Daley Ponderings

Heather and I had the opportunity to attend a marriage retreat with 10 or so couples from our church this weekend, up at Rangeley Lake in Maine (thanks Scott, for the house!) We were the youngest couple (by far, the average marriage length represented there was 31 years), and we haven't... (More)

Having a dad in the fire department is educational in more than just fire safety: 5/17 - Jon is called to an accident "involving motor vehicle vs. moose" 5/18 - Jonathan reads about moose and siberian tigers on wikipedia ~5 - Joy says "owee here" = outta here 5/20 - jpd 17 lb on our... (More)

So last week I was worn out with the extra work that unexpected messes bring.  Today I'm tired but happy about it. Yesterday, Jon left very early to go on the church men's retreat.  Our morning at home started out pretty badly (bickering/fighting) and the boys had to go run around... (More)

Joy says "lellow" for yellow, which appears to be her favorite color. 4/24 - Jeremiah figured out his thumb! It's the left one he sucks. Does this mean I'll finally get a left-hander? 4/26 - Sometimes when school runs past noon, Joy decides to get lunch for herself.  Usually, she... (More)

3/30 - Jeremiah started cooing.  He also can make minimal forward progress along the bed when waking up. Joy says "my do it" for many things.  She also pronounces "water" correctly now instead of saying "wow".  She's also really good at remembering to say thank you. (Sounds... (More)

4/11 - Jonathan likes to be creative with lunches.  He made dill pickle and mustard sandwiches that day. He liked it. As I was keeping track of rainbows I was struck by how many days were sunny.  April 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 25 4/14 - Faith's first... (More)

11/6 - Noah and I were making rice krispie treats and Noah was stirring.  He asked for a marshmallow, but I said no, they had to go in the recipe and he could have one of the finished products.  Well, he decided to snitch and got a natural lesson.  I, only a few feet away in the... (More)

We arrived at the Fitzkees' house on Thursday night, and Nick said we could stay as long as we wanted.  We ended up extending our trip by a day and coming home on Tuesday, which was a good decision.  I think we spent the right amount of time for the whole family to enjoy the... (More)

We cooked bacon and pancakes (I found a nifty plastic pint jug in Walmart or somewhere that you simply pour water into the jug, shake it up, and pour it on the griddle) for breakfast, and then packed up and planned to meet for lunch at Great Falls, 15 miles away. Heather went back to... (More)

As I looked at the maps for the third day, we were going to be biking near various battlefields and other tourist-type places to visit, and so in the interest of resting a little, I decided we should drive for a ways and then maybe bike in the afternoon. We drove from Williamsport... (More)

I've wanted to bike to DC for a while, but there never seemed like a good opportunity to do so.  Once we purchased the tandem bike, and started thinking about the possibility of biking all over the country, the Washington trip seemed like a good first step. The trip did get... (More)

As Heather mentioned , it did take us a while to get this post written, but I thought it would be good to have a record of it, so here goes... Each year for the last several years, Paul has organized a two day bike trip for the kids of BCF.  This year, we drove to Rockwood, PA... (More)

Here's my take on the biking/camping trip. With last year's notes, it was actually pretty fun planning camping meals for 14 people, the vast majority of which are young men.  I only made two mistakes, one was forgetting oil for the eggs (we used some butter from the mountain pie... (More)

I bought a Trail-gator for attaching Jonathan's bike to mine, and we went on a couple 10 mile rides last week to test it out, and to build up our strength, but I had been pretty tired after those rides, so I wasn't very optimistic that we would make it to Ohiopyle without calling Heather to... (More)

I am not sure of the original source, but I received this via Jack Ganssle in his Embedded Muse . Mother taught the IF ... THEN ... ELSE structure: "If it's snowing, then put your boots on before you go to school; otherwise just wear your shoes." For years I... (More)