More pics from Ohio

Out for a walk (and RipStick) around the KOA Kampground.


Back from the walk, and we see Ryan has made new friends, and temporarily traded his guitar for a banjo!


Playing Password. Fun, fun!


Bino giving his clues.*


Matthew on his turn.


Bino and Lion-Deer


The Carolina Crew getting ready to head out.


The Bloggers!


More pics on Facebook, of course. Also, Jamie has posted some here and here.

*While playing Password, Bino had the line of the night: The clue that someone gave said something like, "Where you go to find out if you're guilty or not guilty."

With perfect timing, Bino said, "Church." =D

A HILARIOUS line for us gracers... LOL

(The actual answer was meant to be "court"). ;)

Having a blast in Sandusky!

Just a quick post to say that the other bloggers (or at least some of them) in our blogging community are really real! Of course, I already knew that about a few of them, having met Matthew, Gary, John and Jamie in Atlanta in March. But now I've seen two more of them with my own eyes and I know they're real!! LOL

Something that we've been talking about for several months now has become a reality, and my family traveled to Sandusky, Ohio yesterday and we're spending time with Matthew, Jamie and family, Bino and Leonard at a KOA Kampground! We were able to just spend some time last night getting (re)aquainted and talking some grace talk and just having a great time together. Today we went down by the lake (Lake Erie) and walked around a bit and then had some lunch. I went swimming with my family after we got back, and otherwise it's been a lazy afternoon. We're getting some supper ready (tacos and other good food) and we'll all be spending the evening together.

It's so great to be around these wonderful friends! We're "separated" by distance, living in different parts of the country, but we're a real family and we're really soaking this in!

Jamie, me, Matthew.


Jamie, Leonard, Bino, Matthew.


Facebooking outside... LOL.


Hanging out, S'mores, etc.


Looking out on Lake Erie (that's my wife Tracey on the left).


Waiting for some good grub outside a pub.


The blogging crew!


More pics to come, I'm sure.

Ohio gathering in June!!!

Who: Just some people who want to share Christ's life with one another!
What: Gathering in Ohio!
When: Friday - Sunday, June 26 - 28, 2009
Where: Sandusky/Bayshore KOA Campground and/or the adjacent Knights Inn, Sandusky, Ohio
http://www.mhdcorp.com/
Why: Why not!!
How: Make your reservations, and show up in June!

Wow, wow, wow... it's only a couple months and a couple weeks away from our gathering in Ohio! If you want to come along and share some simple friendship and fellowship with other people who are walking in grace, YOU are invited!!! Ok, "simple" maybe should be replaced with "radical!" ;) Ha ha!

Really though, we have no agenda, except to meet one another and spend time together. If you've read this blog for any amount of time, and have read some of the other blogs as well, you've perhaps noticed that a "community" of sorts has developed in the past year or two. We simply love sharing in Christ's life with one another, and we're moving things away from the blogs for a couple of days for some person-to-person "real life" fellowship! I certainly understand that there are those who are a little shy, or leery of meeting people they've only known online! In that regard, I think that with our venue being in such a public place, it's probably the safest and least 'intrusive' way to meet. Everyone will be free to 'come and go,' spending time together or to 'retreating' back to their own places.

There is quite a choice of accommodations. The campground has tent and RV camping, and cabins and mobile homes of various sizes (see the website for various rates and options). There is also a motel adjacent to the campground, the Knights Inn. The link for the Knights Inn is also on the website.

My family will be staying in one of the three bedroom mobile homes at the campground, along with my parents! Ryan and Jamie and their family, along with Matthew, will be staying in the same type of mobile home. While making reservations, we requested that we be next door to each other, so that no matter where others stay in the campground or motel, we'll have one common "gathering place."

