Super Kathryn: Episode 7

Kathryn had about twenty minutes left before bedtime, so she wanted to play "Super Kathryn" with me. I told her that I didn't know how to play, but she promised to explain it to me. Basically, it's Kathryn telling a story while everyone else (in this case, just me) follows her. As she explained the basic story, I typed it. Here, for your enjoyment, is the background of Super Kathryn: Episode 7.

Kathryn: "In Super Kathryn: Episode 7, Super Kathryn and her team..."
Me: "Who's the team?"
K: "AJ, Katie, Lava Girl, and, of course, Super Kathryn their leader. And their new person, Superhero Daddy. They're all walking along, and suddenly Super Kathryn loses her powers."
M: "How did she lose her powers?"
K: "They don't know that. We'll find out in Episode 8."
M: "Oh."

K: "Now they have to go to the Sword & Shield, where they learn how to use the sword to destroy badguys when superheroes lose their powers, and the shield to protect you from badguys trying to hit you."
M: "Do I still have my powers?"
K: "No. You don't have any powers yet. To get powers, you have to go to the "what powers you want" place."
M: "Oh."

Later...
K: "Welcome to the "what powers you want" place. Here. Take this dinosaur. If you say, "Dinosaur, come alive!" you will be a dinosaur. And then, when you try to talk, you will scare the badguys away with your loud roar! Very useful."
M: "OK."

Our Disney Trip

I don't have time to write too much about the trip right now (and most of you have either heard about it already, or you're waiting to hear about it from Kathryn). But here are the pictures we took. You can view them at Snapfish.com.

Another Nelson Enters the World!

Randy and Amber are now the proud uncle and aunt of Christopher Paul Nelson! Christopher arrived in the world at 11:37 a.m. yesterday (February 18, 2007). He weighed 8 lbs., 11 oz. and he was 22 inches long. Congratulations to Paul and Christina and to the whole Nelson clan! Pictures to come... hopefully <that's a hint, Randy>.

Rebecca's 4-month-old update

Kristin sent out this e-mail today. Just in case she missed someone (I doubt it), I'll duplicate it here:

Greetings everyone!

I can't believe how the time has flown. Rebecca is 4 months old and has grown and changed so much! I have to apologize for not sending out an update at 2 months, the last time she was at the doctor's, but we had spotty Internet connection that week, and then got caught up in the Christmas rush.

Here are the numbers:

Birth: 6 lbs 9 oz, 19 1/2 in

2 mo: 9 lbs 5 oz, 21 1/2 in (25th percentile)

4 mo: 12 lbs 1 oz, 24 in (weight between 10 and 25th percentile; height between 25 and 50 percentile)

So, even though she's on the small side, she's growing very consistently, and there is no need to worry. So its time to move up to the 3-6 month size clothes (the 0-3 mo size goes to 12 lbs and 23 1/2 in). I had just noticed yesterday that she was stretching the sleeper she was wearing, and decided to get out the larger size this weekend. =)

The activities:

Rebecca is smiling at us, and "talking" to us with a wide variety of sounds. We're even starting to get occasional laughs, though we can't always tell what is prompting the laughter, let alone get her to do it again. She's also starting to use her hands...the thumb is making it into the mouth with more frequency, and small toys and light blankets come along with her when we pick her up. Once or twice while I've been holding her, she's reached for my face and it seemed a deliberate motion, rather than a random one, which gives me this warm tingly feeling.

Rebecca is also starting to squirm a lot. She's no longer lying down like a lump wherever we put her. She's not (quite) at the rolling over stage, but she's definitely working on it, because she can get up onto her side or rotate herself through a 90 degree turn. When she's on her tummy, Rebecca is not yet using her arms to push herself up, and she gets frustrated really quickly that she can't see whats going on. It's really cute, because she gets her bottom higher into the air than she gets her head. =)

Teething. Ouch. The drool, the random crying, the drool and the associated dry skin on the cheeks and chin, combined with the two white spots I can see on the lower gums all point to the fact that those first teeth are on their way. Who knows when they'll appear, but we'll all be relieved when they do.

