we arrived home safely and with no injuries, diseases, or vehicle difficulties. we did suffer the loss of our family camera. picked up another one on the way up to camp. smaller than the previous one, but not as small as i would've preferred. since the wife uses it most of the time, she got the most say in it.
the warrior children are still trying to readjust back to their former schedule/routine. it isn't as smooth a transition as we would like, but they will figure it out soon enough. one of my fond memories from this week was tuesday night. nicole and her sister were scrapbooking and i stayed with the kids. as the kids were winding down, landon was pretending to be a snake and he called me a tiger and auburn a lion. i told him that tigers were big cats and he asked what big snakes were. i told him that snakes are all snakes, but some snakes are big like anacondas and some snakes are small like garder snakes. he told me he was a small snake. i asked him if he was a garder snake. he said, "no, i'm a panda snake." i ended up telling him about the panda snakes at camp cobeac and how they hide from us and why we will never see a panda snake at camp cobeac. we never did. i love his imagination.
the next night the wife watched the children and allowed me to play age of empires with jconn. the wednesday night summer tradition lives on. took some jumping through hoops and climbing through windows (both microsoft and other varieties) to accomplish, but we finally were able to play.
i'm playing around with different photo album scripts. i think i found the one i'm going to use in the future. for a small demo with pics from family camp, point your browser
here. more albums will come soon.
while at camp i learned that my brother had a small stroke in his brain stem. as shocking as it is to hear of a 31 year old having a stroke, it is even more difficult to hear that it is your brother. . .the one who is partially paralyzed from a brain tumor that he experienced almost 20 years ago. the Lord keeps reminding me of the summer bible conference challenge a couple weeks ago. dr. paul downey reminded us that whatever happens it is never bad since God is always in charge and that He has promised that one day we will be glorified (which is a better promise than that things will always be "good" for us).
i sat in the balcony on sunday morning and was reminded that it is like the "minimum-security" portion of the auditorium. in that place, parental monitoring seems to be low and young ones are able to do whatever they please. i remember wanting to sit in the balcony. it always seemed like you could get away with more up there. . .especially if another kid was worse than you.
finalized travel arrangements for chief's wedding. almost down to the 2 week mark. looking forward to watching the mets play the rox. as for homerun derby here in motown. . .bobby abreau was off the charts. . .which proves, it doesn't matter how good you do against real pitching. as long as you can smack a bunch of easies in front of a drunk crowd, you are a hero. . .worth 13 mill a year.
more later. . .
peace and java