As A Father of Five...

...I hole-hardly endorse Catholic Minority Report's post "I'm Counter-Cultural, Who knew?"
Here is a snippet:

Many times I have been introduced by various people in this way.

Introducer: "This is Patrick Archbold, he is the director of blah blah. "
Introducee: "Hello. It is a pleasure to meet you."
Introducer: "Patrick is expecting his fifth child!"
Introducee: "Really?! Wow!"

To the introducer, my family size is a noteworthy piece of trivia requiring immediate full disclosure. Oddly, upon learning of my fecundity, many people are then completely liberated to give me all the gory details about their reproductive lives . "Two was plenty for me, I got the ol' snip snip!" , "After I delivered my last baby, I told the doctor to tie up those tubes while he was in there!","This shop is closed!", or the ubiquitous "I'm done!" Even more remarkably, people often feel strangely comfortable opining on my situation. "Are you Crazy?! Ever hear of birth control?", "Can't you stay away from your wife for a few minutes?" or some such silly thing. I have learned to roll with such comments and try to offer my little witness along the way.

This is exactly how I feel much of the time. I have yet to come up with the ultimate response to some of these questions. So let me know if you have any.

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Et Tu Ranger Rick?

My eldest (9) has had a subscription to Ranger Rick for about as long as I can remember (and I'm sure as long as he can), mostly because at an early age he has expressed a great interest in animals and his grandmother has been kind enough to give him the continuing subscription. If you ask him what he want to be when he grows up, he doesn't say fireman or policeman or astronaut, he says "Marine Biologist". How am I to argue with that?

Not that I have any desire to. Often he come to me and give me some outrageous animal fact like: did you know that a Camel can do spit 100 yards? (OK, I made that up, but you get the idea) I used to tell him 'that can't be right' until he hands me his Ranger Rick. Now I have learned that he probably knows more than I do about animals and I should just trust him.

On the whole Ranger Rick has been a great asset to him and I am happy to have it in my home, and really haven't given it a second thought. However, (you knew this was coming , right?) yesterday what do I see on my counter but his Ranger Rick on the cabinet opened to a page Entitled "What's Up with Global Warming" by Gerry Bishop. Crap! Can't they just stick to animals? Of course 'What's Up' is that Humans are causing the earth to warm because of all the CO2 that we put into our environment. And if we don't drastically reduce our use of fossil fuels it will be a disaster. Did they present the other side? Did they state that there is a growing number of reputable scientists that doubt that Global Warming is caused by humans? Is it possible that Global Warming could be a good thing? Is there a 'right temperature' that earth should be at? Nope, not one word.

Ranger Rick's young readers now know as a fact (because they trust Ranger Rick to be right - even when their own parents didn't know things that are in the magazine) that Global Warming will be a disaster and it is being caused by humans. I started explaining this to my children at supper yesterday and I got this interesting question, 'What does bias mean, daddy?' Do you see how influential our children are? be sue to fill them with the right stuff.

Upon further examination their website is full of Scary Global Warming 'Facts' and even links to Greenpeace. I suppose I should not have been so naive. It's still sad to see how acceptable it is for a magazine as reputable as this to push an agenda on our children, and that they have bought into our non-thinking culture. Ranger Rick will continue to come to my home, but I will spend a bit more time looking it it myself. Maybe then I will be able to tell you some cool stuff you didn't know about animals...

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From The Mouths Of Babes

This post is cross-posted at Catholic Dads

Children have an amazing ability at to act like a mirror reflecting their parents soul out to the world. They have a tendency -even without trying- to find all those little nooks and crannies that you rather leave dark and hidden. Case in point:

Reconciliation is something that I struggle with, have always struggled with, and will probably struggle with for a long time to come. This is despite the fact that in recent years I have increasingly seen the benefits of reconciliation and have greatly increased my own participation in the sacrament. About three years ago my eldest son, Zach (now 9 years old), made his first confession and it has been the goal of my fetching wife and I since that time to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation with him once a month (although we probably should be going weekly, I know). That's the goal anyway, In practice it tends to be once every 1.5 - 3 months that we go. Less often in the summer than in the winter when we tend to have more of a schedule.