Sleeping like a baby. Rebecca has always been a good sleeper, giving me 4 hour stretches from birth. She would have a nightly "fussy" period from about 10pm - 2am, where she would want to nurse constantly. Then, at about 2 months, the fussy time shifted to 10pm- 1am. But at the 3 month mark, she made a distinct shift in pattern. When she turned 3 months, this nightly marathon vanished. (YAY!) She started to carry the feeding intervals that we'd settled into during the day (every couple of hours) into and through the evenings. She'd be eating for the last time between 11:30 - 12:30, and then sleeping until 5-7am. And in the last 2 weeks, she's started falling asleep around 11pm, after eating at 10:30, and sleeping until 6 or 7am! So we're actually in a nighttime routine! Its wonderful! This past Monday morning (Jan 29) I was woken up by the alarm clock instead of a crying baby. What an odd occurrence! =)

Regression Ping-Pong Tournament

Yes, we really do work here, but regression is an entirely different experience. Finally, I won the regression ping-pong tourney! Hurray! :-)

Regresstion Testing, the Movie?!?

The powers that be extended our regression testing cycle by one week, so we're still in the trenches. But they also scheduled an additional "Destiny Fun" activity. Last Monday we broke into six teams (of about seven people each). Our task was to create a Destiny movie, using one famous film as a baseline. The films chosen were:

1. It's a Wonderful Life
2. Grease
3. Willy Wonka
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark
5. Rocky
6. Monty Python and the Holy Grail

We were given 30 minutes each day to work on our film. The finished product was to be shown yesterday (Monday) for voting and general entertainment.

I was on the Willy Wonka team, and we decided to try to condense the whole movie down to about 10 minutes. I had the dubious honor of playing "Charlie". We remembered that the movie was set in Britain, but we couldn't remember if Charlie himself was British. So I just tossed in a Cockney accent, for the fun of it. This made the experience of watching the film very difficult for me. Like most people, I can't stand the sound of my own voice on any recording. So it was even worse to hear myself faking a falsetto Cockney accent! But we had a blast putting everything together for the film.

There were five awards given for the movies; four from the "official" judges, and one from the team (our "Viewers' Choice" awards). Horace won Best Comedic Performance (for his portrayal of a disgruntled lyricist whose lyrics were removed from John Williams' "Raiders" score). Ray won Best Supporting Actor (as Tim the Enchanter in "Monty Python"). Lou won Best Actor (as Rocky). In Lou's case, he actually drank a raw egg on screen, which made him a shoe-in for the award. I was nominated for Best Comedic Performance and Best Supporting Actor. The "official" Best Picture went to "Monty Python". But we snagged the Viewers' Choice award!

We should have a DVD of all of the films pretty soon. So if you feel like torturing yourself, drop on by... and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.

Poor Swimmer!

Kathryn's first pet was a Betta fish which she named "Swimmer". We got it for her last year for Christmas. Well, Swimmer just died. So Kristin and I broke the bad news on Friday. Of course, Kathryn started crying, which made me start to tear up. But Kristin had the great idea to take Kathryn to Chuck E. Cheese for supper to take her mind off of Swimmer. Her plan worked beautifully.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if Swimmer's death has quite "hit" her yet. Whenever she prays for her meals, she still thanks God for Swimmer (and for the family, her imaginary friend, all her toys, etc). Only time will tell.

Our trip through the snow

Early last week, I decided to schedule a long trip for Kathryn and I this weekend. I decided to drive us out to Davenport, Iowa on Friday afternoon, spend the night in a hotel, go see The Polar Express in IMAX 3D on Saturday, and drive home. Of course, I wasn't counting on having the biggest snow storm in decades on Friday morning!

I went out to shovel the driveway at 5:45 on Friday morning. An hour-and-a-half later I came back in, soaking from the very wet snow. 45 minutes after that, I couldn't tell that I'd already shoveled once -- it was snowing that much. It was about this time that I discovered (much to my relief) that FSC had closed for the day. Hurray!

But I still had to deal with the rest of the snow. So I went out at 9:00 to clear the driveway again. This time, the snow and I maintained a delicate truce until it started to taper off at 10:00. Kathryn came out to play for a while, and she managed to get herself stuck in a couple of snow drifts before retreating to safety indoors.

I knew the storm was supposed to end by noon, and the plows had already cleared most of the roads in our subdivision. So we decided to give the snowplows a few more hours, and then try to get as far as Rockford. I cancelled our reservation in Davenport and made a new one at the Comfort Inn in Rockford.

