April 19, 2012
Carson and I headed to a local metro park last Saturday for a hike. The weather alternated between a light drizzle and a steady drip, and we got a little too ambitious with the path we’d chosen, but it all worked out in the end.
Carson went through three different walking sticks — hamming it up a bit when the camera was pointed in his direction:
I really should pick up a book on the local flora, as I have absolutely no idea what this flower is:
While crossing a bridge on the trail, Carson spotted this little guy hanging out half-submerged.
And, being a 10-year-old in possession of both X and Y chromosomes, he plopped down on his stomach to try to grab the frog for a closer inspection (he failed):
Halfway through the hike, Carson was pooped and cold (lying on his stomach on wet ground while plunging his hands into cold water didn’t help!), but, since it was a metro park, we found a shelter for him to hang out in while I completed the hike and then drove back up to retrieve him. At the observation deck towards the end of that last leg of the hike, I came across this guy bedded down:
Following the hike, we stopped for gas, and the gas station had a Dairy Queen, so Carson scored a Peanut Buster Parfait. Following that, we passed a Michael’s, which prompted a stop for some blue powdered dye as an ingredient for the homemade smoke bomb we made the next day. Needless to say, Carson’s memories of the day might not include anything related to trails, hiking sticks, flora, or fauna.
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April 18, 2012
It’s spring, so spring sports are in full swing. For Benton, that means track (through school), soccer, and baseball (practice…the season doesn’t start for a while). For the next few months, our Saturdays will have a lot of this:
And this:
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April 17, 2012
Catching up, as this was several weeks ago, but better late than never!
The week after Julie and the kids returned from spring break, and thinking it was Julie’s last weekend before heading back to work, a hastily-planned “girls’ weekend” up at Lake Erie was planned. That left a neighborhood full of fathers with their offspring. Conveniently, one of the neighborhood dads (who’s wife did not head to the lake, as she was almost 9 months pregnant) received a shipment of 1,000 tree seedlings on Friday afternoon for some property he has north of town.
Combining the opportunity to help a neighbor out, spend some time outdoors, and have the kids entertained by fresh air and sticks, Pat and I spent Saturday afternoon planting ~3/4 of those seedlings.
Alana, Marty, and Pat haul the seedlings back to where they are to be planted (yes, that box holds a thousand little trees):
Taking a break to give the kids a ride. Jack and Alana on the front…
…and Carson and Andrew on the back.
Because they were outside in the woods for more than 12 minutes, Josh and Benton, predictably, built a fire and a makeshift bench:
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March 21, 2012
The final activity at the U.S. National Whitewater Center on St. Patrick’s Day were a couple of adventure/ropes courses.
All geared up:
Up the ropes to the zip line:
And zipping down:
Then, onto the ropes course:
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March 20, 2012
After the rock climbing at the U.S. National Whitewater Center, Julie and the boys (the blue helmets) moved on to whitewater rafting:
Pre-trip safety instruction with a deep southern hipster:
Loading up (did I mention that they’d dyed the water green for St. Patrick’s Day?):
Heading into the rapids:
And…the action shots:
So, if you race down steep rapids, how on earth do you get back to the headwaters? With a conveyor bridge, of course!
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March 19, 2012
On Saturday, St. Patrick’s Day, we (Benton, Carson, my Uncle John, and I) headed to the U.S. National Whitewater Center on the outskirts of Charlotte. It’s an impressive complex, made a bit surreal by the dying of the water green in honor of St. Paddy (and more surreal by the fact that I combined three images in an HDR process):
There are a number of activities at the center, so I’m going to break this up into three separate posts. We started off at the rock wall (in the picture above over on the right edge — the light brown, lopsided tower thingy), where Julie and the boys both took multiple turns on multiple difficulty levels.
Carson, Julie, and Benton all on the wall at once:
Carson at the top of the wall:
Benton paused for a photo op en route to the top:
Julie close to the peak of her comfort level:
Overall, Carson gave the experience a thumbs-up:
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March 18, 2012
Spring break this year is taking Julie and the kids to Florida by way of Charlotte, NC, (with me). We arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house in Charlotte late afternoon on Friday and then headed over to my cousin’s house for dinner.