Recently I am not happy to report I have been skidding in my faith walk, shortchanging my prayer life and in general going in the wrong direction. (I do believe that we are always moving in one direction or the other, one cannot simply be stagnant in their faith. If you believe you are then you are probably moving in the wrong direction) The reason for this is most likely because of the fact that it has been 6 months or more since I have attended the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

The above facts were pointed out to me by my son this week, quite without his even knowing it. He was having some behavioral problems. I asked him why he would do such a thing (exactly what it was is inconsequential) and he began to break down and exclaim amongst his tears, "Dad, it's because I haven't gone to confession. I need to go to confession!" Doh! It was as if a dagger had pierced me and spread out all my faults before me, and as if God cried out to me as he did to Adam in Gen 3:8 "Where are you?".
God bless him, I think he may be a better Catholic than I am.

Needless to say I have redoubled my efforts and, although we cannot attend our 'regular' confession time this Saturday, I have found another time and parish where Zach and I will be receiving this blessed sacrament tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to it. I only hope that I can do better by him in the future than he already has by me.

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Let's get Physical

My fetching wife has been homeschooling our children since Zach started kindergarten some 5 years ago. As a 'homeschooling dad' I have been relegated to picking up an occasional book off the floor that need to be put back on the book shelf, or brought in for 'consulting' work when discipline is a problem. Other than that my better half has taken on all of the heavy lifting. This year for the first time I have been brought into the class room as a 'substitute teacher' for one subject, two nights a week (plus a few various outings, to be sure). My task: Teach Physics to our 9, 7 and 5 year-old.

After Reading A Thomas Jefferson Education (Read more about that here), the last thing I wanted to do was get a text book and start throwing equations at them. My goal is to get them to start wondering about Physics, ask questions about the world around them and then be excited about finding the answers. I decided the best approach would be to discover the world along with the great scientists themselves and we should begin at the beginning. We are therefore starting out by reading Archimedes and the Door of Science and after two sessions things are going well. I hope to get them excited about the same things Archimedes was excited about and lead them up to the Copernicus and Ptolemy controversy so as to contrast their thinking. Then move on to Galileo and Newton. I plan on being flexable enough so we can move in directions that they are excited about; so I gave my first assignment: To Wonder. Wonder about how the world works. Ask questions about the things they see. Each of them are to bring 5 questions about how the world works and I plan on taking few of those questions and exploring the solutions with them. By the end of the year I have a modest goal of having them (at least the older two) understand a few concepts like D=Vt (where D=distance, V=Average velocity and t=time) and F=MA (where F=Force, M=Mass, A=Acceleration). Mind you I don't want them to memorize them, I want them to understand them and actually go through the process of deriving them.

That's my goal. I'll post updates on how things are actually going as the year progress.

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Another Word From Our Troop

My Brother-In-Law Jeremy has arrived in Qatar and sent his latest 'report'. Here is an excerpt (emphasis added):

..it was about noon when I stepped outside for my first time in the daytime heat and it took my breath away! Hot, hot, hot. One person compared it to having a giant hair dryer blowing on you constantly, as even the “breeze” is extremely hot. Another person I think more accurately described it as when you open a oven that has been pre-heated to 500 degrees and you feel the blast of heat. It is generally not a pleasant experience and even the shade does very little for you. Of course the only thing that was in our favor is that the humidity is significantly lower than Ft. Bragg for which I am ever so grateful. I am not sure if there was just a spike in the temp at that time or if I am already more acclimated to the heat, but I have not felt the insanely intense heat like I did when I first stepped out of my tent. Of course then I even felt bad, because while I was panting in the shade trying to figure out if I could survive this heat for a year a group of soldiers walked by in full “battle rattle”. It is sobering to think of the hardships that these soldiers are going through that are on the frontlines. I used to always think about how they are away from their families, or how their lives may be in danger, but it I guess I never added the thought of the suffering these soldiers go through on a day to day bases in the heat. It must surely sap their moral.

