Appreciating the Arts

It's a beautiful Wednesday night in Iowa.  The weather has been perfect the last few days.  It has been sunny, dry, and not too hot.  This has been a big change after weeks of thunderstorms.  We have had a ton of rain in  June, and river levels are still rising steadily.  In the next few days, we will probably see just about the same "500 year" floods as we had two years ago, and they had back in the 90s.

I took my final exam in Business Law last night, and did pretty well.  This marks one year since I started school again.  Although I haven't seen my final grade for this last class, I'm hoping for an A. That would mean I still have a 4.0 GPA, which I am really proud of!  I still have a while to go until I am finished, though.  I am taking a little summer break for the next 8 weeks, because summer class selections are pretty limited, and we are going to Maine in August.

Asher was very sick for pretty much all of last week.  He had a virus that gave him a red eye and a high fever. He had to stay home from "school", and missed t-ball too.  He is all better now, though.

Last Saturday, I drove up to Marshalltown, an hour and a half northeast of here.  I judged at the Iowa State BBQ Championship, a contest I hadn't been to yet.  It was a great contest, and the BBQ was phenomenal.  I had planned to stay up in the Marshalltown area and go camping on Saturday night, but severe thunderstorms were in the forecast, so I chickened out.  Instead, I went fishing at a couple of spots in the area.  First, I tried a forest area along the Iowa River.  The fishing was terrible because, after I finally made it to the river, it was extremely flooded.  I ended up taking a nasty walk through shoulder high nettles, thorny vines, and (it turns out), a little poison ivy. This became even worse when the overgrown trail I was trying to follow looped around, and I realized I was closer to the truck if I kept going than if I turned back the way I came in.  This was true. but I soon realized that the only way out was now through swampy floodwaters.  I was in water up past my knees, and stinging plants up to my chin.  The bugs, heat and humidity just added to the experience.  Once I got through the flooded area, I was pushing through high brush and heard a loud, angry animal snarling and attacking something.  I still have no idea what it was, and the list of midwestern aninals that could make that noise is pretty short.  I was freaking out, though, since I could see nothing.  As I wielded a big branch and inched forward, a huge deer popped out of the brush right in front of me.  I don't know if that deer was what was being attacked or if it was just hiding from whatever was snarling.  Crazy!  I got out of there just fine, although my legs and arms still feels like they are on fire from the various flora they were exposed too in the Iowa River jungle. I went on to an absolutely beautiful lake in Story County, where I fished and relaxed the rest of the afternoon.

Meanwhile, at home, Asher had heard talk about camping and got really excited.  Sarah had an evening of indoor "camping" with the kids, complete with a tent, activities, and smores.  We all slept in the living room, while the storms fired up outside.

On Sunday, we had a grill-out at church, then headed to the Des Moines Arts Festival.  It was a great arts festival.  It was pretty big, and had lots for kids to do.  Not to mention, it was free.  We found some awesome artists from all over the country.  Asher has a genuine appreciation for art!

 

Eva had a fun time, too!

Eva has been moving around a lot, but not technically crawling yet.  She sits up very well.  She is also an incredible mimic.  She copies words and sounds so accurately it is sometimes eerie.  Tonight, she heard car horns on the TV and said "honk."  She says "dad", "mom" and "up", but she really just seems to be copying the sounds she hears.  I don't know if that counts as speaking yet.