Kelli's Kaleidoscope

Updating the Blog...after 8 months...

2011-04-12T14:31:00.009-05:00

Well, not much has changed in my blogging activity level since August. I'll blame it on the fact that it's easier to upload pictures on Facebook than it is on Blogger. Not sure why I have such a hard time formatting the pictures on this thing.

Most of you probably know that in September 2010, we added Mr. C and Little Man's older brother I-man to our family. So we now have a 10 year old, a 2 year old, and a 1 year old.

My sis-in-law Felicia told me a story a while back of a conversation we had after Paul and I got engaged or married - one of the two. I don't recall the conversation specifically, but can see me saying it. She said that I told her I was going to have 4 children in 4 years and just get it all over with at once. She said that she just smiled and said, "Okay", but in her mind she was thinking that she wasn't sure that would really happen due to nursing, recovering from pregnancy, etc. etc. But now looking at how our family has grown from no kids to 3 kids in less than 1 year, having 4 kids in 4 years doesn't seem that difficult! :)

We still don't know how long we will have these 3 brothers in our home. The court system has been haphazard in my opinion, and I have stopped hoping for common sense results. I'm just praying that God is working his will for these boys through whatever judge will hear their case. It looks like the case will be heard sometime in early summer, but even that is up in the air right now. So in the meantime we are taking it one day at a time and trying to be consistent as we parent.

Thanks for everyone who has loved on us, listened to me rant, supported us with advice and loved on the boys!

You can look for pictures of the boys on facebook/shutterfly.

As for a recap from August 2010 to April 2011, here's the nutshell version:

September - I-man joins us over Memorial Day weekend, and starts school the next Tuesday; we celebrated Paul's birthday on the 19th.

October - We survive the month as parents of 3 active boys, and celebrate I-man's 10th birthday

November - Paul and I go to Malaysia to visit Evelyn and Steve. What an adventure! It was so much fun to meet Evelyn's friends/students and see how much they love her, and also to see the land and culture of Malaysia. We celebrated Steve's birthday a month early (talk about a surprise), ran a half-marathon with Steve in Penang (our first international one), and enjoyed being kid-free for 2 whole weeks! My mom (Jane) came and stayed with the boys for most of the time, and then they went to Paul's brother's house, and our friends at camp for Thanksgiving.

December - Lights of Tejas consumes us at camp, and we enjoy all the activity. We also enjoyed our first Christmas with kids in the house. So much fun!

January - We celebrate my birthday by going to a trapeze lesson...and I'm hooked on it! (See Facebook for videos)

February - Paul and I get away to Mazatlan, Mexico! Mom and Dad Smith come watch the boys for us again. We celebrate Mr C's 2nd birthday right before they return home. Then Mr. C figures out how to crawl out of his crib, and we convert his bed to a toddler bed. Oh joy!

March - Paul and I-man go on a guy's road trip during spring break. The pool opens at camp, and now there is a permanent request to go to the pool every weekend...even though the water is still FREEZING by any sane person's standards.

April - we will celebrate Little Man's 1st birthday. He's almost walking - he's taken 2-3 steps on his own before falling, but isn't discouraged. He's a super fast crawler, and can now crawl up into Mr C's toddler bed. I fear that he will figure out how to crawl out of his own crib well before the age of 2. Yikes!!!

Hopefully I'll remember to update this more often so more pictures and our family history will make it on here. As I mentioned in the August post - this is really so I remember what happens each year since I'm not going to scrapbook. I do want to have something to help me remember all of it in my old age, though. :)

Does anyone blog anymore?

2010-08-15T14:07:00.006-05:00

I told myself when I first started this blog that I wouldn't let facebook take over. But it has. It's easier to throw pictures up on that, or on shutterfly, instead of writing the story that goes along with each picture. But I feel like I miss out on the preserving my history part. Since I'm not going to scrapbook, the blog was a way of writing down our story and remembering the details so we can look back and see all that God has done for us along the way. So for anyone out there who still reads blogs, here's a quick update on our lives in 2010.

As most of you know already, we started the process of becoming foster parents in February 2010. It was a last minute decision for us to go to the training in San Antonio that weekend (Valentine's), but it was evident that God had planned it for us long before we did. By Tuesday March 16, we were licensed, and Friday, March 19, we received a call to foster a little girl who was born 10 weeks premature, but who was now 6 weeks old and needed to be discharged from the NICU of St. Joseph's Hospital. We brought her home on March 23, and we called her Anna. She was with us for 2 months before she was moved to the home where her older brother was just adopted. Talk about on-the-job training! We had to learn how to take care of infants in a weekend, but the nurses were great and gave us tips and let us stay at the hospital overnight to "practice" getting up in the middle of the night, and trying to feed a sleeping infant. When she moved, she had doubled her weight (we brought her home weighing 5 lbs 7 oz, and she left weighing almost 11 lbs).

At the time Anna moved, we were pretty devastated, even though we trusted in God's plan and knew that He was the one moving her. We just didn't understand why we had to give her up. It hurt so much!

Summer arrived like a tornado as it usually does around here, which probably helped us get on with life and adjust to not having Anna in our home anymore. And wouldn't you know it that on June 22 we got a call about 2 boys ages 2 months and 16 months that needed a home? So on June 24, "Mr. C" and "Little Man" came to live with us (I won't post real names here).

Looking back I can see how our time with Anna prepared us to be ready and willing to help these 2 little boys. Being new parents, there is no way we would have said yes to a 2 month old and a 16 month old right away. But after learning how to take care of an infant, we felt more confident about having the skills, or at least the resources to obtain the skills to love and care for 2 boys under the age of 2 a the same time. :)

So now these 2 active, lovable boys have been with us for 7 weeks, and we are completely in love. We know that they may not stay with us forever. God may choose to return them to their parents and heal that broken family. Or He may choose to blend a new family and allow them to stay with us forever. We won't know until it happens. But in the meantime, we are loving these boys and enjoying life as parents who get little sleep, have little "adult only" time where we're actually awake, and who love every minute of it.

What an adventure 2010 has turned out to be for us! And many of you (probably all of you reading this) had a huge part in making the adventure happen for us. When we brought Anna home, we had nothing for a baby. My cousin Stephanie in Houston rallied her friends along with my Aunt & Uncle and they loaded us up with bouncy seats, bottle warmers, baby clothes, diaper bags, blankets, baby bath tubs, an infant car seat, etc. So many people stepped up to help us acquire all the necessities that we would need to care for Anna. And our camp family here threw us a baby shower and loved on us and celebrated with us as we began our parenting journey. And again, when our 2 boys arrived, many of our friends offered boy clothes and let us borrow more baby/toddler paraphernalia (swing, double stroller, toys, etc). And the best gift of all was our friend Natalie offering to watch the boys for 2 nights while we got away to celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary. What a trooper!

I don't have pictures to post with this since I don't have it password protected. But you can check out the shutterfly site or facebook and find pictures if you're interested/haven't seen them yet.

Thanks for joining us on this journey and supporting us along the way, too. It has been such a blessing to watch God work, to lean on Him for wisdom and to have faith in the future He has planned out for us.

Much has happened since November...

2010-04-03T19:43:00.014-05:00

Well, I did start an update to this blog after Christmas - my parents celebrated their 35th anniversary in 2009 and took us all on a Caribbean cruise over Christmas. I had great intentions of getting pictures up, but I really didn't take very many because I was so focused on enjoying everything, rather than capturing in photos. So maybe one day I'll get it posted just so I have a record of it when I want to look back. But for now, let's move on and focus on Spring Flowers!!!

Paul was super sweet today and took care of Anna for most of the afternoon while I went out and enjoyed God's beautiful creation. I even took the dogs for a swim in the lakes, and then came back and bathed them. So after our excursion to the meadows, then the dogs got baths, then I got a shower, then Anna got a bath - so we're all clean for Easter!!!

I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day to think about what Jesus did for me and God's power in raising him from the dead! I'm so humbled that God would use that same power in my life! I hope you enjoy some of the pictures below of Texas in spring - it's the state's best season in my opinion, even if everything is covered in pollen. :)

A Colorado Thanksgiving...

2009-12-03T21:21:00.007-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! (Okay, so I'm a little late)... So Merry Christmas!!! (there, I'm early for once). And my pictures below definitely get me in the Christmas spirit, so I don't feel bad about saying it early.

This year for Thanksgiving, we went to Colorado Springs to visit Evan & Heather, friends from our Indiana days. And what better way to remember those cold Indiana days than to go to a snowy destination?

Our first few days in CO, we went up to Steamboat Springs and spent 3 days at a time-share that Evan & Heather's friends couldn't use. Don't ya hate it when you have to go to beautiful resorts to help out some friends?

The second day we were there, we woke up to snow falling, which was really fun since it ended up being the only snow we saw fall while we were there. This is our view from our hotel window as it was snowing.

We all ventured into the town of Steamboat Springs and window shopped in the little shops and generally had fun being cold for a while.

We inquired about snowshoeing, but the locals said there wasn't enough on the ground to need it. So we stuck with our tennis shoes and endured cold toes, but it was fun.

I think this was on the third morning. The snow was still there, but the sun came out and was shining through some snow that was blowing off the mountains. So I caught this rainbow from our window.

I think this was a maintenance shop at the resort because they kept pulling out mini snow-dozers and shovels from it. But it had the best row of icicles I've seen in a long time!

While it was still snowing, Paul and I actually went out to the outdoor jacuzzi (we sprinted from the hotel door to the water) and had fun making snowballs from the snow surrounding the jacuzzi and seeing how long they would last underwater, etc. It was fun...but no pictures.

After we returned from Steamboat Springs, we went to the Garden of the Gods and drove around. We got out of the car for a few pictures, but didn't spend a lot of time outside hiking in the park. We saved that for geocaching later in the week.

Proof we were there...

Paul's such a funny guy. I love 'im!

Another day we hiked up to Pulpit Rock. It was crazy because there was snow all along the trail that we took up (on the non-sunny side), yet the temps reached at least 75 degrees that day, so I was actually regretting wearing all the layers I had on.

It was pretty slippery since the snow had been melting and then re-freezing. There were some close calls with slipping, especially since I had old tennis shoes on without much tread on them.

The view from the top - Evan & Heather looking out.

I was making a face at Paul because he jokingly threatened to push me off the edge.

Pike's Peak is in the background - it's the peak with the snow on it in the middle of the picture.

Evan had a small slide on the way down (we took the sunny trail down so there wasn't snow, but there was LOTS of mud! You can see the compassion on Heather's face as she analyzes the "injury". Just teasing Evan!

That's Pulpit Rock from the bottom of the trail looking back up.

A couple of different days we went geocaching in the area. This was along a trail of which I can't recall the name. Heather found the first cache, which was fun.

Paul hinted loudly enough that I "found" the next cache. It was pretty close to the drainage ditch, (I really doubt it was a named creek), so I had to be careful not to fall in.

The next day we went geocaching again, and the temperature was MUCH colder. So we all had lots of layers on and hats/gloves. Gotta love Colorado weather...it's a lot like Texas - just wait a while and it will change!

This was another one that I had help "finding". But it was fun.

Self-photo attempt.

Another find...I actually wasn't there for this one because I wimped out and sat down for a while. I learned the hard way that I should have brought water on this outing. While in CO I was constantly thirsty and felt like I never had enough water to drink. Darn elevation!

Other than those main activities, we played lots of games (Settlers of Catan, Carcasson, Fluxx, Sequence, etc), watched movies, and read books. It was great to be able to relax and just hang out without any appointments or meetings to go to!

Thanksgiving day we spent with the friends who had let us use the timeshare. They are Evan & Heather's ballroom dancing instructors, and their daughter is also Evan's co-worker at Focus on the Family. It was a lot of fun meeting everyone who was there and playing games (Evan & Heather introduced us to the game Fluxx there - a fun big group game). Evan and Heather are really blessed to have great friends there in Colorado Springs.

After our week with Evan & Heather, we spent Sunday-Wednesday at the CCCA national conference that was hosted at the Broadmoor Hotel. I'll post another blog with pictures of the hotel. It was the NICEST hotel I've ever stayed at! More details to come!

Movies to go with the September Post...

2009-09-20T13:23:00.005-05:00

Here is one of the videos that go with the post I uploaded in September...before you comment on how long it takes me to put videos up, I have to explain that it took hours to upload this one and then it would error out and not upload anything. So it wasn't due to a lack of effort in getting the videos uploaded...it was technical difficulties!

How is it already September?!?!?

2009-09-14T14:10:00.042-05:00

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been that long since I posted anything. And I can’t say that it’s because I post to facebook more, because I haven’t done that, either. So here’s an attempt at a semi-brief update of what we’ve been up to over the last 4 ½ months.

May was spent preparing for summer camp (staff arrived May 14)! I don’t really recall having a life outside of working and sleeping that month. We were able to sneak in a Settlers of Catan tournament with Philip & Felicia, and Jim & Stacey at the camp over Memorial Day weekend. But the rest of the time was wrapping up retreat season, and transitioning to summer camp.
Then summer happened and I really don’t know where the weeks went. I really don’t think it’s because I’m getting older that I think it went so fast. Maybe I’m wrong. But it really was the fastest 10 weeks that I can remember.

One thing that made it pretty special is that Rachel came out for 3 weeks and worked in the kitchen because we were short handed. She was switching jobs, so I convinced her to quit her old job early and come out to Texas before she started her new job. We owe Clay big time for letting her come, and Rachel deserves a medal of honor for her hard work and sacrifice of sleep and free time. I will definitely admit that the kitchen has the worst hours of all of our jobs. She was usually out the door by 6am and didn’t get finished until 7pm with only a short break in the afternoon if she was lucky.

It was really neat for me to have someone else in my family get a true sense of what summer camp is like. My mom came out for a week in 2007 to help in the gift shop when we were short there. So she had a pretty good idea as well, but I think Rachel got the full picture. I promise that the next time she comes to visit, we will just play and not work at all!

Here's some proof that we did take off a couple days and go sightseeing. We went to the IMAX theater near the Texas History Museum near/on UT's campus. We saw Night at the Museum 2...it was fun, though we did have to sit in the very back row to feel like we could see the whole screen. Are we old, or what?

We went down to the Congress St. bridge to wait for the bats to fly out. This is while we were waiting.

Then this is when the bats flew out. You can't really see it in the pictures, but it was pretty cool to see in person. It's just a stream of black dots coming out and you can hear them squeaking. They all take turns leaving. I envisioned a huge mass of bats flying out all at once. But instead they start at one end of the bridge and start leaving and gradually the bats leave from left to right. As the bats started to leave from the side we were standing on, you could smell them. It wasn't pretty. I think watching them fly over the city from your car is just as cool. :)

Girls Night In! Of course we had to play the Cupid Shuffle and dance. Then we watched a movie, had ice cream sundaes, and played ultimate twister!!!

This is the day Rachel, Nerys, Paul and I went to San Antonio. We went to Six Flags first, then went down to the Riverwalk to have dinner. Six Flags was nice because it was still cool in early June, and there weren't any lines. It was great!

Rachel & Nerys at the Casa Real (I think that's the name of it) on the River Walk.

Me & Paul...the flash made it look like we had tans!!

We had a mariachi band play for us, too. I'll try to get that video uploaded as well. It was fun!

Then we went to see the Alamo. Paul was taking lots of pictures as we walked...Rachel was super excited about it, too.

Yep, there's the Alamo! Right in downtown San Antonio...it's so weird sometimes when you look at what surrounds it now, but I'm glad they didn't destroy it or let it deteriorate.

She was really excited about this picture.

I'm not sure which historical figures we were imitating from the sculpture...but it was fun.

She likes sticking her tongue out.

After Rachel went back to Virginia, the summer just flew by and all of a sudden the staff was leaving and I was headed to Virginia to surprise my dad for his 60th birthday. All 3 of us girls showed up the weekend after his actual birthday, which I think helped keep him guessing, though he almost found out our secret several times. It was fun to go back for a weekend just to hang out. Although I still ended up breaking their back porch screen…actually Scout, Rachel’s dog, ran through it, but somehow I ended up with the blame. Apparently she is really scared when you pick up a chair that was knocked over and it makes a noise as you set it down. So she ran from the noise…straight through the screen. And the screen didn’t even faze her or slow her down a bit.

Saturday we went down to the dock to visit Dad's "new to him, but old in age" boat. The shaft on their motor hadn't been altered yet (it needed to be longer), so we didn't go out on the boat, but it was fun to look at and imagine the wind blowing through our hair on the York River. Now they have it running, so they are becoming sailors! Okay, Dad's becoming a sailor...I think Mom's just enjoying the ride.