The gaggle of sibling/cousins/second-cousins held council (short two: one was still at soccer practice, and Benton had gone off and located the basketball hoop) in the backyard trying to decide what to do:
“Red Rover!” someone suggested. “Boys against girls,” (the same) person suggested. While the numbers did not seem to be in the boys’ favor at first blush, Mac is no dummy. He immediately identified the weakest link and went for it:
The game was called after two runs.
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January 18, 2012
I went back to work after the holidays and spent the first week working crazy hours, which then evolved into an upper respiratory infection by the end of the week. By the following Tuesday, I was working from home rather than annoying my co-workers with a persistent cough and, worse, the risk of infection. At the same time, Alana came down with a stomach bug that kept her out of school for a couple of days, the second of which was Tuesday. She felt well enough that day, but she needed to stay home to get past a 24-hour window of quarantine.
As luck would have it, a book that she’d ordered, Fancy Nancy: Ooh La La! It’s Beauty Day, arrived that morning. Gender stereotyping be damned, the Fancy Nancy series of books are pretty entertaining, and Alana has owned and/or checked out many of them. But, this was a new one to her, and she had anticipated it’s arrival ever since ordering it over the weekend. She dove right in, and, the next thing we knew, a good portion of Julie’s day disappeared into time spent at the home spa.
Before starting, Alana made up a list of services to be provided:
The ambiance was enhanced with iPad-piped music:
They started with a footbath (Alana was a recipient of some of the services as well as the provider, as the logistics allowed):
The facial mask was concocted from bananas and honey (and a couple of cucumber slices, of course!):
The facial mask itself (Fia became very interested in this treatment, as Julie was incapacitated while her face was slathered with yummy goodness):
The manicure, which Julie commented about two days later, “I’ve found it’s really unfortunate that my middle finger wound up being the blue one — out of my peripheral vision, I keep think I’m flipping myself the bird.”
And, the “total makeover,” which meant “makeup and a ponytail:”
Thus, Super Mom got her day of royal treatment.
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January 17, 2012
I’ve got a co-worker who took an extended trip to Japan and Taiwan during the latter half of December. It was a mix of business and pleasure, and he came back with a bagful of small gifts from his travels. Carson and Alana scored, in that he gave me (for them) a small stack of 4 pieces of recycled cardboard with punchout figures that could be assembled by interlocking them. This was my first day back to work after being off between New Year’s and Christmas, and, as it turned out, it was the first night I got home before 8:00 and was reasonably healthy ever since. That’s one of the reasons I’m just now getting caught up on posting here.
I wasn’t sure what the interest level and/or ability of the kids would be, but, as shown below, they both dove right in (2 cards apiece) and were quite successful:
Carson posing with the animals he put together:
Once all eight animals were assembled, a little cooperative trading occurred so that each of the kids wound up with a herd with which they were happy:
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January 16, 2012
As is now officially a tradition (ugh!), we spent New Year’s Eve bouncing around a couple of houses on our street — the party started next door and then moved a few houses down for the latter half of the evening and to ring in the new year (neither Carson nor I lasted that long).
Alana, foolishly, neglected to ask for another pony (or six) while she was adorned with pigtails (the pigtails being a rarity that make her father even more malleable to her whims than he normally is). But, she did proudly show off her pierced ears, which were just past the point where she was able to start switching them out with choices from the array of styles she received for Christmas.
Meanwhile, downstairs, Benton and Carson got so involved with their respective handheld devices that they didn’t realize they’d actually been sitting next to each other for more than 3 seconds without requiring adult intervention. I was optimistic all year long that it would happen at least once in 2011, and they squeaked in under the wire.
And, not one of our kids, but I’m including the picture anyway, because this picture of “‘Taterhead” just makes me chuckle (I simply can’t look at this picture without thinking, “Yes, he IS!”):
He wasn’t just walking around wearing this on his head — it was a part of a game he was playing with several of the other kids:
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