Flood Relief

As you probably know, we had a good sized flood in September after the hurricane.  Actually, it was a double whammy.  Indiana got dumped on by two different storms, back-to-back.  I think we had something like 8 or 9 inches of rain on each of two consecutive days.  The seminary was turned into an evacuation center, with people staying there for two nights.  I helped out by staying up on the second night along with Aaron V. and Yevgeni K.

So here's (finally) some pictures of the flood.  None of these are my pictures... I kept forgetting my camera and wishing I had taken it along.  

This past Saturday, I took a break from my studies and helped out one of the relief teams from Oak Glen URC.  We spent the whole morning on this house.  There was a lot of stuff in the basement that was ruined, as you can see.  The man from the house called it the "Wailing Wall".  Apparently,  this was a quite a common sight all along the flooded streets!

Steve & Nicole's Wedding

This past weekend I went to Washington State for Steve & Nicole's (Enter) wedding. The wedding was very nice and went with only one major hitch (sorry, very bad pun :) ). Holly (niece) was one of the SEVEN flower-girls, as you can see in the pictures.



The groomsmen.


The bride's maids (and matrons).


Holly looking quite cute outside. The weather was unfortunately typical Washington weather (grey and rainy), but that did mean that the colors stood out quite well, as you can see.



And of course, another high point was seeing once again Steve, Laurie, the kids (Emily, Marie, Joel, Holly), and for the first time the NEW BABY Jenna!

Camping Trip To Thousand Islands

Two weeks ago, the three kids of our family (Jer, me, and Ruth) went on a camping trip to the Thousand Islands on the St. Lawrence. (Well, one of the islands anyways.) We had a very relaxing enjoyable time, filled with snorkelling in our wetsuits (we sure put those to good use), some fishing, and enjoying ourselves. I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but here are some pictures. I did take an underwater camera, but we haven't filled it up yet, so I don't have any pictures of those unfortunately.

It's a beautiful park, good fishing, great snorkelling, fairly quiet. (There are a lot of boats that go by during the day however.)

Yes, we did do other things besides fish.


Jer and I caught this one trolling. I forget the size... something like 3.5 lbs? (For the record, I caught this one, even though Jeremy's holding it. :) )



Go west, young man... where did that quote come from, anyways?


This fungus was HUGE, probably about 1.5 feet across.


Ruth took this beautiful sunset picture.

Retreat

... just a note to say that Steve has pictures of the Seminary Retreat up on his blog: http://steveamy.wordpress.com/

Seminary Life

Steve and I have been doing pretty well by ourselves so far. Steve makes these amazing power drinks made of beets and carrots and all sorts of other fruit... they taste amazing. We've been eating pretty well too... here's a picture of our last supper.

But just today both of us needed haircuts, so we went to a place in a mall. I don't think either of our barbers had ever cut many heads of hair like ours, and they both took quite a long time cutting. Steve's turned out pretty well, but I think my barber was a little lost... half of my head on the top was buzzed, while the front was clipped, allowing for a nice big cluft of hair (like Tintin). :)

Here's two pictures of the 20 dollar haircut:

And here's a picture after the fix up job in the bathroom.

Steve and I had a good laugh about this one! :)

This is what happens to guys who study Greek (continued)...

Seeing Steve & Amy's blog reminded me of a funny picture I saw in my Greek workbook.

If you can't read the caption, it says: "Here is a famous Greek scholar who spent too much time studying and not enough time playing." (Basics of Biblical Greek Workbook, 2nd Ed., William D. Mounce). :)

A Trip to the Zoo

On July 1st (a while ago, I know), we (the Ontario Clifford & Henriette Van Dyken clan) made a trip to the zoo ( http://www.zooz.ca/ ) on the way to Fort Erie. It was a beautiful day for it, and we had a good time. We saw monkeys swinging, lions roaring, storks squawking angrily (we got too close to the nest), hippopotami sneezing, friendly macaws, and we even got some fishing in there. The park was very nice for a day trip... not too big, not too small. Here are some of the pictures I took (I don't know where Mom's are, sorry).