06.29.08
Posted in Photos, Married Life at 7:50 pm by Jeremy
Annie and I gratefully took a weeklong vacation to Texas last week to visit our families. Like all vacations it came to a close too quickly, but we were able to pack in lots of family in just a few short days. We had been planning on visiting this summer, and when Annie’s family reserved a lake condo on Lake Travis AND offered to fly us there (thank you Jan and Steve!), our decision was easily made.
Mom, Dad, Jennifer, Taylor, and Presley picked us up at the airport in Austin, where we met Presley for the first time. The following day Nana and Grandad came down from Stephenville for the day. On Friday we had the honor of attending the Organic Pecan and Fruit Orchard demonstration day in Lamkin, Texas, where dad is the orchard manager. Although retired, he has been helping the older couple who own the orchard. The husband recently died, leaving dad to take care of it (technically, he’s now a sharecropper). We got a tour of the orchard and a free fish fry lunch. That evening we drove to Abilene to visit Jordan and Ashley and to attend the Phillips family reunion (and our second fish fry of the day).
After our stay in Hamilton, Mom and Dad drove us back to Austin to meet Annie’s family (thank you Mom and Dad for all the driving!). We spent four days in The Hollows, which is right on Lake Travis. The landscape brought back lots of great memories… (I worked a summer at Camp of the Hills, which is just up the road). The heat, the hills, the trees, the full moon over the lake, and the cacophony of nighttime insects brought back many great memories for me.
Thankfully it was a full Carpenter reunion/vacation, though we were missing Papa and Hawkeye. Steve generously kept all of us kids entertained by renting either a boat or waverunners each day. We skiied, tubed, swam, and kayaked and ate Jan’s brisket and tortilla soup. We enjoyed playing with Evelyn, who is quickly growing and communicating more and more. On our last day we took the scenic drive into Austin and had lunch at the Whole Food headquarters store.
06.14.08
Posted in Photos, Denver, Married Life at 11:45 am by Jeremy
Last night Annie and I decided to walk from the house and get dinner-to-go, so we tried “Ethopian Restaurant.” Um, I wouldn’t recommend it. But on the way home we walked through Cheesman Park and noticed a crowd gathering around an outdoor movie screen. There were quite a few people already there throwing frisbees and eating free popcorn, snowcones, and cotton candy. It ends up that Denver Parks and Recreation was hosting a movie in the park night, which they do every Friday night in the summer. The event rotates to different parks in the city, and last night happened to be right next door. So we grabbed some quilts from home and went back to watch Shrek under the stars. As soon as the credits rolled, the sprinkler system came on and everyone scattered in a hurry.
06.11.08
Posted in Photos, Denver at 9:24 pm by Jeremy
Amazingly, climbing in Colorado is not just a weekend affair. With rock just 20 minutes from the house (see Denver skyline in background below), there’s plenty of summer daylight after work to get some climbing in. I’m trying to take advantage of this and get out more often. Here are a few photos from bouldering in Morrison last night with Dylan and Jon.
Posted in Photos, Denver, Married Life at 9:15 pm by Jeremy
A few photos of some climbing in Clear Creek Canyon this past weekend… Annie and I climbed with friends Ruth, Mike, Cam, Molly, Dylan, and Reb. Dylan and Cam led the way on a 3-pitch climb called People’s Choice, with a fun, airy dihedral on the third pitch. Afterwards we all ate dinner together on the back deck of Reb’s place, content to be in Colorado on a cool summer evening.
06.01.08
Posted in Photos, Denver, Married Life at 9:08 pm by Jeremy
A few quick updates… the weather’s getting warmer and Annie and I are excited about the summer. For Memorial Day, we camped in the Lost Creek Wilderness near Bailey, CO. We hiked several miles and pitched our tent in (near) solitude… a little rain in the night, but the Hubba Hubba was a champ as usual.
Then today we got outside again, this time repeating a mountain that we ticked off last summer, Mount Bierstadt. We hiked it with our friend Chad, who will be climbing Mount Rainier later this summer. Luckily, in his training, his overweighted pack handicapped him to our hiking pace. The hike was very different than the first time around, as there is still a considerable amount of snow on most portions of the trail. Early in the morning it was mostly frozen and fairly predictable. But as it softened under the noon sun, we found ourselves sliding and sloshing through mud and sometimes hip deep snow. Every step was a surprise. Of course, the preferred method of descent was glissading, the technical term for “heiny sliding.”
