Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Vacation 2016: Day 4

Friday started with Tyler and me dropping the kids off at Covenant Kids. For the entire meeting, there were activities that the kids could participate in. Tyler and I thought that sounded like a lot more fun for them than sitting around with us, trying to be quiet so they went. We dropped them off there on Friday morning, talked to a few people at the session and then headed out to scope out the waterpark.
We needed to check everything out, sans kids, and then make our game plan before trying to bring the kids. That's what we told ourselves at least. Mostly, Tyler tried out the slides and I tested the lazy river. We both talked to friends for quite awhile too. I ran off to meet with my spiritual director and Tyler talked to more friends. It made for a really low key but thoroughly satisfying morning.
At noon, we went and collected our children and fed them lunch. They enjoyed watching the golfers and ducks whilst recapping their morning's adventures and collectively daydreaming about their soon-to-be waterpark exploits. Good times.
In the afternoon, we took the kids back to Covenant Kids where they got to go on a field trip to a Butterfly Emporium!  Albert wasn't feeling it that afternoon though, so he got to go hang out with Grandma, Aunt Kendall and Lily for a couple of hours. Meanwhile, I took Tyler on an adventure.
All I told Tyler about our excursion was that we were going on an adventure. I was giving him directions so when, after nearly half an hour or driving, we ended up in a residential neighborhood, he was a little confused, especially when I had him stop at a house. See the confusion?
He was even more confused when I walked up to it, grabbed a key and went in. Our friend Brittany is an artist. When she was graduating from college, we went to her senior show and Tyler fell in love with a couple of her paintings. She has this wonderful ability to take a portion of scripture and paint it in a thought-provoking way. He loved that and said that he would love to have something like that in his office to stare at and inspire him while he was thinking deeply or writing a sermon.
Since Nick and Brittany live in Phoenix, I thought that his ordination would be the perfect time to arrange for him to get such a painting so I contacted Brittany and had her paint one of his favorite sections of Scripture. In the previous picture, he was reading the note she wrote about her painting (Nick and Brittany had to leave town but left everything for us to pick up when we were able). In the above photo, he is pondering it. He was thoroughly surprised (which I was so glad about because I was certain he was going to stumble across Brittany and I's facebook messages) and so, so grateful to Brittany for the time and effort she put into this wonderful piece of art.
Here he's pretending to be a cat burglar, stealing someone's priceless artwork. It did have to look strange if any neighbors were watching. We walked into a house when the owner's were obviously not home and walked out with artwork.  
After Tyler and my big adventure, we came back to the resort and took the kids to the waterpark!!
It was ridiculously hot outside so we had to be careful to wear our shoes whenever we weren't in the water. The pavement was HOT!!
During our waterpark play, the rest of the Johnson clan showed up at the resort to play as well. When we were all tired out and ready for some food, we headed out in search of some pizza. This was half of our crew.
And here was the other half.
We ended up at a restaurant that served some really good gluten free pizza. That was a yay from Addilyn and me!

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