October 27, 2011
Early in our marriage, we joked about adopting a Romanian so that Julie could have a kid who might have a genetic inclination towards gymnastics.
Once that urge passed, Julie took up judging gymnastics for a few years.
Then we had kids.
And Julie swore that the last thing she would want (well…right behind football) was for her kids to do gymnastics — too much time and too much wear and tear on the body.
She still claims that is the case, but, when loading pictures onto the computer from my camera, I discovered some pictures that Julie snapped earlier this week:
If the pictures don’t make you think we might have a kid or two heading down a gymnastics path, would the fact that Julie told me not to delete the blurry pictures just yet “because [she] wants to show Alana some things about her form first” change your mind?
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October 26, 2011
Julie, Alana, Carson and I headed out to our local ski resort on Sunday to see if we could pick up some cheap gear for the coming season. While Julie rifled through the equipment, I took the kids up the slopes on the ski lift they had running (I was struck how much closer and softer the grown looks when it’s white and snow-covered):
We paused for a picture at the top of the mountain:
And then headed dowwwwwnnnnn:
The steep sections were imminently rollable:
Although…still sufficiently energy-sucking to require jacket removal before racing down the final stretch:
I was then called away to be fitted for a deal on skis and boots, while Alana and Carson headed back to the top for another run (they’re on the lift in the middle of the picture):
It was a successful outing, and we are almost fully outfitted for when the snow actually arrives.
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October 25, 2011
In a mad fit of work avoidance last Saturday, Benton and I busted out the milk crate of firestarter-making supplies and got busy. This was a milk crate in my workshopt that had slowly been accumulating all of the necessary ingredients:
- Egg cartons (Carson eats 4 eggs a day for breakfast these days…followed by a couple of waffles; these were easy containers to come by!)
- Sawdust (courtesy of the collection bag on my dust collector)
- Old used/warped candles (courtesy of my parents)
- Dried moose poop (also courtesy of my parents…who stopped on the side of a road in Alaska and collected a large bag once they were told that moose scat was an excellent firestarter)
Growing up, I made firestarters with these same basic ingredients sans the moose poop (not a whole lot of moose wandering around Sour Lake, Texas), but, let’s be honest, dried excrement makes any project more exotic!
We mashed up the poop:
We melted the candles (the initial attempt to line the pan with aluminum foil was not successful, but the pot cleaned up fine with a couple of rounds of boiling soapy water):
We filled the egg cartons with a mix of moose poop and sawdust and then poured in the melted wax:
After cooling for an hour or so, we cut up the cartons and had 3 dozen firestarters!
We used one to start a fire in our firepan in the driveway that evening, and it worked like a charm! We should be set for the winter.
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October 19, 2011
Last Saturday turned out to be a gorgeous fall day. Benton and a few of his friends coordinated one of their get-togethers on a nearby field for a pick-up soccer game. I decided I sneak over and try to get some pictures of the action.
When I arrived…they had decided to hang out on the playscape next to the field instead of starting their game, so, instead of 12-year-olds in action, I walked a two-mile loop through the neighborhood and tried to get some good shots of the season.
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October 18, 2011
Our camping frequency has dropped off dramatically since we’ve moved to Ohio, so we decided in the middle of the summer to simply pick a weekend and make it happen. The trip was in late September, and we opened up the activity to a range of friends. As it turned out, my sister flew up from Austin to attend, the Pages (with their three kids), one of my co-workers and his daughter, and another of Benton’s friends all came. It turned out to be the right-sized crowd, and it was an easy-going, compatible bunch. We headed down to Hocking Hills, which is widely regarded as one of the more scenic areas in Ohio (and where we camped over Thanksgiving two years ago).
The boys devised a 2-on-2 football game that seemed to run semi-continuously throughout the weekend:
Alana and Claire were inseparable:
Drew and Ella at Upper Falls near Old Man’s Cave:
Alana at Old Man’s Cave:
A walk in the woods — Julie, Amy, Ella, Drew:
Julie at the dam near our campsite:
We ate well, with corn chowder, tamale pie, and pineapple upside-down cake for dinner on Saturday night:
Randy was recovering from rotator cuff surgery, so he got his daily physical therapy from Amy:
And, on Saturday evening, we pulled out some Michigan-acquired sparklers and turned the kids loose:
Not a bad weekend getaway at all!
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October 17, 2011
While I am far behind on posting, and Alana did turn six back in June, and this is a post about Alana’s birthday party…the party occurred less than two weeks ago.
