Meet Bill, Lars and the Real Girl

Saw a couple of flicks on vacation ...

Lars and the Real Girl (4.1/5)
Pretty darn good movie about a topic, mental illness/delusions, that would never, ever, be addressed in a studio movie. This was light most of the time, while getting serious occasionally. Definitely not a feel good movie per se, but also not so heavy you want to go jump off a bridge. Ryan Gosler did an excellent job portraying the earnest, lovable, but struggling protagonist ... quite a different turn than his star creating roll in the Notebook. All in all, it was an interesting look at something that doesn't turn up much in the movies, and was worth the watch.

Meet Bill (2.1/5)
This was a pretty stupid movie about a guy having what was essentially a midlife crisis. There wasn't anything really redeeming about it. The acting was "eh", the story kind of lame, and in the end it was really kind of pointless. Initially I was thinking 2.8, but dropped it after I wrote this ... steer well clear!

Movies I've seen recently:
Juno - 4.8/5
Slumdog Millionaire - 4.6/5
Iron Man - 4.2/5
Lars and the Real Girl - 4.1/5
Wall-E - 4.0/5
Traitor - 4.0/5
The Dark Knight - 3.9/5
Star Trek - 3.9/5
Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist - 3.7/5
Kung Fu Panda - 3.5/5
The Passion - 3.5/5
Valkyrie - 3.5/5
The Incredible Hulk - 3.4/5
New in Town - 3.2/5
Horton Hears a Who - 3.0/5
Meet Bill - 2.1/5
Jonah, a VeggieTales Movie - 2.4/5
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 1.9/5
Burn After Reading - 1.5/5

Back Baby!

So, we're back. Working, playing, doing the summer thing, yeah!

We had a great trip! Here's the quick recap:

• Friday/Saturday - on the road. Driving, stayed the night in MO and enjoyed the pool at the hotel both Friday night and Saturday morning. Hung with my cousins, Marc and Erik a bit on Saturday. It was fun to catch up with them.
• Saturday pm - hit the cabin! When we first arrived, a decent sized oak tree was down across the whole driveway! Luckily we could park in their "guest" parking spot. Cyndie and I managed to pull the limbs out of the way with Uncle John's old F100 pickup! (I gave him a hard time that with all the equipment/tools/etc he has out there, he didn't have a chain saw!) Fished a bit, swam a lot ... this will be a re-occurring theme for the rest of the vacation.
• Sunday/Monday/Tuesday - our good friends, the Hobbys, and their six kids visited. That was a lot of fun. The kids really liked playing with their kids. We had fun just being with Chris and Vicki. I think it was Monday morning as Chris, I, and their two older boys were shoving off to go fishing, that Chris got his cell phone out and had this conversation (with his boss), "how would you feel if I extended my vacation a day?" It cracked me up that he made the call from the fishing boat!
• Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday - relaxing with Cyndie and the kids. Daily activities included swimming, games (UNO, Game of Life, Monopoly), rides around the lake in the golf cart (Emma did a great job driving all by herself ... once I convinced her that she needed to press the gas and brake with the same foot so that she couldn't depress both at the same time. Tim, not such a good driver. He's convinced that to drive you need to constantly turn the steering wheel ... left, right, left, right ... makes for a wobbly ride!), fishing (after the Hobby's left we stopped saving the fish and threw them all back. But we had one big meal where all 12 of us had fish!), playing on the association playground. Good stuff!
• Friday/Saturday - Uncle John and Auntie Diane stopped by for the night. It's always fun to spend time with them!
• Saturday - slowly packing up, while still enjoying the cabin.
• Sunday - marathon trip home. Left the cabin about 6:40a, pulled into Lake Geneva around 6:05 p. It actually wasn't too bad of a drive!
• Weather - smoking hot!!!!! It was in the high 90s or 100 all week at the cabin. Even the evenings and mornings were not much better. We were SO grateful that the cabin had AC! The lake was very refreshing, but by the end of the week, it was probably in the high 80s temperature wise.
  

Now we're back in the swing of things, and looking forward to a long July 4th weekend!

So One More

Well, we're sitting here killing time between eating breakfast and a swim in the pool, so I'll make use of the last bit of internet connectivity for one last post. We had a pretty uneventful drive yesterday. A good stop in a Burger King with a play land in Sterling, IL. We stayed the night in Bethany, MO. Crazily, it turns out we went to the same Subway here for dinner that we stopped at 20 months ago when we were driving the opposite direction during the move. We enjoyed the pool here last night, and will get in one more swim this morning before heading off to KC to meet my cousin Marc. The kids had a bit of a rough night ... sleeping in the same full bed, with us in the room, etc. Oh well, that's life on the road!