That's saying a lot considering the high morale our troops do have in the field. If they didn't believe in what they were doing there would be little reason for moral we are seeing in Iraq.

Read the full text of Jeremy's letter after the jump...

Wow! It has been a long and crazy week, but I am finally in my new home in Camp As Sayliya (a-say-lay-uh), Qatar!

My trip started last Monday I will try and spare some of the more mundane details, but basically it involved a lot of sitting around waiting, riding an airplane and riding a bus. In fact it seems like that is all I have done in the last week. We started by waiting for 3 hours outside at Fort Bragg, before we finally got picked up and brought to the airport, at the airport at Pope Air Force Base we sat for another 4 hours waiting for our flight. We finally boarded our plane, it was a big DM 11 it has 10 seats across the row. I was not fortunate enough to get an aisle or window seat, which made a 15 hour flight seem twice as long. We did stop twice though, once in Maine and again in Germany. We finally got to Kuwait around 11 PM on Tues. night (I added the 8 hours time difference). We waited at the airport for an hour or so, then had a 2 hour bus ride, then an hour and half briefing, then we unloaded luggage for about 2 hours and then loaded our luggage on another bus and took a 45 min. ride to a different camp, unloaded our luggage again and finally got to bed in a tent around 6 in the morning. I slept for 5 hours then had to get up for a meeting. So it was about noon when I stepped outside for my first time in the daytime heat and it took my breath away! Hot, hot, hot. One person compared it to having a giant hair dryer blowing on you constantly, as even the “breeze” is extremely hot. Another person I think more accurately described it as when you open a oven that has been pre-heated to 500 degrees and you feel the blast of heat. It is generally not a pleasant experience and even the shade does very little for you. Of course the only thing that was in our favor is that the humidity is significantly lower than Ft. Bragg for which I am ever so grateful. I am not sure if there was just a spike in the temp at that time or if I am already more acclimated to the heat, but I have not felt the insanely intense heat like I did when I first stepped out of my tent. Of course then I even felt bad, because while I was panting in the shade trying to figure out if I could survive this heat for a year a group of soldiers walked by in full “battle rattle”. It is sobering to think of the hardships that these soldiers are going through that are on the frontlines. I used to always think about how they are away from their families, or how their lives may be in danger, but it I guess I never added the thought of the suffering these soldiers go through on a day to day bases in the heat. It must surely sap their moral.

Later on that night we ended up waiting another 4-5 hours for another flight. This time it was only a 1 hour flight down to Qatar. Then we waited at the Qatar airport for 3 hours, we had a little problems with customs. In a box of files that I was carrying through we had quick stashed a stack of atropine needles. It is something we are forced to carry with us, but we only use it in the event of a gas attack. Well the Qatari customs officials didn’t necessarily like us bringing needles in and they confiscated our entire box, including all of our military and medical files. Thankfully we were able to rectify the situation early the next morning and someone went back to the airport and picked up the box.

We finally got to Camp As Sayliya (CAS) about 3 am and from there everything has been smooth sailing. The unit we are replacing, in an effort to speed up the replacement process, has been very efficient and well prepared and has taken excellent care of us. Yesterday (Thursday) we spent in-processing and showing us around the camp. Today they took us to the city of Doha to the mall so we can start to get a feel for Qatar and the people here. First thing we noticed is that they are wealthy! From what I understand, every natural born Qatari gets a check for somewhere around 1000-3000 dollars a month just for being a Qatari. So many Qatari’s don’t work and the people that work around here are immigrants. The mall we went to was called the Velligio. It is almost a perfect resemblance of the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas. It has a sky painted ceiling and canals that ran down the hallway with gondola rides. The stores in the mall were your average American stores like GAP and Banana Republic and a Claire’s. But everything seems to cost about twice as much.

