Fall Reading Week

Reading Week always means I get to take a trip home, even if it's only for a few days. But I get to do fun things with my family. For instance, here you see me preparing to serve dinner at church with mom. I expect to receive a tersely worded e-mail from her shortly about posting this goofy picture of her. But hey, I look good!

Here we see mom instructing me on the proper way to slice a bundt cake. Apparently my almost masters' degree doesn't increase mom's confidence in my ability to wield a knife.

Max, on the other hand, was just tickled to be in the same room with cake.

We had excellent help and lots of amusing conversation with our friends Liz...

...and Bill (always dapper in his hat).

That looks like some mighty fine cake cuttin' to me. That's like, ninja level cake cutting. Wax on, wax off, grasshoppah.

Did I mention that we had cake?

Posting this picture on the internet has just guaranteed that I will be receiving no Christmas presents this year.

I also got to go to one of Zoe's drill meets. It's all very serious - lots of standing at attention, saluting, formation making...

...splitting a can of Coke with your best friend...

...making dorky faces at your mother. Okay, perhaps it's not serious at all and the military just has the wool pulled over our eyes.

I don't remember what this is called, but it's like a big game of military Simon Says. All of the students from each school stand in formation and have orders barked at them. If you blow it, you get dismissed from the floor. Zoe (front row, left end) was the fourth cadet to be dismissed, apparently for making eye contact with the drill sargeant. The nerve! I bet if the military had staring contests, she would totally clean up.

I got to spend time with the rest of the family, too. Here's my brother, Tryg. I don't recall if this was a really annoying game of "I'm not touching you," or an emphatic request for me to pull his finger. Really, it could have gone either way.

And while the grown ups (whatever!) talked, we turned the photography assignment over to Emma...

...and Josiah. Let's see how they did...

...A still-life. Very nice...

...A close up for Mr. DeMille. Good, good...

...A shot of daddy's ass. Interesting choice of subject...

...A random tonsil search. Always a good idea...

...Ummm, okay, I think we're getting distracted. Maybe we should try to coax more emotion out of our models. How about rage? Could you give us some abject rage?...

...Yes!! Excellent!! What about total disinterest?...

...Perfect!! How about a dash of fruity cousin in the background?...

...Spot on, I say!!...

...And clearly we've come up against a brick wall.

Before heading back to school, Zoe and Max and I took a trip to the pumpkin patch. Here we see Max hanging out at the petting zoo with Larry the Llama. Or maybe it was Llarry the Llama.

It's almost like they're looking in the mirror.

We made friends with some scarecrows.

We stumbled across this scarecrow of Big Bird which is every bit as creepy as it sounds.

Max nabbed this very rotund specimen.

Zoe opted for a more petite gourd.

For me, it's not about size as much as color. I like for my pumpkins to still have some green on them. It makes them look like they're not quite finished...like me.

Egads.

And doesn't this picture of a 14-year-old girl with her mom pretty much say it all?

Max was much more compliant.

Have you ever seen a more gorgeous head of red hair?

Have you ever seen two more gorgeous heads of red hair?

True story. As we were passing through the pumpkin farm market on our way out, Max, who is amazingly brilliant and wants to work for NASA when he grows up, points to this piece of produce and says to me, completely seriously, "Mom, you should have gotten that pumpkin. It's still really green."

Week 6

This week the Company of New Pastors headed south for a conference in Louisville, Kentucky - the "Mecca" of Presbyterianism. And since coffee consumption is one of the Presbyterian sacraments, we couldn't hit the road without a quick Starbucks stop. Notice that Matt is our token double-fisted drinker.

We stopped to have lunch at the culinary utopia that is Arby's. You can see that nearly all of us broke bread together, except for...

Gary who decided to form his own leper colony. Actually, he was on the phone with his wife and didn't think that our presence would add any value to that conversation. I can't imagine why.

Somewhere in the middle of Indiana, traffic came to a grinding halt because of construction work. So we killed 15 minutes watching this maverick construction barrel roll all over the highway between cars in a live-action game of construction barrel "Frogger". The excitement was palpable.

But our enthusiasm was rechanneled when we successfully negotiated a time zone changing of the dashboard clock in the minivan. It's the little things, kids.