There are also such things as basketball, volleyball, a playground, swimming pool, game room, etc, on the campground site. Again, see the above link, where you'll also find links to area attractions, such as the Cedar Point amusement park and many other things. I'm guessing that since our time together will be relatively short, we won't necessarily be doing a whole lot of extra activities - but that is up to individuals and families. Again, people are free to do what they please! With all the local attractions, feel free to make this into a longer family vacation if you'd like! We've simply set aside these particular days for our get-together.

FYI, Sandusky is in northern Ohio, and is located on Lake Erie about 65 miles east of Toledo and 65 miles west of Cleveland. Any questions... email me and I'll try to help! My contact info is on the side column of the blog.

Now, or at least very soon, is the time to make your reservations! "The sooner the better." :) I don't know how far in advance the campground and motel begin to fill up.

Hope to see you there!!!

By the way, if you are planning on going, would you let me know? I'd like to post an update to let others know who is planning on going. You can either reply here or send me an email. Thanks!

Get-together in Ohio - June 2009!

I can't believe it's been over three months since I posted From internet to interstates - Ohio - Summer 2009! At the time, the summer of 2009 was so far off, but now it's just a few short months away!

What this is all about is a weekend get-together for some of us who have, up till now, known each other mainly through online interaction. We all live in various parts of the United States and around the world so we obviously can't all meet in person often, but if we plan in advance, we can at least get some of us together! I'm really, really looking forward to meeting you, if you're able to make it! This will all take place during the last weekend in June: Friday, June 26 through Sunday, June 28, 2009. We have no "agenda" except to meet one another and share in Christ's life with each other!

Note: Our previously planned meeting location has changed, so please disregard all of that particular info on the link above, but we'll still be meeting near to where we originally planned. We had originally thought of meeting together inside a community called Lakeside, which is a place on the shores of Lake Erie where my family vacationed when I was a child, but there are daily fees involved just to get into this gated community, in addition to lodging fees, so we decided to go with something that will still cost money, but hopefully not as much!

Our new location is the Sandusky/Bayshore KOA campground (and/or Knights Inn - next to the campground). My family will be staying in a "2 Bedroom Park Model" home next to Ryan and Jamie and their family and Matthew in a similar model. We figure this will give us kind of a larger general meeting area. The campground also has larger and smaller cabins/homes, as well as RV and tent camping, so you've got a choice of places to stay! There are also such things as basketball, volleyball, a playground, swimming pool, game room, etc, on the campground site. Click the link at the beginning of this paragraph for rates and information for the campground and motel. You'll also find links to area attractions, such as the Cedar Point amusement park and many other things. (With all the local attractions, feel free to make this into a longer family vacation if you'd like! We've simply set aside these particular days for our get-together).

FYI, Sandusky is in northern Ohio, and is located about 65 miles east of Toledo and 65 miles west of Cleveland. Any questions... email me and I'll try to help! My contact info is on the side column of the blog.

I'm not sure yet who all is coming... but I believe we've got at least 4 or 5 states represented, as far as people who have talked about coming, and anywhere from a dozen to 20 people so far! If this sounds like something you want to do, give it some serious thought and prayer and see what Father wants to do!

A dog's first snow of the season

A coworker of my wife sent this. A dog's reaction to the first snow of the season. Wow... talk about lots of snow! Light and fluffy snow is usually not all that fun (can't build snowmen) (although it does makes clearing it a lot easier), but with this much snow and a dog this size, how could it not be fun!

www.dogwork.com/dogsnow

I'm BAA-AACK!!

Not that anyone knew I was gone! LOL. My family traveled to stay with my parents during the past few days and we got home about four or five hours ago. We came home to a nice 2 - 3 inch layer of snow to blow (on top of a nice, slick sheet of pure ice) with my Spirit snowblower! Yay, just what I wanted to do today!