We left around 3:00 and arrived safely a few hours later. To entertain us on our drive, I packed my iPod with a few of Kathryn's favorite CDs. We sang along with her God of Wonders: Praise and Worship CD for most of the trip. Then she surprised me by asking to listen to one of my "mix" CDs. I'd played it once while Kathryn was in the car, and she really enjoyed the music from the different movies (especially Superman and Pirates of the Caribbean). She also loves Charlie Peacock's In the Light and Message Boy (which should make Bill and Paul very happy).

That night we went swimming in the hotel pool, and spent some time in the hot tub (all that shoveling was murder on my back and shoulders). Kathryn was a very good girl the whole time. (Of course, she's normally happy when she has our undivided attention).

The next morning we rose early to grab some breakfast in the hotel lobby (for some reason, the hotel breakfast is one of Kathryn's favorite things to do when at a hotel on vacation). Then we started down to Davenport. The roads were much clearer today, with just the occasional patch of packed snow. Unfortunately (as normally happens in cold weather), the wiper fluid froze up, and the trucks on the highway were kicking up great quantities of salt. I pulled over several times to pour extra fluid on the windshield. Once, while trying to thaw the wiper fluid, I couldn't get the hood to latch for a few minutes -- the spring on the catch had frozen. I spent a few minutes in fervent prayer until it finally caught again.

But finally, after many trials, we made it to the Putnam Museum and IMAX Theater in Davenport. For some unknown reason, Kathryn absolutely loves The Polar Express. We went to see it in the theater with my mom and sister when it first came out. And that was probably Kathryn's earliest memory of a theater-experience. And after that, my Mom used The Polar Express soundtrack to put Kathryn to sleep whenever Kathryn stayed overnight at Mom's house. So maybe that explains why she loves that movie so much.

As for me, I remembered it as a cute movie, but nothing spectacular. But this IMAX 3D version completely blew me away! I have never enjoyed a movie experience as much as I enjoyed this one (not even when compared with the first time I saw Fellowship)! The 3D process was absolutely perfect for this movie, with its long shots and picturesque camera moves. Most movies have too much action to work in 3D, because when the picture moves too quickly the 3D just becomes a blur. But this was absolutely jaw-droppingly beautiful! If you ever have a chance to see The Polar Express in the IMAX 3D format, do it! It's amazing!

Then we just drove home, singing nursery rhymes, worship songs, or Christmas songs most of the way. It was a very tiring trip, but all-in-all I'm glad we went.

Some pictures

We took some family pictures for the holidays. Here are my two favorite pictures of our girls.

Yes, I'm still alive

The past few weeks have been very busy indeed. In fact, I needed to check my last post to remember when I'd last written. Lots of things have happened since then:

Kathryn and I attended the annual AWANA rollerskating party. It was Kathryn's first time on skates, and it was my first time since high-school. Kristin and Rebecca came too, since Kristin wanted to get out of the house, and wanted to see Kathryn's first rollerskating experience. We almost ended the evening early when Kathryn fell down and I nicked her finger with one of my skates. I was mortified! But she recovered and actually started to skate a bit (instead of just clomping around in the skates).

For Halloween, Kathryn was a pirate! Unfortunately, it was bitterly cold that evening, so we only visited the houses within a couple blocks of our house. When I get back home, I'll have to find the pictures of the event.

This weekend, Karin, Travis, and Sammy came to stay with us. Since the whole family was in town, Gail and Marge decided to visit too. The house was very full, and we all had a great visit. While Grandma and Grandpa were available for baby-sitting, Karin, Travis, Kristin, and I took advantage of the fact. We went out to see "Stranger Than Fiction". It was a remarkably good movie. I don't normally find Will Ferrell very funny, but this movie had all of us in stitches!

Rebecca's doing fine, but she's got a slight case of the sniffles. I'll try to be a bit more prolific with these blog entries in future... I hope. If I fall behind again, please just e-mail me a slap-upside-the-head to get me back on track. Thanks!

The Family Shopping Outing

Yesterday was our first full "outing" with the whole family since Rebecca was born. We had a few tough times, but we all survived.