Then we all went out to eat dinner in Gloucester on the water. It was beautiful and we had wonderful seafood...actually I think I had pork medallions, but they were super good, too. We saw lots of jelly fish in the water as we walked around the dock after dinner. I never think about them being in fresh water but maybe the water there is just brackish enough that they can survive?

Sunday after church = Family Bowling Trip! Go Mom, go!!

Clay, Rachel, and Scout!

Life in posed pictures...

Real life...

After my trip to Virginia, Paul and I went out to Palm Springs, CA for a week. Everyone in Palm Springs kept asking us why we decided to visit in August. I guess they couldn’t understand why we would choose the 110 degree weather over the 105 degree weather we had back in TX. Well, hot is hot, and we just wanted a change of scenery to relax and get refreshed before retreat season started.

We did lots of eating out – some places were ½ price because it was their “off” season. Other places were not because their food was worth every penny!!!

We also went on a glider ride for an early 30th birthday present to Paul. It was really fun and not nearly as scary as I thought it might be. A small prop plane towed us up to 10,000 feet above sea level, and then we released the tow line and our pilot delivered the most graceful fall I’ve ever experienced. He even put a few tricks in to make you feel weightless. I’ll put the movies on another blog after I get the pictures up.

This is the tow plane taking us up.

He turned before we hit the mountain...but for a minute I was almost concerned.

Coming in for the landing...the dots in the middle of the picture are cows. He said, "I'm going to put us down before the runway on the field so that I don't have to use so much brake to slow us down." It worked just fine.

After our flight, we drove around Hemet and the surrounding small towns that I can't remember names for. Our rental car was a hybrid Nissan Altima. We only filled up once after driving over 500 miles, so that was really nice...because gas in CA is expensive!

Paul saw these mailboxes and got these pictures. He has a great eye for these kinds of shots. I'm too busy looking at trees and plants to notice the fun man-made shots.

It amazes me that people would choose to live in the desert. It was SO HOT!!!!

This was our typical view each day. Driving around Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Desert Palms, you could see the dry desert mountains in the background, and the green sprinkler-fed grass and palm trees lining the streets. Crazy!

We went to the Palm Springs Air Museum one day. They have WWII airplanes on exhibit - one hangar with the Pacific Arena planes, and one hangar with the European Arena planes. And the docents giving tours/info were all WWII veterans. It was really neat to hear them talk about their experiences.

We spent so much time looking at all the planes and asking questions, that we ran out of time to look through their library. We ran upstairs for a quick peak and found rows and rows of bookshelves filled with WWII history books and other pilot diaries that only have 1 copy. I hope one day they can get those pieces of history preserved digitally so we don't lose them!

My favorite view of trees - looking straight up into the foliage.

Thursday night we went down to the Village Fest. They close down Palm Canyon Drive and hundreds of vendors set up booths and tents to sell their artwork or raise awareness for their causes, etc. I was so surprised how hot it was though. When the sun set and it was dark, it was still 90+ degrees and the streets were still radiating heat.

One of the days we got up at 4:30am to drive up to an overlook and watch the sun rise. This picture is blurry because Paul was trying to get our camera to do a special shot by keeping the shutter open. We haven't figured that feature out on our camera yet, but you can kind of see the cars driving up the mountain below us. The headlights make a S shaped line.

Here's the same shot with the normal shutter speed. The road curves at the bottom right of the picture.

The weather was really pleasant at 5 in the morning.

Taking fun pictures...though we didn't plan to wear red and green on purpose since we were dressing at 4am. Maybe we can still use one of these as a Christmas picture though...if I decide to send Christmas cards out this year. I'm so bad about that!

This one is the best in my opinion.

Then we went to the Living Desert zoo while it was still cool in the morning. After that, we headed back to the hotel to sleep during the hottest part of the day! Then we ventured out to go eat dinner and we watched the sun set, so that was pretty neat.

Zebras!

I love this picture because it almost looks like the giraffe is in it's natural home and we're not at a zoo.

There were several giraffes. Apparently they allow zoo visitors to feed the giraffes from your hand if the giraffes feel like coming up to the fence where we were standing...but they were tired of seeing people that day, so they stayed over the hill most of the time.

The dad of the group did come tease us by coming within 30 feet of the fence...but instead of eating from our hands, he awkwardly ate the grass. God sure does have a sense of humor with his creations.

These little guys were hilarious to watch. I don't remember their names. I feel like they were in the Lion King movie, though.

Of course the wolf was looking straight at me until I snapped the picture when he decided to look away. He was so quiet and still, we almost didn't know he was there.

One of the evening trips we took in Palm Springs was up the Aerial Tramway that goes up Mt. San Jacinto. It was pretty cool. The temperature dropped 20 degrees, so it was really pleasant at the top. I don't remember the guy's name who had the crazy idea of building it (by the way everyone told him it couldn't be done). But I'm sure glad he succeeded! It was beautiful at the top.

The tram car rotated 360 degrees as we ascended, so everyone got to see every view from the top.

After we left Palm Springs, we spent a day and a half in L.A. These are some of the wind turbine fields we saw as we drove back to L.A. Pretty amazing that they generate electricity. Paul read that on the new ones, one of the blades is as long as an 18-wheeler truck!

We went to the Tar pits just to see what it was. Pretty much, it’s smelly tar/asphalt that is bubbling up from the earth.

This is one of the excavation sites "Pit 91" that they look for fossils in. But right now they're working on another area, so this pit is on hold for the next 5 years.

They put these statues of elephants near them which shows 1 elephant getting stuck, while 2 others watch helplessly as he struggles. It’s really very sad if you think about it…so let’s move on. We also just drove around town and saw Beverly Hills and drove up and down the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu and walked down the pier watching the street vendors/entertainers. The weather in L.A. was so much nicer (as in only 80 degrees) than Palm Springs, but the traffic and crowds were worse in L.A. so I guess you have to pick which is more important to you.

We went to the Warner Brothers studio and did the back stage tour which was pretty neat. Paul wanted to go to Paramount because it’s supposed to be a better tour, but it was already full.

This is Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino -the one used in the movie. Clint bought it, but he's letting WB display it right now for the tour.

The tumbler from Batman Begins!

We got to see the set used for Friends – the Central Perks coffee shop. It’s amazing how tv makes everything look bigger and better. Because in person, it’s really not all that impressive. But the camera angles and lighting make everything look better.

The Smithsonian wanted to buy the Friends set, but Jay Leno convinced WB not to sell it because he wanted to do an interview with the cast on the set. But he never got to do that interview. And WB decided they can make more money with their tours than the Smithsonian can pay them. A little selfish in my opinion, but no one cares what I think. :)

We flew back on a Tuesday, and were back at work on Wednesday. Now we’re in the midst of our fall retreat season which is a much slower pace, though still pretty busy. I like it though because I look forward to cooler weather and time to get away every now and then for fun.

We were off this weekend, and for Paul’s birthday (Saturday, Sep 19th), we ran a sprint triathlon with Philip and his friend Matt. It was interesting since Paul and I hadn’t done a whole lot of training since we got back 3 weeks ago (and we didn't do ANY training during summer).

We only have 1 before picture and 1 after picture on Matt's camera, so I'll post those together when I get them. It was a fun race...one that we were happy to finish. And now we're all in the same age bracket (30-39), so they ranked us together. I think I came in 9th in the women, though I don't know how many women in my age bracket competed. Paul, Philip & Matt came in 26, 27, 29 in that order out of the men in their age bracket. Our times were 1 hr 27 min (me), 1 hr 29 min (Paul), 1 hr 32 min (Philip & Matt). But the caveats are that Paul's bike chain came off at the beginning of his ride so he had to stop to fix that, and Philip was staying back with Matt since it was Matt's first triathlon race ever. Otherwise Philip would have come in 30 minutes before the rest of us, and Paul would have beat me. :)

Our long term goal is to complete the Rock n Roll ½ Marathon in San Antonio in November, and if we survive that, we will attempt a full marathon in Austin on Valentine’s Day 2010. We’re such romantics. Though I’m still scared about running 26 miles…13 was one thing, but 26 is just so long!!!

I’ll try to do better at keeping this updated so I don’t forget stuff. The next adventure that we have coming up is getting to stay with Lydia and Corban while their parents are at a 4-day conference starting Tuesday. We’ll get to see Lydia’s first softball game and go to piano lessons and go to swimming lessons and hear about their day at school and I’ll get to practice cooking dinner 4 nights in a row (though I have a feeling that one of them might be pizza, even if it’s pizza from the grocery store that we cook at home). It will be fun, and hopefully I’ll get to post some pictures. :)

April is already here!

2009-04-14T19:26:00.027-05:00

Well, it's been a while since I've updated our blog, so here's a semi-quick summary.

In January I started training for the Austin Zooma Half-Marathon for Women. On April 4, I ran the race with Felicia and Laurie and we all finished just under the 2 hour mark, which was really great! The course was super hilly (you can see the elevation chart here if you want to see it). I was really proud of all of us. And Paul volunteered with the race, so he got up super early with me (as in 3am early) and was helping at one of the parking lots by 5am.

It was the perfect race day because it was cool and overcast the whole morning until about 9am, so we didn't have too far to run under the sun.

The Monday after the race Paul and I flew to Orlando, FL to hang out with Daria & Jason for 10 days (well, Paul only stayed for 7, but I got to stay for all 10).

The first day Paul and I went to Discovery Cove (we swam with stingrays and tropical fish, and watched dolphins from 20 feet away!). We only have pictures on land because we didn't have a waterproof camera. But it was really fun. And really COLD. But we were determined to swim as long as we could and make the most of the day despite the weather.

(Before we got in the water and turned blue).

The second day we went to Sea World, and went from show to show. It was super crowded because of Easter, but we managed to get to all the shows that they offered, plus we got to eat at the restaurant with the shark tank inside which was fun. Below are a few pictures.

Waiting for the Shamu show...

Here come the trainers!

There were 3 whales swimming around - 1 baby (not pictured) and 2 adults. The baby was learning as they performed, so that was pretty cool.
There's all 3...

How an animal that size jumps that high out of the water is unbelievable to me. It was really cool to see the power that they have.
And to think that the trainers swim with them, and can ask them to perform specific tasks - all for a little fish and ice.

This was the most comical show - 2 seals, an otter, and a walrus, along with 3 trainers kept us entertained for quite a while.

Waiting for the dolphin show to start.
The set for this show was so elaborate - it was definitely the most complicated show we saw. They had acrobats, trainers, parrots flying, dolphins flipping, and trainers swimming with the dolphins.

This was the best shot we could get of the sharks in the aquarium at the restaurant. It was a really cool place to eat though.

Easter Sunday - the day Paul flew back, and we realized we didn't have a single picture of all 4 of us together yet. We weren't very good at taking pictures of us hanging out.

Almost every night we played Settlers of Catan. This time Jason won, and Daria was thrilled for him, can't you tell?

The day they tried to drown me...I mean teach me how to surf. The waves were "mushy" according to the surfers of the family, so it was hard for me to learn since the waves kept breaking right after each other without any time in between to actually get on the board and try to ride in. The few that I attempted to catch, I found myself too far up on the long board, so my weight pushed the nose of the board underwater and I just flipped. I quickly decided that I wasn't going to learn to surf in 1 day, so there wasn't any point to getting clobbered repeatedly by the waves. So I let Daria and Jason surf, and I was happy to watch from the beach.

I wanted at least 1 picture of us together before I left. Daria's going to work, so that's why she's in all black, and a crewneck t-shirt (since crewneck t's definitely break her wardrobe rules).

The pictures below are of the guest room in their house. Mom, here are pics, but Jason says it still isn't done, so look for even more improvements in the future.

Now we're back in TX and are getting ready for summer camp. It's a bit crazy like always, but everything is coming together. But I probably won't get a chance to blog again for a few months. Until next time!

Random Ramblings...Hello again blog-world!

2008-12-24T22:16:00.025-06:00

I realized I haven't posted anything since October, and the Oct post wasn't much to talk about. I don't think life has been that busy...I guess facebook has taken precedence the past few months. So here's a last post for 2008.

Over the last couple weeks we have been receiving super fun Christmas pictures and cards from many friends living in other states, and even some friends living 2 doors down from us! Needless to say it has made us feel slightly guilty that in 7 1/2 years of marriage, we have yet to write and send out a "Christmas letter" - ya know the ones that give a summary of your life during the past year to everyone you haven't had a chance to hang out with in person. Maybe that's because we don't have kids yet and usually that's the main focus of the letters. I don't know. But I'm glad that we have so many friends who are nicer than we are and who do send out those letters and cards - it's so fun to see what you've been up to (or at least see a recent picture!)

I noticed that my blog profile pic is from our Big Bend trip in 2007. And now it's almost 2009. Maybe it's time to find a new one?? We'll see.

In November, Paul and I went to a marriage conference put on by Family Life. I highly recommend it. It's a great check up for your marriage - it has great reminders about principles everyone should hear in pre-marital counseling, and the homework that they give is really fun and definitely something Paul and I needed! I feel like we are more proactive in putting our marriage first now (over work, etc). It's easy to fall into a routine and become more like roommates sharing a house, instead of soulmates sharing and living life together with one purpose. So if you want more info about it, go to Family Life website and look for Weekend to Remember.

We've had fun family visits recently. Paul's mom was in TX for almost a month going back and forth between our house and Philip's house in Austin (Paul's brother). It was a good time to catch up, play games and relax all together. Mom treated us to Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy show in Austin which was really fun. Paul's dad got to come out and join us for about a week of that time and we all had an early Christmas together. It was fun to get to give gifts and see everyone's faces as they opened them. Part of my Christmas gift from Felicia was a pedicure which was super fun. All of us girls went together and either got a pedicure or manicure.

The game of choice was Settlers of Catan, or Cities & Knights (a variation of Settlers of Catan). Any outsider looking in would say we were addicts, and the prevailing comment before starting a game was, "Christianity and Marriages go out the door when this game is played" - we were all ruthless and competition was fierce. To prove our addiction, both Paul and I and Philip & Felicia gave each other the Cities & Knights game for Christmas (we had always borrowed their friend's copy before), so now we have a game at each house so it's always ready to be played. It's a sickness! But so much fun!

After Paul's parents left, my sister Daria came into town to visit - her first trip to Texas! We also had fun going to a different kind of acrobatic show - Golden Dragon Acrobats. It is a smaller production than the Cirque Dreams show, but a lot of similar feats and definitely amazing. It's crazy how people can move their bodies like that and combine such strength, balance and grace all at the same time! Daria also did a mini makeover on me and got me out of my "camp" clothes into a dress and heels! We had fun shopping at the new outlets near Houston, and also got to visit our cousin Stephanie in Houston and her 3 kids (including twins!).

(After she arrived, TX decided to change from the 70 degree weather to 30 degree weather for a few days)

Her friend Lindsey lives in Austin, so we got to hang out for an evening and explore Austin cuisine including Hey Cupcake for dessert.

Of course we also had to teach Daria how to play Settlers of Catan (she won the 1st game). Then we taught her how to play Cities & Knights and she won that one, too. She definitely caught on quickly and dominated. Though playing with 3 people is much different than playing with 5-6 people - strategies change depending on the number of players.

We attempted to make cut-out cookies, too. We did eventually succeed, but it was a 2 day process because we didn't finish rolling out/cutting/baking the cookies til 1am, so we waited to frost the cookies the next morning. They were filmed as part of Paul's Board Report soon to be posted on YouTube for our Board of Directors to watch, so I'm guessing it's the first batch of cut-out cookies to become famous...okay maybe not but I bet no one else posts their Christmas cookies on YouTube. :)

After she went back to Florida, Paul and I had a few days off and we pulled everything out of our bedroom and bathroom and sorted/re-organized/cleaned. It felt good! We had about 4 bags of stuff we trashed and 4 bags of stuff we gave away, and now I feel like we can decorate and eventually paint/put new floors in. The big projects will come later - probably after summer, but for now I'm excited about an organized room without junk we don't need!

This is a picture during the middle of the process when everything was pulled out. Paul thought it looked like a "Where's Waldo" type picture - can you find Flurry, our dog?

The next project will be sorting our home office in the same way, but I think we're both dragging our feet on that one because there is so much stuff in there!

