Memorial Day

Following an afternoon of pre-potluck craziness with Josh otherwise known as roommate iron chef, it was party time at the Rabe's. Nancy and Doug let us take over their house and grounds for half the day, including ultimate frisbee on the lawn, with lots of spectators.

The extremely brief but torrential downpour earlier this week left the new church building wet where it wasn't supposed to be (....). Quite a few people were blessed to have a schedule open on Wednesday morning to sweep out the lake. I keep telling Kristi she doesn't have to salute me, but it doesn't take.

Wednesday was also the celebration of a visit by our remote hoodies, Rodney and Katie. They still own a house in the hood but will not be back to it for a while. While they were gone, baby Abigail was born and it was my first chance to see her in person!! With four babies, two in the oven and 7 other children present, the average age was well into the teens.

Horsey

Giddy up cuz the next activity on Saturday was an afternoon of horseback ridding organized by our seasoned cowgirl, Amanda. Amanda took us to the Rockin' P Ranch in Pekin. Check out the Picasa page for a full listing of pictures.








We had one more outdoorsy event on the schedule Betsy and fam invited everyone to a cookout at her place in Tremont. It wasn't long before Josh and I noticed we were the only boys in the chatty room so....

Time for some guy time.

And little doggy the size of my foot time.

Thursday was multiple opportunities to worship beginning with a great crowd from our Sunday School class checking out the Rescue mission service. It's a different experience than the South Side Mission, where you get to see and hear more about the work God is doing and making available to us in their hearts. But PRM is still a great challenge and blessing. Especially when you have a whole team leading music instead of my shaky self.

Next stop, sending off our friend Holly with prayer and a little social time at her place. Holly, second row, second from the right, was headed to South Africa with a team from church the next morning.

Things got a little nuts Friday night. A quick really long game of mini golf with the three Amigo's got violent at times, but ended with few injuries, except to Amanda's pride. Good job Sarah!


This is proving to be the year of being outdoorsy for me. Can't get enough of it. Chris let me break him in after a year off the trails with some mountain biking at Farmdale. It was great to finally finish the entire BMX course (below) without stopping or crashing like last time a couple years ago.


Jere had brunch prepared for us upon our return (I'm a liar) and it was wonderful!! Thank you for some old roomie catch up time guys!


Question for you all. Do you prefer to put the fork on the right side of a place setting, or the left? Your answer may determine the future of Chris and Jerelyn's marriage, so please be honest. Please respond to the survey on the right side of the blog.

Dr. Hut

Slightly new experience at the South Side Mission on Sunday. I agreed to fill in for Worship leading for a dude who's done so for me joyfully in the past. But on Sunday morning, I come to find that my church is forgoing any evening service plans and asked the congregation to attended the evening's mission service. A simple announcement like that would easily go missed, but there was a trifecta of notices made (one verbal and two written). It was good though. No peers, just leadership who already know I'm a dunce and love me anyway. The service was great and I got to hear Justin speak for the first time. He does alot with the Jr. High group at church and I give him alot of grief. I was totally floored at his speaking ability and might actually have to show him some respect in the future (but don't bet on it).

Dr. Becky. Technically that's what she is now. Becky graduated from Physical Therapy school and it's time to celebrate. She had everyone out to the farm to celebrate with the usual, pictures and cake. But the real fun started when I got there..I mean when it was time to burn things.

Saying goodbye to her nine-year career delivering pizza's for one of Peoria's Pizza Huts, Becky ceremoniously burned her outfit and 30 pizza boxes, providing our hot dog cooking warmth.




Congratulations Becky!! I'll miss being able to say "Hey lets just have Becky deliver us a pizza". It never got old. Maybe it never will! :-)

You Can Tell It's A Busy Weekend When...

I forgo the formatting of pictures on the blog and simply describe them one by one. Lets get started.

A rained-out outdoor activity on Friday went indoors as our Sunday school class had a time of worship, games and a movie at Ryan's.

I don't know. A reward to the person who can explain this one.

Saturday afternoon, I visited one of the many graduation parties this weekend. Lindsay's old brother and I were really good friends in high school and college. I always picked on Lindsay, but she invited me anyway.

Man can this girl cook! I'm totally going to beg her to be on a Men's breakfast cook team. All the food was prepared by the graduate, except one thing.

Same scene, other side of the river. Next was a potluck for the counseling ministry at church. We all attended a conference in Indiana last February and enjoyed a reunion dinner and some follow-up time.




Look out Sarah, these kids might start asking to have Josh babysit for them in the future!!! :-)

Why do I Love My Job?

Besides seeing God at work, let me count the ways.

