Busy week...I had a business trip this week starting on Monday. Just after work, another guy and I headed to Chicago to catch a flight to Sioux Falls, and drove to Sioux City. Tuesday morning we started with an initial supplier audit for a new electron beam irradiation company called NextBeam, which interestingly enough occupies a section of the building that Gateway 2000 computers used to have, back in the day. They've been gone a long time, it seems. The audit went on for a couple days and we went back Thursday morning. Also interestingly, the city is right in the corner of the state, so on Tuesday evening we drove from the hotel in South Dakota through Iowa to the restaurant in Nebraska. Took about 10 minutes. Had a really great meal that actually went over the expense limits, oops.... we also found a nice big nature preserve that used to be a homestead back in the day where we went for a 7.4 mile run one evening, just one big loop around the property.

Because the trip was over a Tuesday, I was missing the softball game, which turned out to be ok because the games were all cancelled due to heavy smoke from the Canadian wildfires. It wasn't in SD while we were there but it was awful in Chicago when we got back Thursday. 

Friday was a work group lunch get-together at James' house for smoked meat and Kubb, which is one of those games where you throw wood blocks at other wood blocks that you find at Menard's. It was a good time but I had to cut out a bit early to get ready for the big New Mexico trip tomorrow.

I went bike riding with the 2nd Mile B group again Saturday morning. The B group was smaller than usual, and at first we were trying to keep up with the A group because we were all riding the same direction. The one who was actually the leader of the B group wasn't really leading the group, because by around mile 10 or so, the A group started really leaving the Bs behind. And the B leader was with the As and I don't know if he didn't notice us (2 of us) fading back or decided we'd be fine, or what. Anyway, after a little bit we lost the A group entirely, so we just went our way and headed back home when we were ready to. We ended up looping through Oswego and back, about 28 miles.

Saturday was our final 'dinner for 6' group. The group got together at the Peytons' house and he grilled ribeyes for everyone. We all had a nice visit. John and I talked military service again, but it's always nice to have someone to talk about that with. Beth and I have enjoyed this round of dinners a lot, we'll have to make sure we do it again. 

Today was the annual Father's Day extravaganza at church! Always a great time, but as usual I was overbooked. I had van duty, including a lady that was helping out and needed to be there early, and my riders all wanted to go home at different times. So I had to do a return trip on the van while I was supposed to be in the dunk tank. No problem though, I got my turn later. I missed bingo, though. Beth even won a $10 gift card from the Winona Village merchants. I spent most of Saturday morning at the church helping to set everything up (I seem to now be the expert at setting up the big canopy) and I was also there pretty late in the afternoon today helping tear it all down, too. 

This was also VBS week at church! Beth and I were guides once again for the 4th graders, and we only had one kid that ... shall we say... tried our patience this week. Most everyone was having a fun time but there is always one kid that won't listen, won't do what he's told, won't participate.... but most of the time it went really well. "Keepers of the Kingdom" was the title, and putting on the full armor of God was the theme. Knights and kings and princes and princesses and dragons and swords and armor and such. Good times.

This week had a few disparate things. 

Beth and I were both invited to attend a leadership, uh, retreat? conference? seminar? Not sure what to call it, but a consulting group called Effective Elders (E2) was brought in to do some leading/teaching for the church to develop a 3-year plan for evangelism, discipleship, and leadership. I've been asked to attend elder training coming up soon, and am kinda being treated as an elder already....as evidenced by the fact that I was also asked to be on the leadership ministry committee for this. Not exactly sure what the duties will be, but we're going to start rolling things out over the coming months. Anyway, the seminar was over 2 days, Tuesday evening and Wednesday all day, so I took a personal day Wednesday to attend. It was also Tuesday evening, so I couldn't attend the softball game. We got crushed again, I heard.

Wednesday Alex dropped of Missy at work, and on the way back home he accidentally ran a red light. Basically he didn't notice that it had changed. And a police officer was right there and pulled him over and gave him a ticket. Looks like that's going to be something like a $160 fine. No accident, thank God, and hopefully this will get him to pay attention better. Also I'm glad this happened here and not in Washington.

Friday evening the family went out to see the new movie "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" which the kids both loved so so much, and Beth and I liked all right. It was long but crammed full, and frenetically paced. But the animation was incredible, as expected.

I rode with the 2MA group B on Saturday morning, part of the annual Storm the Fort fundraiser. I chose the 24-mile ride since the next shortest ride was 44 miles and I thought that was a bit much. The pack that was doing longer rides left us behind fairly quickly, and I hung back with a couple of older men. One of whom was Trey's dad. Not as fast as the pack, but a good ride nonetheless. The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet since the kids were both working at least one day. 

Monday was Memorial Day! A free day off work. We had no plans, other than Beth and I wanted to go see the parade in Pierceton. Unfortunately the parade was actually in Leesburg, which we found out when we got to Pierceton about 15 minutes early and found absolutely nothing going on there. Beth mad a phone call and got the real story so we moved on to Leesburg as fast as we could, and only missed some of the keynote speech. The parade was fun, there were the police and fire trucks and a lot of old cars and such, all with people throwing candy at the kids in the crowd. Only lasted half an hour at most, but it was fun.

The softball team accomplished something rare: we got shut out for a second straight week. This time it was 13-0, though, so a little better. Once again we just couldn't hit or run or field. I don't think we got anyone past second base, and only a couple that far. 

James and I went out to visit Restoration Medical Polymers in Columbia City on Wednesday, it seems we're going to be doing some business with them fairly soon.

There were a couple graduation parties to go to this weekend, in particular Kathryn Monsma and Derek Guthrie from church/softball.