Here's to Dad!

Here's to Dad.
He's really not that bad!
In fact I'd say he's great,
the best Dad to date.
Maybe it was fate.
Or maybe his mate.
Either way, I like who he is today.
I mean, look, I've turned out okay.
The times that we argue sure stink,
but in the end, they've built character...
good... I think.
He's strong-willed, loud and outspoken oft,
but he keeps his heart soft.
People say how good his boys are
and he really left us no choice.
We had to listen to Dad's voice!
If there was one thing in this time of uncertainty
that I wish and hope I can be,
it is to be like my Dad
and raise a family like he.



Love you Dad,
Joel

SENIOR SHOW

It was great to be at North Park for Laura's senior show reception. Many friends, relatives and students crowded the gallery Thursday evening, with a special appearance by Kelly and Jodi who brought nine of the kids from the Bethel Church/Humbolt Park neighborhood. They were very excited to see the artwork. I cried a little bit.

SMOKE ON THE WATER

The mighty Kennedy Eagles had their Conference Swim Meet three weeks ago and took 2nd place as a team. An amazing effort as they had not won a dual meet against any of these teams all through the regular season. Darren had some awesome swims both in Prelims on Thurs night and then again at Finals on Sat.

Darren's 200 Individual medley relay (Darren swam the breast length) got 4th overall. 1:53.83 prelim 1:50.74 final.



In the 200 freestyle he was 10th place (out of 32 varsity swimmers) in prelims at 1:58.90 then dropped more time and held onto 10th of 16 swimmers in finals on Sat. for 1:57.94

In the 500 freestyle he was 4th place (out of 32) in the prelims at 5:17.46 and again held while dropping another 3 seconds in finals for a 4th place medal at 5:14.63. He has dropped 25 SECONDS in the 500 this season!

Hot DAM 2

Here are some more pics to supplement Michael's itinerary. Mike didn't say much about our rock climbing adventure which included scrambling, bush whacking and route finding. We created a new and improved hike, circumnavigating the 1st Flat Iron by way of climbing the top of the 2nd Flat Iron. A critical landmark is the Copenhagen lid.

Here's Michael and Tim doing street ball right...with a
fo' shiz nasty reverse loop underlay

hot DAM

I'm sorry if the subject of this entry offended anyone. It's the motto of the D.A.M. (the Denver art museum).

Laura and I have just returned to our respective knowledge coves after a fabulous time in Denver. The weather was pretty awesome too.

Highlights:

• We watched almost all of the Planet Earth series.
• We ate an inordinate amount of dessert.
• Dave and Julie have a cool church with a decent Steinway piano that I practiced on.
• Jamming street style in the church parking lot (playing basketball)
• Dave please post a photo or two
  
• Seeing Keenan improve his mad english skillz.
• Having Dave and Julie and their Pastor try to set me up with this girl.
• Chilling at Confluence Park (see photos)

• Eating Maggie’s delicious fajitas

• Getting a haircut from Laura

• Hiking with Dave and finding a rock bench (see photos)

• 

• DAM with Laura

• Lasagna blast at Macy and Ben’s

• also watching Dave play guitar hero. Look for How I Learned to Rock by Dave Prentice in bookstores soon.
  

• Thrift shopping: two pair of jeans = SCORE.

• Hanging out with Dave and Julie’s friends Jeff and Amy (Amy, I know you look at this blog).

Chattin' it up with Keegan

Cruise Report

This is sort of a belated post about our Caribbean cruise. We got back three weeks ago, but I guess it's just been busy. We had a wonderful week aboard the Carnival Triumph - warm weather, fun ports, gorgeous blue Caribbean seas, relaxing days where our biggest decision was when and what to eat! We visited Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel - all places we had never been. This photo was taken on our shore excursion at Cozumel on a large catamaran that took us snorkeling and to a private beach.

The ship was huge. We explored a lot, but I'm sure we didn't see all of it. 893 feet long, with 3,000 guests from all over the world and an international crew of 1,000. We had great dinners every night. Even I finally maxed out on shrimp! And even after we were stuffed, we had to sample the fancy desserts! Then we went to a show every night - singing, dancing, comedian, illusionist. They were all really fun.