Our first stop was at Kathryn's pre-school for a fundraising Fun Fair. I volunteered to help, and was assigned to the Bean-Bag Bucket Toss (like Bozo buckets, with candy in each bucket). The kids were mostly around that happy age that delights in everything (somewhere between 2 and 6) so I had a blast! Kristin took Kathryn and Rebecca around to the other games, and Kathryn came back with a lot of goodies.

Then we drove down to Pita Inn for lunch. Kristin doesn't like it as much as Kathryn and I do, but she still enjoys it in moderation. After that, we hit the main object of our day: Woodfield Mall. We found some early Christmas gifts, and some birthday gifts for Kathryn and for my mother. And we did a lot of walking.

I particularly enjoyed one moment, during dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. Rebecca started getting hungry, and the nearby Motherhood Maternity store allows breast-feeding in their fitting rooms. But our food had just arrived, and Kristin naturally wanted to eat a bit before being chased out with Rebecca. So I held her for a while, using my pinky knuckle to satisfy Rebecca for as long as I could (see the post Rebecca's Habits). Of course, now I can't eat, since both of my hands are occupied. So Kathryn used my fork to feed me some of my pasta while I held Rebecca.

And another notable occurrence: Kathryn's been coloring her speech with many little extra flourishes lately, as in this example yesterday, "It's a good thing I got that 'Get Out of Jail Free' card, because on the very next turn... BAM... I landed right on the 'Go to Jail' space." For some reason, that "BAM" really cracked me up.

Rebecca's Habits

Over the last two weeks, we've discovered a lot about Rebecca's habits. Everyone warned us that "no two babies are alike." Well, they're right (at least as far as Kathryn and Rebecca are concerned).

Like Kathryn, Rebecca is generally very well-behaved. But Rebecca moves her arms and legs a lot more than Kathryn did. To this day, Kathryn sleeps on her back, completely still. But Rebecca is rarely completely still.

Of course, Rebecca's main activities are eating and sleeping. I love holding her while she's sleeping, but I can't really do anything with her when she's hungry. Babies have something called a "rooting instinct", which the Wikipedia defines as, "When the baby's cheek is stroked, the baby will move his or her face towards the stroking and open his or her mouth, demonstrating the rooting instinct." And (partly because Rebecca moves so much) she often accidentally brushes her cheek with her sleeve. We've lost count of the number of times we've seen Rebecca lying on the floor, straining with mouth open to latch onto her sleeve. She doesn't have much control over her arms or legs yet, so it's a bit like watching a dog chase its tail!

But once Rebecca decides it's time to eat, my sole contribution is to delay her long enough for Kristin to get ready to feed her. Sometimes it takes a while for Kristin to get ready (especially if she's in the shower, or if I'm just trying to give her some time to sleep before she has to feed Rebecca again). So, in the meantime, Rebecca thrashes her head from side to side, trying to find anything to latch onto. Fortunately, once she finds something to suck on, she stops crying for a short while. Over the last two weeks, I've discovered precisely how long a given item will keep her satisfied:

• Pacifier: varies from three seconds to one minute
  
• My sleeve: two seconds
• My cheek: three seconds (our version of a "kiss")
• My arm (sans sleeve): ten seconds
• Her own thumb/finger/hand/fist: fifteen seconds
  
• The tip of my pinky finger: twenty seconds
• The knuckle of my pinky finger: five minutes!

So as you can see, if Kristin is ever more than six minutes away, there's nothing I can do if Rebecca is really hungry. But most of the time, she just wants a cuddle. That's another difference between Kathryn and Rebecca. Kathryn was content to stay on the floor on her back between feedings. Rebecca demands a bit more "cuddle-time".

More Rebecca pictures

It's been a crazy few days. All of the grandparents have visited (at least once, if not twice). But we're starting to settle into a routine, of sorts. Kristin and Rebecca came home from the hospital on Thursday afternoon. That night, Rebecca slept very well. Unfortunately, Friday night was exactly the opposite -- she wanted to eat every minute! But last night was wonderful again. It seems that Rebecca is alternating between good and bad nights. So Kristin and I are expecting a very sleepless night tonight.

