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Warning: vacation recap ahead.

Visit 2010’s recap of our trip to Maranatha for a refresher course, or to see how similar trips to Maranatha are. We want them to be similar, because kids need traditions.

I tried one new (new to me, at least) ice cream flavor at the sweet shop: Caramel Apple. It was slightly disappointing; I would not get it again. There was not much flavor. If I had read the full description on one of the posters I saw afterwards, I might not have tried it in the first place. The poster called it something like a “lightly-flavored” ice cream. In other words: bland. My favorite is still Royal Coconut, which they did not have there this year.

Now on to the photos:
Like all good vacation spots with kids’ programs, there was an opportunity for tie-dye T-shirts. As usual, Alpha was the only one of our children who wanted to participate.

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Continued from last week.

Our drive home took about as long as our drive there, because we stopped a few times again.

I’ve been calling this series “Bluegrass Vacation” because Kentucky is the Bluegrass State. I didn’t know how serious they were about that until we were on the freeway and I saw the blue grass that made Kentucky famous:

That was just south of Cincinnati. I think this next photo is in Cincinnati, as seen from the freeway:

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Continued from last week’s post.

Relaxing at the House

Since I was up late, and since the kids had other people around to help them with breakfast when they awoke, I got to sleep in. I think it was close to 9am when I stumbled upstairs to the kitchen.

Our time at the vacation house involved swimming at the pool, playing games, and napping.

Whenever people were not swimming, their swimwear was drying on the fence. After a while, it was difficult to find a free spot on the fence for your stuff.

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Not bluegrass the music – bluegrass the state. We took a few days to go to Kentucky.

It’s about a 5 hour drive, but with a 2-month-old and a 2-year-old we couldn’t just drive straight there. So we left the house around 10:00am and got to our destination at 7:00pm – a total of 9 hours for a 5 hour drive.

Our first stop was at a rest area for lunch. That didn’t take too long, maybe 30-40 minutes.

It was a decent rest stop, and the kids enjoyed both the lunch and the time to run around.

They kicked a soccer ball around, and they followed a fuzzy green caterpillar.

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Warning: vacation recap ahead.

Visit last year’s recap of our trip to Maranatha for a refresher course, or to see how similar trips to Maranatha are. We want them to be similar, because kids need traditions.

Here’s a tip: if you like attention, take a 3-week-old baby to a place full of families. Everybody loves to see a newborn. I think Delta was the youngest one there, although I heard there was a 1-week-old there the next week.
That would be crazy – check out of the hospital, take a day to unpack, a day to settle in, a day to pack, and then leave on vacation.

The kids liked their programs (morning and evening each day). Beta wanted to go, but he had a fever the first two days, so he missed some of the sessions.
My wife took him to the nearby clinic, where they diagnosed a sinus infection and put him on antibiotics. Then he was good to go.

I tried a couple of new (new to me, at least) ice cream flavors at the sweet shop: Cake Batter and Royal Coconut. Cake Batter was okay, but I probably woudn’t get it again. Cake batter is inferior to cookie dough both in the baking and in ice cream. Royal Coconut, however, was delicious. It tasted like an Almond Joy (or Mounds) candy bar. I highly recommend it, unless you dislike coconut.

Now on to the photos:
Like all good vacation spots with kids’ programs, there was an opportunity for tie-dye T-shirts. Alpha was the only one of our children who wanted to participate.

(more…)

At the risk of alienating my remaining readers with yet another recap of my family’s vacation, I am writing a recap of yet another family vacation. But don’t worry, this is a different kind of recap: little text and many photos.

About halfway between now and the last trip, we visited Lake Michigan for a week. The part of Lake Michigan we visited just happened to be connected to Maranatha.

Background Note (for those unfamiliar with Maranatha): The full name is Maranatha Bible and Missionary Conference. The way I usually describe it is that it is somewhere between a resort and a campground. Or VBS for adults.

Now on to the recap:
We went to the beach

and dug holes

and chased seagulls

and went for long walks on the beach.

Beta and I played shuffleboard

while Alpha painted some crafts

There were sunsets over the lake.

And we finished out the week with the kids’ program, where they recited the verse they learned that week and performed the song (with motions of course) that they also learned that week.

Oh, and here is the view out our front door, over the balcony.

And here are the views to the left and right on the balcony. No, I did not make a panorama shot.

And there was a lot of preaching. Ron Zappia was a good speaker to have that week. Or any week, for that matter. But I don’t have pictures of any of the sessions because that would be a little rude to be taking pictures during what is essentially a church service.

Conclusion: Everyone had fun (and plenty of ice cream) and no one ever wants to leave Maranatha. But leave we did. Of course, as we did after our trips to Boise and to Wisconsin, we stopped at Bob Evans for lunch on the way home. Now it’s tradition.

The end.

(Well, almost the end. There are two more smaller blog posts planned. Stay tuned.)

I know that yesterday’s entry promised to be the last about our trip to Wisconsin Dells and Chicago. Don’t worry, this one is about photography. The subject of the photograph just happens to be a lake from our travels.

Some of you may recall that we took a trip to Devil’s Lake while we were in the Wisconsin Dells area.

My little point-and-shoot camera didn’t have a wide enough lens to capture the whole lake, so I took a few photos from different angles to get the whole scene.

Note: Most pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Here are the individual photos:

And is how they look all together:

But I didn’t take the photos from precisely the same location. So for the panoramic photo, I had to manually align them:

It seems that the panoramic result is a bit skewed. The treeline looks correct but the shoreline wasn’t that curved. So I arranged the photos to match the actual view:

That panorama now distorts the background (treeline) and foreground (shoreline) equally. So maybe that’s the best compromise for now. Here is the final result, with spiffy finishing touches:

Then, after I did all that work, I learned about AutoStitch. AutoStitch is a program that will create a panorama for you.

Many photos -> Autostitch -> one big photo.

Here is the output of AutoStitch:

AutoStitch doesn’t do much, but it does it well, quickly, easily, and cheaply (it’s free). And my favorite part is that it doesn’t need to install anything. You download the .zip file which contains an .exe. Run the .exe, select the few input files, and it generates an output file and soon as you click ‘Open’ on your input files.