The holiday season is over and I’m trying to get back in the groove with work and life. Alice and I were travelling for about 10 days. We went to Florida to visit with my family and then stopped in Kansas on the way back to visit with my brother. Here are some pictures from the journey.

The view of the inlet in St Augustine. We visited the fort for a few hours while we where in Florida. My folks live about an hour north of this historic town.

Here’s a shot of the cannon firing. They do this drill everyday at 12:30. I had no idea how accurate these cannons were. They are pretty accurate up to about a mile and a half. No wonder this fort was never taken by force.

While we were in Kansas City, we visited the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. This is the famous museum with the shuttlecocks on the lawn. One thing we noticed while we where there is that there was clearly a religious theme in almost all of the collections. The way we moved through the museum it was like you were seeing man’s struggle with spirituality through history. We started with the ancient Egyptians and then went through several collections of paintings and sculptures inspired by the birth and death of Christ and the parables and we finished with some modern attempts to invite the viewer into the spiritual realm. Fascinating! If you want to browse some of the pics from our tour, see my flickr account.

While we were in Kansas, we stayed with my brother and his wife. He has a beautiful new house in a suburb south of Kansas city. When you buy a house in Kansas, they throw in a basement! He turned the basement into an entertainment lounge complete with a bar, a bathroom, a small office and a work out room. What a huge difference there is between bay area housing and the rest of the country. While we were there, we got to spend some time with his cat Ms Kitty.

We also got to go skeet shooting while we where there. Here is the sign that they have about eye and ear protection at the range. I was thinking that this might be a good sign for my blog too.

We’re safely back in the bay area now and trying to settle back into a rhythm. We missed the January retreat on the development of an order but we’re looking forward to the February one. I posted about it a month or so ago here. We’re planning to get 2006 off to a good start by focusing some time here and hopefully catching some Emmaus Road meetings. Emmaus Road is a local emergent cohort.