A Winning Day . . .

Well, Saturday found us back at the ball fields. Josh & James had tournament games today and both did great. James' team won 8-2, despite James getting his shoulder dinged a bit near the end of the game. Lora was able to get a good picture of James batting.

In some ways, Josh's game was even more exciting. After taking a pounding for the first two thirds of the season (they lost one game 25 - 0), they came back and nearly beat the top team in their league last week, even though they only had 7 players. Today, they were one player short and still won 19-2. Next week will be interesting!

In spite of all this excitement, Grandpa Don decided this would be a good time to catch forty winks.

Grandpa Don shows his enthusiasm as Josh hits a home run!

The other highlight of the day was a visit from my old college buddy, Mike Carper. Mike & I met at Kearney in 1983 and he was an usher in our wedding. We have lots of good memories of war games, concerts, nachos, movie marathons and other stuff. We had a great time visiting. Mike's knowledge of history and literature are pretty daunting, so there's never a dull moment. I read a bunch of Cliff's Notes right before he came so I could appear somewhat intelligent . . . . .

Do these look two guys you would trust?

Saying Goodbye . . . . .

A sad note from our family. Lora's grandmother, Marie Merriman, died on Friday, July 13th at her home in Lincoln, NE. She had turned 92 just three days earlier.


Grandma Merriman left behind quite a family - 7 children, 20 grandchildren and 40 great-grandchildren. Even at age 91, when you went to visit her, she would fix lunch and visit with you at length. She could recall all the grandchildren and great grandchildren (as well as their spouses) and always remembered birthdays and what you were doing.

At Christmas (often celebrated at her home) she bought individual gifts for all the grandchildren & great-grandchildren. I have problems remembering what to buy for 2 kids.

2 years ago we celebrated Grandma's 90th birthday with a family get-together in Lincoln. The picture that appears above is a favorite picture of Grandma that we took at her celebration.

She will be missed by many.

Wise Guys (and Gals) from the East . . .

Well we've had an interesting week in our basement. We've had 2 sets of good friends visit over the last week.

On Monday, Dan & Carol Bongard visited on their way to Ft. Collins, Colorado. They are both part of Keynote Communications, the music ministry of Campus Crusade. Dan is killer bass player and Carol is a wonderful photographer (hopefully she never views my photos online . . . ).


Rehearsal in Studio B at Howard Studios - Take 7 of "Play That Funky Music"

Anyway, we grabbed a bass amp and set up some our gear and had a jam session with Josh, James, Dan & Dad. We played some worship tunes that we all knew, then things got a little silly and we ended up on a version "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry (with about 25% of the original lyrics) and a good old college try at "Stars" by Switchfoot. We had a great time. Hope Dan did as well. Dad was lucky enough to be out of the camera's eye. We got some video of one song. If we can get it online, we may do so.

On Wednesday night, Dave & Kelle Fackler visited, along with their kids Tina and Andrew. Dave & Kelle are also with Keynote. Dave was the keyboard player/lead vocalist for Flashback. Dave is kind of a jack of all trades, master of most of them. Kelle is a flautist and just a generally great person to be around.

We hadn't seen Andrew since he was about 4 or so. He used to help set up drums & sound in Flashback. One of the cutest kids ever. As you can tell from the photo below, he's grown a little since then . . . .


Andrew Fackler playing his Garrison guitar

I think he got the pants from the leftover costumes from the movie "Castaway".

While we didn't have a jam session, we did get to hear Andrew play a little guitar & drums and caught a little singing from "the fam" as they were going to bed.

The ladies had a nice time talking (see photo below). As was always the case in the past, we had a great time listening to Dave's impressions and just goofing around and having a good time. It was also the first time we'd spent extended time with their daughter Tina, who is about Josh's age. We had fun getting to know her as well. The pictures of Dave & Tina didn't turn out too well (due to the photographer - not the subject matter) - we'll try some others soon.


Lora deep in thought as Kelle waxes eloquently about quantum physics and sub-atomic particles

4th of July pictures - the old fashioned way . . . .

Well, our 4th of July wasn't too eventful . . . . just hung around home most of the day and got things done. However, we ended our day by going to Christensen Field in Fremont and watching the fireworks.

Inpired by my friend Tim in Lexington, Kentucky, I decided to try my hand at some manual picture taking (you know - with the "auto" stuff all turned off).

Now, mind you, the Kentucky Tim has a really nice professional camera made of a titanium/kevlar alloy that shoots at 578 megapixels and has nuclear-powered lenses coupled with laser sightings. (He also has the ability to make colors more vivid by use of ESP).

The Fremont Tim, on the other hand, has a camera he made in Boy Scouts back in 1971, using an old Hush Puppies shoe box (the kind you make with a pinhole) and some leftover Polariod film from 1974. He is also color-blind. To get different F stops, Lora held 4 sheets of black construction paper in different configurations in front of the pinhole lens. Josh had a 5th sheet of black construction paper and ran past us at varying speeds to simulate different shutter speeds. (He collapsed after our 137th picture).

So if you do compare my pictures to Kentucky Tim's - cut me some slack.

Anway, right before the fireworks started, I tried my hand at some landscape pictures. This was one of the better ones of a Fremont sunset - looking west.


After attempting to shoot some pictures at our fireworks display in Deerfield and failing miserably (probably due to using 1968 Polariod film), I did some reading and tried again using some different settings .... er, I mean different sizes and shades of construction paper. This time we got some better results, although I'm still learning.

This was picture 137. Josh collapsed and went into Anaphylactic shock after serving as our human shutter for more than an hour.

Anyway, gotta go here. I'm jumping back into the car to see if Josh has regained consciousness back at the parking lot where we left him . . . . . .

Splash Station Opens!

Well - it finally happened. After about 3 years or so without a community pool, Fremont opened it's new water park - Splash Station on Monday, July 2nd.

The New Water Slides!

Train and Water Tower

Either through bribery or good grades (depends on who you believe), James was chosen as one of the middle school students to "break in" the new facilities. Jacob, one of James' good friends, was also invited - so they got to enjoy the day together.

Jacob and James

In spite of ample sunscreen James left with a little bit of a sunburn after almost 6 hours at the water park. Mom spent her time reading on a chair in the shade! Imagine that.

Here are some links to the articles in the Fremont Tribune:

Kids Give Park Thumbs Up

City Dives Into New Water Park

Dad has had the thrill of driving by the park - I don't think Josh has been there yet either.

However Josh & Dad spent some time in the basement Friday night assaulting their eardrums and learning a Switchfoot tune.