Today we went Geocaching for the first time together. Paul had gone once before with Philip, his Dad, and Corban, but I had never gone. I didn't really get what the attraction to the hobby was, but now I can see that's fun. Basically it's just an untimed scavenger hunt that uses GPS as clues. We set out to find 4 spots in Giddings, and were successful at finding 3 of them. One was pretty tricky. The 4th one that we didn't find - I'm not sure if it still exists, even though it was posted only 1 month ago. But I think it must have blown away or accidentally picked up and thrown away.

Other than that, we've been working and watching Heroes episodes (we're on Season 2 now), playing with the dogs, and enjoying the "quiet" camp season. Summer is just around the corner for us, which I need to learn to embrace instead of fear. I really love summer camps, it's just the "to-do" list that needs to be done before summer camp always seems so long and time seems so short!

Merry Christmas everyone...and if I don't get another post up before 2009, Happy New Year, too.

2008-10-26T20:14:00.002-05:00

So you may have noticed that I took the Fireproof Movie ad off my blog header. But if you haven't seen the movie, I would highly recommend it. I loved it, and so did my family and friends, so if you didn't see it in the theaters, go to http://www.fireproofthemovie.com/ to find out how you can see it now.

Videos from our Washington & Oregon Vacation

2008-09-29T22:53:00.004-05:00

I haven't figured out how to turn the video on it's side yet, so you'll just have to tilt your head a little. There's a surprise ending, so wait for it. This is at Fairy Falls, along the Columbia gorge.

This is at Pikes Place Market - where they throw the fish. Such good salmon!!!

Adventures in Washington & Oregon!

2008-09-28T21:40:00.043-05:00

So last week was our turn to take a vacation to celebrate a successful summer season at camp. Sunday we flew into Seattle, WA and then drove up along the northern route of Hwy 101 around to Olympic National Park. This is crossing over on the Edmonds-Kingston Ferry.

Sunday night we drove to Forks (stopping to enjoy the small towns along the way, and getting fresh plums from a fruit stand (they were super sweet and perfect texture!).

On Monday, we took a small hike on a trail outside the Logging Museum in Forks. We wanted to go into the museum, but they were closed on Mondays, so we just looked at the exhibits outside.
Along the trail, I just kept saying "It's all so big! I feel like a smurf...it's just all so big!!!". Little did I know these were the smaller of the trees we were about to encounter.
These are red alder trees. Apparently they grow well in disturbed areas, and they are nitrogen-fixing (their roots have some kind of bacteria that help to make nitrogen and add it to the soil). So they are natural fertilizers. How cool is that?
I'm glad all the rain in Forks, WA doesn't fall at one time!

After we left Forks, we made our way down to the Hoh Rain Forest. They average about 140 inches of rain each year. The ranger said that they had a dry summer this year and "only got about 10 inches of rain". I was tempted to tell her that our definition of a dry summer was less than 1/2 an inch of rain. The Hoh rain forest usually gets most of its rain from September - April.

This is a Sitka spruce tree (one of the dominant tree types found in the Hoh Rain Forest). It is over 270 feet tall, and they estimate 500-550 years old.
This is sori (pronounced "sore-eye") on the underside of a fern. The ferns were so big and so abudant all over. It was fun to see such a different landscape than Texas.
(more ferns)... The ranger guided us along the Hall of Mosses trail, and this is a close-up of the moss that grows on the trees. Apparently the moss helps the trees by trapping soil and water way up high in the branches, and the trees actually send out roots up in the air toward the moss to collect nutrients. We were told the moss also makes great habitat for spiders, so I didn't hold on to this piece of moss for very long.
Here Rachel (the ranger) is pointing out how "nurse logs" happen in the forest. Basically a big, old tree dies, falls down, and then small seedlings start to grow on the trunk of the dead tree. As it decays, the dead tree provides nutrients to the seedlings, and they are "nursed" through their early years. The roots of the young trees grow around the dead tree, and then eventually when the dead tree decays completely, the new trees have already established their roots in the strange shapes, so you end up with holes that you can see through. And that's also why you'll see many trees growing in a line - they all grew up on the same nurse log.

(trees in a line)

This is the same tree that Paul and I posed in front of above.

More crazy root systems due to nurse logs.

Mushrooms!

This is a view from the road leaving the Hoh Rain Forest.

From there we went to Ruby Beach. It was really cool to see all the drift wood and the black sand and the rock formations.

(Paul running toward the Pacific Ocean).

Aww, I can just hear the romantic music in the background now, as the titles of "Love Songs from the 70s, 80s, and 90s" stream up the TV screen.
I think he was missing his pail and shovel for the sand castle. :)

Paul took this picture and hit it just as the wave crashed on the rocks.
This was neat for us to see. It's a freshwater stream flowing into the Pacific. We had never seen a small stream flowing into the ocean before. We've seen rivers meeting the ocean, but to see the small stream run into the ocean was really cool.
Another shot of the freshwater stream.

After we left Ruby Beach, we raced toward Eco Park Resort (close to Mt. St. Helens) where we would stay in a log cabin with no electricity. It has propane lights and heat, and a propane powered refrigerator, but that was it. The bathroom was outside in a separate building and also had propane heat. They had a solar water pump that fed into the water heater at 50 gal/hour, so we were asked to conserve water. I was surprised at how hot the water was in the shower.
Our bathroom unit.
On Tuesday morning we were able to pick blackberries along a trail near our cabin. They were also very big, and very tasty! From these blackberry bushes, the owner of Eco Park Resort (Mark Smith) makes really good blackberry pie that we had after breakfast. I was glad we indulged in dessert in the morning, because when we came back through for lunch, it was all sold out.
What a beautiful morning sky!!!

Since it was a clear day, we were advised to head up to Mt. St. Helens first thing since it has a tendancy to be visible only 121 days of the year. I guess the steam coming out of the volcano tends to make it's own clouds around the top.

You can still see the mud-flow trails even after 28 years.
Some of the land surrounding Mt. St. Helens was allowed to naturally recover, and so it still looks like this - pretty bare. Other land was manually re-forested by the Weyerhaeuser company and has done really well. There are differing opinions about which approach is best - human intervention or nature.

Here's a shot of the mountain and I think Castle Lake (we're looking at it from the north - at Johnston Ridge Observatory). One tip for anyone going to Mt. St. Helens - the Weyerhaeuser Forest Learning Center has better exhibits about the blast and it's free (the Johnston Ridge Observatory isn't, although I didn't mind supporting the National Park Service since I could tell they are in need of funding!!).

This is a shot of where they clear-cut the forest to harvest the wood. We were told that Douglas Fir like full-sun to grow, so they have to clear-cut the forest, so that when they re-plant the seedlings, they survive without older trees blocking out the sun.

One of the towns we saw along the way to Eco Park Resort. So much wood waiting to be processed! And it's all renewable!

After we read everything we could stand to read about Mt. St. Helens, we drove to Portland, OR and had dinner with my mom's brother & family - Dick, Carol, and Anna (Garret was at college). They served us great Salmon and veggies and rice, and we had fun catching up.

Dick gave us great tips about what roads to take for the best scenic drive, so on Wednesday we set out to see waterfalls along the Columbia Gorge. I think this is Latourell falls.

This might be Wahkeena Falls (all the names kinda run together now that we're home).

I'm pretty sure this is Fairy Falls. I liked this one the best.
For some reason this picture is flipped (it's supposed to be horizontal, not vertical). I think it's a banana slug, but I'm definitely not an expert on that. (The head is at the bottom of the picture).If only I could capture the full beauty of this trail in a picture. I loved this part of the trail!

So if you're still reading, here's a short story. We were hiking along the Wahkeena trail, hoping to reach the top of Multnomah Falls and look down on it from above. However we didn't have this map with us, and we got to a crossroads of trails that had signs listing 4 more miles to different destinations, and since were weren't sure where we were, we decided to turn back and take a shorter side trail to take us back down the mountain. Once we reached the bottom, we realized that we had only been 1 mile away from the top of Multnomah Falls. We were kinda bummed that we turned back early, but we still had a lot of fun on the hike that we took. Needless to say, though, we didn't take the time to hike up to the bridge closer to Multnomah Falls. We just looked at it from the bottom and then went on our way.
Multnomah Falls...the second highest continuous waterfall in the U.S.
Are you still reading! What a committed blog reader - you must be a parent. :)

Okay, after the waterfalls, we went to the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River (operated by the Army Corps of Engineers). The salmon were running from the ocean up to the spawning sites, so that was really neat to see. There's a job that consists of counting the fish by species that go up the fish ladder at the Bonneville dam. The lady watches the fish as they pass by a window and she identifies the fish species and then hits the appropriate button on her fish keyboard. The tricky part is if a fish crosses and then gets lazy and floats backwards past the window, she has to subtract that fish from the count. The people who do this job have 8 hour shifts and get a 10 minute break every hour. I would never be able to do that job. (Sorry, I didn't take any pictures of the salmon).

The dam was built in the 1930s, and was expanded during WWII because they needed more power to build more war equipment, etc. So they actually dug out part of the river bank, created a second dam, and then routed the water to flow through both dams. Pretty crazy undertaking. But now the turbines are needing replacement, so we actually got to see an old turbine being dismantled, and a new one ready to go in its place.

We contemplated driving to Mt. Hood, but it was getting late in the day, and the mountain was covered by all the incoming rain, so we skipped the long drive. We attempted to view it from the vista point, but that didn't work very well. :)
After our trek we met up with Dick & Carol again and got a condensed tour of downtown Portland and then we went out for gourmet pizza. And when I say gourmet, I mean we had a Thai pizza with peanuts and a thai sauce along with 2 other veggie pizzas. It was super good. On Thursday we went to OMSI in Portland ("Oregan Museum of Science and Industry"), mainly so Paul could tour this submarine - the USS Blueback. He just finished a book about how the nuclear submarine program was started in America, so he's been pretty interested in submarines lately. This one was actually a diesel engine sub, but it was still fun to tour.

I'm glad I have more room than this to cook at the camp!!

After spending hours at OMSI, we went to visit my Grami, who I don't get to see very often. Somehow during all of our visits with family I neglected to take pictures, so I don't have any to post. But it was all very fun!

Thursday night we drove back up to Seattle, WA and on Friday morning, we headed to Pike's Place Market for a Savor Seattle culinary tour (very worth it if you're ever in the area!!!). These window washers weren't part of the tour, but I wanted to take their picture anyway.
Look at all the colors!! Everything was so fresh and tasty - after the tour (which consisted of tasting lots of different foods from the market), we spent the afternoon grazing on different produce from many vendors. It all tasted so good!

This is Yori (sp??), who gave us our taste of smoked salmon on the tour. We went back after the tour and bought some to bring home. It was very good. This is where they throw the fish from the ice to behind the counter (to save time/energy). I have a video of our salmon flying through the air, but I'm not sure how to load it yet...I'll try to do it in a separate blog.

Eh, what's up doc? The woman we bought our carrots from said she picked them at 2am that morning. I asked her why so early, and she said that it was raining the day before, and she didn't want to pick in the rain. So she got up early after it stopped raining and picked them to bring that morning. It was probably the sweetest carrot I've ever tasted. (No, mom, I didn't wash it before eating it, but I survived).
Later in the afternoon, we took an Underground Tour of Seattle. It was really fun to hear about the history of Seattle and how it burned down and then was rebuilt on 2 different levels because the business owners couldn't wait for the city officials to rebuild the city on a higher level, so they re-opened their shops on the original level, which became the underground (now abandoned). The tour itself wasn't as great as we expected because the tour group size was so big, and we felt rushed through all the exhibits. But it was still interesting to hear about the original crapper and how toilets would become geysers since the city was originally below sea-level and that doesn't work too well with gravity controlled plumbing.

You can't see the toilet tank because it's mounted about 5 feet higher than the toilet so that the water would flow down when you flushed. The toilet is also built on a platform higher than the ground to try to avoid the toilet water coming back up the toilet when the tide changed directions.

The arches are where old windows used to be...I think.
After the tour, we finished off our Seattle experience with a Crab, Shrimp, Potatoes, & Corn feast.
Yes, I ate it all...all by myself...I only let Paul eat the hard sourdough bread. ;)
This is a picture of Pikes Place Market after it closes for the day. The counter on the right of the picture is where all the flowers used to be. They said that there's a farmer that travels 250 miles ONE WAY to bring their produce from the farm to the market. I don't know if they travel back and forth each day, but that's a lot of driving! And to have to set up and take down each day just seems like a lot of work.

The crazy part of our whole vacation is that we never once got rained on. On Sunday evening it was raining lightly while we were driving to Forks, WA, and I think it might have sprinkled a little while we were inside OMSI, but we never got wet the whole week we were there...not even in the Rain Forest!

Well, if you made it this far, you deserve a medal because it's the longest blog post ever. Hopefully you enjoyed the pictures. If you ever want to visit Seattle or Portland, do it in late September - it was the perfect time to go!

My Oven Works!!!

2008-08-12T20:01:00.007-05:00

So there has been this white square object with 4 circles on top, and a square window on the bottom in our kitchen. I haven't used it in forever, so I had started to forget what it was for. The other night I figured it out! And it turns out that you can make really yummy things with it!

The dessert is called Cream Cheese Chocolate Cupcakes. I got it from Taste of Home's Contest Winning Desserts book. Very, very good, and very, very rich.

Here's the recipe! (I'm impressed that my cupcakes looked the same as the picture in the book!). When I made it, I doubled the recipe and it gave me 42 cupcakes, and I had extra filling leftover (guess I didn't put enough in some of them). Enjoy!

Filling:

8 oz cream cheese, softened

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup peanut butter chips

Cupcakes:

1 cup sugar

1 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 Tablespoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup baking cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Beat the sugar, egg and salt smooth. Fold in chocolate and peanut butter chips; set aside.

For cupcakes, in a large bowl, beat the sugar, water, oil, vinegar and vanilla until well blended. In a large bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into sugar mixture until blended.

Fill paper-lined muffin cups half full with batter. Top each with about 2 tablespoons of the cream cheese mixture. Bake at 3500 for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into cupcake comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely.

Christmas in August!

2008-08-03T22:50:00.004-05:00

So after I took those sewing classes in March, I decided I wanted to make Christmas stockings for 2008. Before summer started I found a stocking pattern I liked (McCall's 4990) and then found some fabric that I hoped would look good together. Somehow during the middle of the summer I found time to make them.

I had a few mistakes along the way so I got pretty experienced at seam-ripping. This was one of them. I was so proud of my straight seam and lining up the edges so well, and I even tied the knots at both ends before I realized I'd sewn it backwards (yes I have to tie knots because my machine doesn't backstitch, but I still like my machine better than the modern ones).
Here's a closeup of the red/green fabric.

Here's a closeup of the fabric that I used for the cuff. (I didn't want too many flowers so I thought some squares might help). :)
For the lining, I used a black scrolled fabric. Paul originally thought it was a weird selection, but I think it's grown on him now that he sees the whole thing put together. I wanted the inside to be dark so it's a surprise when you pull out the presents.And I made sure that you could fit DVDs in them. You can actually fit 4 in at once.
Here's the finished product. Paul said we should leave them up from now til Christmas. I'm kinda proud of them, so I don't mind leaving them up for a while. But I'm not ready to think about Christmas quite yet since we still have 2 weeks of summer camp to finish!

Where did June go??

2008-07-09T14:23:00.007-05:00

Wow, I just realized today that I haven't posted since May! And the post in May was catching up from sewing I did in March! So needless to say, we've been busy with summer camp!!

Yesterday we got to hang out with Ashley & Jon McPherson a little bit (in between camp stuff). I knew Ashley in Nebraska (when we were about 5 yrs old) and our families have kept in touch and even lived together for a few months while my family was looking for a house in Northern Virginia. So it was fun to finally get to meet her husband, Jon, and catch up a little bit. They've been in Waco only 2 hours away from us for several years now, but we never got our act together enough to find each other's contact info until this summer. And now they're moving to Alaska!! So I'm going to plan a trip to Alaska. I've always wanted to visit Alaska, and now I'll actually KNOW someone in Alaska.

Yesterday I had to work in the kitchen so I didn't get to get away to hang out much until after supper. Not long after they arrived at the camp, it thundered and downpoured and we had electrical surges and had to cut off the power to all the buildings. Ashley, Jon and Paul were at our house playing Mexican Train Dominoes when Paul got called away to go turn off power at the camp buildings. Then I got a text message from Ashley saying our fire alarm was going off for no reason, and our oven was displaying "bad line" on the clock screen. So they got to deal with a little excitement while they were here. Personally I think they brought it to the camp because we haven't had real rain since April and it only took 30 minutes of their presence for it to dump buckets and send crazy electricity all over. But I'll forgive them. We had fun despite it all (at least Paul and I had fun - hopefully the feeling was mutual). And Jon showed us how to find them online through our Wii's so we can race on MarioKart from Alaska-Texas. (We'll have to practice more before we challenge them though).