05.17.08
Posted in Craftiness, Denver at 6:43 pm by Annie
For Aaron’s third birthday, I sweet-talked Jeremy into designing a shirt with an image of Aaron alongside an owl character from one of his books, Little Hoot. I may be biased, but I love the way it turned out; and I think the owl Jeremy sketched really looks like Aaron.
Posted in Denver at 6:41 pm by Annie
I’ve been mildly obsessed with plants, bulbs, seedlings, and flower pots this spring. There is something quite remarkable about witnessing 4 seasons for the first time in my life. Having the time to watch how colors in my yard are changing on a daily basis has made me want to be a farmer. Or at least I want to have a modest vegetable garden to think of fondly and call my own.
In my obsession, I joined an online seed swap and gathered seeds from all over the states. Then I tried several times to motivate them to show me a little green. I haven’t seen much success, but I’ve had fun with my stubbornly sleepy seeds nonetheless. Aaron and I did manage to start some seedlings on wet paper towels. We had fun watching the radish seeds burst into leaf almost overnight. We spent a chilly morning settling our seedlings into their new plastic cup homes.
Unfortunately, each and every seedling met with a sad demise: some were dumped out on the floor, some were too wet and rotted, some dried up when we forgot to water them, some were too frail to survive transplanting (morning glories), one my cat ate, some wove their roots so tightly through the paper towel, I couldn’t wrangle them loose to set them in soil.
I tried to establish seedlings 3 times, and so far all I have to show for my efforts are some cute pictures of Aaron and one flowerpot with one sprout that looks like the tiniest single blade of grass. It appears that I am lacking the gene of natural plant charmer. Maybe next year I’ll buy seedlings that are already a few weeks old from the neighborhood nursery.
Posted in Craftiness at 6:39 pm by Annie
I sewed this mini sewing kit out of felt for a friend who likes folk art. The heart is a pincushion. The left wing has two little embroidered pockets with velcro closures. The pockets hold a small spool of thread and a few buttons. The right wing has a strip of ric-rac to hold needles and a loop of ric-rac for safety pins and a thimble.
Posted in Craftiness at 6:35 pm by Annie
I made Polly from a recycled sweater sleeve. I wet-felted the 100% lambswool sweater, then machine and hand stitched her together. I added her eyes and beak with craft felt, and sent her to live among friends in a faraway land.
05.16.08
Posted in Craftiness, Photos at 12:22 pm by Annie
I’ve been lazy with the blog and with crafts lately, so today I decided to catch up on this spring’s projects before summer begins.
Sophie and I made these in January for a few friends with kittens for Valentine’s Day. I used felt, ribbon scraps, vintage cotton calico, and filled them with poly-fill and catnip.
05.05.08
Posted in Faith, Photos at 10:14 pm by Jeremy
Recently Annie and I used some free movie tickets to see “Expelled,” which is a look at the creation and evolution debate within the academic world. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. We had mixed opinions of the content and delivery, and I’ll let the rest of the blogosphere wrestle over it’s worth or worthlessness.
But it has set me again to thinking about the reality of my very existence. From time to time I have these moments of awareness that put me in a state of reverent wonder. I mean, have you ever stood in amazement that you actually exist? How many times has it struck the depths of you that you are actually alive, that you breathe, think, feel, see, taste, hear, and move? And have you ever felt your heart beating inside you and wondered by what power it maintains its rhythm?
Or have you ever felt reverence or admiration for nature? Have you ever driven across the plains and seen the Rocky Mountains rise up before you, or have you ever watched meteorites and counted the stars and pondered the infiniteness of the universe, or have you ever walked in the woods and smelled the earth and pine trees, or have you ever watched a storm race towards you on the wind and feel the force of the thunder and rain, or have you ever seen treebuds emerge after the winter and wondered how they ever develop into the full foliage of spring, or have you sat by a lake, lay on a beach, seen a full moon, stood at the edge of a cliff, floated down a river, drank ice water on a hot day, or tasted a strawberry? And in the midst of all this, wondered in amazement that you exist within it?
How often does nature arrest and mesmerize our minds? Probably not as often as it should. As Bob Dylan says,
“How many times must a man look up, before he sees the sky?”
To take it further I would say, “How many times must a man see the sky, before he considers its maker?”
The psalmist wrote that “the heavens are telling of the glory of God” and that “day to day they pour forth speech.”
