Cruisin' for a Bruisin'

Here we are at our favorite ice cream parlor. Or should I say "frozen custard" parlor! It's called Liberty Frozen Custard and it's on Nicollet and 54th, just a few blocks from our place (making it IMPOSSIBLE for me to be on any kind of diet). It's an old remodeled auto garage with vintage vinal chairs and pinball machines and the like. When Jon and I decided winter was (or should be) finished, we walked over for a frozen treat! Here are some cute pictures of Abigail in a classic hot rod trying her tiny hand at the wheel! You can see in the video that she was babbling away and loving it!! By the way, the video doesn't have any sound so I will provide a dialogue for you at the bottom of the post.








"babababababababa...boom boom boom...AAAH! Hmm...where's the shifter on this thing? "

"Abi, be careful, don't fall!"

"MOM! NO, MOM!! Watch out, mom! Don't touch me; Mom, I'm driving, be careful!"

Catching Up #3: Baby Isaiah!

Well, this catching up blog has nothing to do with my late film development, but rather it has to do with the fact that we lost Jon's digital camera shortly after we moved. Speaking of losing things, has anyone seen my cell phone? Or my BRAIN?! I can't even blame pregnancy for these silly situations; I can only blame myself ;-)

Anyway, about a month ago we had a little friend over for the day! His name is Isaiah and I am convinced he is the one who taught Abi to crawl. Never have I met such polar opposites enjoying themselves despite their differences. Isaiah is a go-getter, high-energy, in-your-face, smiley-pants, always on the verge of a laughing fit, curiosity killed the cat kind of baby. This was a high contrast to Abi who is pretty low-key, laid back, mild-tempered, laissez-faire, sweet, gentle, cuddly, content-to-just-sit-here-and-watch kind of baby. But they shared toys and floor space pretty well considering we still had boxes everywhere from the move. We loved having him here and we'd love to set up another playdate soon!! :-)

Here's Isaiah showing Abi the moves. Abi watches in awe...

Abi is showing him her toys. Like Abi, he tastes it to see if it's safe.

Both babies look up from their play to give me a big grin!

Isaiah is getting ready to leave Abi in the dust...

Zoom! There he goes!

Catching Up #2: The Gunflint - Abi's First Winter Adventure!

I know the last thing everyone wants to see is a bunch of snow, but like I said, I'm catching up some photos! Please bear with me :) To anyone who has the opportunity to take kids on a winter adventure: DO IT! Plan, plan, plan, and then enjoy! I think Abigail wore 3 or 4 layers of clothes most days and 5 or 6 layers at night. But she didn't freeze and we had a great time!
Brenda cross-country skiing up on the bluff! It's a lot easier to do this run when you're not 4 months pregnant!
Jon the crazy man getting excited for broomball!
Out for a walk on the frozen lake.
Mama and baby - oh precious!
Glorious!!
The girls walking back to the lodge.
Yeah! No diving!

Sometimes the best toys aren't toys at all! Pink baby with pink cheeks equals HUGGABLE!

Polka-dot princess!


Climbing up to Honeymoon Bluff!Aw, she's close at hand :)

The family watching the sunset at Honeymoon Bluff.Don't worry she wasn't THAT close to the edge! Baby at the boundary waters!

Catching Up #1: Superbowl XLII Party!

So I'm the kind of person who gets about 12 rolls of film developed all at once, so here's some pictures from waaaaaay back at Superbowl time!
We spick-and-spanned the apartment for our guests to arrive :) And they came! Here is one of them playing with Abigail!








When we wrote out our limited guest list (only 4 couples because we had a teensy apartment) we didn't realize we had invited the Larson family plus spouses! Here are 3 men on a couch: Parnell, Jon, and Chris.

Michelle and her friend Trin pretend to enjoy football while Brenda and Becky raid the food!!!











It's past Sammy-pants's bedtime so daddy-Dale comforts him with deep-fried wings :) mmmm wings...


Sammy isn't the only sleepy one. Joelle tried to watch the Pats kick themselves but the ZZZZs won out...














Abi was the MVP!!
I think I'll clean tomorrow.





















One lone pizza slice. I think I shall have it for breakfast tomorrow. All-in-all a great party! Thanks for coming, friends :)

Remembering Andijon...

Some of you may remember back in 2005 when I was working with the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan, a terrible event took place. Maybe many of you never heard the story about WHY the Peace Corps (and all Western organizations) was sent packing. It was to cover up what happened in Andijon (a city in Uzbekistan) on May 13: a massacre where many were killed by the government during a peaceful protest (men, women, children alike). I was teaching about 250 miles away in Jizzax at the time.

Seeing as how tomorrow is the 3-year anniversary of this massacre I just wanted to remind everyone to take a moment to pray for the country, its administration (President Islam Karimov), and the salvation of its people.

