Scenic Walks

The other day, I played around on Picknik.com and the end result was changing my desktop image to this photo from my past...


True, I did a bit of tweaking and I sort of 'Kinkade-ed' it up a bit I think, but the effect is far closer to the memory than the original image.

If I remember correctly, my wife gets credit for taking this one - though she wasn't yet my wife at the time. We were on what was likely one of the most ill-planned adventure weekends that this Eagle Scout had ever partaken in. ...and it was one of the best hikes of my life!

We'd gone to the Lake District in England while studying abroad. The whole class of 18 college kids and our American professor had gone the first time, but at least three of us (Meghan, myself, and another friend) had absolutely fallen in love with the region. So the three of us went back for a weekend.
There was no pre-arranging. No calling ahead. Just a train ticket and a list of hostels, and our previous time in the area - which amounted to about 48 hours of expertise.
Needless to say, it was an adventure in most of the safer senses of the word.

But I wanted to talk about walking.

Here's the thing that relates to the picture for today;
There are trails that go EVERYWHERE in the world. You can walk to the store, go to a hidden lake or find a mountain and traipse up a goat-path until you can't go any higher. Your intentions - planned or otherwise - can get you wherever you like.

But if you don't stop and look at what you're walking on, what you're walking next to, or what spectacles of natural beauty are off in the distance, you'll overlook vast sums of God's creation - which was, after all, made for you.

So I'll re-live my favorite hike for the lunch hour here.

But lets plan on going past some good things together sometime soon, okay?

...and take some pictures, so you can give God the credit.

Dinosaurs!

We have a family membership at the Cleveland Zoo. Its great!

So this last Friday we packed everyone up for our first* full-family zoo adventure of the season, and we found THIS!!!

*We've actually been to the Toledo Zoo already this year, but the hometown zoo counts for the real 'first'.

Meghan's comment after viewing the above 'movie' was simply;

"I can't believe you spent all this time on that."

Thanks dear.

As we walked through the Dinosaur section of the zoo, I realized two things:

1) That I really liked dinosaurs as a kid, and I still kinda do.

2) That I had absolutely no interest in reading the signs.

I'll probably read those signs on a later visit this summer, but for now I just wanted to appreciate the beauty of the natural/animatronic world.

The signs just confuse things anyhow. Palentologists have changed all the dinosaur names two or three times since I was a kid... and I think they had something to do with downgrading Pluto from its planet status as well. I figure it's all about the marketing.

Those signs also force the whole issue of the age of the earth. Its tough to read to your kid that, "The Laziguanasaurus lived in what is now Chile about 1.5 jillion years ago" ...and then explain that the sign, though likely accurate on many points (like the part about Chile), isn't quite in the 'hard facts' category when it comes to the timeline. You're supposed to be able to trust those signs... but that's what a Christian deals with when dipping the toes into the scientific world.

Speaking of trust... Here's a serious 'Jurassic Park' moment for you:

"But I don't understand, Mr. Hammond said that the park was perfectly safe..."

We heard this poor child say something about "being a dentist for the dinosaur"

...our sympathies to those who knew him.

This guy was in the entirely wrong section of the zoo. Not even close to the other dinosaurs.

So appaling! They treat him as if he weren't even real!

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Have YOU been a Dad today?

There's this series of advertisements that have have been popping up on a few other blogs that I look in on (no ads here, you'll note - I'm totally not worth their time)

"Have YOU been a Dad today?"

How do they know that I'm a Dad?
What if I wasn't a Dad?
Does my answer affect my final grade?

the confusion, the worry, the applicability

Things have been going pretty well in the Dad department here, and it makes me hope that such things continue. However, being able to take some days off while Ellie comes into her own here has helped the process considerably.
I went back for a half day's work today and of course I had pictures and stories and plenty of people who were interested in hearing and looking. It was easy being a Dad... even at work.

But it got me thinking about Biblical parenting, etc.

The first thought was the fourth commandment (or fifth, depending on your numeration):

Honor Your Father and Mother...

Then I thought of Abraham and Issac on the mountain:

"Father? The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son."

The thing about that we forget about parenting is that its not for us, its not for the kids, its for God!

Certainly it matters how the kids turn out, and we get benefits and joys from parenting, but the final goal in all these things is to give glory to our creator...

...I'm gonna keep working on that, 'cause there's always room for improvement!

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The odd expectation of (hopefully) inevitable things

We're going to the hospital in a few minutes.

(No, no, its fine. I'm eating breakfast while she's getting ready. We're all set.)

This whole thing of being induced into labor is not new to us, our son was the same way three years ago - my wife just has a very comfortable womb, apparently.
In fact, a 'normal' labor is what would seem strange to us... and that fact is strange to me.

While its true that I'll probably be able to provide you with a written count of how many times I need to sit down today because I get a mite bit queasy - written because it might be more than I can show you on my hands - this 'gift of modern medicine' thing is once again going to downright amaze me, I'm sure.

Its pretty great that our labor preparations no longer involve me looking around on the ground to find a nice smooth stick for her to bite down on... though I imagine that, as a husband, that is one task that I could very well excel at.

Seriously, take a consideration at how many ways science has blessed us - and when I say 'science' I mean God allowing us to figure out bits of His creation. Its great.

And I've got a camera on my beltloop to take pictures of it all!
(well, the stuff that its okay to take pictures of... this isn't THAT kind of blog)

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