I did learn something about Army chaplains through their visit...at least 1 of them anyway. Don't joke about breakfast times. Ashley and Jon had to go to Fort Hood to get their airline tickets so they can go to Alaska, and then go to Dallas to make arrangements to ship their car. So they had a long day ahead of them. So last night as we're deciding when we would all get up and get breakfast, the conversation went like this:

Kelli: What time do you have to leave tomorrow?
Jon: Well, what time is breakfast at the camp?
Kelli: We serve the guests at 7:45am, so we can probably get in about 8:30ish
(pause as we see Jon's wheels turning).
Kelli: Or we can try to go earlier and just get in line with the guests
(another pause as Jon keeps thinking)
Jon: Tomorrow's your day off, right?
Kelli: Yes, so we're flexible.
Paul: Well we could all get up at 6am and leave by 6:30am to go get breakfast burritos in town.
Jon: Yeah, that would be best.

Later that night as we're going to bed Paul says, "I was joking about the 6am part". To which I replied, "But you said it to an Army man, and they 'do more before 6am than most people do all day!'"

Of course we thoroughly enjoyed breakfast (especially since they paid for ours - thanks again guys!). And I'll admit that it's not the first time we've gotten up early to go get breakfast burritos with friends/family before they headed out of town. But I thought the conversation was humorous. (Paul and I also had to get some work done at the camp (yes on our day off) so it was good we got an early start so that we could get OUT of the office earlier and enjoy the rest of the day at home).

Sewing Projects...Pictures Finally!!

2008-05-28T16:47:00.005-05:00

Remember back in March when I took those sewing lessons? Well here are pictures of the results. To refresh your memory, here's a picture of my lumpy red pillow.
I don't know if you can tell from this picture or not, but I did ask my teacher how to fix the seam where I had to hand stitch it closed. It does look better than it did - I promise. But I'll never put this pillow out on display anywhere.
Here's the elastic waist skirt. I'll never wear it in public, but I did learn how to hem a seam and to insert elastic. And I learned that I didn't measure myself very accurately so I ended up with way too much fabric...that's why you're not going to see a picture of me in it...it just looks frumpy. But I did learn sewing basics while making it.

Here's my funky pink pajama bottoms...I experimented with putting an elastic waist with a drawstring attached to it. I found that it doesn't work when wearing it. I put enough elastic inside the waistband to go 3/4 around my waist, and then stitched the fabric drawstring (recognize the blue fabric from the skirt material?) to the elastic. But it doesn't hold very smoothly - the fabric bunches up in different places. I think I should have put enough elastic in the waist to go all the way around (close the elastic) and then also put the drawstring on top of it (to cinch it tighter if needed or just for decoration). Basically the waist needs a lot of help but I'm not about to re-do it.

I also discovered that even though I cut off 6 inches on the bottom thinking it would be enough to make the correct length for hitting the middle of my calves, I still didn't have the right measurement. So I just have highwaters. And I also found out that tapered legs are awful things to try to hem...I didn't get it smooth all the way around. But again, I'm not about to fix them.
Here's my pride and joy of the class. My handbag! I actually use this in public and it works great! And I like the fabric. And I didn't have any weird places that I have to make disclaimers about. If I was more of a handbag person, I would make more.

I do want to eventually get a magnetic close to it (sew it into the lining so you can't see it, but it will help it stay closed better). So if I find appropriate magnets, I may re-open the inner lining seam and fix that. But otherwise, I like it.
Here's what it looks like hanging (just imagine it on my shoulder).
Well, I can't say that I'll be scaring any fashion designers by my up-and-coming designs. But when/if we have kids, I'll know how to hem their pants (because they are bound to be short given the genes they'll receive from their parents!). And if we have girls, they'll have cute hand bags!

Spring 2008!

2008-04-30T20:10:00.008-05:00

Here's my yearly tribute to Texas Wildflowers. Enjoy! (I put common names with flowers that I recognized/looked up...correct me if you see I made a mistake).

Some sources call it a Blackeyed Susan...others a coneflower...I'm not an expert by any means so I just call it pretty!
Grasshopper on Blue Eyed Grass

Herbertia (or prairie nymph according to another book) - I think it's my favorite this season.
More blue eyed grass...and a purple something - maybe some kind of phlox???

See the tiny grasshopper?

Don't know what these are called - I love the burgundy color of the pods before they open.

Laisy Daisy??

Indian Paintbrush
An albino (or at least all yellow) Indian Paintbrush...I've never seen that before!
Ohio Spiderwort

Rain Lily??
Spotted beebalm

Whitemouth Dayflower - see the spider on the stem?

The Biles Clan in Texas!

2008-04-30T19:41:00.007-05:00

Well, I didn't do very well at taking pictures of our outings because I was having too much fun just enjoying hanging out. So here's a recap and a few pictures that I snapped.

We went to the Botanical Garden at Zilker Park in Austin. It was fun to see all the blooms and all the new life coming out with spring!

Bamboo!

Later we went to the State Capitol building. (Lots happened in between, but I don't have pictures...it mostly involved eating and talking...not much to take pictures of, but fun to do!)

It's a really cool dome. The Texas capitol building is actually taller than the nation's capitol building in D.C. This is a view of the dome looking up from the bottom. At the very top, the letters T-E-X-A-S are around the points of the star.

I didn't take this picture - I stole it off another website. But I wanted you to see the outside of the building.

While we were there, at least 3 wedding parties were inside taking pictures. The photographers were at the top levels looking down at the bride/attendants, etc. It was pretty interesting - I don't think I would ever even think to go to the capitol for a wedding photo. The place was full of people the whole time we were there. Most people would walk to the center of the dome, lay down, or look straight up, and snap a picture.

More House Projects...

2008-04-30T18:53:00.008-05:00

Earlier I mentioned that the only thing left to do in the living room was to pull up the carpet and put the floating laminate wood floor in. Sounds easy because on the commercials people just line up the boards, click the board down, and it's done - like legos for grownups. And overall it was an easy project (especially for me since I didn't do any of the work). But somehow we managed to re-arrange the whole living room in the process of laying floor so the room looks a lot different in many ways.

After my parents and Rachel left, Paul's parents arrived. They stayed at the camp with us, but spent lots of time driving back and forth to Austin so they could visit Philip, Felicia, Lydia, and Corban. I think they really only came for the grandkids, but that's just my opinion. :) Paul and I went back and forth with them a few times, and Philip and the kids came out to the camp too, so it was fun because all of us got to hang out together. But I'm getting sidetracked from the house project...

For about a week during their stay, Steve (Paul’s dad) and Paul were found pulling up old carpet, laying the new floating laminate wood floor, switching out dishwashers and rearranging all the furniture (yes, some of the pictures that Rachel and my parents helped hang had to be re-hung on the opposite wall since all the living room furniture was swapped around). So here’s the week in pictures and the NEW final product.

Steve doing all the work...

Paul inspecting all the work Steve did...
Child Labor laws?!? What child labor laws? (Corban got to stay an extra day with us since he's not in school yet, and he was a good helper)
Okay, here's evidence that Paul worked, too. :) Note the air vent at the bottom of the picture. I was pretty impressed - they covered the air vents with the wood, and then came back after everything was clicked in and cut the hole for it. They measured from the walls to remember where the hole should be. And they got it right!
Vacuuming up all the dirt that was under the carpet...I don't even want to think about how much was under there...and we had steam cleaned the carpet twice!!
Admiring their handiwork...

Since we had the couch under the window during this process, Paul decided that he liked the open feeling when we walked in the door. So he convinced me to switch the furniture around a bit so we could keep the open feeling.
So the whole time that Evelyn and Steve were here, I never cooked...except in the camp kitchen for 300 people. But not in my home...because it was torn up. And those of you who know me well know that even if my kitchen wasn't torn up I probably wouldn't have cooked. But this way I had a great excuse for eating out instead of cooking!

(the dishwasher is on it's back in this picture) We actually got a new dishwasher that is much quieter and has many more options for loading dishes (the top rack will raise up higher so there's more room for big dishes on the bottom, plus other movable racks are available to hold all kinds of dishes). I hear that when they hooked up the new dishwasher there was a small incident in which water started spewing from under the sink but they had it all cleaned up before I got home from work that day.

Here's the new arrangement. The tv hutch/cabinet thing used to be next to the piano, but now the couch is there.

The next project will be our master bedroom – new paint and new floor (we had extra laminate wood flooring that will be enough to cover our bedroom). But we’re waiting for Philip to help with that. We don’t want to leave anyone out of the home improvement experience. He mentioned that he wants to put a floating floor in their house, so if he helps us, it will be good practice for him, and then we can go help him. (When I say “we”, I mean Paul – I’m not a floor kind of person…but I’ve gotten better at painting walls!)

The Finished Product...

2008-04-16T20:03:00.020-05:00

Before my parents and Rachel got to Texas, Paul and I (but mostly Paul) put up old/weathered and some new wood on the hallway walls and the half-wall that separates the living room from our kitchen. The wall behind the tv and piano still wasn't painted or primed, and there weren't any pictures on the other walls that were already painted.

So when my parents and Rachel arrived, after hanging out in Austin for a day, the first project they helped with was hanging pictures on the walls that were actually finished.

(They also hung pictures in the guest room, but those walls weren’t painted, so I’m not posting pictures.)

Dad and Paul picked up stain for the weathered wood, and stained it a cedar color to match the existing trim in the rest of the house.

Then we all participated in priming and painting the chair rail that was put up around the living room and hallway.

After that, Rachel and I started priming and painting the wall behind the piano and tv. While we were painting, Paul and Dad used the router to make the decorative chair rail.

While the girls watched some episodes of the Cosby Show, the men put up the chair rail around the living room.

Then we hung pictures. We had originally put our meadows collage pictures on the green hallway wall. But the picture that my grandma gave me last Christmas looked better on the green wall than on the peanut butter wall. So we moved it around.

So here’s the semi-finished product. We haven’t gone around to do touch up paint yet. And eventually we want to pull up the carpet and put laminate wood flooring down. Maybe we can convince Paul’s parents to help with that project while they’re here this week. :)

Our friend Courtney painted these 4 pictures - Faith, Hope, Love, and then the verse from 1 Corinthians 13:13. She's the person that helped us pick out paint colors and got this whole project started for us in the first place. (She also decorated all of our new rooms at the camp, and if you've seen any of those rooms, you'll know that she's super talented).

These pictures are hung above our dining room table, but at the time the table was cluttered and I'm not going to post evidence of a messy house on the world wide web. :)
Paul's mom brought this painting back from Tanzania (I think). It wasn't in a frame originally - that came from Hobby Lobby. I believe the napkin rings (on the ledge) were also from there, but I'm not 100% certain.

Easter Weekend and the Deck...

2008-04-15T22:58:00.007-05:00

So Easter weekend, besides painting the inside of our house, we also re-planked our front deck. (I don’t know if that’s the correct term, but I’m gonna use it). The reason for starting this project was that our front screen door was catching on the existing “floor” of the deck (which was made of 2x6 boards), so it wouldn’t open all the way and was a rude welcome for our guests. So after discussing it with a neighbor, it was determined that the best (really meaning fastest and cheapest) solution would be to pull up all the 2x6 boards and put down 1x6 boards to give the door extra clearance.

We started this project on the Monday after Easter (we had Friday – Monday off). Paul did most of the work for the project, but I helped when I could. We used crow bars to pull the boards up, which involved lots of banging and noise. The dogs were outside with us, but Chessie (the lab mix) hates noise and banging, so she stayed on the back deck. Flurry (beagle mix) loves to be in the center of everything so she was sitting on the top step and was usually in our way but she didn’t seem to notice.

Once all the 2x6 boards were pulled up, Paul noted that we needed to put more dirt under the porch to help block the water that seems to run straight under the house whenever it rains. And this task definitely required the skid steer. Unfortunately, the bucket on the skid steer was 1 inch too wide to fit between the poles of the porch. Which meant Paul would fill the bucket with dirt, and then bring it as close to the porch as possible, and I would use a shovel to help dump it out of the bucket. Then while Paul went to refill the bucket, I would do my best to shovel the dirt over to the correct part of the porch. After we got all the dirt dumped, we both shoveled dirt into all the pockets and low spots.

At one point as Paul was off getting dirt, Chessie decided to come to the front and see what we were up to. When Paul came back with the dirt, Chessie was right in the way and didn’t know which way to go. So I called her to me (I was standing in front of the porch on the steps that were still there). Chessie was leery of the skid steer, so she tried to hug the side of the house and then did what she always does – hopped up onto the deck from the side grass. She didn’t realize the top boards were all gone so in mid-air (almost like a Wiley Coyote cartoon), her eyes bugged out, her feet started working, and Paul and I both thought she was going to fall between the beams. Miraculously she was able to jump from beam to beam and she made it to the steps where I was. The look on her face said it all – “What have you done to my territory?!?” Paul and I laughed for about 2 minutes straight.

Then the project expanded and we started digging a trench around the perimeter of the front yard to make another barrier/guide for the rain water in hopes that it would go around to the side, instead of under the house. This project lasted the rest of the afternoon. By the time we decided to put the top boards on the porch, the sun was low in the sky. And then the batteries for our cordless drill died. Paul went all over the camp looking for another drill – cordless or corded, and couldn’t find any of them, which was CRAZY since the camp has about 20 of them! So we went to Bastrop (30 minutes away) to Home Depot and bought a cheap corded drill to be our back up for the future. By the time we got home, it was pitch black so the project was put on hold.

Tuesday, we left for work by straddling between 2 beams and inching our way from the front door to the steps. For lunch, we straddled the beams and inched our way back into the house. I tried to open the door slowly so I could warn the dogs about the missing deck, but it didn’t work. Flurry shot through the door and immediately dropped into the dirt. That evening I had my sewing lesson in Austin, so we left around 4:30 and didn’t get back until around 10pm. So in the dark we put the 1x6 boards on – we drilled 2 screws into each board just enough to get them stable, with the exception of the board closest to the door because we had to cut a notch into it.

Wednesday morning I leashed up the dogs for their walk and tried to prevent Flurry from falling through the gap where the first board should be. My attempts failed and her front leg fell through. At noon I came home to get food to take to the ladies Bible study that we have each Wed at 12:30. I heated up my food, and then emptied the dishwasher and before I knew it I had to race out the door. So I had food in one hand, and was closing the solid door with my other hand as I stepped outside onto the porch. As I did so, I skillfully placed my foot in the center of the gap and crashed through the hole…at least until my thigh caught me just above the knee. Needless to say my breath was taken away and I pushed my food out the door, eased my leg out of the hole, and hobbled back inside to the couch where I raggedly breathed out “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow”. Both dogs came to lick me but it didn’t help.

It’s now three weeks later and the knot on my leg is just now becoming less tender. Thankfully Paul put the last board on the deck when he came home for lunch so no one else was hurt.

Ah, Do-It-Yourself projects are so much fun! Next up...pictures of the finished living room once the paint dried and my family helped us hang pictures and chair rail moulding, etc...but not tonight...I need sleep!

Home redecorating...

2008-04-09T20:46:00.006-05:00

Well, the reason (biggest reason anyway) that I haven't posted pictures of my sewing projects is because we got sidetracked with home redecorating projects. My parents and youngest sister, Rachel, and Paul's parents are all visiting us here in April (my parents first, then Paul's parents). So we wanted to get paint on the walls before they arrived. We painted the kitchen quickly - that project started and ended in early February. Here's some pics of the transformation.

The flowery wall paper wasn't really our style in the kitchen. That was the main reason we wanted to paint.

Ah tinted primer...gotta love gray. Some of our friends came over and actually asked us if gray was the final color. They all looked a little relieved when we told them that it was just the primer.
Here's the final color. "Riverbank" green in the kitchen.

While we were in the paint mode, Paul taped off the rest of the living room. The top color was going to be Peanut Butter (tan) and the bottom was going to be Riverbank (same green as the kitchen).

The top half of the hallway leading to the guest bedrooms was to be a shade darker than Riverbank - Behr calls it "Crocodile". However we looked at gray primer for at least a month before we got the crocodile out and painted it.

We did manage to get the bottom of the living room painted with the Riverbank in February along with the kitchen. But we didn't get any peanut butter on the wall until Easter weekend in March.

