About Gorillas and Blow Dryers

Checking out the flood waters in Iowa City with my sister Rebekah who studies at the University of Iowa...much of which suffered greatly in (what many are calling) the 500 year flood.


How much interesting stuff can you pack into a road trip? That all depends on where you go and who you see on the way. This is what we were able to scare up on our 12 hour trip (with stops) last Friday.


Bridge waiting to be torn down and rebuilt because the structural integrity was compromised.

Road still underwater...tree down.


Road closed to through traffic, but open to vehicles in the clean up effort.


A giant BLOW DRYER is working non-stop to diminish the humidity in this building.

Anabel found a friend in one of the U of I buildings housing the Museum of Natural History. She named him (or her!) Anabel.

Thanks for the tour, Rebekah...we had a great time!

"Chain Saw" Dads

How do you entertain a couple of men and their kids? Have 'em cut down a tree! This wee project kept the guys busy for the lion's share of the morning. (Lest you think that the tree was a perfectly good, oxygen producing specimen, this one was half dead and threatening to take a nose dive onto the house.)

Adjusting the chain saw.

Cut'n up firewood for winter. Watch those woodchips fly!!!

Jason, my brother-in-law, with the mean machine.

Balancing Acts and More Fun Stuff

The girls have been having a ball with friends here in the US. Anabel and Alicia worked out balancing on the teeter-totter with Kara and Erin Korthals. Look, Mom, no feet!

We visited a dairy farm in Hull, IA to let the girls in on the "secret" about where milk REALLY comes from! They weren't really impressed with the actual milking process, but enjoyed bottle-feeding the calves.

Hey, there is LOTS of milk in here!

The cousins bakin'cookies...mmmmmm!

Mess'n Around

Ken mixing up a bit of cement

Just to keep up on those construction skills, Ken took on the challenge to cement around the tank for the sump pump at the Korthals' house in Bondurant, Iowa.



Hey, I think he still remembers. :)

Ride 'em Cowgirl!!!

Anabel and her "horse" driver's license

The day after we hit the States (only 10 days ago), Anabel hit the trail with "horse camp". She and her new-found friend, Gabby, attended a week of camp to learn how to care for and ride the horses. Anabel was more than thrilled. Here are some of the highlights.

Anabel and Gabby with one of the horses

Guiding the horse through some obstacles

Learning how to ride around the barrels

Flying High

USA here we come!!! Alicia and Anabel were thrilled to get to see the cockpit of a "big" airplane.

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It has been quite the initiation to the US this past week. Our kids are amazed with everything, which makes for some really interesting comments...

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At Community Bible Church in Omaha two days after we had been in their multi-purpose room for Sunday School...

Anabel: Quick, Mommy, you gotta come see what they did to the room!

Mommy: Sure, honey, let's go check it out.

Anabel: See, they "parted" it!

(A divider had been pulled down the middle of the room to make two smaller ones.)

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After a visit to the Henry Dorley Zoo...

Mommy: So, tell me about your trip to the zoo.

Alicia: Oh, I was really impressed.

Mommy: Why

Alicia: It was soooo realistic!

?????? Ok, so I am not quite sure what it was she was expecting... :)

Lessons Learned

A very nice specimen - quite unlike ours...

As Ken was sitting at the auto shop waiting for work on the car to get done, a guy walked by selling shrimp. That was nothing unusual since we live fairly close to the ocean and we also live in Brazil where people are always selling unusual things on the streets.

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Ken glanced at the mechanic in the shop and the guy gave him a look that said, "go for it." These shrimp where an incredible price...less than $1 a pound. "Cool...well, then I'll take 2 bags (a kilo each)," and then proceeded to give the vendor a R$10. At this, the vendor exclaimed that he could give Ken an even better deal...he would give him the change (a whoppin' R$ 7) in shrimp. Well, ok, why not?

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As Ken was telling me how he aquired so many kilos of shrimp (the refrigerator door was having trouble closing), I recalled how something very similar happened to me in Israel with figs which I will not go into right now. Since my story didn't turn out so well, I decided not to say anything in hopes that his experience would be better than mine.

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Ken proceeded to contract Alicia to pull off just the heads to prepare them for consumption. She is very industrious and always glad to make a little extra money, so went right to it. At this point we realized how little these crustacean were. After cooking up the first batch it was discovered that there was 3x more shell than shrimp. I was needing a little extra fiber in my diet, but this was a little more than I had bargained for. We unanimously concluded that they were hardly edible in this manner, so Alicia went to it again and decided to take off their transparent shells. After 2 hours of hard work, she literally had only a handful of shelled shrimp to show for it. Not worth it. Just out of curiosity, Ken asked her to count how many little pink guys were in the next kilo she beheaded. Only 636. Did I mention that these were very tiny shrimp?

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Now for some creativity. Ken got out a meat grinder...yes, for real. The shrimp now looked like pink hamburger. I started dreaming up shrimp pizza, shrimp spaghetti, shrimp lasagna, etc. It all sounded wonderful, but after the first culinary delight of "cheese sauce a lá shrimp" we discovered that the shells, even though ground up, were just only neatly concealed and still managed to ruined the whole dish.

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Tomorrow we are going to take all those little containers of ground shrimp that are tucked away neatly in the freezer and label them "dog food". At the price we got them for it actually comes out to about the same price as real dog food.

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So the lesson for the day is:

The next time a street vendor tries to give you your change in produce, take your money and run, or otherwise you may have to suffer the embarassment of 4452 little tiny shrimp staring back at you every time you open the refrigerator door...not something I would wish on just anyone!