Oh boy we found some dirt!

Last week we took a chance to step aside and enjoy some class here in Peoria. "What's that" You say? Why my friend, nothing other than the Heart of Illinois Fair! You notice the flames coming out of that car's exhaust? Demolition derby baby! Nuthin' like watching a bunch of old cars ram each other until only one still goes! Tiff didn't quite believe how simple it is until she saw it, luckily she has me to introduce her to this kind of thing. She makes me use a napkin, and I take her to the derby, what a pair! Anyway, they make 'em muddy out here, luckily we sat a few rows up and out of the way (the pic didn't turn out quite right. And that is a real elephant, kicking a real beach ball, into a real person. And you can't forget the Mud-drags! Nothing like a watching a jacked up truck try its hardest to get through a mud track a few feet deep, get yanked out by a tractor and try again! We also witnessed first hand that you actually can buy a deep fried twinkie or snickers bar (are you supposed to eat it?), and we're pretty sure we saw someone changing clothes inside an empty corral, not all that private but I guess it was good enough in a pinch.


Tiff was sold on this mower, I tried to talk her into a Honda, but she wouldn't have it. Luckily we don't have grass.


And these bears made from K'nex won Grand Prize in the "Crafts made from toys or whatever" exhibit

We remembered how to develop film...

And it's not as easy as I recall. Too many boxes with too many labels. Oh well, we figured it out and hopefully we won't leave without full batteries again. From now on we just have to click "import". Hopefully. Here are some cool pics from our trip to St. Louis (you can't tell in the photos but we are actually wearing scuba gear - it is seriously that humid in St. Louis)







Let's see, what do we have: Tiff and an Elephant, my best "giraffe", how high the Mississippi was, my beautiful wife and the gateway arch, and a dead gazelle in a tree.

A Day in St. Louis!!

So we went to St. Louis yesterday, and it was pretty awesome. Sadly, after we'd been on the road for about a half hour, we realized that the batteries were dead in the camera! Hence no photo yet. We did however get one of those single-use cameras (we had to remember how to use it) so now we have to figure out how to get it developed! Adventure after adventure! If any of them turn out, we'll get 'em scanned and posted up. It was really sweet though, we went up to the top of the gateway arch which was awesome, looked over the muddy Mississippi (it's crazy how high it was & still is) and went to the St. Louis Zoo. Cool thing about the zoo? It's free & awesome! We saw all kinds of bears, a hippo, elephants, a tiger, snow leopards, a jaguar, all kinds of snakes and lizards, a bunch of birds, sea lions, an African wild ass (it looks like a cross between a donkey and a zebra, but it's neither) an emu, kangaroos, and everything else you can see at the zoo! It was also ridiculously humid, which made it feel nice when we got back to Peoria where we can almost get along without gills.

Red Winged Blackbird: Tifanious Carnivorous

Since Braden is at work all day I've decided to pick up running. There is a nice jogging trail around our apartment that is about 2 miles long. I see all sorts of fun wildlife...a rabbit, doves, robins, and red-winged blackbirds. There is one blackbird in particular that I see a lot. It likes to wait for someone to pass by and then dive-bombs her! Luckily I've learned how to not get pecked by this sucker - all you have to do is bark at it. That's right, I said "bark" at it. It's funny to watch the bird in it's dive towards my head, I turn around and make loud noises, the bird doesn't know what to think and stops mid-bomb before skedaddling outta there. (But, it's probably funnier watching me yell at a bird.)



Here is a shot of the bird flying in for the kill. Luckily, no blood was shed during the taking of these pictures, but it was close. Whenever you turn your back on him, he attacks!!

In case you didn't know, We made it to PEORIA!

Well, a couple of weeks ago we underwent a life changing event: we moved to Peoria, Illinois. It was quite the adventure, pulling a trailer through 5 states was a thrill, especially when the trailer lights started giving us problems in the middle of the night. But it's okay, we survived.



We stopped to take a picture in the middle of the road in Wyoming, beautiful scenery huh? There were about a thousand prarie dogs directly to our rear.



Here is a kind of creepy statue of Lincoln's head overseeing the Wyoming highway...



And this was Nebraska! It took about 17 hours to get through, and this sign was the most interesting thing!



And this was the beautiful Iowa sunrise! (We drove through the night) I literally though we were going to drive off the face of the earth in Iowa, it is so flat that I actually forgot that was impossible for about 45 minutes.



And this was our first encounter with the ever elusive sign to Peoria. We were actually driving over the Mississippi river right here, which was quite an experience, especially with all of the flooding that has recently occurred.

And that's our trip in a nutshell, a 1355 mile long nutshell.