Shaha/Enniss Grand Adventures

The memories are so sweet… we had such a great time with the Enniss family:

Shea chugging an Alkoholfrei beer.  Hey, when in Germany...

Heidelberg:  a hot day.  And an unfortunate day.  Stroller tire went flat, Katie rolled her ankle, Jack threw the mother of all tantrums, and I scratched the van in the underground parking garage.  But other than that… AWESOME.

Shea is so stoked to be hanging with Shahas for two weeks, can't you tell?

Traumland on Natalie's 6th b-day.  A very fun day:

We went on this roller coaster about 6 billion times.  No lines and the kids couldn't get enough of it. 

American Cemetery in Belgium:

Belgian countryside, beautiful!

 Dutch American cemetery:

Meanwhile, back at the "cottage" the kids played for hours in the backyard.  What I would give for a backyard!!!

And a stop at Burg Eltz on the way home:

Stay tuned, I will eventually post Switzerland.  Although Shea has the best pic of the kids on the bench in the caves.  Puh-lease post that picture!

Screenland Armour

I'm getting ready to move away from the Kansas City area.  While I am looking forward to moving out west, there are some things about this area that I will miss.  One of them is the excellent barbecue, and another is a great little place in North Kansas City.  There's a small fairly isolated movie theater out there called the Screenland Armour that quickly became my favorite after I first heard about it.

The Armour not only shows first-run movies, but also has a lot of special screenings of older films.  Some of the special screenings I've seen include Jaws, The Big Lebowski, The Silence of the Lambs, The Princess Bride, The Matrix, a December 23rd screening of It's A Wonderful Life, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles DOUBLE FEATURE (which also included a Pizza party and a showing of an episode of the old cartoon between movies).

The Armour had an event in conjunction with the premiere of X-Men: Days of Future Past that I saw as an opportunity for a last hurrah there and a chance to share how great the Armour is with all of you.

The view of the marquee that welcomes the faithful moviegoers at night.

The interior is decorated with some cool artwork donated by fans of the theater.  All the Shaha faithful will recognize the image below.

And check out these gems.

One of my favorite things about the theater are these babies.  Four awesome classic arcade games at only a quarter per play.  They have Smash TV, Rampage, Mortal Kombat 2, and THE ORIGINAL TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES.  When I went to see The Princess Bride I played TMNT until I beat it...it was an awesome experience and quite the achievement.

As part of the special event, a local Comic Shop set up a display and sale area.  Great events like this make me wish that things had worked out to where I could have settled down for life out here.

Here is the great movie screen.  I think the curtains and the cool border around it give the room a lot of personality and a unique charm.

I hope you can see this.  It's a closeup of the decoration at the top of the screen.  It reminds me of that cool Lion's head in Cinema Paradiso.

And to the right you can see Screenland Armour's most well-known employee.  This unnamed sentinel gives arguably the most important service in the world of entertainment.

Here's a more detailed shot of him, and check out the video below to see him at work.

As part of the event, the theater showed the Days of Future Past episodes of the old X-Men cartoon.

I hope that you enjoyed this look at my favorite place in the Kansas City area.  It will be very missed by yours truly.

As you all know, we got to go see Ben and Marinda and family. They showed us all sorts of awesome stuff. I apologize that I am only now starteing to share with the fam.

This is us in front of a lake in Switzerland.

Ben and Marinda took us to this cool place in Switzerland where you can walk through these different houses that represent different times and locations in Switzerland. They had a petting zoo too. This is Natalie and Jack in the petting zoo.

Natalie's anxt over goats. . . actually the picture.

Jack playing with the goats - we did have to wait in a whole other line at customs because our children had been to the goat petting zoo in Switzerland.

How'd you like to be buried in this cemetery?! It was so pretty! The Swiss are doing something right. Almost everybody in the cemetery died in their 80's. The cemetery is behind this cool as heck church.

Marinda lead us all on this "danged fool crusade" which involved us renting a "trotty bike" (a scooter with brakes and that's it) and riding it down a path on the mountain. At first I almost aborted mission. It was so steep and wet. But thankfully i stuck it out and this is a picture of Shea ahead of me on the trail. It was one of the most spectacular rides of my life.

This is the imprint of Shea's body on the grass from when he biffed on the Trotty bike. I wish I could have caught it on film. He was okay - just injured pride.

 More to come!

16 AGAIN!!



The Old Geek has made it another one, and thanks to you all for making it such a great birthday. Shirts and Jelly Bellies from Katie's crew, German chocolate and cookies from Ben's gang, movie and candy from Dave's group, a fun phone call from Joe (they're at DisneyWorld this weekend, the luckies!), Killers CD from Steve, a GPS from Mom and you all (another newfangled gadget i'll be discombobulating soon), and GREAT cards from everyone. 




where DOES Katie find these amazing products, inquiring minds want to know . . . .



Still a blow hard, but the targets are getting easier thanks to Mom. Thank you all for a really nice birthday and we hope you are all safe and well. Love, Dad/Gwampa/Pat/the colonel

Israel

Marinda asked that I post about my latest Israel trip. I was able to shepherd one of our Generals around recently. We had one especially great day when we took a helicopter tour around the country. We got to see the border with Syria where the civil war continues. We saw some regime artillery actually fired and dropped into one of the villages. Pretty amazing to see the fighting firsthand. Last time I observed artillery was when I was at Ft. Campbell. We then flew along the Jordan River to the Dead Sea, over Jericho and up to Jerusalem. We made several low passes over Jerusalem. I'll have to post some pics. We landed in Jerusalem in order to attend the opening ceremony of the Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem. Before the ceremony, we had time to run down to the Old City. We went through the Armenian quarter and around the southern wall to the tomb of David. Quite a few Orthodox Jews were praying over his grave. Really neat. Then out along the edge of the city, the Mount of Olives is visible with the Garden of Gethsemane just down the hill. The General is an avid Christian and was moved I think to see the Mount of Olives and realize our proximity to Gethsemane. We continued down to the Western Wall of the temple and walked toward where the Holy of Holies used to be (now the Dome of the Rock). The Temple Mount was closed unfortunately We then walked back throughout the Old City, stopping briefly at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Catholics believe Christ was crucified, buried, and resurrected. There was a choir and organ going as mass was ending. We walked some of Via Dolorosa and the "stations of the Cross." We then got back to the hotel and changed into uniform and headed to Yad Vashem. Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Peres both gave speeches and the ceremony. Netanyahu's speech was very interesting. He called on world leaders to pay attention to evil in the world - Iran in particular. The General was on the front row and shook Netanyahu's hand when he came in. I was on the sixth row. The ceremony was outstanding. A violinist played an amazing, moving piece to kick it off. They honored six Holocaust survivors - one for each million killed in the Holocaust. Their stories were incredible. How they suffered and, more significantly how they survived, overcame, and went on to have families and normal lives. To close the ceremony, an Israeli soldier, called the "IDF Chief Cantor" sang a Jewish prayer a cappella. It was fantastic. Amazing experience. The full ceremony is here: Subtitles are in Hebrew, but when they show the Holocaust survival stories later in the ceremony, they are in English, too. Skip ahead to watch. Really well done.

Happy Easter and stuff!