Father's and Son's

Wyoming, the Cowboy State

Not too long ago we bought an atlas of the United States for our boys. As we were going over the western states portion of the atlas we realized our boys had not been to Wyoming. What you say? How could that be? It is so close! So we packed up the car for an adventure.

We didn't get a picture of the Welcome to Wyoming sign, but Evanston is only 4 miles away.

You can see the excitement in their eyes.

Here are the boys with a mounted bear in the grocery/hunting supplies store. They think of the greatest combinations in Wyoming, there was also a liquor store, but you had to go outside to access it. There were probably in excess of 100 trophies on the walls of this hunting store.

This is the river walk, we didn't see the river, but we saw some tracks, lets see where the lead us.

A metal bear with a fish!

We didn't see the river because it was cold and windy. As you can see I had no jacket and the younger boy wanted to be carried (no surprise there), so not trek to the river.

The worst part of this whole experience is that I didn't even get any fireworks. What was I thinking, I saw at least four different places I could have bought them, maybe next time.

Christmas Fun... What?

So my sister didn't want more junk to shove into her 300 square foot apartment so she was given activities this year. A while back she and I took Miles to the symphony and then we made rings from silver coins. Hers was made from a quarter, I made mine from a half dollar.

Here we are pounding the coins to flatten the edges, this was a rather tedious step and later I found out our neighbor thought her washing machine was broken because of the noise.

Here I am using the drum sander on my dremel to open up the middle of the ring.

It is pretty cool that the writing is still legible, here's the quarter.

I finished mine later, you can see that it still says half dollar.

Liberty

Some photos of my weekend in SoCal

This is what I saw Saturday morning.

Bob the Builder with me and my boys.
E taking the Lego Volvo for a spin around the track.
M driving exactly along the line of track because that's the kind of boy he is.
Meeting a Lego family outside Legoland.
Cajun jambalaya pasta for dinner.
Learning how to hold the reigns to drive a team of horses.
Trying to open the locked jail cell.
Three days of fun, what more could I ask for? maybe a week or more.

The Joy of Fatherhood

On Monday I was asked to make a Robin Hood/Peter Pan hat with some specific instructions. It was to be green and it needed a red feather. I don't know that I have ever made or seen a paper Robin Hood hat, but I think I made it successfully, or at least good enough for a 3 year old. He has been wearing it most of the time for a week now.

The results

Wearing it opening a Valentine

Wearing it eating Valentine M&Ms

Posing for a photo wearing it

Who knows what he's trying to do here

I think the hat has a couple days left before it's torn apart from all the use it has seen, but it's easy enough to make another.

Out with the old...

...and onto a new year that's hopefully happier and all together better than the old.

The hopes and fears of all the years a met in thee tonight.

At this hour of the morning when I usually prefer to be sleeping soundly I came across a blog post that was comforting to me as my first Christmas with a significant loss is about to begin. The other day I was very sad at the thought of having lost Nolan and that Christmas just wasn't going to be all that good this year. I started thinking of Christmas a the celebration of Christ's birth and what Christ did for us. It was relieving. I can't say that this christmas will be what I thought it would be 3 months ago, but I have a new view of what it will hold for me this year.

Merry Christmas

Take a moment to think of the significant role Christ has had in your life.