Exiting Stage Left

Yep, The Life and Times of the Wildwood DeVries is about to go silent for 10, agonizing (for my loyal readers who won't get to hear about the latest coming and goings) days. Yeah baby! We're headed off for vacation at the Larsen cabin (thanks Uncle John and Auntie Diane). I was just talking with the kids at breakfast and telling them that this is where the summer really heats up ... action wise. We have this trip, during which we'll see some good friends from college, the Hobbys, and their six kids, then we'll see Auntie Diane and Uncle John, then we'll get home and Grandma and Grandpa D will be there and Auntie Jane will be there for July 4th, then we'll have Grandma Cathy and Grandpa Fred come for a visit, then our friends from CA, the Armstrongs (and their kids who are the same age as Em and Tim), will be visiting, then there's day camp for Emma and a trip to Auntie Jane's house (just her and her cousin Sarah), and somewhere in there a new cousin will be born!!!

Whew ... why don't you just site back and take that in for a bit ... that's a lot of action!

So we're off; we're hoping to leave around 10 ... drive to Bethany, MO where we're staying the night at a hotel (with indoor pool). Tomorrow we'll meet up with my cousin Marc to get the keys and have lunch together (maybe see his new house and puppy). Then it's off to the cabin for a week plus. The Hobbys will join us from Arkansas for a Sunday/Monday. Then Uncle John and Auntie Diane will be there the last weekend with us. Can't wait!! I took a poll at breakfast and Timmy, Emma, and I all voted that we were most looking forward to the fishing. Apparently we're becoming quite the fishing family. We decided that the best plan would be for Cyndie to be the pilot of the little boat, and the three of us would fish (and she would probably read)!

So enjoy the peace and quiet that I'll leave you ... expect more when we get back!

Star Trek, a review

Gow and I hit the fabulous Showboat Theater on Saturday for a view of Star Trek. Here's the take:

Star Trek (3.9/5)
I very much liked this movie. Not being a Trekkie (my Star Trek exposure is limited to The Wrath of Kahn and watching the Next Generation on TV), I didn't have much in the way of expectations, at least in regards to who the cast should be and how they should behave. That said, I expected a "big", "summer" movie, lots of explosions, action based plot.

The movie delivered on that, plus more. Now it was no Oscar type film, but it was a tight, well told story with more depth than 90% of the summer flicks. The acting was good, the effects top notch, and the team was able to tell the "origins" story for this iteration of the Enterprise while also giving us an interesting adventure/story.

Kudos all around, I recommend this movie.

Movies I've seen recently:
Juno - 4.8/5
Slumdog Millionaire - 4.6/5
Iron Man - 4.2/5
Wall-E - 4.0/5
Traitor - 4.0/5
The Dark Knight - 3.9/5
Star Trek - 3.9/5
Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist - 3.7/5
Kung Fu Panda - 3.5/5
The Passion - 3.5/5
Valkyrie - 3.5/5
The Incredible Hulk - 3.4/5
New in Town - 3.2/5
Horton Hears a Who - 3.0/5
Jonah, a VeggieTales Movie - 2.4/5
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 1.9/5
Burn After Reading - 1.5/5

Good Stuff, Reader

Yesterday was fairly typical ... had the Caspari kids around all day as Amy and Dave where down in Chicago for some tests on his liver function (please keep them in your prayers). But the fun thing I wanted to share today was what I discovered this morning when I went into Emma's room to open her curtains and let some light in. I'm in there, like I said, opening the curtains. Emma's not there. She walks into her room with her nose in a book (Cam Jansen ... thanks for turning us onto those Amy and Sarah). She's reading as she walks, and kind of wanders over toward me. I ask her for a hug, and she complies, then kind of settles onto my knee (I'd knelt on one knee to hug her) and leans back against me to use me as a chair while she keeps reading. Good stuff. It would appear that our "summer reading program" that we've instituted to try to challenge her a bit to read longer/harder books is already paying off!

In other news, we booked our trip to Cancun in July for our 15th anniversary. Cyndie and I spent some time, just before bed, looking at the website for the resort and anticipating the trip! We're excited!

Many Zeros

So, following up yesterday's post, the high did indeed come today when we checked (online) our account balances and saw that they had gone up SUBSTANTIALLY! Yeah baby!

So we had a celebratory dinner ... steaks all around ... with Laura and Gow and Sally. Followed up with the boys going over to my friend Eric's house for a late night of Settlers (with a sweet victory for me in the second game ... swiping it out of Gow's hands at the last second!).

This morning we set about using some of the money ... we're going to immediately pay off about 60% of the loan on this house, the remainder of the car loan, and the heater/AC bill, but want to do a little research and praying about how we want to invest the rest of the money.

The rest of the week will be scurrying around getting ready to leave for the Larsen cabin for our week of vacation there. The Caspari kids are up here with us today as Dave has some tests done to check his transplanted liver's functioning properly ... pray for that one.