Water Water Everywhere

Gracie participated in her kindergarten year end program entitled, "Water Water Everywhere". She was quite nervouse about performing, even to the point where she, crying, told us she didn't want to do it. Erin and I gently insisted, and she did great. My dad took some photos of the concert.

The class spent the year leaning about water, and Gracie would frequently come home saying new words like, "evaporation" or "conservation" or "water cycle". I've got to hand it to her two teachers, Mrs. Jantzen and Ms. Jocelyn -- they were excellent.

Gracie's done kindergarten, and in September off to the new Tuscany School for grade one.

June 18, 2006 (Father's Day)

On Sunday, while over at mom and dad's place for dinner, we had one of those freak summer rainstorms where the sky is blue, the sun is out, and it's raining cats and dogs. We couldn't resist going out and playing in the rain. Here's some photos (click to enlarge).

The kids were quick to get wet, but Kevin lead the way for the adults. He eventually laid right down in the gutter, and bathed in the rain water. My dad has some photos of that.

It's quite remarkable to experience a rainstorm like this. The sun was out -- the sky was blue, there was a warm wind blowing. We had a similar storm right when I got home from my mission.



This photo doesn't really do justice to just how much it was raining. Trust me -- it was alot.

Practically Assailable

I read Moby Dick some years ago, and today had cause to remember a portion of it (which I'm quoting below mostly so I can have quick access to it in the future). This is some of my most favorite writting:

That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations.

The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; -- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it.

All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

June 10,2006

We had a nice evening at the Cardel Theater with this weekend -- Jeff Shipley arranged for the Elder's quorum and families to watch a movie (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). The theater was very nice (surprisingly nice -- given that anyone can rent it for free), and the kids had a great time. I seidled up to CJ Burton for a quick lesson about aperture and depth of field -- thanks CJ.

Zoo School