Since we had Friday and Monday off surrounding Easter weekend, we had plenty of time to paint as well as do outdoor remodeling like re-do the front porch...a story for a different blog posting. The peanut butter dries a little less orange than it appears here when it's wet.

Sewing 101...

2008-03-10T20:16:00.004-05:00

So I signed up for a Beginner's sewing class in Austin. It meets every Tuesday night for 4 weeks. Last Tuesday was the first session (from 6-8:30pm). The teacher mostly spoke and helped us figure out how to thread our machines. There were 6 of us taking the class - I'd say 3 were either college age or were young teachers because they were talking about spring break. Then there was another woman there that was probably my age or a little older. Then there was a lady that was probably in her early 50s. Everyone else had "new" machines (as in purchased within the last 10 years), while mine was the only one made in 1939.

The teacher, Mary, spent almost 2 hours talking about sewing, and then it was time for us to make our first project - a round pillow. I sewed around the edges, leaving a hole to push the stuffing through. I felt bad for the other students because some of them were having mechanical problems - a needle broke, they had bobbin issues (they had front loading bobbins which the teacher definitely disliked), and then 1 lady's machine just jammed up completely and she just took it home to get fixed. My machine didn't have any problems though, so I was thankful for that. Because sewing takes lots of patience...something I don't have a ton of, but am working toward increasing. But machine problems don't help in the patience department of the craft.

The first thing I learned from making this pillow is: don't leave such a large hole to push the stuffing through. Even though the pattern says to leave 6 inches, you can get by with 3 inches, and then you only have 3 inches to sew by hand. And that was my biggest problem. The teacher didn't demonstrate the sewing by hand part, but left it as our homework. Tonight (the night before it's due) I decided to sew my pillow closed so I could bring it in for "Show and Tell". Let me tell you, it took all of my strength to stay calm and not give up in frustration. Well, I kinda did give up in frustration. You see, we were supposed to weave the thread in and out of the seam from the inside with our hand so that you can't tell a difference between the machine sewn part and the hand sewn part. But after 20 minutes of poking myself with the needle and fighting to keep hold of the fabric tight enough, I decided I really didn't care if you could tell. It's a round pillow and if I actually put this pillow out on display anywhere, I will just make sure that the hand sewn part is hidden. It's MY pillow...I can do whatever I want to it...at least that was my attitude tonight (I had a long weekend of working and feeding over 300 people, so that may have contributed to my lack of patience).

Isn't it a cheerful red with flowers fabric? (Really, the price had more to do with my decision to buy it, but it's not a bad fabric for my first official sewing project).
Here's the seam that was machine sewn.
Here's the section that I hand sewed. You can't really tell that much of a difference, right? Ok it looks frumpy, but as stated before, I just didn't care tonight.
Our second project (that I'll start tomorrow night) is a skirt. The pattern claims it will be easy!

I have the fabric washed, pressed, and cut out already, so tomorrow night we should just be sewing. The skirt has an elastic draw string waist, so that should be interesting. I'll update you on my success with the project and whether or not I will actually wear what I make in public.

Prayer Request for Matt and Claire!

2008-02-25T14:17:00.006-06:00

You'll see my version of the fire in the blog about our Adventures with Lydia and Corban. But here's some more info (it's an email that our Camp Director, David Jones, sent out). Please pray for them!

David's email sent Saturday night:

Hello everyone.

Matt and Claire’s trailer caught on fire today. The clothes dryer malfunctioned and started the fire in the laundry room. No one was home at the time – Matt and Claire were working at different areas of the camp. Paul was at home next door and noticed the smoke. Cesar Villegas (one of Alfredo’s sons) also saw it. They both responded quickly with a 911 call, calls to staff members for help, and the gathering of water hoses. They (soon including Matt) sprayed the house down until the fire department arrived. Thankfully, the water hoses kept the fire from spreading to any other room. It spread only in the attic about 20 feet in both directions. But the entire house got very hot and was completely filled with smoke. Everything plastic above about six feet in the house melted. Fortunately, the most damage to their personal belongings was from smoke and most of that is cleanable. They lost a lot of clothes, some furniture in the master bedroom, and of course everything in the laundry room. A lot of us helped pull some important belongings out this evening before it got dark.

The trailer belongs to my parents and it is insured. In the short term, the Walls will be in a room at the camp, but we will be making a decision about their housing for the long term in the very near future. All things considered, Matt and Claire are doing well – probably still in shock about it all. Please be in prayer. We are collecting money to help them with things that insurance does not cover. If you can help, please send it to the camp (made payable to Matt or Claire Wall). Thanks.

This was our first building fire ever at the camp, and it was not near as bad as it could have been. The Lord is in control and I know that Matt and Claire will someday see His plan in all this.

Thank you for your prayers – David.

Adventures with Lydia and Corban...at Uncle Paul and Aunt Kelli's house

2008-02-25T12:28:00.032-06:00

**Disclaimer…this blog ended up being kind of long, so if you don’t have much time, just skip down to Saturday. There’s a big prayer request at the end of that day (house fire) that I’d like you to pray for.

Lydia (age 7) and Corban (age 5) are our niece/nephew that have just moved to Texas. Their dad, Philip, is Paul's brother. This past weekend, their parents were moving all of their belongings into an apartment (temporary until they finalize selling their house in NC and buying a house here in TX). So Paul and I offered to bring Lydia and Corban to our house while their parents did all the moving...this is when the adventure began...

THURSDAY
4:00pm – meet Lydia, Corban, and Felicia at their motel…Felicia and I sit and talk while they continue to play for a bit
5:00pm – head over to Chick Fil A – the kids play in the play room before and after dinner…Felicia and I talk some more
6:00pm – head back to the motel – the kids get a bath, then they get ready to get in the van so we can go to camp.

Corban asks if there is a shorter way to camp – I tell him that it’s going to be an hour drive – no shortcuts. Felicia says, “Tell her what you’re worried about”…Corban replies, “Throwing up” (he gets carsick pretty easily).

6:45pm – We head out to the van (it’s the camp van b/c I had a pallet of 3000 magazines in the back that I had picked up earlier that afternoon)…Lydia begins to cry and is soon bawling that she doesn’t want to leave her mom. Corban is fine and excited to be in the new van with the exception of his earlier concern. This is where I start to wonder if I can handle kids. Up until now, both kids have LOVED spending time with Uncle Paul and Aunt Kelli, so I never envisioned them crying today. Felicia puts both kids in the van despite the crying and upchuck concern and I start to head out of the motel parking lot. Thankfully, after 8 min, Lydia stops crying…now we just have to control the carsickness. So the whole way home Corban’s holding a plastic shopping bag in case he needs to throw up (which thankfully doesn’t happen). I repeatedly put in 3 different books on tape that the kids had checked out from their library (each about 6 min long, so we heard each book many times – I can almost recite them to you)…and Corban fell asleep so that was good.

7:30pm – In Bastrop (between their motel and the camp) we stopped for groceries and I received the dirtiest looks from everyone in the store because I was the only one there with kids that should have been in bed. I now understand why grocery shopping with kids is more time consuming. I’d like to know how other mothers return shopping baskets to the collection areas after they load up groceries and kids. I locked the kids in the van, sprinted with the cart over to the collection area, shoved the cart in, and then sprinted back to the van (because there wasn’t a close return area. I now understand why they are left on curbs near the lonely trees in the parking lots instead of in the correct return area).

8:45pm – arrive at Camp Tejas and greet Uncle Paul, Chessie, and Flurry. The kids are definitely more excited about the dogs. I don’t really recall what we did the rest of that evening because all we NEEDED to do was brush teeth, put pj’s on, and get in bed. But somehow that took a while b/c the kids didn’t get in bed until 9:50pm. I’m the worst mother ever, and I don’t even have kids of my own yet!

11:00pm – Paul and I crawl into bed. I already feel like a cold is coming on and I’m worried about passing it to the kids. As I set my alarm, I ask Paul, “What time do you think the kids will get up since they went to bed late? Can I set my alarm for 8:30am?” He laughs and says “I think they’ll be up before then”.

FRIDAY
7:45am – the kids are up!...and they’re HUNGRY!!! I give Corban his treatment (for asthma) and put on Sleeping Beauty – it’s the only kid movie I have in the house and I was told that they watch a movie while he does his treatment. I then ask them what kind of eggs they like – Fried or Scrambled? Corban says “Lacy” (through his nebulizer mask). I think that I must be mistaken in hearing him. He takes the mask off to say “Lacy eggs”. I’m completely lost. Luckily, Lydia tells me that Lacy eggs means Fried eggs…Whew…thank goodness for older sisters!

I fried the eggs for them, then mixed up the Cinnamon chocolate chip pancake mix. I give them wooden trays to put under their plates and let them eat breakfast on the couch as they continue to watch Sleeping Beauty. I think the whole breakfast process took almost an hour. After we finish eating, they continue watching the movie and I go take a shower. After I’m done, they get dressed and we take the dogs for a short walk.

10:00am – We start a short tour of the camp. We visit the main office where they quickly observe that Uncle Paul has a “tidy desk” and Aunt Kelli has a “messy desk”. Then we went to the kitchen and met Janice and Carolyn and Ava as they were preparing for the weekend’s meals. After promising to return for lunch at 12, we head out to the climbing wall, the lakes, the bunk houses (which we peak into), the chapel, Marmax (largest conference room)…and then we head back to the house.

11:00am – We play games in the living room – Sequence and Uno Jenga…many times. All throughout the day, Corban asks, “What we going to do after this?” After I answer, he says “And what we going to do after that?” and the pattern continues. (After 2 days of this, I finally decide that the answer is “I don’t know what we’re doing next – we will decide after we finish this activity”) which doesn’t satisfy, but delays the next repetition of this question.

Lydia would play a note on the piano, and Uncle Paul would try to sing the same note...the high and super low notes were what made Lydia laugh so hard.

12:00pm – We head to the dining hall to eat lunch – Chicken Fried Steak. Thankfully Janice is at the line when we come through and asks if the kids will be sharing. I would have served each of them a full helping of everything, but the seasoned mother/grandmother helps me out. Thanks!!! After getting more cheese and bacon bits on the floor than on the baked potato halve, we bus our trays and grab 2 brooms to sweep under our table.

1:00pm – We head out to the playground and swings and have fun until Uncle Paul comes out to join us. We then head up to the top of the climbing wall (observation deck anyway) and look out as far as we can. When we come down, we play in the rocks at the bottom of the wall – mostly chasing each other.

This picture turned out a little dark, but I love it because it shows Corban's surprised face. He was running around the corner to catch us, and I caught him with the camera. It's always fun to get an unstaged photo (he is so serious when he poses for pictures, but in reality he's such a giggle box!!)

We were making pizzas in the sand - wet sand was the sauce, dry sand the cheese, acorns were pepperoni, leaves were tomatoes, and stickes were pineapple...who needs Fisher Price when you have a sand box?

2:00pm – We head back to the house for some “quiet time”. While the kids draw pictures, I collapse on the bed and wonder how Felicia and Philip have so much energy…and how the kids are still awake after all that we’ve done.

I lose track of time after this point, but I know that we took the dogs on a walk, and then went to the library and had about 30 minutes to pick out books to read at bedtime. Then we head back to the house and have meat spaghetti (as opposed to noodles and spaghetti sauce without meat b/c I just poured it out of the jar), and Corban has macaroni and cheese (he doesn’t like spaghetti). He asks me, “What else are we having with supper tonight?” and I recall back to my childhood that mom usually had me pick out a vegetable each night, but I figure that one night without veggies won’t harm them…and I’m too tired to think of anything else to go with our meal. So after supper we have cookie dough ice cream.

Then it’s bath time, and we decide that it would be fun to let the kids have a bubble bath…they sure did have FUN, and I sure did learn the hard way that giggling in the bathtub translates into water on the floor and bubbles everywhere! In reality there was only a little bit of water on the floor and the bubbles were contained to the wall of the shower, but I just didn’t think about the ramifications of letting a 5 yr old and 7 yr old bathe themselves. I had to wash their hair, so I was quickly reminded that I needed a cup to pour the water over their hair without getting it in their eyes…a very important technique to master!

After bath time, I twisted the towels around their heads and we took pictures for their parents. Then it was a Bill Cosby episode and off to bed with the radio on sleep mode for 20 minutes and lots of nightlights.

I don’t remember doing much after that…maybe Paul and I picked up a little – put some dishes in the dishwasher, ran the kids clothes through the washer…it’s all a blur at this point.

Next up: SATURDAY!
Thankfully the camp was serving all 3 meals, so I only had to worry about snacks in between. I quickly learned that Corban is a bottomless pit and is always hungry. He also doesn’t like bread or most carbs. He likes meat, eggs, cheese, and cheetos…and that’s about it. Lydia surprised me in that she actually eats salad when her parents aren’t around…I think she even took green beans, too!

After Paul brought breakfast back to us at the house, we got dressed and took the kids and dogs down to the Meadows Retreat center (new construction going on). The building is supposed to open this coming weekend, so we had a few volunteer groups working on it on Saturday (along with our paid staff). I learned that kids have different definitions of long distances, and the walk that we took them on was SUPER LONG in their eyes.

They weren’t that excited by the building, but afterward we went out to the meadows and let the dogs off the leash. Then Corban took off running (forgetting that he had just walked for SO LONG), and he tried to keep up with Chessie. That was pretty fun to watch the dogs frolicking and the kids chasing. After this, we headed to the lake and threw a stick in for Chessie to fetch. After that, we went home and bathed the dogs outside in the kiddie pool.

Then it was snack time because we couldn’t go get lunch yet (we waited til the guests went through first). Next we ate lunch outside and then Paul and I attempted to stall while we waited for the dock to clear of guests so we could go canoeing. So we checked the mail, swung on the bench swing next to the office, and went to the top of the rodeo arena lookout tower to see the mud from a better angle. Then we took them canoeing where we learned the meaning of “glide” and learned that Uncle Paul and Aunt Kelli can only paddle so fast, despite Corban’s plea for us to go “Faster, faster, faster!”.

Next we went to the playground where we swung as we watched the other guests go off the zip line and up the climbing wall.

When it was our turn to climb the wall, Aunt Kelli climbed next to Lydia. We got about half way up the wall (Lydia climbed the first bit, and got a little help from her belayer with some of the harder sections). But after looking down and seeing how high she was, Lydia quickly decided that she didn’t want to go any further up.

Then it was Corban’s turn. Aunt Kelli did the same thing with him, but since he has shorter legs, I’m pretty sure his belayer just pulled him up the wall…there wasn’t much climbing going on. And I think he was so impressed that he was going up without any effort, that he didn’t look down for quite a while. But once he did, we came down pretty fast. Although he still loved to tell everyone that he “climbed” higher than his older sister.

After the wall we went back for some more quiet time at the house (more for Aunt Kelli’s sake than anyone else’s) and we were all in the house with the windows open when suddenly Paul asked me if I was cooking anything. I said no, and he went out on the back porch to figure out where he smelled the burning smell. He raced back into the house and I immediately knew something was up. It turned out that our neighbor’s house was on fire. I’m not kidding. It was so surreal and crazy and I hope the kids aren’t scarred for life. Paul raced over to knock on the door and started calling Matt and Claire (the owners) to make sure they weren’t inside. He brought their dog, Katy, out of the yard to me, and I held her in the driveway while I called 911. Soon we had more staff out racing for garden hoses to use until the fire department arrived.

I told the kids to stay in the house and Corban said, “Wait, if you see a fire, then stop, drop, and run!” I wanted to take time to laugh but I had to race back out to find car keys for all the cars that were in the way of the fire trucks headed our way. I put Katy in the back of our car, then started moving the interns' cars that were next to the burning house. Paul was working with Matt, Cesar and Alfredo to find more hoses to use while we waited for the fire trucks. Then I passed off Katy (dog) to Seth, and I loaded up Lydia and Corban, and our 2 dogs into our car and went over to Janice’s house to play while everyone else worked on the fire. It was pretty scary, pretty fast, but amazingly the kids were okay. And thankfully no one was hurt.

The house (mobile home) is not salvageable, but a lot of their belongings only have smoke damage. Basically their bedroom and laundry room was burned up (the dryer caught fire), so they don’t have clothes, toiletries, etc, but their photo albums and many other heirlooms (antique plates, etc) were still savable. Paul helped with the initial cleanup after the fire was out that evening, and I stayed with the kids. I was amazed at how they handled it (I wanted to cry, but knew that if I lost it, they definitely would…I now understand how mothers can go on and stay strong after big losses…they don’t have a choice in the matter). They were playing restaurant at Janice’s house, which quickly turned into “the restaurant is on fire, call 911” games that I closely monitored to make sure they were dealing with it okay. As we were walking back to our house, I told them that we didn’t want to talk loudly about the fire when we passed it, and we weren’t going to go into the burned house. I thought we had discussed everything until we left our house again to go get supper and all of a sudden Lydia is crying and Corban is on the verge of tears. So we had a talk about how God knew the fire was going to happen but that He protected everyone and would make it work out for the good even though we couldn’t understand it right now.