In case you're wondering (and in case there's anyone left who doesn't know the story), Kristin allowed me to choose Aileen as Rebecca's middle name. It was my paternal Grandmother's name, and I've really missed her since she died. Kristin chose Rebecca as the first name because (as she says) her first choice (Amanda) didn't work very well with Aileen. In some variations, Rebecca means "to bind or captivate". And Aileen is a variation of Helen, which means "light". We thought it was pretty cool to give her a name which means "captivating light"!

On Saturday, Kathryn, Randy, and I went to the Trinity Homecoming football game. Kathryn has already started to express jealousy toward Rebecca. So we wanted to make sure that Kathryn still had her special outing on Saturday. (Trinity won, by the way. 24 to 3 against Joliet's University of St. Francis.) Kathryn absolutely beamed when I showed her the place in Johnson Hall Lounge where Kristin and I sat after our first date. Then I told her about how "Uncle Bill" came in and gave me such an exuberant greeting that he nearly knocked me over (seat and all). Kathryn's response was, "Uncle Bill is so silly!"

I'm going back to work on Wednesday, so Kristin's mom is going to come back that day to help Kristin around the house. The time has been going by so quickly! I can't believe it's Sunday already. But anyway, here are a couple extra Rebecca pictures for you to look at. I took them to church today, and was nearly mobbed by the entire Women's Ministry team as they each tried to be the first to see pictures of the new baby.

Rebecca Aileen Howk

Here she is!

10-03-2006 9:21 p.m. 6 lbs. 9 oz. 19 1/2 inches.

Baby Update

Kristin says this much better than I ever could, so here is the copy of her e-mail:

Baby has, somehow, mananged to make it to week 37 (probably due to all your prayers), so when she comes she will not be a preemie! YAY!! Now on to the medical details.

During the past week (week 36) I was in the office being checked out and monitored every day except Friday. On Wed morning and Sun night (early Mon morning, really) we had some false alarms. Last night (about 1am) I thought my water had broken, but the nurses at the hospital said otherwise and, since I was still only dilated to about 3 1/2 and not having contractions, they sent me home. :-(

This morning, at my 11am appointment, I saw both the doctor and the nurse practitioner/midwife, who said "I can't figure out why you're not in labor, you're dilated to 5cm." Then they hooked me up to the monitor and confirmed what my own experience told me: I'm not having contractions right now. In fact, between being sent home from the hospital at 3am and going to the doctors office at 11, I only felt contraction. So I'm not sure how I went from 3.5 to 5 so quickly, though I highly suspect those prayers for baby's continued development are why it didn't happen sooner. :-)

The doctor told us (Michael arrived at the office towards the end of the monitoring session) that it's dangerous to be walking around dilated to 5, as the baby could decide to slide out on her own. So, he's going to give me today and tomorrow to go into labor on my own, and then on Wed morning, if needed, he will induce labor by breaking my waters (the amniotic fluid/sac surrounding baby).

So baby should be arriving soon! (And it's just as well, the waiting was starting to really mess with my mind.) Looking forward to seeing all of you, and showing off the little one (who has hair, remember).

My long absence

Well, I haven't written in this thing for a long time. We've been trapped in "false labor pains" for a while now, and it's starting to wear us down a bit. Since Kristin's only in her 36th week, we're praying for the baby to wait just a bit longer. But the doctor seems to think that Kristin will deliver "any day now", and every contraction makes us wonder if "it's time".

So I haven't had time to write in my blog for a while. Every time I get a spare moment, I'm either spending time with Kristin, Kathryn, Randy, or Bill. When I'm not spending time with friends and family, I relax by fighting the Nazis in Company of Heroes. In fact, I'm about to go play that game right now (it's very therapeutic). So I haven't had much time for writing in my blog.

But over the last couple weeks, we've done a couple of interesting things. Kathryn and I went to the Enchanted Castle again, attended Amethyst's third birthday party, and went to the Rockford Children's Museum / Discovery Center. I've seen several movies (Hollywoodland, Flyboys, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Searching for Bobby Fischer). We're still thoroughly enjoying our time at AWANA. And I've started to teach Kathryn how to play Monopoly.

Normally, each of those topics would be an entry in itself, but I'm not really in the mood to write tonight. Instead I'm gonna go push the Germans out of Cherbourg. Good night!

