Our New American!

We had a red white & blue celebration on Monday evening. Najah was sworn in as a United States citizen that day!


This seems to be the year of completion for him, graduate school and citizenship! We are very proud of you Najah!


He was quizzing the kids on what the stars and stripes stand for on the flag. Do you know? Can you name all 13 original colonies??

We started the meal with prayer and sang "God Bless America". It was exhilarating.

The United States is truly the land of opportunity. We take it for granted, but those from other countries know.

Congratulations to Najah!!

We are missing you Gretchen

XOXOXOXO

THE CLAN

A visit from Mr. & Mrs. Neidnagel

[Oh that was fun to write.] Yes last weekend we were honored to have Jordan and Melissa visit our family. We had never met Melissa before but felt as though we were long time friends almost instantly. She is so sweet.



They were married on July 4th! Yes newlyweds. They had a medieval themed wedding that was fabulous. Sure wish we'd been able to make it out there. I "borrowed" these wedding pictures from other blogs. Unfortunately I didn't really take many while they were with us. I get excited and just forget.


We sure hope that they will come again. There was much to talk about and many things in the area that we would like to do with them. There is such encouragement from getting together with other members of Christ's body who are like minded.

Congratulations you two and thanks for including us in your trip. May the Lord bless you mightily as you start this adventure that He has ordained for you!

Farewell to a Sweet Teacher

Today was Haley's last lesson with Suzanne Ballam. Suzanne and her husband are moving to Texas. If you know of anyone looking for a harp teacher we highly recommend her. She was home educated herself and has been a tremendous encouragement to Haley.


Thank you Suzanne for being an excellent teacher. You have been a godly roll model for both Haley and Mandy. We pray that the Lord will bless you as you make this adjustment.

Winning Favor -- creating a scene

It's amazing to see all that it takes to shoot one scene. It may be only seconds on the screen when all is said and done, however it still requires a great deal of hard work.






















It's so fun to see all this. I think back to movies that I've seen and try to imagine all this going on around some of the scenes. Wow. Amazing. I can see why it might take more than a year to shoot a movie.



The following are a few random pictures from throughout the rest of that day.






Our friend Nathaniel Bluedorn went out one weekend to watch the filming (especially to get a look at The Red camera) and climb rocks with John and Nate. So that's how we got pictures with Nate in them. Thank you so much NB for sharing your pictures with us yet again!

HAPPY BIRTHDAYs

Two men in our family have birthdays this week.

It's Nate's golden birthday this year! Yes he is 23!

We fed him steak for breakfast. Man-food! Grrrrrr. . . . . . .
It seems much more masculine to cut it with a gigantic knife, no?!?!



In the evening we had pizza from the Zion Pizza House (the best place in town) and played games. Nate almost won Parcheesi but Haley and I ganged up on him just as he was about to get his last man home. Then Dad, who was in second, raced in and won instead.
Do you think we should we have let him win just because it was his golden birthday??

Kyle's birthday is the 26th.
We are missing you Kyle.

Sigh, since we can't be together, here are some flash backs from last year.

We had a fun afternoon in the pool.

Osama bin Phillips
Actually it's a wonderful winter scarf that Haley crocheted for him.

Kyle enjoying two of his presents. 1. a beautiful picture of Gretchen -- Awww
2. a picture of Matthew in disguise -- hum? think about it.

This is our prayer for these sons of ours taken from Colossians 1

We pray for Nate and Kyle, and ask that they may:

be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that they will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified them to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.

For He rescued them from the domain of darkness, and transferred them to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom they have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Happy Birthday we love you!

Dad, Mom, Haley & Matthew

Making a Movie in Orange City Iowa

Nate's been really busy since getting home. That's good. He's preparing for his next assignment.

So I asked if I could put up some of his pictures from the shoot. They are so interesting.

Most of the pictures do not have Nate in them since he was taking them. Here's the only one he took . . . . looking in a mirror.

Hunter (the director of photography) carefully leveling his coffee.

Hummmm . . . . handy. =)
Gotta keep your strength up.


Planning meeting at the start of the day.


Hunter and Jamey adjusting lighting in the "bedroom".

Mr. Doryk with the boom.

Here's the sound cart. I like seeing the dolly for the camera in the background. Hunter had all sorts of dollies for moving the camera.

The roller dolly using roller blade wheels. If you click on this you can see them up close. In fact you can click on any picture to see it bigger.

More meetings.

Sometimes they filmed in really tight places. The camera is in the back corner. I liked the dramatic lighting and look forward to seeing how it comes across in the finished movie.

Here Matthew is being wired for sound.

This is a fun sequence. You can see what they are going to shoot and then you can see everyone in the background doing their part. The principle speakers must have all been miced because I don't see the boom in the pictures.

The Director, Jamey, is reviewing the shot with some future(?) filmmakers!


Here are some of the actors waiting. A lot of time is spent waiting while everything is being set up for the shot.

The Big Game

They put an announcement in the paper, put fliers on cars in parking lots and people from the area came to be a part of the crowd. Wouldn't that have been fun? I would have gone!

Look at this one up close. He's lining up the actor's face so he can do a fade in from the face of the other actor who is playing the part of the character when he was younger.


Notice Hunter is on roller blades. Nate said he was incredible on those skates! Boy the Lord can use the most interesting things in our lives to accomplish His purposes!

They had to get sprayed down to look like they had already been playing basketball.



Orange City was a fun little town with a marvelous dutch influence. It has about 5,000 people. (5 times the size of Oakland, and 1/4th the size of Zion.)


The downtown has all these fun dutch inspired store fronts.



Someone jokingly gave this gift to one of the actors. =) It fits the town's ethnic flavor. I think that the school mascot is called the Dutchmen.

Here are the younger members of the movie crew.

The children of the film crew (not including the goofy Jeremy).

The entire movie crew.

Nate and Mr. Doryk

We appreciate him so much. He gave generously of his time to teach and mentor Nate. Not just in audio, but up on those rocks!