Chipmunk

Aimée had her wisdom teeth out today, all four, all impacted. She is brave and wonderful and doing pretty well under the circumstances.

Toadstool

Driving

Not a vacation, just delivering a child to a party.

Christopher

Aimée

Guys, Hanging Out

July Self-Portrait

Turkeys

Rear View

Happy Birthday, Steve!

Our church's "summer fun night" fell on Steve's birthday. I am blessed weekly by Steve's faithfulness and encouraging heart, and I pray God's blessings on him for another year.

Clouds

Baseball

Kipper and I played baseball in the yard this afternoon.

Pig Tank

I debated a long time over what picture to post today. I like the discipline required in only posting a single picture each day, but some days it's difficult to choose. On days when something really fun is going on, I often have quite a few pictures that come out well and that well represent my day. On truly mundane days I may have several equally boring pictures to choose from. Today's problem was that I didn't really love any of the pictures that truly represented my day--we had three extra boys here all day, with another three extra that were here for parts of the day, making it a day of much testosterone. But I really loved this one, because it makes me smile. So you get the smile and not the testosterone.

Moon

Grace

School Planning

I spent a chunk of the afternoon planning out Ben's ancient history course for his 9th grade year. We'll be using Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Ancient World plus a couple sets of Teaching Company lecture series (Foundations of Western Civilization and Great Battles of the Ancient World).

Poetry Reading

Aimée and Kipper (later joined by Ben) spent some time this afternoon reading poetry aloud together.

Bee on Weed

Heritage

Going through older books at our church library today I discovered a 1948 biography of Jack Wyrtzen, founder of Word of Life Fellowship. As I flipped through its yellowed pages, I looked for mention of my first pastor, John Duchardt ("Duke"), a friend and fellow laborer with Jack Wyrtzen in New York when they were young men. The page I photographed tells of Duke's conversion and subsequent ministry alongside Jack and the others sharing the Gospel around New York City. Duke's son Bob led the Bible study where I first heard the Gospel and taught me faithfully throughout my teen years. So in a sense this is a page from my own spiritual heritage, and I'm glad to have run across it.

Pond

Part of my morning run today went through a local park with this pond, and I paused to take this picture with my camera phone.

Dinner

Um, not a great photography day! But our teriyaki steak was pretty good. Can't have everything.

Street Sign

This one always makes me smile. No outlet from Shangri-La?

Falls

I discovered on a town web site that our town is home to an 80-foot waterfall, so we ventured out to find it this afternoon. Unfortunately, much of the falls is obscured this time of year by foliage, so it was really hard to photograph (and, after all, getting a photograph was the chief motivation for this little adventure). But I managed to get this one of the bottom of the falls. We'll head back in November or April when there are fewer leaves.

Afternoon Viewing

We love this detective series from A&E. We watched all the episodes (only two seasons, alas) from Netflix last winter, and then the kids gave me the first season DVD set for my birthday, so we've started on round two of Nero Wolfe.

Quote of the day: "You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important."

Blue Sky

House Wren

Flicker

Foosball

Some of our Fourth of July guests in serious competition.

Squirrel

He spotted me and posed for the camera.

Summer Reading

From the top, a commentary on Ezekiel, which I just finished this afternoon; a collection of New York Times crossword puzzles; The Doctrine of God by John Frame; Desiring God, which I'm reading with a group of women from church; Calvin's Institutes; and Photoshop Elements the Missing Manual.

Christopher