You see, June was a busy month. School was over, summer travel was kicking into high gear, and Alana turned six. But, she didn’t get a party, which wasn’t a big deal…at the time.
Apparently, Alana quietly stewed off and on all summer about this non-party. Her concern, as best we can tell, was that, while her birth certificate and the calendar might claim that she was six years old, the absence of a formal party to recognize the occasion might very well have thrown the universe completely out of balance. By Julie’s count, Alana had at least three separate “birthday recognition events,” but none of those included an Alana-centric gathering of her peers to recognize her next step toward teen-hood.
SO, she decided that a tea party was in order. Julie, not wanting to discourage industriousness, told Alana to have at it.
And then Julie got herself thoroughly sucked into the planning and executing the event.
Throughout the planning Alana insisted that this was a NO BOYS affair — an insistence that had every Y chromosome in the house breathing a sigh of relief about.
Like all good tea parties, this one included an actual silver tea service (which had been polished maybe once previously since it came into our possession):
The “tea” was served (actual tea was offered, but most of the guests opted for sour lemonade — made intentionally sour so that they would need to drop sugar cubes into it to sweeten it up):
The hostess welcomed her guests and outlined the rules of a game she had devised for entertainment:
Like all proper tea parties, after sipping and munching, the party headed to the basement for a post-tea spot of dancing.
And, like all good spots of dancing (or, at least, like all good events with a group of kids on a basement stage where a ceiling-mounted black light is available), the dancing turned into a rave:
With calories appropriately burned, the party returned to the first floor for candles and brownies with the NOW properly six-year-old hostess:
And NOW Alana feels like she truly is six years old.
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October 16, 2011
Alana has had a busy fall of soccer, which she has thoroughly enjoyed.
On the day these pictures were taken, her father proposed that she put her hair into a pony tail, but she insisted that was not necessary.
Hanging out a Benton’s game — a girl’s gotta’ just chill sometimes:
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October 15, 2011
It’s been a busy fall on a lot of fronts, which is my excuse for not posting. I’ll see if I can get caught up with a few posts over the next few days.
Starting off, Benton made his first foray into school-run sports by running cross country this fall. We’re not sure where exactly he got the idea (none of his close friends ran), but he’d announced in the spring that he thought he would give it a try in the fall, and give it a try he did! What I now realize is that cross country — any distance running I suppose — is something of an engineering problem, in that the goal is to find a pace during the core of the race and then starting the final sprint in such a way that you’re out of gas right as you arrive at the finish line (but not before). Below are a couple of pictures from one of the invitational tournaments near the end of the season. Benton bested his personal best in this race by over half a minute, finishing the 2-mile course in 13 minutes and 20 seconds — a solid, middle-of-the-pack finish in the varsity race (7th and 8th graders):
We headed straight from that race over to some soccer fields just east of Columbus so he could knock out his second fall sport — soccer. Benton is now on a team in a mid-level league that has a couple of his good friends on it. The team is one of the best in their league, having lost only one game as they head into the end-of-season tournament (that loss came on the one weekend when Benton…and his two friends…were off camping — more on that in a later post). As with cross country, Benton is a solid, above-average player who genuinely enjoys the sport and his teammates, so that has made for a fun fall.
All in all, it’s been an active fall!
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August 21, 2011
It turns out, our long weekend in and around Cooperstown, New York appears to warrant three posts rather than the initially planned two. Rather than staying in a hotel, Julie found Shadow Brook Campground, which had a good-sized camper already on-site that we could rent, a small pond that allowed fishing (no license required), and paddle boats available for a very nominal fee ($5/half hour). That seemed like it would make for more interesting downtime, and it did!
The Pond
We were in the camper tucked back in the trees (you can see some blue chairs in front of it)
The Fishing
Carson had a hook in the water within 15 minutes of us arriving at the site:
Benton also got into the action:
And, at one point, even Alana (with doll in tow) gave it a shot:
The Paddle Boats
We didn’t get around to renting a paddle boat until our last evening, but all three kids piled on…
…and quickly decided that the fun thing to do would be to paddle through the fountain in the middle of the pond:
The Playground
Alana went swimming, but, before swimming, she tried out the playground:
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August 20, 2011
Below are some other pictures from our long weekend in and around Cooperstown, New York.
Alana Knows the Art of Baseball Spectating
(My favorite picture from the weekend)
Around Cooperstown
Downtown Cooperstown is eminently walkable
And…eminently stoppable (for ice cream):
Since Benton doesn’t eat ice cream, he got a blue sorbet/gelato or somesuch:
And…a gratuitous picture of a bumblebee on a flower outside a house on a side street:
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