New York City

Our first stop was New York City, where my Aunt Nancy lives.  Because of weather delays, we didn't land at Nework Airport until about 2 a. m.  We crashed in our hotel room until later that morning.  This was the view from our hotel room window on the eigth floor--a train yard and Jersey City (I think).           

                                  

We decided that though we would not go to the island it's on, we wanted to at least see the Statue of Liberty, so on our way to Aunt Nancy's in the Bronx, we stopped at Liberty State Park.  It's on the New Jersey side, but it's right next to the water, so you can see across to Manhattan, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty--her back, that is.  It was cloudy that day, so things look a little dull.     

Below is Ellis Island.  The bridge is some sort of access bridge to the island--but not for tourists!  There were security guards there to make sure no one got on the bridge who wasn't allowed to.   On the far right of the picture is the Statue of Liberty.

The skyscrapers rising up in the background are Manhattan. As you can see from this picture, the park was pretty big.     

After that we met up with Aunt Nancy, who took us on a tour of the New York Botanical Garden.  It was really beautiful, and much more expansive than I had imagined.  It contains acres of gardens and forest that have been preserved for about two hundred years, so it's a kind of oasis in the city.   

I was fascinated by the black squirrels that seemed to be everywhere.  I had no idea black squirrels existed!  They were really pretty.  This one looks kind of scarry, though, with the light reflecting off its eye like that.   

   

This is one of the beautiful, historical buildings in the graden.

We ended the day by having dinner with Aunt Nancy and family at their apartment.  It was great to see everyone again.     

East Coast Trip

We returned late Wednesday night from a quick trip to the East Coast to visit some of Mom and Dad's siblings. We had a great time, though we were all pretty tired by the time we got home. We flew out to the East Coast last Thursday and made a quick loop through New York, the D.C. area, and Pennsylvania. We were really thankful for the time to catch up with family. Everyone was so kind to host us or take time out of their busy schedules to see us. In addition to visiting family, though, we got to do something a little different this time. We actually went sight-seeing. Imagine that! We weren't able to do that much, but it was fun. I'll be primarily posting on that part of the trip.

The Alpaca Photo Shoot

Last week I had the opportunity to do a photo shoot for a friend. She raises alpacas and I agreed to try to get some pictures of them, so we headed out there and spent almost two hours snapping shots of them all. In case you're not familiar with alpacas--and I'm sure you all are!--they're a smaller relative of the llama. They're really cute, kind of funny-looking things. Mostly they didn't pay much attention to the camera, but sometimes they would get curious. If I got too close, though, they would shy away.

First we did the the females and babies (called crias). The crias were really cute. It was fun trying to catch action shots of them running and jumping around the pasture.

I loved getting up-close face shots. Their expressions are so hilarious! These were some of my favorites.

After that we took pictures of the males. We got some wide shots, and as well as some nice up close shots.


It was a lot of fun. Thanks, Mrs. Miller, for the great opportunity. Hopefully the pictures will be useful to you!

In Case You Noticed

I've had a blog color crisis. :) I tried changing templates tonight. Well, one thing led to another, and now I will have to decide whether to leave it as it was, or change it. In the mean time, I hope you don't mind the different colors and altered layout.

The Love of Books

Life slows down, and so do the posts. When you do pretty much the same thing everyday, there's less to say about it. A large part of what I've been doing lately is reading of various sorts. My Whitefield courses involve a lot of reading, mostly of a theological sort. While Berkhof and Pink and other theology books are good for me, I have to say it's not what I love to read. Some things we do because we have to, and others because we love to. What I really love is fiction. So, while I've been pushing myself through my school books, I've been devouring a novel in my spare time. Most recently I read A Tale of Two Cities. It's bad, I know, but I hadn't read a Dickens novel before, so I didn't really know what he was like. I was pretty impressed with him, from what I saw in this novel. I really liked the way he developed the characters--by the end you really feel attached (or repulsed) by the different ones. Some parts are rather gruesome, though, so it's not exactly family-friendly.

Before Two Cities, I was re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia. Our Grandma Grove read them to us when we were younger, so I've had fond feelings for them for a long time, but I never re-read them on my own before. I love C. S. Lewis's other novels, and I enjoyed going back through and picking out the deeper themes that I hadn't caught when I was younger. I also found myself trying to picture how the later books would look as movies. I'm starting to wonder if the movie makers will really be able to do the whole series. I'm pretty sure they will not be able to catch Lewis's vision in them, even if they do.

Well, I hope that wasn't too boring. Maybe I'm feeling an unconscious need to continue writing the book reports I had been writing for years. Anyway, now you know what I've been doing instead of blogging.