Jonathan's blog

We never showed any photos from the Nashville-KY-Knoxville trip we took in August...After a few days at the Lake Cumberland Resort, we spent the last weekend of our vacation in Knoxville. Saturday night UT's Christian Student Center (CSC) was having a cook-out at the World's Fair site, so we went with the Bells.

At one point, a bunch kids (including Finn) were chasing a huge beach volleyball around the field.  I was sitting in a lawn chair and watching.  A few minutes later, Lisa and I realized that we couldn't see Finn.  We gazed around the big field but still couldn't see him.  Each of us and a few of our friends scattered looking for him.  Lisa went into the men's restroom looking for him.  We couldn't find him.  Now it's about 5 minutes later, and we're about to start panicking and calling the police.  At that point I see Finn walking towards us with our friend Kelly.  She said that she had seen a small kid walking outside the park, just past the spray park.  She ran to him, and sure enough it was Finn.  He had crossed a small street and was walking down the sidewalk.  He couldn't really explain why he had walked off.

What a relief to find him!  We decided to get each of us one of the Road ID's (link) to wear when I'm biking by myself, Lisa is walking by herself, Elliot is at soccer practice or Tae Kwon Do, we're at an amusement park, or wherever.

Here are some photos from Knoxville:

The boys are playing soccer again this fall.  Last Saturday Finn scored his team's only goal, and Elliot scored 2 of his team's 3.  Here are some photos of Finn in action:

Being chased by Goliaths, Finn actually fought them off and scored in the above series of photos...

Last Friday morning Lisa and I took a bike ride on the Chippewa Trail out to the Chippewa Nature Center and back.  It was a nice morning ride, winding through woods and along fields...5 miles out and 5 back.  Here are a few pictures:

The weekend before last we spent a few hours at the Fall Harvest Festival at the Chippewa Nature Center.  Some of the more memorable observations were of the guy scraping and preparing the skin of a bear that had been killed in the UP a few days before, Prairie Pete and Miss Sarah portraying early Michigan settlers, and the folks plowing the field with plows pulled by oxen.  We learned that the difference between cows and oxen is that oxen have been trained to pull the plow.

Here are a couple photos of the boys helping to back apple butter.

Here are some photos of the boys from last month on the first day of school.