Anyway, it was great to see my parents. My dad had a stroke in October, and is recovering well. My dad 'retired' as a full time pastor over a decade ago, but that didn't mean for an instant that he stopped doing what he does! He became the "part-time" pastor of a small country church, and has been doing that for the past ten years. As the people down there always tell me, he's not a "part time" pastor for the church. He's always doing what he does, being who he is, and I suspect he never ever had any sort of "time card." :) Anyway... my mom had previously told me that my dad planned on 'retiring' from this church next spring, but with the stroke and all, he decided to do it at the end of this year, which is, of course, upon us.

The sad thing is that he wasn't able to take the service on Christmas Day, so my mom (also a retired pastor) took it for him, and he was also not able to do his final service this morning (which we weren't able to be there for), so my mom also did that. Everyone understood, of course.

Now... if we'd have known what the weather was going to do, we'd have stayed there one more day and would have been there for the final service! We started out yesterday in very pleasant 70º weather (just southwest of St. Louis). We headed up north about half an hour, and the skies were looking VERY dark. It became very, very windy and a bit rainy. I decided to go back to the town we'd just gone through and wait things out. Turns out a tornado hit just a few miles away! Well, after a bit, we got going again and mostly ran into rain, but the winds had died down, thankfully. Onward to Iowa, and we began seeing all the snow we had left behind a few days before.

The temperature had been dropping all throughout our trip. Rain was still coming down lightly, and as we got just south of Iowa City (75 miles from home), the temp was 32º (0ºC - freezing), and we had heard that there would be light, icy rain. It was indeed light, but it was enough to cause some HUGE problems! We were driving along as normal, but then suddenly I felt as if our van had just slid a little to the side. I let off the gas, and slowed down, and I noticed us sliding a tiny bit more. Very quickly, the other vehicles around us slowed down. All within 30 seconds, we dropped from a comfortable 70 mph to a very scary 30 - 40 mph. Then, even at that speed, we were sliding, so I had to drop down to 20 - 30 mph --- on the interstate!

Such a short distance to get home - but yet so FAR with all this ice. Suddenly we saw a pickup on the other side of the interstate go off into the median and almost onto our side. We then knew this weather was NOT for us to be driving in! We passed one exit to Iowa City, but then on the next one I pulled off, very slowly. It then took us almost 15 minutes to drive three miles to the nearest motel! Cars were sliding all over the place, even in town.

But... we arrived at a motel, and we were safe for the night. And... they had Douwe Egberts DELICIOUS coffee out in the lobby! Mmmmm... and Ahhhhh... The evening also turned out to be such a fun time for the kids! After we got settled, we slid (walked) over to a nearby restaurant, Old Chicago, and the food was absolutely splendiferous! I had a nice, relaxing beer before the meal came (they only had 110 to choose from), and we played along with a trivia game that was on some of the TV screens. Just down the street from us, the Iowa Hawkeye basketball team was beginning a home game, and so we watched that on TV at the restaurant. It was my little girl, Noelle's eighth birthday and she said it was her best birthday ever! They brought her a Little Big Cookie and some ice cream for dessert, and we all shared that.

Then, back to the motel for some more fun, just kickin' back and watching TV, etc, watching the weather reports. Yeah, back to the weather. It was absolutely terrible out. Lots of accidents and vehicles in ditches. When we checked out this morning and got back on the highway, there were still lots and lots of cars in the ditches from last night. I'd estimate that in the 75 miles we drove, we saw at least 30 vehicles in the ditches. We saw one semi that had slid into a very shallow ditch and we saw a U-Haul-type truck (at least 26') on its side in the median. On a couple of the deeper ditches, that go waaaay down there, we saw some cars as well. THAT would've been scary! I'm so glad we just decided to stay in Iowa City for the night. I was supposed to work today, and my wife Tracey was supposed to work at church (which is why we planned on coming home yesterday), but we called and got substitutes.

Anyway... I'm glad to have been able to spend some time with my parents during Christmas, and I'm glad to be home safe and sound! There are 139 unread blog posts in my feedreader. I'll get caught up soon... NOT! I'm just gonna clear 'em and start fresh! Hope y'all don't mind! Happy belated Christmas to all!