I am still learning about all the camp has to offer and my job here. But I do understand that our overall mission is an important one in that soldiers that come here only have 4 days of Rest and Recuperation and we try to let them do as much or as little as they want in those 4 days so that they can be re-charged and go back out to the front-lines and continue doing the best job they can.

It is funny though as we generally have anywhere from 500-700 soldiers here at anytime, and although they are from all over Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, it is something about the bond of the military that gets all of them to associate quite well and have a good time. As I am writing this e-mail in my office it is Karaoke night in the stage right next to my office. I stepped out there to see about 100 soldiers out there having a good time and now they are doing a fairly good rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama”, oh, I have to take that back, it sounds like somebody else just joined the original singer on the microphone and is not doing so hot, but at least it sounds like they are all having fun :) If anyone remembers the first two years of the war and seeing the generals do their daily briefings for the reports, that is the stage that they all sing karaoke on.

Well that’s all for now, thanks again to all of you for your prayers and support this last week during my travels

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Prayers Needed

My 93-year-old grandfather flew up from Florida Thursday to visit some of his great-grandchildren that he has yet to meet (including his namesake: John Albert Peach) despite his care giver's advice not to travel. He had a wonderful half a day with them on Thursday, however things went down hill after that. Thursday night he was rushed to the hospital because of a Stroke and continues to be there today (Monday). The good news was that if he had not been up here when he had the stroke then in all likelihood he would not have been discovered until it was too late, and the travel in no way exacerbated the stroke (in fact it probably started prior to the travel) He continues to - slowly - recover however the amount of motion he will retain on his left side remains to be seen. Frequent trips to the hospital have been our standard operating procedure as of late and my thoughts about blogging are few.

While I take this blogging mini-hiatus I ask you to keep my Grandfather in your prayers. Thanks.

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A word from the Troops

Well at least one troop. You may have read in an earlier post that my Sister and her Husband were featured in the a local News media story covering a recent troop deployment. My brother-in-law, Jeremy is sending periodic updates and has given me permission to post them here. He will not exactly be on the front lines but it will give good insight as to what our troops are experiencing and how their morale is out in the field, and get and inside look at how the Army functions.

Jeremy will soon be sent to Qatar as he has been training at Fort Bragg for the last few months. He writes in part:

Well I am done! Done with training that is... ...Now the only thing we have left is our 4-day pass and then we sit and wait for a flight to go overseas. I am told that our flight will be around the 20 th, but I am not holding my breath, it could change to September 1st, or they could all of a sudden get us on an early flight and we leave on the 17th. So the main thing now is to get all our ducks in a row and make sure we are about 80% packed so if we do get a last minute flight we are ready to go.

I know some of you have said you get a kick out of my stories on dealing with Fort Bragg and how inept they are. But they certainly got an earful about it a couple of weeks ago. My Brigade Command Sergeant Major and Colonel decided to come down for a 1 day visit about two weeks ago. We knew they were coming for about two weeks before and so any chance we had we told the Fort Bragg people "Hey we have VIPs coming, this is their itinerary and they are going to need transportation". Oh "don't worry" was the standard reply. Guess what? The morning the Col and CSM were here they waiting for almost two hours outside their hotel room waiting for transportation. I finally managed to yell at someone enough to get them to take their own van and go pick them up. But it was a real eye opener for our COL and CSM to see just how messed up things are down here.

Well the next time I e-mail I plan on being in my new home away from home in Qatar

I will continue to update you on Jeremy's progress as he continues his Tour of Duty. I would ask anyone reading this to keep him and his family in your prayers

Read Jeremy's full letter after the jump...

Hello all!