If this is so, then these satisfying moments in nature that we experience are full of words and communication. The heavens, the water, the earth, they are all talking to us. And for those who will hear, they have a message: “Behold the power and divine nature of our creator! See his creativity, his power, his wisdom, his majesty!”
Elsewhere it is written in the Bible that God has made himself evident through what has been made. This phrase “what has been made” is translated from the single Greek word “poiema,” which is where the English language gets the word “poem.” Therefore the universe is God’s poem, his work of art, his metaphor and analogy of who he is. It is his letter to us, a clear pointer and indicator of his being. It can’t be overlooked.
Yet who is listening to the heavens’ declaration? Who is reading God’s poem? And why do many scientists, who analyze every word and letter and beautiful use of alliteration and rhythm and meter of the poem fail to honor the poet by claiming such a work is merely the result of time and chance?
Consider Stonehenge. We do not say, “Wow, look at how the forces of wind and water created this arrangement of stones!” Even though it is mysterious and definitively unexplainable, no one questions that a thoughtful, able, and creative agent arranged it with intent and purpose. Why then, as thinking and reasoning humans, do some rule out the idea that there is a thoughtful, able, creative, intentional and purposeful agent that has created us and set us within an orderly environment with seasons and days and physical laws and has given us the capability for language, reason and emotion?
Or consider DNA, which is the storehouse of genetic information in a cell nucleus that is required to build and construct every protein that an organism needs. To say that a natural process created an information system is a contradiction in terms. A piece of paper may have words and sentences, but they did not arise from the nature of the paper. Instead they were composed on the paper by the author. (I even came across this explanation of DNA on a nanotechnology web site: “DNA is a protein-building code library. A protein is like a “word” built of letters (amino acids) which are spelled out along the length of the DNA “page.”). I encourage you to look up some DNA videos on you tube… fascinating.
The Bible addresses the failure to acknowledge God in an extremely relevant and insightful manner. In the New Testament, there is a passage that says God has made himself evident to man through the things that he has made. It goes on to say that instead of honoring him or giving him thanks, man has willfully suppressed this awareness and knowledge, exchanging away the glory that the heavens point us towards for a self-made, human-exalting glory.
To see the relevance of this, listen to a quotation from Richard Dawkins, one of the most well known opponents of intelligent design: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” And Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA said, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.” Statements like this give us a glimpse into this God-suppressing reality that the scripture presents: in man’s self-exalting knowledge, he suppresses the evident nature of God, lest he be brought face to face with his creator. He is unwilling to humble himself to divine authority and recognize his dependence as a creature. (I also came across this youtube video that explains the structure of DNA. It is interesting that the narrator closes his explanation with, “in this elegant design, we see how nature stores the instructions to build all living things.”)
Perhaps you completely disagree with me and think I’m ignorant and misguided. I am not a scientist, philosopher, or great debater. If to you the world does not bear the mark of a creator, I have little hope my words will convince you otherwise. You simply have to see it for yourself. But I encourage you to consider creation and its glory. And if it hits you deeply, as it is bound to do, take note of your emotions. My guess is that there will be reverence, pleasure, admiration, awe, delight, wonder, and humility… marks of witnessing the glory of God himself. And at that moment, take the melody of deep satisfaction and transpose it into the key of worship for the maker of it all and give thanks.
Some videos to tweak your mind:
The mystery of black holes
Just how big is the universe? (Don’t mind the poorly translated subtitles)
Top 10 Hubble Telescope images, voted on by astronauts.
05.02.08
Posted in Denver, Uncategorized at 12:02 pm by Annie
I haven’t written about Aaron (my neighbor who just turned three) in awhile. So here’s a tidbit from this week. As you may know, Aaron and I have many things in common: we both like cheese, we both have questionable tennis skills, we both like watering plants, we both love it when his little sister Maris talks to us, and not least of all, we both love owls. Well Aaron has 4 little felt owls that we made together several months ago, and they live in a little wicker basket, “the owl nest.” This week I accidentally referred to it as his “bird nest” and he started crying, saying “it’s an owl nest, not for birds.” So I tried to explain that “an owl is a type of bird.” Through tears he said, “owls not birds.” So I hurried on saying “and flamingos are birds, and penguins are birds, etc” because he knows the birds at the zoo. And then he chimed in “and squirrels are birds” and the tears dried up. And that was that.
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