Janine's sister own's and operates Emo's, an ice cream shop down the street from the school. They save up the flops which were not up to par with customer orders and I occasionally reap the benefits. It's tough to lose weight working at PCS.
Where else can I spend half my day outside driving a diesel U-haul for the first time ever? With brakes that feel like they could go at any time, a steering wheel that doesn't feel like it's connected. Only the low gears are functional and there are warning signs which indicate death is a consequence of driving the vehicle?

I can see my IT boss breaking his back carrying a 100lb server case while being out-geeked by some of Peoria's uber-geeks.

I get to visit a top of the line data storage center. I never knew that Peoria was (gone now) home of the 3rd largest rights-managed image repositories in the world, Jupiter Images. First you walk through a huge warehouse where hard copies of every type of image you can think of is stored (not pictured).

Then, a room about twice the size of my bedroom holds all of them electronically.

As they get rid of old equipment that the company who purchased them doesn't want, connections with the school pay off big time. The large square box in the front cost $100,000 new five years ago. Of course, no one at the school will notice a difference when it's installed, but my boss will have a huge grin on his face for the next three months.

Indian buffet for lunch. The school is kinda generous on a day like today.

Even after work, life (through God) is good (despite how I paint it sometimes). Nan's pork dish with my mum's corn-puddin' and root beer floats by Hobbsy.

Ever since our previous study started (Song Of Solomon), we've wanted to see 15 guys show up for Bible study. It's always close but not quite there. What a blast to see 16 this week and have a great, though convicting, time with all of them.

Ryan wouldn't take off that ridiculous bears cap so Wes had to break his legs.

Monday Jogs

Monday jogs are on again. I feel bad pressuring a new daddy to stay our for an extra hour or so to babysit me on the trail, but I know he enjoys it as well. For some reason, I'm always behind him though. One of these days I'm going to have to create a post tag for Storm's butt. Honestly.
The adventure race put me in the mood for more scenic jogging so we hit up the Farmdale reservoir in East Peoria. Beautiful. Hey look, Deer! Deer deer, not Alicia Deer. I'm definitely feeling more outdoorsy this year.

Also back is the rest of Monday Softball season. Kari's team played again, but Pastor Joey's team had their very first appearance and won! Go Tolsons!!

Adventure

This weekend was the big Adventure Race out at Jubilee State Park. With most of my prep going in the morning of, I started getting a little nervous upon arrival. It didn't help that the band-aids required for the race got used on the way to the race because of a package opening accident in my car. I was too embarrassed to tell my teammate until after the race.

There were 50 teams participating overall in the race, 27 in the beginner class with Storm and myself. Other rivals in this class included:

Kari and Kinsey / "Trippin Trail Blazers" Sarah and Kelli

"WCIC" Steve and Jeremy / "Beat Gustafson" Father Daughter Mike and Katie

The race started with some simple control points to find on nearby trails. Different teams were sent to different locations for the first few points in order to spread them out. Storm and I will never live down the fact that the first turn we took on this race was incorrect. It was, however, made up for within minutes. :-P

Next was biking to an area where we would do more orienteering on foot.

The Orienteering was not as serious as I had feared. Often, you are only given clues to the control points and must determine the exact location based on features from your topological map. Our maps had little circles on them instead :-)

Most control points were off the road and some were off the trail as well. Trails were closed to bikers, so hiking had a much bigger part in this race than originally intended. I actually enjoyed that because it's easier to hike uphill than to ride, and it made us more likely to go off the trail, which we did.

The other surprise was how much mud and water was involved. There was a particularly confusing marsh where we did not use the trail as our guide, but rather the compass. I was thankful for the fact that worthless shoes and wool socks were used.

Also a somewhat deep creek.

Final surprises were the two mystery events spread throughout the race. The first one Storm and I hit was the figure 8 knot tying. After so many rock climbing trips I had better be able to do this in my sleep. I was impressed how fast Kari and Kinsey got theirs considering I doubt they can pass a belay check ;-)

Next mystery event, not so simple. So you take two small boards that you never would have thought were big enough for two people to stand on, and you tell two people to stand on one. The two heterosexual team members (I assume) then throw one of the boards ahead of themselves and occupy that one. The process is repeated with the same two boards until the team has crossed a distance and returned without touching the ground. Ridiculous.

Gotcha

Finally! The finish line, 2 hours and 46 minutes later.

Brauts

...And Katie with a Banana.


I won't tell you how the other teams did, but I will say that if you want to beat Gustafson, gotta put it in your team name. Good job guys. The race was entirely enjoyable and my own ability to last it and enjoy it was a complete surprise to me. Thank you Storm for your encouragement and putting up with me!

Video of mystery event #2 may not go up becuase I'm having alot of trouble with the size of the file