Well I am done! Done with training that is. We completed the last of our training requirements as of yesterday and this morning we moved off the FOB and back into some nice A/C barracks. Just in time because the heat has really been cranked up around here. During our training we had temperatures in the tent around 100 in the heat of the day, now it is 90+ by mid morning and around 110-112 in the mid-afternoon. Now the only thing we have left is our 4-day pass and then we sit and wait for a flight to go overseas. I am told that our flight will be around the 20 th, but I am not holding my breath, it could change to September 1st, or they could all of a sudden get us on an early flight and we leave on the 17th. So the main thing now is to get all our ducks in a row and make sure we are about 80% packed so if we do get a last minute flight we are ready to go. But one thing is for sure and that is that we won't fly out before our 4 day pass, so I am definitely looking forward to that! Beth and Eva are flying down here and we are going to head to Myrtle Beach for a couple of days, it should be relaxing time with the family.

The training these last few weeks has actually been pretty good. My personal favorite was TCP Ops (Temporary Control Point Operations). There we learned how to setup a temporary holding area to hold, search and transport detainees. Not likely that we would ever have to do that, but just something that the Army has decided everyone needs to be trained on. We learned how to search vehicles, and people and then they do exercises where they have COBs (civilians on the battlefield) that are dressed up like Iraqis and it is very good training because you get a real feel for how the language barrier is so difficult to work with. They also showed us moves on how to subdued and control people twice our size. I didn't personally get to test out the method, but when I was in charge of the transport cell they brought over a COB that looked like Shaquille O'Neill and one of my average size soldiers had to subdue him when he started getting out of hand, so I saw first hand that the methods do work! We also did base defense operations, which is basically how to guard a base camp from attack. I was in charge of the ECP (Entry Control Point) and was shot by a sniper within about 5 min. of starting the scenario so I did nothing for the next two hours. (By the way, it was a cheap shot, I didn't even hear a shot go off, one of the trainers just looked over at me and said you have been shot by a sniper and it took me out of the scenario :( ) But it was a pretty hot day, so I was semi-thankful to not have been out in the sun playing the game for two hours. We also did urban operations, which is where they teach you how to enter, clear and search rooms. It was a long day and our trainer wasn't very good, thankfully the MN guard has some excellent trainers and most of my soldiers were already pretty squared away on urban operations. The last big event is a 4 day event, "GAC STX"(Ground Assault Convoy, something, something, something) anyway, basically we learned how to conduct convoy operations in theater. It was good training and the main event on the 4 th day is when you go out with live ammunition and drive through a course that has pop-up targets shooting at you and fake IED's going off. By the way, special thanks goes out to my Commander, LT Mangen, she was supposed to be conducting 5/25/100, where when you dismount a vehicle you do an immediate 5 meter search around your vehicle for any IEDs, then you do a 25 meter search and then you scan 100 meters. I was still in the vehicle talking on the radio when I noticed the OC/T (Observer, Controller, trainer) asking her if she saw any IEDs, she said she didn't and he was pointing at something and asked her again if she say any IEDs, she still didn't see it, so he took out an IED simulator and set it off right outside my door, let me tell you, those things are LOUD! Thankfully the OC/T decided not to kill me and let me continue on my mission, and we later went back and he showed us the IED which was thoroughly buried and almost impossible to see, so I cut LT Mangen a little slack, but I still give her a hard time about it.

I know some of you have said you get a kick out of my stories on dealing with Fort Bragg and how inept they are. But they certainly got an earful about it a couple of weeks ago. My Brigade Command Sergeant Major and Colonel decided to come down for a 1 day visit about two weeks ago. We knew they were coming for about two weeks before and so any chance we had we told the Fort Bragg people "Hey we have VIPs coming, this is their itinerary and they are going to need transportation". Oh "don't worry" was the standard reply. Guess what? The morning the Col and CSM were here they waiting for almost two hours outside their hotel room waiting for transportation. I finally managed to yell at someone enough to get them to take their own van and go pick them up. But it was a real eye opener for our COL and CSM to see just how messed up things are down here.