One of our favorite things was having a balcony room. Even though we booked late, our room and the Lesters' were side by side on the back of the ship. We sat on our balcony a lot, enjoying sunrises, sunsets, coffee in the morning, a glass of wine at night, and always the relaxing view of the sea.

We've lost the few pounds we gained, our tans are fading, but the memories will last forever! :)

show choir saturday

Surprise, this blog isn't from one of the Prentices. Joel and I spent all day Saturday at a show choir competition at Belmont University in Nashville. We were getting paid to play in the band for an area high school show choir. The program was classics: Will It Go Round in Circles, September, Dust in the Wind, Best of My Love (girl's song), Takin' Care of Business (guy's song), and a 70s medley to end it. Only two costume changes, nothing super elaborate, just a solid all around act, and they ended up taking 3rd behind two super elaborate and much larger choirs. So they really did well.

Unfortunately, we had to leave at 6:15, and we didn't get back until 4am. We had down time during the day, but I was sick and throwing up, so that wasn't too much fun. It was interesting to get a sense of the show choir world. Lots of super-crazed, high energy kids packed into a hall is insane. That was the main lesson learned. Jeff and Darren, I'm glad you guys aren't totally crazy like that.

Black History Month

As a part of Black History Month, we are had two traditional African American worship services on campus during our regular Wednesday morning chapel. Part of this included a traditional gospel heritage choir that I was a part of. The choir had about 40 students, we practiced a few times and performed twice, directed by Rollo Dilworth. It was incredible to be a part of such a rich tradition of soulful music. I'm in the upper left in green. There is a regular non-audition gospel choir with about 200 students, 95% of which are white. We made about twice as much sound today. It was a blast.

flu and film

Sorry for my long absence. Things are warming up in TN and I'm finally feeling better after fighting the flu this last week.

I hope you've all been able to check out the podcast, which is linked from Joel's post. You may remember a post I had last semester that had photos from a German cyclist film. Well the university had its film festival this weekend, and Heinrich was 1st place out of five different short films critiqued by a panel of three school faculty. The theme of the festival was "courage." It was exciting to play a part in making this movie. Our roommate, Rocco, was director, producer and editor, and his brother back in NJ wrote the script. Once the script was finished, I did a rough translation of it into German and then sent it back to NJ where some native German speakers fine tuned it. Then, just last weekend, I did the narration, and then Rocco was up super late editing it all in and creating subtitles. The finished product was pretty satisfying. You can watch it here.

In other news, we finally got a sweet couch for the apartment.

4 Generations

The time in Indiana was good, my dad turned 85, as you can see he is still a good looking guy! He really enjoyed Keegan, but was ready to have a quiet house back to himself after a couple of days............heah, two year olds are noisy!

A Hive of Badgers.

Dearly Beloved,

We are gathered here on this blog, to speak, show and tell about all things in our life. With things ranging from weather to broken limbs.

So, somewhere in between those two is my next post. But, before I get to that... HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAGGIE!


Item One: I NOW HAVE A BED! What a blessing. Michael found a bed (mattress, frame, and boxspring) on craigslist.chattanooga and it happened to be selling for $40 in Cleveland. So, I emailed saying I was interested. I got a call a few nights later and I went over to the seller's house with Rocco and his truck.

We arrived and opened the door to 2 girls sitting on the couch, a cat to the side and a movie playing in the background. They were both laden with tattoos and smoking most likely their 3rd or 4th pack of cigarettes. In the middle of the room was the mattress and a low-lying frame. The one girl said, "Do you still want it?" I wasn't sure what to say. I asked "Where is the boxspring?" She said, "Oh I thought that was it (pointing to the frame.)" Seeing that I may not buy it, she continued to say "You know, just take it for $10."

So I did.

It smelled of smoke so I left it outside for 24 hours. Then, I completely soaked it with FeBreeze. It smells nice now :)

Notice the bike bottle holder.



