Ark Encounter

 The Ark Encounter is a Noah's Ark-themed attraction that opened in July of this year.  It is located a short distance from the family farm in Kentucky, so we decided to check it out.  Because the park is brand-new, there are still some organizational issues.  We visited on a holiday, and you could tell they were still working out the kinks of managing large crowds.  Fortunately we did not have to wait in the extremely long line to buy tickets because we purchased ours online.

What I liked about the Ark is that it was built to the dimensions as specified in the Bible.  This allowed me to actually experience the wonder that the Ark was.  Of course, no one knows exactly what the interior of the Ark looked like or what life on the Ark was like. Some artistic liberties were taken with the inside portion of the Ark, but I was okay with those.

I should mention that as of now, this is a straight-up tourist attraction.  I mean, there's an add-on where you can go zip-lining or ride a camel.  I was not moved spiritually by the attraction at all, but I don't think it was designed to do that.  If it were, there would have been a chapel or a minister on hand or something.  I appreciated it for what it was, but it is definitely not a place that I would plan a spiritual pilgrimage to or anything.

Most of the exhibits inside of the ark consisted of large signs explaining the events from creation, leading up to the ark, and then what happened afterwards.  The signs were beautiful, but there were so many people on the ark that it took a while to get up to them.  Then, once I did I felt like if I stopped to read it that I would be holding up everyone behind me.  So, I just took pictures of all of the signs that I will read at a later date. 

Okay- here's the part that was surprising.  There were all of these cages on the ark with animatronic animals in them.  There were the usual bear, pig, rodent-type animals, but there was also a section with animatronic dinousaurs.  The claim is that dinos were on the ark.  I had always assumed that this was not the case, so I was a bit surprised to find them here.  There were signs explaining the claim of dinosaurs being on the ark, and I took pictures of them all, but I have not had the opportunity to investigate this yet.  Overall, I enjoyed the trip to the Ark Encounter.  I would not make a special trip to get here, but not a bad way to spend a few hours if in the area.

Visiting the Kentucky Farm

We had a great fall break this year- even though it began in an interesting way with us hunkering down to brace for Hurricane Matthew.  Fortunately, we got through the night with no lasting damage.  Once Matthew had passed, we set out on the road headed to Kentucky to meet up with Brian's dad.  Even though Poppy and Nana live in Delaware, Poppy is originally from Kentucky and grew up on a farm there.  As a child, Brian spent a lot of time with his Poppy and Mama-Doll on the farm in Kentucky.  It worked out that Poppy and Nana were going to be in Kentucky on the weekend of our break, and so we decided to take the kids so that they could see the Sanders' family farm.

The farm is located in a small town not too far from Lexington.  I had never been to this part of Kentucky, but it is beautiful.  There are rolling hills, horses, and large horse farms everywhere you look.  The Sanders farm had cows, and the kids were just delighted with them.  They really wanted to pet one, but the cows were having none of that.  We drove / walked all around the property.  I was happy to finally get to visit the farm that Brian has been talking about for years, and his stories were accurate- it is a beautiful piece of land.  We don't know when or if we'll get to visit the farm again, so we took lots of pictures.

 While we were in the area, we did do a few other touristy things- one of which was visiting the grave of Man-O-War.  I'm not the biggest follower of horse racing, but I have heard of Man-O-War and know him to be one of the greatest racing horses ever to live.  What I didn't know is that he only ever lost one race and that the name of the horse that beat him was "Upset" and that that's were we get the sports term "an upset" (like "it was an upset") from.  You learn something new every day.

 Olivia's actual birthday occurred while we were in Kentucky, so we had the chance to celebrate that with Poppy, Nana, and Uncle Dustin.  Nana even ordered a cake for her.  Olivia received many nice gifts- including a new American Girl Doll.  It was a great trip.

Olivia's Sleepover

 I can't believe that Olivia is turning 10 this year! Double digits!  Since "10" is a big birthday, we decided to let her have a party.  I asked her what type of party she wanted, and she answered "sleepover" without any hesitation.  We ended up hosting nine of her friends for a night of fun and celebration.  The girls rode bikes, danced, played Pie Face, did make-overs (using up every ounce of my make-up), and stayed up all. night. long. It was a loooong night, but as far as I can tell everyone had a good time.  In case your wondering Brian and Owen got out of Dodge.  They went to the movies and spent the night at a hotel.

Grandparents Lunch

 One of the kids' favorite school days is the day of the grandparents' lunch at school.  Since Olivia's and Owen's designated lunches were not on the same day of the week, their grandparents had to make a special effort to be present on two different days.  The kids are so lucky to have such loving grandparents.  Here are some pictures from this event.

Return to Ichetucknee

The kids and I made a return trip to tube on the Ichetucknee River over the Labor Day weekend. We went with the Murrays, and had a grand time.  Last year when we went, we began at the Midpoint Launch and tubed the last half of the river.  This year we began the North Launch and floated all the way til the last take-out point.  This is the first time that any of us had ever done the northern section of the river.  They cap the number of people who can go down the northern portion each day, so it was a quieter, less crowded stretch of river.  The total distance that we tubed was a little over three miles, and it took us about three hours to do.  We all had rafts or tubes, but we were in-and-out of them.  The kids liked snorkeling and swimming in the chilly water as much as they liked the tubing.  Even Julianna got out of the raft and swam in the river.  It was a full day, but lots of fun.

Summer Running

 I participated in three runs during the month of August.  I am still not running at the rate that I once was, but I am hanging on.  The first run that I did was a local 5k.  I finished in 29.43, which kind of surprised me because this is a lot faster than I thought it would be. This race was a morning run, and that same afternoon I went with Quincy and Chase to Jacksonville to complete the Jaguars Stadium Challenge 5k.  This was a really good race that takes runners all around and up-and-down Everbank Field.  You end up running through the Prowl (where the football team enters), around the field, and finish on the 50 yard line.  They also put your face up on the jumbo tron, so that was neat.  I finished in 34.04.

The final race that I completed in August was the Heels and Wheels Duathlon.  I have done the triathlon for the past three years, but I decided to go back to the Du this year because I'm a terrible swimmer and frankly I'm scared of catching a brain-eating amoeba in the lake.  There were only two in my division, so I got the second place trophy by default.  My time was 1.45.15.

Hopefully I'll be able to stick with a running program this year and my times will improve as the weather gets cooler.