Almost Over

Here's for the last (and probably longest) vacation post yet.

 

  Saturday, the last day of our vacation, was a very busy day. After waking up and eating breakfast casserole, we went to the 45th Division Infantry Museum in Oklahoma.

 

 

  The 45th Division Infantry Museum was really interesting. It was a fun place for my brothers, and I enjoyed it except for this small detail:

 

  I can understand why they wouldn't want fifty-million people to take flash pictures of their original Bill Mauldin drawings and Hitler artifacts, but it was such hard rule to keep in a low-light atmosphere. There were still a lot of great pictures to be taken.

 

 



 

  About the Swastika, I was standing in the room with the World War Two artifacts and thought for a moment about what a different world this would be if the Nazis had won World War Two, and this flag became the flag of the United States of America. But it didn't, and by the grace of God we were saved from a certain fate.

 

 

  As we continued through the museum, we saw this shrapnel from some civil war era cannons. My five-year-old brother looked at it and commented, "That would leave a pretty big hole in your stomach."

 

  The boys walked over the fourteen acres of plane, trucks, and tanks while my cousin Ashley and I sat in the in shade with baby sister. Then we went to Pops.

  On route 66 in Oklahoma, in a city called Arcadia, there is a gas station called Pops. It is called Pops because they sell every kind of soda in existence. This picture should give you the tiniest idea of what Pops is like inside.

 

  There are about twenty cases of soda on the right side of the store, and every one is like the one pictured; one has root beer, one has cola, one has cream soda, one has ginger ale. They've also got all the disgusting fruit flavors and flavors no one really wants to drink like loaded baked potato and sweet corn.  I would have taken more pictures inside except there were about thirty people all at each others elbows. 

 I drank the red birch beer, which was very good, but the bacon soda was a gift for someone, I never would have bought it for myself.

 

  After leaving Pops, we went back to our cousins, swam, and enjoyed just hanging out with them for the rest of the day. Thus ends our vacation. It was fun and we are looking forward to seeing all of our cousins and aunt and uncles again soon. (To those of you reading: hint, hint)











OKLAHOMA!

  We realize, after seeing casinos, we're not in Texas anymore. Winstar World Casino is about five minutes into Oklahoma. I originally intended to take a picture of every casino we passed on the way to my Dad's sister's house, but there's so many I finally figured, "What's the point?" and only took a couple pictures.

 

 

  After travelling about an hour into Oklahoma, we stopped at a rest stop that was good by OK standards. The restroom was crawling with (pause for effect) BLACK WIDOWS! Okay, there was only eight of them crawling around the outside of the windows, but as soon as I saw them, I made a beeline for anywhere other then where those spiders were.

 

 

    To be featured later...

 

 

 

   Cousin Ashley and I painted our toenails. Before...

 

 

  and after!

 

  And now the vacation story is almost over. More to come later.

 

 



 



 

More Travelling, and still in Texas

  Thursday morning, we left the hotel we were staying at and went to see my Mom's sister and her family. It had been nearly a year since we had seen our North Texas cousins so we had a blast with them.

 
  Every time we visit our cousins, we go on a walk through their neighborhood. On this particular walk my brother Caleb learned a rhyme. "Step on a line, there goes your spine." For about five minutes he sing-songed this piece of information in his smurfy little voice as he carefully skipped over the cracks in the sidewalk. Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I told him,
  "Stepping on crack does not break your back." And to demonstrate, I skipped along the sidewalk, making sure each time I landed I was atop a crack. I don't think Caleb had much faith in the old rhyme because he was soon stretching his legs from one crack to the other.
  The rest of the day was fun and we enjoyed the time we got to spend with our family. But our vacation is not over yet...

Travelling in Texas

 

 

 

  My brother looks out the window and says, "When I look out the window and see bales of hay and get this queasy feeling that I'm in redneck country."

 

  Last week we went on vacation, travelling through Texas and into Oklahoma to see family. Wednesday we left Houston and headed towards Stephenville to see Dad's uncle. On the way we stopped at a rest stop in Huntsville that was so cool we spent an hour there. There was so many great pictures to be taken, I may have contributed to that long rest stop.

 

  

 

  I think this was a proto-type for the big Sam Houston statue on I-45.

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

  Anyone who has travelled down I-45, seen this statue, and wanted to stop and look at it: you should have stopped. It is impressive. The light came up through the trees at just the right angle when I went to take the picture on the bottom. After that we had one long car trip ahead of us.

 

  After visiting my Dad's uncle in Stephenville, TX, the first day of vacation ended in a little town in Texas somewhere staying in the Quality Inn which really was an inn of quality. And so ended our first day of vacation.

 

The Stars Were An Afterthought

  Genesis 1:16 "God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars." (NIV)

 

 

  The universe is a huge and incredible place. That feels like a gross understatement. The mere size and depth of the physical world defies the imagination. The little planet we humans call home is seemingly the tiniest detail in the expanse of space. And yet, when we read the account of creation in Genesis, we do not read the story of how God, our Creator, shaped the planets and stars contained in the billions of galaxies surrounding the solar system we call home. We read of the formation of the little planet given us. For six days, God focused on earth. He obviously did not need to: He created the vast galaxies in a single day.

  God, the maker of the stars, bears an unexplainable love for the people He made. Those who are God's children are loved by a God so great that with Him the creation of the stars was mentioned as an afterthought.

Setting Things On Fire...

 

 

 

 Today I went to Wal-mart to run some errands and came back home to find my brothers using burnt motor oil to set a couple tree stumps on fire. All my brothers have the potential to be pyromaniacs, but one of their chores is to burn tree trimmings and old stumps so their desire for fire is fulfilled. Life in the semi-country is exciting . This is my life, and by God's grace I haven't been burned. 

 

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