And for one final story this e-mail….It was a Friday a couple of weeks ago when he had nothing going on, we were just sitting around in our tents all day when I received a phone call from one of my sergeants in another training group saying that some people were looking for us because we were supposedly missing some training event. So I went to the BDOC (Base Defense Operations Center) to find out what was going on. When I got there, just outside the door were three sergeants talking about how they were upset that a unit had missed the training. So I asked them if they were the ones calling for the 347 th PSD. They said they were and wondered why we failed to show up at 1900 for a Base Defense Operations class. Well it was quite ironic that that was the class they said we missed, because only a couple of days prior LT Mangen and asked the LT in charge of Base Defense if we could do the class on Fri. he said no, she asked him again the following day and he said no again, she asked him a third time and he was adamant that we could not do Base Defense Ops on Fri. So when I found out that we "missed" the class I thought it was pretty funny. So after taking 15 min. of explaining the whole situation to them and them calling their LT and getting confirmation on the story, they finally said, your right it was our mistake, you didn't miss any training, you are scheduled for the training on 30 July. So I walked back and had just finished explaining to LT Mangen that we were in fact right and good to go when all of a sudden they came over the FOB PA system and ordered all 347 th PSD Personnel to report to the BDOC ASAP. Well that really set me off, because they had just said 10 min. earlier, that everything was good to go and none of my soldiers needed to be in class. So I practically ran back to the BDOC and asked them why in the world they would page all my soldiers when they had just told me we were good to go. They guy looks at me and he says "Oh, your with the 347 th? I thought you were with some other unit". I was upset at them, but just laughed to myself and figured it would be another good story that you guys would all enjoy :)

Well the next time I e-mail I plan on being in my new home away from home in Qatar, so take care everyone, and I will chat with you all later!

Jeremy

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Gophers

I woke this morning around 6AM and the power was out. I only knew it was 6 because I keep my watch near my bed. No sense getting up and running if I can't take a shower, so I slept in assuming power would be restored by time I needed to wake up for work around 7AM. No such luck. After I awoke, I figured I'd give the power company a call to see if they had an estimate on when the power might be restored. I informed them of my power outage and to my surprise they were unaware of the problem.

'This is not good' I thought to myself, but they assured me that a crew would be over shortly. They arrived about 30 minutes later (I was impressed with their speed). There was power at the transformer near the street, but none at my house. So they started digging.

I took a shower at my neighbors (which is my fathers house, yes it was convenient - at least as convenient as it could be without power at my own). Having a personal well rather than getting water from the city municipality means that without power you don't have any water either, or at least not very much. Then my 5 year old Drew, figured that that was the perfect time to get sick, and proceeded to get sick on our staircase and foyer floor. No electricity, no water and a mess to clean up does not make my fetching wife happy (or me for that matter). After another trip to my neighbors to acquire some water which witch to clean, the whole matter was under control as long as we could keep the refrigerator door closed until the power was restored. And it was restored around 9AM.

The electric guys said that the power loss was a result of an inquisitive and persistent gopher who had chewed threw 4" of gopher resistant covering.

I knew I hated those things, at least I will never be bothered again by that particular gopher. Also it may be time to think about getting a generator. At least one that can run the well and water heater.

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Andover 5k Race Report

There is nothing that will suck the energy out of you during a run more than the blazing heat of the unimpeded sun beating down upon you. It would have been better if I had been out all night drinking than to have this race done on the hottest day of the year. Even at the race start at 8:30am it must have been well over 80F. Beyond that I wasn't feeling 100% and it turns out I was coming down with some stomach bug thingy (that I am only now a few days later mostly over)

OK those are the things I couldn't control, now on to the things that I can (but didn't do a very good job of in any case). We were on our way to the race and Ally and Andrew were about to run in the 'kids run' that starts 1/2 and hour earlier and I was giving them some advice, "Don't start too fast" I explained, make sure you start easy and then you will be passing people in the end. Ally did a great job and was passing kids as she bounded across the 1/2 mile finish line . Andrew just chugged the 1/4 mile of his race (they had two age groups and distances) and I think he finished in the top 3-4. They both did great.