PRE-MATTRESS



Item Two: The Badger Hive

Michael, Rocco and I have started a podcast. We hope to record every Sat. morning and then Rocco will have it edited and primed for listening by the end of the weekend. So, if you have some spare time, check it out (and let us know what you think.)

By the way, Laura, we talked about the Super Bowl and how there are a bunch of Poser fans on Super Bowl night only. So, thanks for not being part of that statistic.

The Badger Hive

It is named after the Honey Badger, which happens to be the most ferocious animal on the surface of Earth.

love,
Joel

Super Sunday Super Lame

I am posting about my boring life so that we do not let the blog die! I am not watching the big game because I never care about football during the regular season so why pretend to care today? I will be stopping by a party to get some free pizza during halftime. Otherwise, I will be spending time with my new best friend, my philosophy of art textbook.

We have been hit with a tropical heat wave here in chicago with temperatures rising to nearly 35 degrees. This means that I can wear regular shoes instead of boots for once. I'm taking 10 academic credit hours (as opposed to last semesters' 18) so my life is more manageable this semester. I am working towards my senior show which will hang March 18- 28 with a March 26 reception. Once that is over I will be pretty much done for the rest of the semester!

As many of you know, Anders is in Bethlehem, Israel right now. He's there for 2.5 months (until the beginning of April) volunteering at Bethlehem Bible College for Palestinians. He's living on campus and volunteering teaching English and doing some maintenance on the campus. The West Bank has been safe from the Gaza strip violence so that has been fortunate. He's spent a few weeks adjusting but is finally getting the swing of things, he said it's been weird adjusting to a place with so much hatred and tension as a part of everyday life. The bible college has taken a strong position of non-violence which brings a very powerful and uncommon presence to the West Bank. Yesterday he went to Jericho and saw Zaccheus' Sycamore tree!

Cruisin'

Tom, Bella, and I made a couple of loops around Riverwood Golf Course this afternoon. The cross country skiing conditions were great, and we got a good workout. Now that the temps have warmed up, it's fun to be able to enjoy all this snow.

But we are looking forward to fun of a different and much warmer kind . . . we are going on a cruise! It's been in the works for a while, but we didn't know for sure until about ten days ago. We fly to Miami this Saturday, meet up with Doug and Jody Lester and their daughter and son-in-law, and then board the ship on Sunday for a western Caribbean cruise. We'll be stopping at Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel. It will be a first for Tom and me, so we're pretty excited. Fun and sun - here we come! Watch for more blogging when we return.

Blog #70 (here's to many more!)

Hey Gang,

I'm just laying on the floor/my bed. Michael and I have finished our first half week of school. We're now taking "awake" naps at 860 Highland Avenue (my new home.) We are full of wonderful food from the McCluskey household. We are good friends with their son, John, and so we've eaten there nearly every sunday lunch for the past year or more. They call it "Family Lunch."

I've put up some posters that used to hang at the lake. One of my favorites is the Deer jumping over the moon:
I wish that I could go sledding at Grandma's house right now.

Jeff On The Mend

Jeff demonstrated additional thrills and spills last Thurs. at a ski meet. He hooked a ski on a slalom gate, fell and hit his knee badly. We didn't know if he had a fracture or torn ligaments until we got the good news from a doc at orthopedic urgent care. Just a bad bruise and lots of swelling.

The moon walk on crutches is coming along. He hopes to be back to dancing form by the weekend, but no skiing for a couple of weeks.

Stuntmen

Try hitting "pause" for amazement/amusement.

Grandpa's pride n joy

I love this picture of Keegan on Dave's workbench, so I got an enlargement for his office, Keegan got so excited when he saw it,one of his favorite things to do is play around on grandpas work bench.

father and son

This was my favorite shot taken during the weekend.

white Christmas

Prentice Landing Book List

I'm looking for some new books to read and wondering what my family recommends and I will compile a booklist. Hooray!
What was your favorite book of 2008? (you can put pre-2008 books as well)

Laura: The Red House by Sarah Messer

Carolyn: What's So Amazing about Grace? by Phillip Yancey

Jeff: 1984 by George Orwell

Happy New Year!