So that’s a huge prayer concern right now – please keep Matt and Claire in your prayers as they sort out everything, take inventory of what they will need, and find new housing arrangements. There are so many things that God orchestrated to prevent the house fire from being worse than it was. So we have to remember that God is faithful in our time of need, but I know there will be many moments where we have to trust in God’s wisdom because it sure doesn’t make sense to us right now!

Well, Paul has already chided me for writing a novel. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for sticking it out. Sunday (yesterday) we took the kids back to their new apartment in Austin and we shared highlights of our 2.5 days with them. I’m sure they will hear more from Lydia and Corban throughout this week. I know for certain that I have taken away more lessons about raising kids than I thought was possible to cram in my head in such a short amount of time. I look forward to having kids of my own…but one at a time…and let’s start out with infants that don’t ask so many questions before I work my way up to the kids that can talk and ask “Why?”

On the Biles Side of Christmas...

2008-02-25T11:47:00.013-06:00

First we celebrated Dad and Mom Biles' 35th anniversary. We all met up for lunch (without the grandkids) to honor their marriage and thank them for all of their hard work!

This is Evelyn and her mom, Gma Manoogian.

Here's a group shot at the restaurant - it's hard to see those in the back, but it's the best we could do.

After lunch, we headed back to the house WITH all the grandkids and opened presents!

Janice, James, and Stephen on the couch.

Jonathan showing off his new jacket...stylish!!

Cody (James and Janice's son) with a new present.

Aunt Kelli, Uncle Paul, and Gma (Evelyn)

Kong Kong's lap is the best place to be for Destiny and Cody (Steve's nick-name is a long story - if pronounced correctly it means Grandpa in Chinese)

Janice (James' legs), Bethany, Stephen

Philip, Felicia, Corban, and Lydia

I was playing "This little piggy went to market with Corban and Destiny, and Lydia was helping me tickle toes.

Then we convinced everyone to tickle Uncle Paul!

Bethany and James (Mark was in California, but he called so we got to talk to him)

Aunt Kelli, Corban, and Destiny - I think we had been reading a magazine together or something like that.

Paul and Bethany

Philip, Felicia, Lydia, Corban

Gma and Kong Kong and some of the grandkids...Caitlin (in pink) and Christian (the baby on Kong Kong's lap) had arrived by this point (2 of Peter & Jennifer's kids).

Jennifer visiting with Kong Kong.

That's all for now! I can't believe how time has flown since Christmas. It's already the end of February and I'm just now getting these pictures up!

Behind in posting...Smith Christmas 2

2008-02-08T21:04:00.003-06:00

Well, I had intended to post this in January, then in February...now it's April. So here it is. Pics from Christmas in Georgia.

A Sampling of Christmas 2007

2008-02-08T19:08:00.000-06:00

PRESENTS!!!

As they say in the South..."we just be visitin'..."

Isn't she a cutie?

"Just hear those sleigh bells jingle-ing, Ring ting tingle-ing too"

I always wanted a Christmas Speedo!

Eat...play games...eat some more...play some more games!!!

Telephone pictionary...it's the only way you can start out with a picture of a toenail clipper and end up with Michael Jackson at the end.

The grocery store trip where we got everything on the list...somehow we still ended up sending people to the store at midnight to get more ingredients.

Just wait...there's more fun coming soon!

All Because Two People Fell In Love...

2008-01-23T13:54:00.000-06:00

Over Christmas, I asked my grandma (my dad's mom) if I could scan in some of her old pictures of family. It was really fun to find the pictures, and one day I want to get more of them scanned in. It made me want to make a super huge family tree diagram that would take up a whole wall in someone's house, but the thought of all that writing makes me tired right now. So until then, here's an abbreviated family tree in pictures...I hope I got all the names correctly associated with the right picture...here goes:

Anna Elizabeth Bratcher at a ladies Bible Study Retreat (above), and on her way to church (below).
Anna Elizabeth fell in love with Wesley Trussell Walker and they got married (I didn't find any pictures of Wesley when he was young). These two are my great-grandparents.

Anna Elizabeth and Wesley Trussell had 3 kids: Mary Ellen, Anna Jane, and WT Walker Jr.

This is Mary Ellen when she was young - what a knock-out!

Mary Ellen grew up and married Jim Rowe (I don't know his middle name). They never had kids of their own, but boy did they love their nieces/nephews! (Anna's kids)

Anna Jane was the 2nd child born to Anna Elizabeth and Wesley Trussell. She's pictured below with her baby brother, WT Walker Jr.

Yes, WT Walker, Jr's full name was WT because Pappy (Wesley Trussell Sr.) told the doctor that his baby's name was to be WT Walker Jr. and that's what went on the birth certificate. So he got the nickname "Dub".

Here's Dub on his horse in Tennessee. He was sick a lot when he was younger...they finally moved down to Florida due to his health problems in hopes that the warmer weather would help.

Here's Dub as a grown man...I don't think he married or had kids.

Anna Elizabeth (the middle child in the Walker family) is my grandma - my dad's mom.

Now for the other side...

This is Joshua Ernest Smith.

Joshua fell in love with (get ready for this name): Anna Estelle Reeves Leigh Chapman Below is another portrait of Joshua and Anna when they were younger...I think.
Below is a picture of them when they were much older (but still deeply in love).
Joshua and Anna Estelle Reeves Leigh Chapman Smith (had to throw that name in again) had several kids - I think 7 in all?? And William Lawton Smith (pictured below) was one of the youngest if I have my facts straight.
So William Lawton Smith (he went by Bill) fell in love with Anna Jane Walker and they got married and had 4 kids together (in birth order): William Lawton Jr, Ted Wesley, Sue Ellen, and Julie Gay.

Below, they are pictured with Bill Sr and Anna in the back, then (L to R): Sue, Bill Jr, Julie, Ted. Uncle Dub gave them those pajamas one Christmas and they all put them on for the picture.

Below is a picture of my dad's parents - my grandparents the way I picture them in my mind the most.

Here are the kids all grown up (from left to right): Ted, Bill Jr., Anna, Bill Sr, Sue, Julie. Bill Jr is my dad.

So there's a little history of how I came into this world (one side anyway). One of these days I'll get a family tree put together with pictures, etc. of all my family and Paul's family. But that's a bigger project than I can tackle right now.

I'm off work today, and will be off tomorrow, too. So maybe I'll catch up on my blog posts and get some pictures up from Christmas in Georgia and Virginia tomorrow.

I hope everyone is doing well and staying warm. It's 30 degrees and wet/rainy out today - a perfect day to stay home from work!

Work, Work, Work...and more Work!

2008-01-17T21:54:00.001-06:00

Well, we had a great Christmas - lots of driving since we drove to Georgia, then Virginia, then back to Texas. But it was great to see all our family. As soon as we got back though, we went straight to work and haven't stopped since! Since Jan 4th, I've had 1.75 days off. So needless to say, I haven't had energy to post pictures or anything else interesting. This weekend I go to Dallas for the Gift Market (3 days of intense shopping for the gift shop and camp furniture)...then it's back here and I'm taking time off!!!! So maybe next week I'll get an update with pictures up on my blog. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and has started 2008 off on the right foot!

Elfed...

2007-12-09T17:22:00.000-06:00

I saw this on the Vansell's blog first....then I had to try it out. So I put our faces in ("our" meaning me and Paul), and then put some friends from Indiana (who went to Big Bend with us in October). It was pretty fun. Enjoy!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1266185055

(I took the liberty of elfing Heather and Evan without their consent, but I hope they don't mind).

Tag...I'm "It"

2007-12-09T08:12:00.000-06:00

Well, I've been tagged by my good friend at Adventures in Raising a Boy. I've always loved reading other people's blogs when they get tagged because they usually write such interesting facts about themselves. But now that it's my turn to put a list together, I'm not quite sure where to start. I guess the rules would be a good place:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. Since middle school, most if not all of my joints "pop" or "crack" (especially my ankles/knees). When I walk up the stairs, it sounds like I have bubble wrap under my shoes and as I step, a bubble pops. It doesn't hurt (sometimes it actually feels better) - I just can't sneak up on anyone very well.

2. I don't like ham or onions (I'm actually pretty picky about a lot of food, but ham and onions are biggies). But I don't mind pork...maybe it's the salt that I don't like about most ham, I don't know. Whatever it is, I'll do anything to avoid ham.

3. I really enjoy "old-time" country music and bluegrass...maybe it's the acoustic instruments and the harmony in the vocals...maybe it's the beat...but the "twang" that most people complain about, I kinda like. And though this sounds contradictory to what I just stated, I love deep voices in male singers (Don Williams, Randy Travis, etc), and I usually prefer altos in female singers (Mary Chapin Carpenter, Anne Murray).

4. I LOVE dark chocolate - the darker the better. All that 60% cacao stuff that Hershey's has come out with recently (and asks a pretty penny for) is my biggest downfall in the candy aisle.

5. One of my favorite stores to "window shop" in (not purchase because it's usually too expensive) is Office Depot or Office Max. All of those new pencils, pens, hole punch reinforcers, erasers that really work (not smear), and binders get me pretty excited. I don't know if it dates back to the first day of school when we got all of our new school supplies, but even now I really like to go in there and dream. Guess that's pretty weird, but I'm okay with it.

6. I think I'm one of the worst judges in whether a new movie in the theaters is going to be good or not. The ones that look good in the previews to me usually are terrible...and the ones that I pass over usually are much better. Paul has helped me learn how to judge a little better, but it's been a long journey.

7. I sometimes memorize random car license plates and make up stories in my head about why I'll need to remember it in the future. (I have an uncanny ability to remember number/letter combos, but the fact that I put it to use for this reason is kinda silly). Like this afternoon, I saw a white car driving super slow past the camp about 3 times, so on the 3rd pass I memorized the license number. I'm not sure if it's paranoia or the secret dream I always had of becoming Nancy Drew in real life. But I can't help myself.

So there you go...my weird/random facts about myself. Now to tag some other blog friends.

Jason Edgerton
Alexis Grace (okay, her mom can fill it in for her, but I'd like to see what her mom decides to write - it's always so interesting and fun)
For the Display of His Splendor
Tri for Him

I think everyone else in my small blog world has already been tagged in the past (at least I think I remember reading facts about them...maybe I just know weird facts about them though). :) Julie, Jennie - If you want to post a new set of 7 facts, feel free - it's fun to read your lists!

A New Thanksgiving Tradition...

2007-11-23T20:58:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! Hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing day with all of the food and traditions that you needed to make it feel like Thanksgiving to you.

Paul and I actually did something a little different than in years past, and we think we might make it a Biles Family tradition in the future.

We started by waking up at 5:45am and getting ready for a 5 mile race in Austin. We drove to Austin and joined eight to ten thousand other people that were also crazy enough to go running that morning. The weather dropped about 35 degrees on Wed, so Thursday morning it felt like 37 degrees with the windchill...which was quite a difference from the 80 degree weather we had been training in.

The Turkey Trot (put on by Thunder Cloud Subs in Austin) was a super fun 5 mile race that went up and down many hills, but because there were so many people running on the streets, the hills weren't that bad - at least we were all suffering together, right?

Apparently there were 3 water stops along the way, but I only saw the 2nd one because of the number of people around me - I was so focused on not running into someone in front of me that I hardly had time to look to the sides (where the water was).

Here's our stats according to Paul's Garmin (his GPS stopwatch): We finished in 44:06 minutes. Our first mile was at a 9:29 pace, then we got faster from there - 2nd was 8:48, 3rd was 8:59, 4th was 8:34, and the 5th mile was 8:16.

Here are our official race results sorted by age and gender. (Once you get to the page, press Ctrl + F, and then type in Biles - it's the easiest way to find our results). You can also go here to find the other categories. If you went to A&M or UT, you could get a race number with the colors of the Aggies or the Longhorns...you can view those results from that page to see which school did the best if you care...but since I'm not a Texan and didn't go to either of those schools, I really don't care. :)

Here's another picture of the turkey at the beginning of this post. Yep - it's a haybale, with spraypainted tin roofing sections as the tails. They get pretty creative out here in the country. :)

Girl Time!!

2007-11-23T20:16:00.000-06:00

Okay, I got our camera back from Paul's office, so now I have access to the pics from my weekend in Chapel Hill. Enjoy!

On Friday, before Suz got to join us, we saw all the exhibits in the hallways surrounding the planetarium at UNC, but there weren't any showtimes during the weekend.

Later that night we started a friendly game of monopoly. At first, Julie was killing me and Jennie, so then Jennie and I joined forces to bring Julie down.

So then I started doing better except that I ended up going to jail a million times...okay maybe every third turn, but I went there A LOT!!

But in the end, my hotels had everyone else mortgaged to the hilt and I won. Which is a first for me - I never win monopoly, and usually won't even play it (especially with Paul since he always WINS)!

Anyway...we then played more games that Julie definitely won by a landslide (mainly because she knows lots of obscure Scottish words and can remember them under pressure and late at night).

On Saturday, Suzanne kicked the flu-bug out of her system (teachers should get some kind of presidential merit badge/award for working with snot-nosed kids during flu season) and we all got to hang out and tour UNC and eat and shop and goof off...and of course watch movies and play more games.

Below is one of the Arboretum pathways at UNC...very fun.

We went to a second-hand shop and Julie found fun fabric that is currently a strangely shaped apron that she will take apart and re-use......and Jennie found a Halloween costume...I don't actually know how she ended up using it - we had talked about her being the big bad wolf dressed up in Grandma's nightgown (from Little Red Riding Hood). But I think she would have bought it anyway just because it's red. :)

Suzanne and I didn't end up buying anything there, but we sure had fun trying things on!

Plants & Animals...but more Plants than Animals Part 1

2007-11-12T21:17:00.000-06:00

Well, I took a blog break and didn't finish posting all the promised pictures from Big Bend. Once I got back to the "real world", work and schedules seemed to overtake me. It wasn't all work and no play though - I did get to go to Charlotte, NC to hang out with "my girls" from high school - Jennie, Julie, Suzanne - I wish we could have extended the weekend - I definitely had fun catching up on some much-needed girl time! (Oops, I meant to say Chapel Hill, NC - thanks for helping me with the geography Jennie!)

Back to the Big Bend pictures. Can you tell that I loved the time that we spent there? If anyone wants to go back with me, just let me know. I'd love to go explore in spring when all the flowers are out!

(This isn't really a plant or animal, but it was a fun picture)

This is a close-up of the lechuguilla plant's fruit after it finished blooming and the fruit has dried out.

Anyone know what kind of snake this is? I haven't a clue, but it was cool to see it slither around the rock. We have video of it that you can watch if you're interested. But first I need to find a faster internet connection so I can upload it - maybe I'll get the videos posted next time.

Yep, it's a tarantula. Apparently it was tarantula mating season. I was glad we didn't see one until the last day though. We also have a video of this. Once I get it posted (next time hopefully), I would recommend watching it so you can see it touch Paul's shoe - it will give you perspective of how big it was!

(Another angle of the same tarantula)

Cactus!! We mostly saw some variety of prickly pear cactus (not shown below). So this was a little different, although when it comes to cactus, all I know is that it's pokey and hurts if you get too close! (I readily admit I have no idea what variety of cactus this is).

But look what we found inside the above pictured cactus. We think it's some part of a tarantula - maybe the mandible??
Another variety of cactus that I can't identify. :)
Nope, the yellow part isn't a flower - we think it's new growth (in our humble opinion).

Here's a closeup of the plant above...Name? you want a name...you wouldn't remember if I told you...and I don't know what it's called anyway...but the flower is pretty!

We were hoping to find some kind of bird in the nest built in the cactus, but we weren't that lucky.

Talk about feeling small!!!

This tree had weirdly shaped berries - they weren't round - they were almost like those pictures of sickle cells that you see in biology pictures.

And the fuzzy outside appears to pop open and a smoother fruit is produced. One day I'll figure out what it's called...just not today.
Okay, I might have a name for this one - it's a yucca plant, but I can't get much more specific than that.
Here's the balancing rock that is at the end of a trail designated as Grapevine Hills on the Big Bend maps.
The funny thing is that the surrounding landscape was probably more interesting than this phenomenon. I mean, we definitely wondered how the rock ended up like this. But there were several smaller (but still BIG) rocks all over this area that looked like they could fall at any moment, even though they have probably been in the same position for decades.

