (IL not the cool Breaking Away town in IN) to visit the zoo. While in Abq, we joined the local zoo so that we (more often, Jill) could visit the animals any time. The polar bears there are fantastically fun.

Given that Chicago has 2 zoos and that Bloomington is a large town not far from there, we didn't expect the zoo to be large. And it is not. But here's what's nice about a small zoo:

1. Not too much walking or time and you see everything

2. Small crowds

3. Interesting small exhibits (e.g., bugs, tiny white haired monkeys, goats that may be petted)

Of course to qualify as a zoo, there must be monkeys and big cats. Done and done in Btown.

There is a rain forest building with unshy birds. Several of us almost walked into this guy.

The leopard paces behind Jill and Clara.
Our favorite animal was the sun bear -- a large-dog-sized bear that enjoys digging and overturning objects in pursuit of food.

For lunch, Clara tried a pickle. Yum!
Check out the big tower near downtown. No elevator could be seen, so we're guessing that it's not an attraction a la Eiffel Tower.
Clara is now climbing objects to a standing position. So far, no major injuries have incurred other than some head knocks on the carpet. She also sometimes crawls on hands and knees, but when in a hurry, the army crawl works best.

noise

I can't remember if a previous post discussed our musical ambitions (yes, I'm that lazy). The skinny: we're trying to learn to play the piano (Jill) and guitar (Chad) so that Clara (a) grows up somewhat exposed to music and (b) can be the skilled member of our trio.

You might ask yourself how Jill makes time to practice while raising our relentless baby. This might shock you, but here's your reason:

Here's me strumming away on a smooth C chord. I am getting the hang of strumming and switching chords, but the F chord is my current nemesis. Our friend Jessie (more on her below) told us that a certain worship leader she knows rearranged songs to get rid of all F chords. So maybe I don't need to get it after all?
Sometimes Clara needs to sit with mommy at the piano and bang a few notes.
Spectacular thunderstorms have been passing through in late afternoons. The best part is that the temperature and humidity drop after they pass. It's barely evident in the photo below, but that rainbow was the best I've seen in the midwest. We could see the whole bow from our porch.
Somehow we didn't get the camera out this weekend to prove that Jessie came to visit us. She's on furlough from teaching at an international school in Kenya. She loves living there despite the lack of good cheese.

My short list of reasons I'm glad to not live there: no pizza, nobody rides bikes (shocked by that!), armed guards required. Otherwise it sounds kind of fun.

9 months

Guess who turned 9 months old today. Give up?

Clara did! She visited Dr. Beck today and was declared a-okay. She's average height and 25 %ile in weight (just under 16 lbs). She speaks no words and has no teeth. Her latest trick is dragging toys with her on crawls around the house. She also grabs low hanging surfaces with hopes of climbing higher. So far she remains grounded, but we worry about future experiences with gravity.

Our church small group celebrated Christine's recent graduation. Congrats Dr.!
We also had the senior pastor join us to discuss our church's 'plans for growth'. I feel for church leaders that hope to implement big changes. Churches are hugely conservative (in the disliking change sense), and members tend to get upset if their opinions are rejected. We'll be praying.

Joel and Leyla along with their kids came over for dinner and wiffle ball in the backyard. We really need to play more wiffle this summer.
Excitement this weekend was tempered by setting up my latest reverse osmosis experiment and getting data. When our lab is rich, I'm going to buy automated sampling equipment

local hot spots

We hit the second of the 3 nicest, nearest vistas outside town this week -- Allerton Park. In the olden days, we rode our bikes there and back. We're still full of vigor, but we took the motorcar. There are some very nice gardens in the park, and 2 of them had weddings the day we visited. In fact, we walked right next to a bride and her father as they were about to march in. We shared no bits of wisdom from our nearly 10 years of marriage.

The high temps and swampy conditions couldn't dampen or melt this family's spirit.
We walked out to the sun singer and back through the swampland. I'm happy to report that papa has the sweetest blood for mosquitoes. Total bites at the end of the day: Chad (8), Jill (0), Clara (0).
Jill recently has been saying that she can read Clara's mind most of time. It usually goes thusly, 'what's that?' 'can I eat it?' I couldn't say what she was thinking when this photo was snapped.
For memorial day, we planned a bike ride to a restaurant in Tolono for lunch. This was a great plan -- we'd ride there in the dry, eat lunch during the storm, and then ride home dry.

The only problem is that Dead Horse and Lu and Denny's didn't sound or look so great, respectively (perhaps we are mistaken, but after looking us over a local suggested that Monical's (which appeared closed) was our only viable option). I recalled visiting a nicer restaurant many years ago, but now methinks it is actually in Philo. We'll investigate.

So we ate bunches of ho-hos from the IGA and watched the heaviest rain from their mulch department. We rode through some light rain to BWW in Savoy for a late, well-deserved lunch.

Clara had fun, and so did we.

big huge weekend

Our weekend was so big that it took 3 days to get everything done and 3 more to write it up. First, I took Friday off from work so that we could meet up with the rest of Jill's family in Indy. Since rain was in the forecast, we scrapped the original plan of going to the zoo and went to the Children's Museum.

We first visited the Bob the builder room, where kids could play with toys and climb on construction looking stuff. Across the hall was a Barbie exhibit. I thought, well, it's sort of fun but I don't see the big deal. But each following room got better and better. I highly recommend a visit.

Ricky and Enoch loved the hand operated backhoe and tanbark shoveling room.

A few exhibits were designed for babies, but Clara mostly played with the family.
Best exhibit: small river with weirs, channel control, crane, boats, locks, and dams. My second favorite: the actual train engine designed to push trains up a 5.9% hill. Hugely huge!
After playing for 5 hours, the gang was just starting to wear down.
The Tour de Champaign took over the streets of C-U this weekend. On Sat, I raced the cat 3-4 criterium race with a few teammates (2 had raced the earlier 4-5 race and 2 others were fresh). I assumed that most riders were cat 4 since there was another 3 race later. The pace felt very fast for the entire race, but I assumed that was due to my limited training. I yo-yo'd between 20th and 10th position throughout the race. Once I got stuck at the front of the peloton chasing a small break. After 5 seconds, I was cooked and decided to hide. As the laps counted down, I successfully moved up a bit and took 6th in the sprint.

Two days later I found out that I was the first cat 4 finisher. Proud!
Sunday's course was supposed to be a figure 8 but due to road construction the second block was converted to a straightaway and 180 turn, as photoed well by Jill below.Very early, I realized that the back of the group was a bad place to be. As the leading riders finished the turn, they sprinted back to speed. Meanwhile, riders near the back were still slowing down. Staying with the group required digging deep into our suitcases of courage. Every lap. 35 laps? It was hot (90 degrees at least).

Eventually, teammate Jason took off on a break and I stayed in second position in the group. No one tried to come around us to pull for about 10 laps. Poor guy in front. Jason won the race, and I came just short in the bunch sprint and got 4th overall. Proud.

Mercy, it's been hot this week.

Clara's latest achievement is going from crawling position to sitting. We're working on teaching her sign-language for 'more' and 'all done', but she prefers to cry or shove the spoon/bottle away from her mouth.