Cary and Becky's New Addition

Here is the very first family picture with Cary, Becky, and Anthony! Hurray! We can't wait to see all three of you very soon! Welcome home!

Guys' Weekend, Part 5: The Pranksters Revealed

Well, between the last post and this one, I chatted with Sarah. She revealed to me that it was, in fact, she and Jen who planted the prank at the cabin! Here's what Sarah had to say about it:

Ladies & Gentlemen,

This past weekend was a smash hit for some and a rather unsettling experience for others. I would like to uncover a few mysteries by telling of the weekend from a female point of view.

Jen & I decided to take a trip up to the Dells this weekend. While a great, fun place to visit it was also in rather close proximity to some men who we decided to have a little fun with.

We started off small thinking a pile of stones with some ketchup should be sufficient, but really there needed to be more. So we moved on to body outlines consisting of plastic utensils (very noisy by the way). During the day we visited a candy store and there were these long gummy snakes that would provide a perfect element of fun & fright. Putting all the pieces together we did a mock up of the outline in our room and then headed up to the cabin where the men were sleeping peacefully around 12:30am.

Everything was going perfectly, we had found the cabin no problem, parked at the end of the drive, took the paths to the back of the house (we noticed there was a light on at the front of the house) and started to lay out the body outlines. We got about half-way through when this dark creature started to approach. At first we were frightened, but then a dog bounded up to us and became our partner in crime for the rest of our adventure, literally he would not leave our sides. Jen even tried several unsuccessful attempts to take him back home. He thwarted our plans just enough that we could only do two outlines when we wanted to do three and we had to reapply ketchup several times as he kept licking it off the severed mid-section of our 1st outline.

There were a few time we thought for sure we had been caught. There was a slam at one point, we though had to be a door, we lost ourselves in laughter a couple of times, and the dog at one point sounded like he was barfing (loud noise).

We gathered up our leftovers and headed back to the car, the dog however had other plans and made it very difficult for us to leave, jumping on the car, trying to get inside and then weaving around the car as we tried to back out of the driveway.

We drove away and had made it back to Necedah and felt a bit down. We wanted to see the reactions so after some discussion we drove back to the cabin. The dog once again greeted us at the end of the driveway and we headed down to the cabin. No lights were on and save for the sound of snoring there was silence. We checked the back and everything was still perfect so we left.

Suspecting that we had been caught at some point, we were eager to hear any reactions from the guys, little did we know the kind of evening they had been through and how it added to our prank.

Needless to say, we are THRILLED it went off so well and hope now that all the cards are on the table, we can all have a hearty laugh about this....goodness knows Jen and I have :)

So a big hearty "congratulations" goes out to Jen and Sarah for this one. They got us good!

Guys' Weekend, Part 4: The Big Black One-Eyed Dog

On Saturday evening, while Bill was still dozing, Jeff and I started working on building a fire for the night. As we were chopping little bits of kindling, we heard the sound of an engine approaching from the back of RJ's property. It was a woman driving an ATV. When she saw us, she asked if we had seen a black lab around the area. When we told her that we hadn't, she explained that she was looking for her one-eyed black lab, that it's name was Pookie (or Pokey), and that it was a "city dog". Then she gestured vaguely towards the back of RJ's property and said that she was our neighbor in that direction. Then she drove back down the trail.

RJ has a lot of trails in the back of his property, primarily for snowmobiling and four-wheeling. I've only walked down the trails a few times. In the daylight, it's a very pleasant walk. But at night, it's a confusing nightmare of twists and turns. This will be important later on in the story.

Later that night after we finished eating Bill's excellent meal of steak, chicken, and portabella mushrooms, we sat talking around the fire. I'm not sure what time it was, but in the middle of Bill's story, Jeff said, "Shhhh! There's a dog nearby; I can hear its collar clinking." We turned around toward the cabin, and reached for our flashlights. We turned them on... and there it was. A big black dog, standing at the edge of the firelight, near the picnic table. It couldn't have been more than 15 feet away, and because of the darkness, it seemed to appear out of nowhere. Then the light caught the glint of that one eye, and it really creeped me out.