Here's an article from the International Herald Tribune:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/09/opinion/edbukharbaeva.php

Our Journey to Expelled and the Journey Back Again

I don't know how many of you have heard of the new documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It's hosted by Ben Stein as he interviews several scientists, all renowned in their fields, who have lost their jobs or have been "disciplined" in the last few years for giving Intelligent Design some sort of credibility. It reveals the stigma in the scientific world that I.D. carries and how asking questions about it has become completely taboo. You are immediately branded as a radical fundamentalist with an agenda for even thinking that there might be flaws in Darwin's The Origin of Species. Anyway, it's so controversial that Dr. Richard Dawkins (the author who wrote The God Delusion) showed up at a showing at the Mall of America to disrupt the film! I strongly recommend that everyone see it. It poses very interesting questions about what we can and can't question in the scientific world. Watch the trailer here:

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/video.php

Well, Jon and I had passes to see the movie so we got my sister to babysit and we took off. We left rather early because 35W was closed that weekend and we didn't know how long the detour would take us.
"It feels like the car is pulling to the right," Jon commented.
"It's really windy out today," I replied.
Sure enough, flags and tree branches were flapping and swaying in the gusts from the south. We were talking and gabbing along when Jon started to lower his head down as if he was listening to my knees.
"Do you hear that?"
"You mean that wobbly sound?"
We tried to argue that it might be the bearings coming loose again when it started getting louder.
"I don't like this. I'm exiting." With that, Jon exited onto some random residential road in Golden Valley. When we found a place to pull onto a side road, he jumped out of the car to take a look at the tire. Grimly he nodded to me in the passenger seat. "It's a flat." And like any studly rockstar superman, he jacked up the car and changed the tire effortlessly in the bitter wind and even took the time to explain to me how to do it (since, sadly, I had no freaking clue). Then as he lowered the jack with the "donut" in place we discovered another problem. The donut was flat. After some discussion, we decided to find a gas station to pump it up enough to at least drive home (who knows if we'll make it to the movie now?). We drove along and along and along, and it was all residential with no signs of a gas station. "I need to stop the car," Jon decided. Pulling over we dug out the twin cities map to see where we might find a more commercial district. What we discovered was that we were on the edge of Golden Valley and North Minneapolis (not a place you want to be stranded with a vehicle if you know what I mean...).
"How bout if I go knock on that door and ask where the nearest gas station is?" I quipped.
"Ok," Jon ceded.
I walked a few houses down (why I didn't knock on the nearest door, only the Holy Spirit knows) and knocked on the door. The door opened and when I posed my question, the guy responded, "Hey, I have a mini-air compressor in my trunk. Why don't I just pump it up for you? You don't want to travel any further east to look for help," and with that he dug out a little box and hooked it up to our tire. He even invited us inside to wait out of the cold. 10 minutes later we were ready to roll!!! We couldn't believe it! He was so polite and helpful and generous. We turned around and looked at the clock; we still had time to make it to the movie! And we arrived just as the last preview was ending!

The movie itself didn't surprise me. I knew this was going on and it doesn't seem like it will get any better. As the credits rolled all I could think of was being laughed at in the computer lab in high school as one of the science teachers asked what I was writing. When I responded "a research paper on Creationism" he and his student teacher laughed in my face and shook their heads. I remembered fighting through a particular class at Gustavus, nose-to-nose with the professor about how life began on this planet. (I feel like God won that one, seeing as how the professor asked that I pray for him at the end of the semester!) But since I am no longer on the academic scene, the war seems far from me. And what I do see just seems hopeless. It's like I see the darkness and I think to myself, it's just going to get darker, so why waste my time? I expressed these thoughts to my husband who gave me a quote from Thomas Paine: "It is an affront to treat falsehood with complacence." Whoa did that open my eyes! Just because something seems a lost cause or an uphill battle or a David vs. Goliath challenge doesn't mean we shrug our shoulders and say, "this isn't my fight." Our answer should be, because there is evil in the world and there is ground to be won (no matter how little) I will fight on. In the name of Jesus Christ I will fight on. And just because I'm not on the front lines anymore doesn't mean that I'm not still in the war. I'm raising new soldiers for the fight and supporting those who are going nose-to-nose with their professors and peers everyday. And maybe I'll get to see some of the action from time to time.

As we were leaving Jon remarked at how believed that the devil was trying to keep us from going to the movie. It was as if he was working against our every move. First with the road closing, then with the flat tire, then with the flat donut, then with no gas station in sight and heading into a bad neighborhood. He wanted us to give up. But God had different plans. His Spirit spoke to Jon to pull over at the right time, and His Spirit spoke to me to walk up to the house two doors down from where we parked where the guy with the air compressor lived.

So what have I learned? No matter how much mud the devil throws, God ALWAYS has the last word!!

NEW Adventures in the Life of Brenda #8: Only in Minnesota...

Yesterday, the thermometer scraped 50 degrees here in the Twin Cities. The mercury had been bottoming out below zero for weeks at a time during February so this was a welcome change of pace! So welcome in fact that as I was running some errands, I happened to glance at our neighborhood frozen custard parlor :) There was a line out the door, and there were (get this!) 2 or 3 families sitting outside on the picnic tables eating their frozen custard next to heaping mounds of snow wearing their winter coats. Aaaah, yes. Only in Minnesota.