This is another picture of a lechuguilla plant that had just finished blooming.

Can you believe it - I actually saw examples of all of the plants described on this sign (I didn't get a picture of the hechia (2nd plant from left), but I have non-blooming pics of all the rest! Which means I have names for them!
This is a candelilla bush. Apparently it can be boiled and high qualit wax extracted from it...which they can do in Mexico where they can harvest the bush (in the park, that's a BIG no-no!)
To me, the candelilla looks a little like asparagus. What do you think?

The plant below that looks all spindly to the right of the land formation (in the foreground) is the ocotillo plant. Ranger Yost said that because the area had received rain recently, this plant had green leaves. We saw other ocotillo plants around the park that didn't have green leaves anymore - because it hadn't received rain. So it's a pretty smart plant - and not a cactus even though it has huge thorns! The first picture is one that Heather took - mine wasn't as nice. Thanks for sharing Heather!

This is a close-up picture I took of the ocotillo showing its leaves. See what I mean when I say huge thorns?

Well, for now I'm going to leave it at this. I have more plant/animal pictures I want to post (we have a few of a Mexican blue jay!). But I'm out of time for now. So check back in later!

Big Bend Part 2: Geology

2007-10-22T07:24:00.001-05:00

Don't let the title scare you away...I don't know much about the subject, so I won't go on forever about it! :) Again, I have a disclaimer.

1) I do not claim to have any recollection of any geology studies I may or may not have suffered through in school or at home (my dad was a geology major in his college days). So if I make a complete fool of myself by trying to recap what I did or didn't learn during this trip regarding geology, feel free to comment...or you can let me live in ignorant bliss.

Monday morning we got up at 6:30am in the DARK and cooked pancakes and eggs by headlamp. It was quite interesting, especially since the stove’s lowest setting was too hot for the pancakes to cook right. So Heather and I took turns holding the pan 2 inches above the burner instead of letting it rest on the burner.

This is what we were seeing (or not seeing).
Here we are with the flash so you can see us. :)

This is the MORNING sky - the sun is coming up!

We had planned to go to a “Geology for Dummies” tour led by Ranger Angelina Yost which started at 8:30am. By the skin of our teeth we arrived on time and started to be edjumacated about the geology of Big Bend National Park. And here is where my disclaimer will play a major role in my story.

Ranger Yost started out at the Panther Junction visitor’s center with comparing the timeline of the earth’s evolution to a 12 month calendar year.

I think the gist of the outline was that there was a Precambrian Era that would have taken up from January 1 through Christmas. Then there was a Paleozoic era that started at Christmas, followed by a Mesozoic era (I don’t recall when that started), and then the Cenozoic era which may have started on Dec 31st (which includes the Quaternary period that we’re in now). Heather may recall more details better than I do – Ranger Yost was good, but I think I must have been one of her “dumber” dummies because I still didn’t quite catch all of the terms that she was throwing out there.

Ranger Yost then told us what was happening geologically during these eras and started breaking down the eras into periods. There were deep seas in the Paleozoic era, then sedimentation occurred to create shallow seas and beaches started forming as land masses started moving, creating the Appalachian mountains. Dinosaurs were thrown in there somewhere (Mesozoic era??), and then they died and the Rocky Mountains were formed. Somewhere in there she mentioned a chocolate covered caramel bar which got my attention (surprise, surprise). It was to illustrate land pulling apart and stretching, which causes the middle part to sink in elevation while the ends stay tall. (I'll throw some pictures in here so you don't get bored, but I don't have explanations because I don't remember what she said about the geologists' theories for these formations).

Obviously I didn’t catch all of the details she was sharing, and I’ll admit that I wasn’t really paying attention that closely because I don’t agree with the “a billion years ago the earth was formed” timeline. I did find it interesting that the Appalachian mountains reach as far south/west as Texas, so Texas has mountains that are members of both the Appalachian mountain range and the Rockies Mountain range. I think most people think of the Appalachian Trail which stretches from Georgia to Maine, and figure that the mountain range starts/stops in those states, too. But according to the all-knowing geologists, “The Ouachita mountain belt extended from the Southern Appalachian region across the Mississippi Valley region, all the way across Texas into the Big Bend Region, and southward into Mexico.” Well I’ll be!

Once we got on the road, we were shown mountains that were formed by the erosion around intrusions (magma, or underground lava, that pushed through older rock but didn’t come out on the earth’s surface); and extrusions (volcanoes that blew up spewing lava). Laccoliths were pointed out, as well as dikes and volcanic domes (don’t ask me the definitions though).

The next part that got my attention was when Ranger Yost started explaining that over the past 10 years, geologists have changed their mind about how some of the mountains formed, and how old they really are. Apparently after Mt. St. Helens erupted, a lava dome started forming faster than geologists thought it could/should form. And a guy in Japan recorded a mountain “growing” in the 1940s, also proving that mountains can form a lot faster than geologists guessed. So now they think some mountains in Big Bend are actually volcanic dome, rather than intrusions that required millions of years of erosion to expose.

This map was made in the 60's by a geologist riding on a horse. So Ranger Yost said that part of it (encompasing the harder to reach mountains I believe) is wrong. Yet it's still the only map that the Park has. She mentioned that there is a project being proposed to create a new map using modern technology (GPS, satellite, etc). But for now, they have to use this old map. Incredible!
I had to bite my tongue (hard) to keep from asking about how geologists thought a world-wide flood that would create a water covered world for a little less than a year, which would recede in a matter of 2-3 months would affect their geologic timeline theories (see Genesis ch 7 and 8). Because what I took away from Ranger Yost’s talk was that the geologists really have no idea how anything formed, their theories change every decade, and that nature really does reflect God’s glory and prove He exists (see Psalm 19).

Okay, no more soap box from Kelli…Here are some pictures!!

This picture and the one right after it are pictures of dikes. Basically, I think it's the thin protrusions that were formed when magma seeped up through a crack, and then when everything else eroded around it, the formations were left standing.

After our tour, we drove around to different overlooks and vistas and had fun taking pictures. (Erin Valerius, this was for you - we tried to make an "EV" with our shadows in your honor.)

(The lengths we'll go to to get a great picture!)
Then we drove down to the Santa Elena Canyon and hiked along the Rio Grande. It was magnificent! I was blown away by how big the canyon walls were. I didn’t get to go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon when I visited as a kid, but I bet it is a lot like Santa Elena Canyon. UNLIKE the Grand Canyon, we didn’t have to deal with a thousand people all clamoring to see the same vista. During the Ranger talk that we attended on Tuesday night, Ranger Mary Kay even mentioned that Big Bend National Park is one of the least visited National Parks (one of Texas’ best kept secrets in my opinion).

That's Paul down there next to the river.

This is looking back at the mountains from the Rio Grande at Santa Elena Canyon.

After spending about 2 hours hiking around Santa Elena Canyon, we drove some more to different sites. But we hadn't packed a lunch, and by 4pm, some of us were starting to show the effects of low blood sugar. So we went back to camp for some supper!!

Here's the "creative" picture at Mule Ears that I mentioned in my previous post. Paul's such a funny guy, isn't he?

The Window from the NE again, but with the sun higher in the sky so you can see the details better.

Big Bend Part 1: Overview

2007-10-18T20:21:00.000-05:00

First, some disclaimers.

1) So much happened and we took in so many sights in just 4 days that I don't really know where to begin so I apologize in advance if it seems unorganized. I’ll try to split up the recap of our trip into separate blogs, so you can skip the sections you don’t care about, and only read the ones you want to.

2) Evan and Heather Kittleman are our friends that we knew in our Indiana days, who came down to go on this trip with us. They did not get to proofread this blog before I posted it, so if I misrepresented them in any way, I did not intend to - please forgive me! They are wonderful friends and we hope to travel with them again in the future.

3) I cannot take credit for all of the photos posted in the Big Bend Series as I have in previous posts. All four of us (Evan, Heather, Paul, myself) were picture taking fools thanks to the digital era and between the 3 cameras that we toted, I estimate that we have close to 2000 pictures of desert land...no, I won't subject you to all of them here, but if I post pictures of the same scenery, please understand my predicament in sorting out which pictures to post.

Now, on to our vacation story!

It started at 6am on Sunday Oct 7th, when we left the camp in search of the west Texas desert known as Big Bend National Park. We stopped for kolaches (sausages wrapped in super yummy bread made fresh that morning) and donuts for breakfast in an effort to introduce Texas cuisine to Evan and Heather.

Then Paul drove for hours until we came to this rest stop where we stopped for lunch. Evan had mentioned that all TX rest stops have wireless internet available, which we attempted to take advantage of, but which failed since the service was so slow.

(Note the laptop on the table).

Around 4pm we arrived at Big Bend National Park where we briefly visited the Persimmon Gap visitor’s center, paid our park entrance fee, and continued on to the Chisos Mountain Basin campsite area. I think we were all pleased to find that the campsite (higher in elevation) was at least 10 degrees cooler than the visitor’s center, because when we first got out of the car at the visitor’s center, all I could think was “Man, we’re gonna be HOT and MISERABLE”. But we weren’t! The trip was great!

After driving in circles around the 60 or so campsites that had concrete slabs with tables and shelters (to save the occupants from the scorching sun), we found the best choice for our tents and got settled. (This is probably the best view I've ever had while car camping in established campsites!)

As Heather and I were starting supper, we realized that we hadn’t planned on arriving early enough to cook supper and had planned on eating out on the way to the campground…which meant that the supper we were about to eat was supposed to be the next night’s supper…which meant that we were short food. Not a good thing to discover out in the desert with two grown men to feed, but hey, we’re on vacation…no worries, right?

After supper we went up to the Chisos Basin visitor’s center and found a short overlook area that has a view of the “Window” so we took in the sunset and were introduced to a sampling of desert plants that we would soon come to recognize and even know some of the common names.

That evening we played card games by lantern-light and reacquainted ourselves with each of our “friendly-competitive” natures. The first night we started out easy with Boom-o and Hallelujah (similar to spades, but no with no partners), but as the week progressed, we moved to a seriously competitive game of Hearts, which many of our neighbors could probably testify to (we obeyed all the camping en masse etiquette rules and were quiet after 10pm, though if anyone watched the shadows on the walls, they would have seen many wild gestures of aggravation, frustration and conquest)!

Now for the quick recap of the rest of our time in Big Bend:

Monday: Went on a Geology for Dummies tour (the next blog will have more details) in the morning. Then we drove all over the park and visited key landmarks/points of interest, including the Rio Grande! After supper we played more cards and did our best to get Evan all worked up over his losses. :)

Tuesday: Hiked about 10.5 miles, starting at the Chisos Mountain Basin visitor’s center and going all around on various trails. We encountered a mule deer (I’m pretending that’s what it was – I don’t know for certain though – feel free to correct me in the next blog), a couple Mexican Jays that wanted our lunch, 2 snakes, and countless numbers of century plants, lechuguilla plants, and other plants that I can’t identify by name. (A Wildlife/Plants blog is coming in the future). In the evening we went to a Ranger-led talk about the National Parks and the history, variety, locations, and importance of preserving them. It was more interesting than it sounds, I promise. The Ranger made us break up into groups and take a “quiz”, so it was interactive, too. And after that we picked up where we left off in our card playing competition. This time I was the aggravated/animated loser.

Wednesday: Packed up our tents/gear in the morning and then drove around to the remaining landmarks that we wanted to see before leaving the park. We encountered a tarantula on the road (the Ranger said it was tarantula mating season - glad I found that out on the last night!), we saw a fox, and a couple of lizards (small ones). We hiked to the balancing rock which was fun, and then headed down to the Rio Grande Village area and to the Boquillas Canyon Overlook. After we’d seen all we could fit in that day, we headed to Fort Stockton and checked into a hotel for a SHOWER!!! (the first shower since we left on Sunday morning). We ended with supper at IHOP for pancakes and French toast!

Thursday: Drove for about 7 hours to Winchester (small town south of Giddings), ate at Murphy’s Steakhouse for a good ol’ hometown meal, then headed back to camp (Camp Tejas that is).

Friday: Went to Dublin, TX and visited the original Dr. Pepper bottling factory. Then we went to a TX winery on the way back to Waco, where we ate at Rudy's BBQ, and finished it off with a milkshake at Health Camp (on the infamous "circle" in Waco).

Saturday: Went to San Antonio for the day to see the Alamo and Riverwalk. It was the perfect day to be in San Antonio because it was Living History day at the Alamo, Chalk Drawing day on Houston St, and the International Accordian Festival was going on at the same time. (A separate blog will cover these days...I bet you can't hardly wait til I post them!).

Okay, now for some highlight pictures. If you don’t want any more details, then don’t read the next few blogs. But if you do, y’all come back!

Evan & Heather Kittleman (first day picture)

Paul & Kelli (first day picture)

This is a century plant which I'll talk more about in another blog. They're very cool plants.

This is Casa Grande Peak viewed from the Chisos Mountain Visitor's Center.

This is the "Window" viewed from the NW looking SE. (Casa Grande Peak is in the center of the window in the background).

(Paul took this pic...he's so creative...we all copied his idea in later pictures)

Does she look Texan yet?

This is Santa Elena Canyon. Mexico is on the left of the river, the U.S. is on the right of the river. (You can't actually see the river in the picture, but it's in the middle).

Evan & Paul on the trail (waiting for us as we took pictures...but some day they'll thank us for taking so many pictures so we can remember when we're 85...or even 45).

The two peaks in the background on the right are called "Mule Ears". Check back later for a more "creative" picture of Mule Ears.

Paul waiting for me to catch up on our hike up to Emory Peak.

Boot Canyon. Think of a leg sticking straight up with a boot on it. The heel of the "boot" is on the left, the toe of the "boot" is on the right (highest part of the rock).

The "after" picture once we finished our 10.5 mile hike through the mountains.

Yep, it's a tarantula. It was as big as my hand! Later I'll get the video of it up so you can see it touch Paul's shoe to give you a reference point for its size.

If you look closely, you can see the snake - his head is lighter in color and is aiming at the rock, which he slithered under/around as we approached.

This is Balancing Rock. I think it's in the Grapevine Hills area of the park. Strangely it's not marked on any of the maps I have or looked at online, but it was a worthwhile trail to take to see the view!

This is a lechuguilla plant that's still partially green with evidence of it's blooms (Supposedly the blooms are purple and yellow, but we were there after all of the plants were done blooming).

Okay, that's a taste of our Big Bend Trip. I'll post more pics and stories over the next few days to give you details!

Where's the camera???

2007-09-24T08:17:00.000-05:00

Ever have those moments when you needed your camera, but didn't have it? I've had a couple of those recently.

During the first instance I was driving, so it was probably a good thing (safety wise) that I didn't have the camera. But man I wished I had one! I would have snapped a shot of Paul on a tractor driving 20 mph on a highway where everyone else is driving at least 65 mph or more. Yep, he was "that guy" on the road that causes everyone to switch lanes and then check their rear view mirror after they pass him, thinking "what's he doing on the road"? I was the car behind him with my flashers on so that no one would hit him (instead they'd hit me, but I guess the theory was that I would have an airbag...which would probably hurt me more than help since I'm short, but that's beside the point).

The next incident involved our sailboat on Paul's birthday. One day I'm going to get a waterproof case that I trust for our camera, and I'll capture these moments. For his birthday, we took off work and went out to Clear Lake near Kemah Beach, TX (the lake feeds into the Gulf). We stayed on the lake part - didn't venture out into the Gulf part (I'm too chicken).

It started out kinda rocky for me - I just have trouble with getting the sail up and keeping the boat pointing into the wind while we get the sail up. So I started out pulling the sail up, then switched with Paul so he could pull the last 6 inches up (it always gets caught at that point and I just don't have the guns to pull it the rest of the way). So I'm now at the tiller (while he's pulling) trying to figure out which way the wind is coming from so I can stay pointed into it. It didn't work, and by the end of it I'm on my knees on the bottom of the boat with my head touching my knees to avoid the boom (holds the bottom of the sail) from coming across and hitting me (because the wind has caught the sail that's partially up - all my fault). We did survive this, and after 10 minutes I was able to speak and relax and enjoy the sailing part. Paul's comment was "I don't remember you being so nervous about this when we were in North Carolina" (refering to high school days sailing at his grandmother's cabin)...to which I replied, "I was young and stupid back then - I know better now" (because now if the boat capsizes I have to figure out how to un-capsize it and pay for any damages that occur).