Jeff and I tried to explain about the woman's lost dog (since Bill was sound asleep inside when the woman showed up). Then Jeff called it over, and it turned out to be a very friendly, but timid, dog. Jeff got it to sit next to his chair by the fire, and then we tried to decide what to do. We weren't really sure where RJ's trails led, but the neighbor to the north was making a lot of noise, so Jeff decided to try there first. Bill and I stayed with the dog as Jeff went to ask the north neighbors if they knew anything about this dog. When Jeff returned, he reported that they almost disbelieved his story about the dog, saying, "There aren't any one-eyed black dogs around here!" It was also Jeff's impression that our neighbors were already a bit on the inebriated side.

So now Jeff decided to search down the trails at the back of RJ's property. He came back a bit later to explain that the woods started getting very dark. Then he heard the sound of a baby crying, remembered the "Blair Witch Project", and fled back to the cabin. :-)

So we tried again. This time I went with Jeff, and we decided to take the dog with us. We used some rope from RJ's shed as a leash, and set off again. This time the dog seemed to know where we were going. It had its nose to the ground and it was pulled Jeff along at a pretty good clip. We followed the ATV tracks all the way around to RJ's other neighbor: only a short walk away from RJ's cabin! If we'd known where the tracks led, we could have saved a LOT of time. The dog seemed to know where it was. It walked straight up the stairs to a door in the trailer. We knocked, but there was no answer. So we walked back to the campfire (taking the short, direct route this time).

Over the course of the next couple hours, Jeff walked back to the south neighbor's to see if anyone came home. We gave the dog some water, which it lapped down greedily. But eventually, we had to turn in. We considered what to do with the dog. Our first idea was to take the dog inside for the night. But we didn't think we should risk bringing a strange dog into RJ's cabin -- we didn't want it to start tearing up the carpeting or the furniture. Since the dog seemed to know its way back to the neighbor's place, and since it wasn't that cold a night, we hoped the dog would find its way back. We all felt helpless about leaving it outside, but we couldn't think of a better option.

I fell asleep almost immediately, so I don't know what happened next. As Jeff tells it, the dog started barking later in the morning (around 3:00 a.m.), but then suddenly stopped. I didn't hear a thing. But the next morning, we awoke to discover that someone (probably the north neighbors) apparently didn't appreciate the barking that late at night. There were two "police chalk-outlines" (made out of white plastic knives and forks) on the ground outside. One of the two outlines was cut in half, with ketchup spread around it. We didn't wait around to ask any questions. We'd planned to leave at noon, so we packed up our stuff (including the chalk-outlines) and went to the local "Roadhouse" for lunch before heading home.

I wish I had some sort of closure for this story, but I don't. We saw neither the dog, nor the neighbors again. An odd ending to an odd experience...

But on the way home, we had the chance to listen to the Bears completely dominate the Packers (which is, of course, the best possible ending to any Wisconsin trip)!

Guys' Weekend, Part 3: The Rock

On RJ's cabin web page, he mentions a rock formation that he simply calls The Rock. Jeff and I tried to find it on Friday afternoon, but without success. We expected that something as grandiose as The Rock would have signs and a Park-District-sponsored trail all neatly marked out for travelers. As it turns out, The Rock is simply a huge rock formation, right next to the Wisconsin River. There are no signs, and no parking lot (except at a restaurant across the street). By the time we realized where we were supposed to be, it was already getting dark. So we decided to wait until Bill arrived, and try The Rock together.

On Saturday, Bill (having just arrived at 5:00 a.m.) was in no shape to scramble up The Rock. So Jeff and I left him at the cabin and went by ourselves. Now, for those of you who don't know Jeff, let me explain that he and his wife Christy have (on multiple occasions) gone on hiking trips in the Rocky Mountains. They frequently go out camping. I was, frankly, a little intimidated at the idea of trying to keep up with Jeff.

Getting up to the rock formations themselves was the hardest part of the experience. We walked up a steep dirt trail toward The Rock, but it felt like we were "crawling vertically" rather than "walking". The dirt was fairly loose, and I found myself grasping at the ground with my hands on more than one occasion. The few trees along the trail became my best friends, because I could hang onto them without worrying about sliding back down the trail.

When we made it up to The Rock itself, I felt more comfortable. I've always liked clambering around on rocks, and these rocks had enough footholds to make me very happy. The view from the top was breathtaking! Of course, neither of us had a camera. So you'll have to take our word for it that we were actually there.