Jeremy had fun up north!

Jeremy loves to herd his Kong.

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

a not-so-brief essay by moi.

First, we'd just gotten a Shiny New Tradition. I'd just unwrapped it and didn't even get a chance to try it out! Our Shiny New Tradition was supposed to be Staying Home And Relaxing on Christmas Day. Only it turned out that our planned traveling day was going to be Stormy Weather, so we left on Christmas for my parents' place.

Good thing we did - the weather was terrible the next day.

We had a great time at Christmas. Seth, Heather and Ray were there as well as my parents and we had a lovely visit with them. Ray and Kai got along GREAT, as usual. :) Kai even let Ray give him a hug and kiss when it was time for them to leave.

Next, we went shopping in Traverse City for mom's New Years' Party! Woohoo! It was very cool - mom and dad took us to Old Mission Peninsula Park (a lovely drive down Old Mission Peninsula) and to the lighthouse at the end. VERY cool there - there's not only a Lighthouse, but a Historic Marker and a World War 1 & 2 monument there.










The next day was New Years' Eve, and so we went to the New Years' Eve service at church. And, thanks to my dad, I got to play the organ!
It's a very old Tracker organ. It was actually installed in the church in 1901, and originally had a hand-pumped bellows. Here's the hardware:


Neat, huh?

But wait, there's more! It's less complex (for the organist) than any other organ I've seen. No endless ranks of stops, no buttons to change stop settings, no double or triple manuals (or more)...
Just eight stops (plus Pedal Coupler - and more on THAT in a minute) and a single manual. And it's got a GREAT sound.

Looky:


Here's a closeup of the Right side stops:



And of the Left side:


See that one that says "Pedal Coupler"? It means it - if you have that activated, and push down a pedal, the corresponding manual key depresses as well! That was disconcerting...


Those aren't really "stops": they're notes for the 3 foot options. "Forte" is the pedal one pushes to get pretty much all the stops to come out. "Piano" is the one to push to make 'em all go back in (except for a few quiet stops). And "Swell" is just what you think - it's the foot rocker pedal for the Swell box to open for more volume.



I found this note a bit amusing in its pointedness. They've tried polite little notes before, but to no avail - sometimes they get over-enthusiastic guest organists that really stomp on the foot pedals and...well...as you can see, it does take its toll on the poor organ hardware!
Sorry for the blur - I was right there taking the pic. Best I could do.
The text is:
Pedal repair work was done in May '08.

It doesn't matter how hard you strike the pedals. The volume doesn't change. The trackers are old and brittle so please be gentle.

Do not wear street shoes when playing this organ.

Here's the pedals:



And check out some of the gorgeous paintwork on the pipes:








My dad rocks. I'm really glad he arranged that opportunity for me. I hadn't realized how much I'd enjoy playing that organ. That was a GREAT organ to play...now I wanna do it again! :D

Then on FRIDAY when we were out getting last-minute supplies for the party, we found this license plate:


*snicker*

Stuff from the weekend

We visited my parents over the weekend. Lotta fun. We went to the Point Betsie Lighthouse, which was open, so we toured it. Dad & I went up to the Very Top. Mom & Kev stayed down - they were Incompatible with the stairs. Not real user-friendly stairways. See?

Bottom Stairs:


Looking UP the stairs:



















Then there's the upper set of stairs. Looking up at 'em, and looking down at 'em respectively:

But the VIEW was incredible.
















From here, South & North Manitou Islands and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore were visible. That doesn't happen every day, so we were very fortunate to see them.


We learned about the history of the lighthouse, its significance for Lake Michigan, and how important it still is for navigation.

Ships sailing the horseshoe of Lake Michigan - Lake Huron cut east at Point Betsie to go between the Michigan Mainland and the Manitou Islands, rather than cutting west of the Islands. It offers much better and safer navigation. the lighthouse and its grounds were sold to the historical Society that now operates it...all except for the actual light, which is still used as a navigation aid and is owned and maintained by the Coast Guard. It's all automatic now, of course. The original Fresnel Lens that was in the light house is still in existence, and has been restored. They're hoping to eventually house it back in the light house.

We took Kai to the beach on Sunday. He enjoyed playing with the waves, but he got ambushed by one that was a fast-moving roller and really splashed him hard when he was "biting" a smaller one that had just crashed in. He's not real big on swimming, so after about 1/2 hour of playing in the waves, he was done and wanted to go home.

We had a great time visiting my parents. I wish we lived closer so we could visit more often, but this is where God put us for now. Maybe later He'll have us move, but for now this is where we're supposed to be.