So did I take my own advice, even knowing that it was blazing hot out? Of course not. I started with my sister Beth and I 'thought' I would take it easy and run with her, but by the 1/2 mile mark I had already left her in the dust and as I approached the 1st mile marker, my watch read 7:27 and I knew I had failed miserably to follow my own advice. My problem is that I just don't respect the 5k distance. It really isn't far and I figure I can just push through any pain I might have (and to some respect I generally can), but with the stomach and heat the way they were, that wasn't happening today.

I knew I was in trouble so I needed to slow it way down. My next mile came in at 8:02. Yep, way slower, now if I can just bring it on home and live for another day. I still didn't have much left and as people started passing me. In the end my only thought was, 'I hope I had put enough distance between me and my sister so she doesn't pass me in the last step' (which she has done to me in a different race), but I was only really demoralized when I was passed by a guy pushing a stroller and his (I assume) wife. DOH! Last 1.1 miles pace: 8:15. Yep slower still...

Final official time: 24:34 Slower than I ran the 3 miles my my last Triathlon. Not exactly my day. My sister came in at 26:28 and I think we were both just glad it was over with. Maybe next year I'll try harder to get into the top 3 in my division (30-39) in this race. I like doing it because it is small and if I really applied myself I know I could do it again.

On a positive note the kids took a turn climbing the wall there for Andover days, Here's Ally, she managed to do it twice:

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The Dells Vacation

Our Wisconsin Dells vacation was a resounding success! My wife's side of the family had a presidential suite at a resort called The Wilderness that bids itself as 'Americas largest waterpark resort' and I would not doubt the claim! Our condo consisted of 4 bedrooms 2 king size bed's and 4 full size beds in which we slept 8 adults and 7 kids very comfortably. It also had a large living room with a huge flat screen TV kitchen and dining area as well as washer and driers in the room. The large deck was great for a late night cigar or pipe tobacco and a beer.

We had little need to leave the resort area as there were 7 different waterparks to keep us occupied. On the second day there we discovered The Hurricane (pictured above) which we could not get enough of. Zach and Ally loved this ride however Andrew was not quite tall enough for this monster, but there were plenty of other slides (both indoors and out) that he could scream about! We discovered that if we put more weight on a tube (up to 4 people) we could get quite a bit higher and further challenged ourselves to touch the piping half way up the tubing. While we were unsuccessful in the endeavour, there was a whole lot of humor in trying and no one even fell off the tube (amazingly enough)

Beyond the water, water and more water there were arcade rooms and an indoor playground. One of the few trips off the resort was to visit Pirates Cove for some mini-golf. The kids enjoyed golf (even little belle who always over shot the hole -- the one on the far left in the picture) although it was a hot day to be out in the sun.

It looks like our pirate was glad we were there too.

We happened to be there on the 4th and our Resort's fireworks were set off right out our 4th floor balcony. You could almost reach out and touch them. Now watching fireworks from your balcony is the epitome of convenience, espically when you have 5 kids that are exausted from running around waterparks in the sun all day long! We never had a problem putting them to bed an night. And we never even made it to see the actual 'Dells'. Those Duck tours were quite expensive and our 4 night stay just did not give us enough time to do everything. I do want to at least take one tour of what made the area so popular to begin with at some time.

Four of us adults (not my fetching wife however) decided to take an evening away from the kids and take a leap at bungee Jumping! This was absolutely the most thrilling (for lack of a better term) and insane thing I have ever done. it is completely indescribable. It seems (or has always seemed to me) a bit innocuous, but I am here to tell you it is not. There is nothing like standing 130' up staring down knowing you are about to fall off this perfectly good 'cage'. To the left is a picture from the actual cage which I jumped out of (but that is obviously not me and I did not go 'backwards' -- one thing at a time!)

