I haven't posted since last year!

Happy New Year!

If you would have told me a year ago that in 2010 that I would be visiting Thomas Edison's and Earl Hamner (AKA John Boy Walton's) home towns I would not have believed you.

If you would have told me that my son's robotics team would qualify for the state tournament, I would have asked "what's a robotics team?"

These and many other things did happen . In many ways, it was a great year. In many ways, it was a horrible year. I guess you could say that about any year.

My new year's wish for all you loyal readers is that 2011 is heavy on the great, light on the horrible!

Library Story with alternat(or) ending

Yesterday we continued one of our favorite family traditions: Library Week.

We generally will visit a number of libraries and spend the day exploring what they have. Our visit to the North Shore suburb of Highland Park was fairly typical.

We found the building . . .
















We entered the building.

We read and relaxed.

We played Games

We made friends.

And more friends

We took in the sights near the library.

From there things became more atypical. 5 minutes after this picture was taken our car battery died. A family visiting the same lake shore view as us stopped and gave us a jump. We could tell within seconds after the car restarted that there was still something wrong. We had no lights and our emergency beeper would not turn off.

We rode about 6 miles (this was in dusk) and pulled over into a gas station that also happened to have a service station. Our alternator had gone out.

An hour and a 1/2 and a good amount of our emergency savings reserve later, we were on our way home. Besides the alternator and the somewhat burned (although still eaten) crock pot meal (due to our lost 1.5 hours) this was a very typical day at the library. (Except for the kids waiting at the gas station, certain people were tired.)