Jeff Pre-carnate...?

A Frightening resemblance.

practice blues

Here's a blues that you can practice with. Get serious, or your blues will be lacking.

Christmas blues.

Here's an idea I had for when we get together. Let's all do some blues. Everyone can sing and play, so there should be no getting out of this. You can bring instruments, prepare some verses, scat, or just let it go on the fly (probably the best plan. I rounded up a video of Fats McPhereson and Joe Wallace demonstrating some F blues.

oh the memories...

Here's looking forward to Christmas in Jamestown:

Also featuring Joel HMS (how's my shovel) Land:

Snow day in Denver

good morning. Our church service has been cancelled. We only have 2-4 inches of snow, but its really cold......thought you northerners would get a kick out of that.

And while we're at it...

The other day I was browsing the internet and came across this studly figure. and then, as I stared I realized that I was looking at myself 20 years later. Notice the similar facial features, and it looks like I never decided to remove the mole on the left side of my face. click for bigger image.

brothers?

Wow you look sharp! Does anyone else see the resemblence between these two?

Or is it just me...

Have a safe trip home you guys and we'll see you up there in a few.

Finished

I turned in my final paper today at 6pm, and I am now finished! I don't know what to do with myself. Maybe catching up on sleep would be a good step. Joel and I are flying home Friday morning. I can't wait.

I feel this classy right now:

Nov. Band trip, finals, and such

Hey gang,
I know I promised you all some pics of the band tour but I didn't take many and several are on my phone and I can't figure out how to put them on here yet. If I do, I will. Anyway, if I could sum up the band trip in one word, it would be probably be: Interesting. From the crappy hotel (which included switching rooms three times before we got a good one, haha), to the driver (who had to make a u-turn into the right lane coming back across the border), to the performances (which went well!), and to the amazing Winnipeg Symphony. It was fun and worth the troubles and definitely memorable. I can go into details about the trip for those of you who want to know more, when we meet at Christmas time.
I have one final this coming week, then the other 5 finals are during finals week (15th-18th). So I should be pretty busy till Christmas break. I can't wait till Christmas rolls around, it shall be glorious!

AKLand

Greetings from finals week!

one week left of classes before winter break starts! i am writing from a computer lab where i am working on a video project. or sitting here for a million hours waiting for my video to save. it's been "fun" and "wonderful", actually it has been a royal disaster. let's just say that i have dropped my video art class for next semester. on a brighter note i have 25 pages of papers to write and a giant critique of all of my work with the entire faculty next week. then it will be christmas!

2009 Calendar

This is the time of year I usually start working on the family calendar. I decided this year I'm going to place orders and (sigh) ask for reimbursement. They run $20 each -Correction, I found a deal for $10 + tax! If anyone's still interested, I'll get going!

Keegan has BIG news...

Our bean is due July 15th 2009. We are all so excited for Keegan to be a big brother.

JHS Choir

Think back about 30+ years when the Prentice three were singing in the JHS Choir. I went to their Christmas concert tonight and it surely brought back memories. Then the JC Choir joined in for a number (I guess the first time ever). More memories. I'm surely grateful that everyone in the family likes to sing. No more backing out, Julie. The proof is right there on the Blog and Keegan has a good start. Would you care to try again for a church number on Dec. 28th?

Cozy

I know that having a fireplace is nothing new for the Prentice/Land family, but it is for me. Since I was young I have dreamed of having a cozy fireplace. We have been in our house for a few years but this is the first winter we are actually using the fireplace and its beautiful! I bought the screen off of craigslist, we are going to paint it brown to match the woodwork. Come to Denver and sit in front of the fire with me.

Gonna jump up and down

We've been practicing this one!

I'M GONNA JUMP UP AND DOWN, Gonna spin right around, Gonna praise Your Name forever. Gonna shout out loud, Gonna deafen the crowd, Gonna send my praise to heaven.
I will run this race and I will never stop. I'll follow Jesus till the day I drop. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. When you've got such a lot, When you've got not a lot, What? Be happy!