There is a video of my jump and I'll post it if I can get it into the right format. You may be able to see the fear in my eyes as the cage reaches its zenith and I realize what I am about to do.

Here's a picture I took of the 'bungiee tower' just after the jump (yes it really is that high):

A special thanks to the Landrys who's time share paid for just about everying on the trip. The kids and all of us had a great time!

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Training Interrupted (again)

Yes it is summer and time for Summer Vacations! The entire Landry clan (my lovely wife's side of the family) is heading on down to Wisconsin Dells for a few days where I'm sure we will not be short on things to do. I will do my best to get a few runs in, but aside from the water parks, I doubt there will be any opportunity for swimming and my bike will not make the trip. My dang alarm clock was set to the wrong hour this morning (notice how it was the alarm clocks fault) so I missed my swim and bike this morning (arrg!)

I do not know how available Internet access will be to me while I am there, so blogging may be light depending on that. If I am not able to blog on the trip you can expect a full report when upon my return.

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Camping with the Kids

Yes, we all had a great time, and I am still recovering. I am surprised how exhausted I was after this trip; as I laid in bed the night after we returned I thought my legs felt just as if I had done a triathlon that day. So I took another day off of training, but vow to pick it up again Tuesday with renewed vigor!

As you can see (if you'll forgive the horrible pictures, my camera phone takes shots as if there were wax paper covering the lens) the children had a blast. We were fairly non-stop the entire trip minus the late night campfires. We went hiking, fishing, hiking, swimming, Climbed a fire tower, more hiking, read The Hobbit (the kids couldn't get enough of this book and nearly cried at the ending) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court by the campfire late into the night, had a picnic and then did still more hiking. There was plenty of wildlife including several deer, grouse, eagles, a big black Bear (we were in the car when we saw him, so I think he was more startled than us) and of course plenty of ticks (especially depending on the hiking trail we chose) and a few mosquitoes. We were well fed with way more snacks, treats, 'smores and actual food than we could shake a stick at. I'm sure I gained 5 lbs!

Here's a view from the Fire Tower, 100 ft above St. Croix State Park:Zach widdling his marshmallow stick for 'Smores:"I Hate Rabbits""Do we have to go?"

Next time canoeing will be in order. I gotta give my legs a break and work in some cross-training! In any case I should do more camping, I've been trying to work in two weekends a year, but I may try to up that to three.

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Life Getting in the way of Training

I've been really good about following my training plan since I started using it early last week (OK it hasn't been that long I know, but I haven't skipped a day for any reason yet, and that's really good for me.) But it is going to come to a screeching halt this weekend as I take three of the kids up to St. Croix State Park for a weekend of camping where there will be no opportunity for any training (but some hiking!). I am really looking forward to it and the kids have been so excited to go for weeks that they can hardly talk about anything else. I'll try to get a few pictures from my camera phone and see if I can get them up here after the trip.

As far as training goes, I'm going to move my 'long' run (it's only 6 miles) from Saturday to Friday morning and skip Friday's Swim/Bike workouts. If we get back with some time Sunday (which I am not expecting) I'll do Sunday's Swim/Bike workouts, but at least I won't miss any runs.

Maybe that will give my arms and legs a break 'cause it seems like I am constently sore with this triathlon stuff. I assumed that the soreness would go away sooner than is has.

I will give a full report on the trip when I get back!

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A Lonely Fathers Day

My Brother-In-Law was deployed with his National Guard troop Sunday for an 18 month tour-of-duty. He leaves behind my sister and niece. Kare 11 did a story on the deployment and used them as their centerpiece. God Speed to those men and women puting their lives on hold for our country. The following video was on Saturday's 10 O'clock News, but be warned: you might need a Kleenex. (isn't my niece cute)

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