I never knew that Matt was such an afficionado of Runts before this trip. See what fascinating things you can learn when you leave town with a minivan full of your best friends?

And after many, many long hours in the van, we finally crossed the river into Louisville. Yay!!

This is the fine exxxstablishment that was located across the street from our hotel. It seems only appropriate that a hotel full of pastors would be adjacent to the Love Boutique since 1 John reminds us that "God is love."

We ran into our good friend Sharon who transferred to Columbia Seminary last year. It's always good to stumble upon old friends.

We decided that nothing says "zany pastors cuttin' loose" like a late night game of bowling. I'm not sure why Chris is licking his shoe, but hey, you know...whatever.

Matt was in charge of setting up the scoreboard. My bowling name was Flo. I couldn't get any of the others to buy into my theory that everybody should have a three-letter bowling name - Flo, Lou, Sid, Bud, Fay, Ike - see how those all have a proper bowling name sound about them? And besides that, three letter names are Trinitarian.

Ryan wins the award for effeminate pose of the night. And yet I couldn't get him to pick a bowling name.

After bowling, we stumbled upon a piano bar where I fell in love with this guy. Oh yeah, I am soooo over Charlie Gibson.

Chris lept at the chance to dance on stage. Here we see him giving us the universal symbol for unicorn. Yeah...that's what it means...unicorn.

And because I was the loudest participant in the bar, our table won the bucket of "magic elixir" that you see in the middle of the table. I'm really glad to know that all of my training in opera wasn't a complete waste of time and money.

When we got back to the hotel, we discovered that the seat of Emily's jeans had met an unfortunate demise while we were bowling. A moment of silence, please.

Meanwhile, back at the Presbyterian center, this is the first piece of artwork one encounters when walking through the door. Seriously. I think this is another occasion when y'all really need to write your own caption.

But artwork aside, the architecture was illuminating and theologically fascinating.

Jeff decided to try his hand at artwork by taking a picture of his own tonsils. Suitable for framing, my brother!

Here we are on the front steps of the Presbyterian center. What a well-behaved looking group of pastors! (Work with me, people.)

I think it was at this point in the weekend that we all started to get a bit punchy. Brad decided that for the rest of the weekend, it was his personal mission to make his way into every photo I took. For instance....

This is a picture of Hosung. Oh nuts, hold on...

THIS is a picture of Hosung. D'oh!! Dangit, Brad! Hold on...

THIS is a picture of Hosung, which can only mean that Brad must be in the bathroom.

Really, Brad? That's your best game face?? 'Cause it is ON, my brotha!

We found a great pub Saturday night. This is suppose to be a nice picture of Brad welcoming all of us to the table, but it ended up having a much more sinister feel to it...like we're all being brought in to get wacked by Tony Soprano.

So we enlisted our waitress Sly (her real name) to keep the Godfather in his place.

And we had Jeff put on his best puppy dog eyes because who could possibly wack a guy with puppy dog eyes??

We were pleased to discover that we would be ordering our drinks from the Beverage Bible. (Notice the presence of Brad in the background. Picture hog.)

Me! I had the very important job of being the toast master. Toast mistress? Toast maven? How about we just say I was the chick in charge of making the toast. (Photo by Matt.)

I think this pose just shot sinister in the a$$.

Then we walked several blocks down the street where we stumbled upon this polka band playing their last song of the night.

There was just enough time for Brad and Emily to cut a serious polka rug!

They were really very good!

Okay, I really don't know what this picture was intended to be other than ongoing evidence that Brad is the world's most skilled photo hijacker. Kudos, my friend. I bow to your superior abilities.

This is our new friend, Karl. We met him at Oktoberfest and couldn't resist getting a picture with him. He was a colorful dude.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but Karl (who had clearly been consuming copious amounts of beer for many, many hours) is balancing on one foot in the squatted position with the other foot in the air. He held the pose long enough for me to get out the camera and snap the picture. Then he stood back up without ever putting his elevated foot on the ground. Really amazing!

And we couldn't let the evening end without everyone pointing to their favorite pronunciation of Louisville.

We headed home on Sunday and capped off a great weekend by successfully navigating the minivan dashboard clock back to central standard time. And yes, those are Brad's thumbs.