But that's not the part that needed a picture. The really great part was as we were coming back. We had survived--and had fun--going all the way down to the end of the lake, and had survived coming back (a little trickier to tack with the wind behind you we found out, but we did make it work). But on the last tack, Paul said, "Coming about", I switched sides, and then a crazy gust of wind or a big wave came along and tipped the boat up so that I was literally looking DOWN at Paul. I started to lean way back to try to counteract the boat's movement, Paul was scrambling to try to climb UP to get to my side of the boat, but in the meantime water was pouring over the side of the boat. By the end of it we were ankle deep in water inside the boat, but thankfully we were upright. Paul immediately starts laughing hysterically and can't stop, and I'm left sitting in shock wondering how in the world we're going to make it into the dock without crashing our boat (another time during sailing when I get pretty nervous).

My next research project is to find an electric motor that we can have on the boat so that we can motor out away from docks and cement walls to put the sail up and bring it back down again, and be able to motor into the dock (not paddle).

I do have a "before" picture of us with the boat. The car took the picture (timer on the camera), so that's why it's looking down at us, instead of at eye level.

Below is a pic of the concrete that we had to navigate around. It helped keep the dock area calm and broke the waves, but it still made me nervous and I paddled super hard to make sure we didn't hit it.

Okay, tell me if I'm alone in this, but doesn't this sign seem a little odd to you? I mean, usually with the "don't" or "no" signs, they have a picture of the activity with a circle and slash through it, or a No preceding the picture. But this picture doesn't look like a person swimming. It looks like a person drowning. But they're clearly trying to say no swimming. Maybe they needed to put the words "Swimming", then an equals sign, then the picture of the person drowning. Or just put a person that is swimming inside a circle with a slash. But this sign is just a little disturbing to me. Maybe I'm the only one though.

I'm going to combine blogs here and add Saturday to our Wednesday adventures. Paul installed a garbage disposal. And not just any garbage disposal - one that doesn't use electrity. It uses water pressure only. It's a little slower at chopping up the stuff, but it is so quiet you almost don't know it's running. So that was fun. Paul had fun installing it, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching (there's only so much room under the sink, so clearly I couldn't fit in there to help, especially since I know NOTHING about plumbing). :)

Paul said I needed a "before" picture so you can appreciate the improvements. So this is the "before".
Here's the "after" picture! What a beauty.

Okay, that's all for now. Until next time!

Fall Pictures!

2007-09-09T12:42:00.000-05:00

On Friday, I left work a little early and headed out to the meadows to see if there was anything worth taking pictures of. Paul and I did this back in the spring, but I hadn't been out there just to explore since then (in the summer I hibernate in the AC as much as possible). I discovered that there was a lot of fun pictures! That put the "creative" bug in me. Since I had Saturday off this weekend, I decided that instead of sleeping in, I would get up and get some more pictures out in the meadows, while no one else was around to bother or interrupt. So at 6:30am, I got out my Carhart overalls and my work boots (I knew there was a reason I kept all that gear from my landfill sampling days), and I set out with our "trusty" digital camera to see what I could find. Below are a few of my favorites from Friday evening, and Saturday morning:

I loved the smell of the hay as I got up close to take the picture. I definitely love being out in the country!

Check this guy out - there were several tiny spiders making webs between blades of grass. They would make a white thick circle in the center, and then hang underneath that white circle (so you could only see the spider from underneath). The rest of the web was transparent, just waiting for an unlucky bug to find it.

I almost didn't see this tiny little hopper. His whole body is probably smaller than the nail of my pinky finger - and I have a small pinky finger nail!!
Peas anyone?

I took this picture in the early morning on Saturday - the sun was starting to come up, but my flash accidentally went off because it thought there wasn't enough light. It made a cool picture though.

This is the same picture when I turned the flash off. I tried to get the shot as the spider was in the center of his web because it was pretty cool, but I made him nervous, and he climbed to the top to try to hide from me.
Someone's leftover target practice items. Guess they missed. The pepsi can in the background is really shot up, but they didn't have much luck hitting the poker chip.

Morning dew on a blade of grass.
This was my favorite shot of the morning. This little guy stayed completely still for over 3 minutes while I tried to get a good picture of him. He's clinging to a big JCB bucket (used on the excavator for digging up stuff). The bucket doesn't appear to have been used yet - the tag is still on it, and it's still clean. Guess it made a good place to hang out and catch bugs. I'm just super excited that he didn't hop away and I was able to get the shot. I didn't have much luck with the frogs near the puddles/ponds. They all jumped in the water as soon as they heard me coming!

I felt kinda bad for this guy - I think he's a cicada??? Anyway, he looked like he was having trouble moulting - he kept kinda twitching - I think his wing got stuck in the mud after he came out of his shell.

No explanation needed. I love trees!

This is just a great Texas picture to me. Everyone uses barbed wire fencing around here, and this was a fun shot to take. It can symbolize a lot - old and new working together, different people working together...whatever you can think of.

Another great Texas shot - an old wagon/trailer left in the tall weeds. Will it ever be used again?

Well, that's all for now. I took a TON of pictures, but I won't post all of them for you here. I was out there for over 2 hours on both days.

Paul's triathlon...

2007-09-05T17:18:00.001-05:00

Well, on Monday (Labor Day), Paul participated in the Austin Triathlon. It was an international distance triathlon, which means it was a 1 mile swim (okay technically he swam 1500 meters, but most people don't have a concept of what that means - here's a hint - a mile is 1609 meters, so he was pretty close), a 24 mile bike, and a 6 mile run. Another note on the swim - it's in a lake, and you don't have lane lines, so adding in his zig-zagging, he probably truly swam a mile. So he covered 31 miles in different loops (1 swim loop, 3 bike loops, 2 run loops).

You can find out Paul's official results at http://www.texastriseries.com/events/austintri/results.asp.

Jack and Adam's Triathlon shop hosted the race - that's where I bought my bike, and it's our favorite source for splurging on training equipment that we store in our spare bedroom instead of using. :) The guys that run it are down to earth and really helpful (we've actually met both Jack, and Adam, and Drew, who joined after they had the shop name). I think one guy had experience working at a different tri/bike shop, and then 2 others were lawyers that decided running a triathlon shop would be more fun. They do a good job with their shop, and the race was run really well - better than some of the other races we've been to, so that was really nice.

The building on the far left, is actually one of the buildings that is caricatured in Jack and Adam's logo (far right building in their logo). Because I'm not from Austin, and didn't do my homework, I don't know what building it is. But it was fun to get a picture of it in the early morning just after the sun came up. It also shows how cloudy it was that day.

We got up at 4:20am to start preparing for the race that started at 7am. We left our hotel at 5am, and Paul got his transition area all set up. It rained the night before, and had threatened rain on Monday, too, but thankfully God held back the rain and just allowed the clouds to stay, which made a perfect race day - cloud cover and cool temps (especially for Texas in Sep!!)

Yep, it was a wetsuit legal race, which Paul really enjoyed. All that neoprene helps keep you afloat and you swim much faster!

This is a bad picture of Paul's wave getting in the water (jumping off a floating dock). I couldn't tell which guy he was - I was too far away at that point. But we can pretend that I captured him in pixels here. :)

Okay, this is a side-note to Paul's race. I just want to point out that the guy who won the race, won because his swim time was almost 2 minutes faster than any of the other guys. His bike time wasn't the fastest out of the crowd, and his run time wasn't the fastest, either. But his swim time gave him such a great advantage, that he won the whole race. Above in the first picture, he rounded the last buoy, and no one was even close to him. You probably can't even see him in the first picture - just know that he didn't have any chasers nearby. The second picture shows him getting out of the water. The big crowd at the top of that picture is the chase pack. I think there were 3-4 swimmers in between him and that big chase pack that aren't in the 2nd picture. But it gives you an idea. I think he swam a mile in roughly 17 minutes (I looked at my watch - his official time may be longer because he still had to cross over the timer pad). The announcer said that this guy is a professional triathlete, so if he took longer, I guess I would have been disappointed. :) But it was still amazing to watch.

Okay, back to Paul's race. Below he's the one in the red cap - looking at me and smiling for the picture. So that was a good sign. Did I mention that he didn't really get much training in before this race? So I was glad that he was cognizant enough to recognize me. I was pleasantly surprised that he took a few seconds to look at me for the picture, too! He finished his swim in about 40 minutes.

Below is his transition area in the daylight (since the earlier ones showed them in the pre-race, pre-sun, darkness. He was number 242.

Another transition picture (between swim and bike). He's still smiling!

I was impressed that this picture came out (maybe I'm improving my photography skills...or maybe my camera is super cool and compensates for my lack of skills). He was probably passing me at about 22 miles an hour. Notice, though, he's still smiling. He said that his average bike speed was maybe 22 mph on the flats, 7 mph going up hill, and 30 mph going down hill.

Here's the first time I saw him on the run course. You may notice that...he's not smiling anymore. Not even a glimpse. But he said that he only walked at the 3 water stations, and 2 additional places, so for the most part he was jogging the whole time. And for not training before this race, I'm super impressed that he did so well.

Below are pictures of him crossing the finish line. It was kinda nice because they had 2 plastic "winner banners" that they would alternate throwing across the finish line. So everyone got to raise their arms and "break through" the winner banner. I did wonder how much sweat was transferred from each runner by the end of the race. I hope they threw those banners away - I sure wouldn't want to be the person to clean them. Yuck!

Above you can see the clock time on the left. Subtract 3 minutes from that, since his wave started 3 minutes after the official clock did. So the whole race took him roughly 3 hours and 19 minutes.

There's that smile! I guess he just needed some cold pizza to re-energize him...and to see his lovely wife that supported him all the way. :)

If you're still with me (I know, this was kind of a long blog, but still fun in my opinion), here are some aerial pics of the race courses - the red line marks the course.

Swim course:

Bike course:

Run course:

Dave & Busters...

2007-09-05T16:40:00.000-05:00

Well, really, for this blog, the pictures do most of the talking for me. Paul and I took the "kids" out to Austin about a week and 1/2 ago, but I haven't been able to get pics up until now.

I had never been to Dave & Busters, though I had heard it was tons of fun. Turns out that it is. I liked the racing games where all of us got to race each other the best.

We got the meal/points deal so that we got dinner and $10 in points on our swipe card to play the games with. Arcades are sophisticated now - no more tokens weighing down pockets - just have to keep track of a credit card like card.

Brittany, and Chloe racing on the Nascar track.

Paul, Kim, and Kristi also racing on the Nascar track. (I raced, too, but didn't get a picture of myself).
Justin, Chloe, and Manwoo (prounounced "Mahn - u").

Paul wearing Manwoo's glasses while Manwoo played the boxing game.

(Manwoo punching his opponent with the virtual reality technology gloves.)

At the end we all combined our tickets that we won, and like good arcade patrons, used them to buy Nerds on a rope (candy), and some other kind of candy that will rot your teeth.

What a great night. We finished by going to a Korean grocery store, where Manwoo bought the makings for a great dinner that he made that week. I don't know the name of it, but it looked goourmet - it had seaweed wrapped around rice, some kind of sweet radish (that was a 8 inch long yellow vegetable), seasoned beef, and some kind of vegetable that we never were able to translate into English from the Korean. But it was great!!!

Well, that sums up our night out on the town. I definitely want to repeat it sometime.

Five girls and Paul

2007-08-25T20:57:00.000-05:00

And if you count the dogs, it's 7 females in the house, and Paul.

The interns for this fall are staying at our house for a week until their living quarters are ready for them to move in (after Labor Day).

It doesn't affect me so much, because I'm still sharing a bathroom with only 1 other person. However the other 4 girls are sharing the other bathroom. And Paul has taken to hiding in our bedroom more often when all of us girls are home. Maybe too much estrogen in the room...maybe.

Anyway, that's what's going on with us these days. Later!

Our New Desk!

2007-08-20T15:44:00.001-05:00

Okay, I know that "normal" people don't get this excited about desks and organizing. But I'm not normal. My favorite store is Office Max (though I don't buy anything there because it's too expensive). My favorite shopping season is Back to School because all the binders and pencils and pens and notebooks and back packs are in the aisles. But I'm getting sidetracked.

Okay, here are some pics of what we upgraded to. The bookshelf with all the books actually belongs to Dustin and Erin, who are moving to Dallas. So they are going to need their bookshelf back soon, which gave us the perfect excuse to look for a desk with bookshelf space, too.

Here's what we came up with from Ikea.I like that it all closes up so you can't see what's inside because it's pretty cluttered inside. One day that will change, but not today.
Even the bench has storage space for files, and then for whatever else fits to the left of the files.

I'll admit that all the books didn't fit in our new desk, so we had to use the college wire shelves that you stack using connectors, but that's okay. One day when I get up the nerve to throw out/donate all my books that I haven't read in over a year, I'm sure we will only need the desk to house everything.

I just can't get rid of the thought that maybe one day the environmental science textbooks might be used. I know it's ridiculous, and the truth of the matter is that anything in those books can be found on the Internet these days (which definitely uses much less of my house space than the books do). But I just can't do it. Maybe it's because it would be admitting that I won't be using my college degree again. I don't know. Like I said, one day I'll have the courage to toss it all...but not today.

Well, I'm off today since I worked the weekend, so I actually went to the mall in Austin to look around. I've decided that I'm really not missing much by not living close to a mall. I get so frustrated walking around malls - they take up so much of my time just to realize that they don't have anything that I need or want. Another reason that I'm a country girl convert. The reason I happened to be in Austin was because Paul had to catch an early morning flight, so we spent the night at a hotel which was fun.

Paul is in Virginia helping his mom get the GMI server back in order (http://globalmosaic.net/). It started a re-booting cycle that it can't get out of, so Paul was sent to the rescue with all his computer know-how. So I'm a bachelorette until Thursday. Thankfully Chloe is here to keep me company (summer staffer from the UK), and so are the dogs.

Until next time!

Summer's over, and Retreat Season is here!

2007-08-17T21:35:00.000-05:00

Well, it did finally stop raining. And ironically we celebrated by taking our family of 12 to Schlitterbahn (water park) and spent all day playing in water. We heard them say "Schlitterbahn is now open" in the morning, and we heard them say "Schlitterbahn is now closed" in the evening. I was definitely waterlogged after that! But we had a blast and it was great to have a day away from work to hang out and have fun. All of us stayed together on every ride, which was pretty cool.

The last day of camp was August 10th, and Paul and I celebrated by staying at Round Top Retreat (http://www.roundtopretreat.org/) from Sunday night through Tuesday morning. It was nice to get away and not think about anything work related for 2 days. But then we came back to our real lives and headed straight into Retreat Season. Our first group arrived Thursday (Aug 16), and left this afternoon, and the 2nd group arrived this afternoon, and will stay through Sunday. So we definitely hit the ground running after summer ended!

I don't have pictures to post with this one, but I wanted everyone to know that we survived summer, and are headed back to a "normal" schedule - at least in camp standards it's normal.

One more note, we did go to Ikea and bought a great desk for ourselves. I'll eventually get a picture up because I'm excited about the prospect of getting more organized and getting our "stuff" more simplified. It was part of our re-organizing that we're doing, which included getting rid of 7 trash bags full of clothes that don't fit, are out of style, etc. We can almost see our closet ceiling and floor now! It was a great feeling to purge the house of all that stuff.

Okay, off to bed. As part of our "normal" schedule, I need to be in the kitchen at 6:45am tomorrow to help with breakfast for the group. Fun, fun, fun!

Rainy Days at Camp

2007-07-27T19:20:00.000-05:00

I know that in reality it hasn't rained every single day this summer, but recently, it sure has seemed like we've received more than our fair share! Last summer we were begging for rain because it was so dry. This year we can't get rid of the rain - the ground is so saturated, that even a small shower looks like a flood because the water has no where to go, and it creates pools and streams that sometimes look like they're flowing up hill because there is so much water!!!

We have 2 bridges that you have to cross if you come to the camp the "main way" from town. Late Wednesday night, one of our staffers was coming back from Sonic and didn't realize how deep the water was over the first bridge. To make a long story short, she tried to cross it, got stuck, and the water was reportedly up to the steering wheel at one point. Luckily there were guard rails on that bridge (on the 2nd bridge, there aren't guard rails so she just would have floated over). Thankfully everyone in the car was safe (they got out, the car was towed back to camp, etc) but the car is totalled, and our staffer was pretty shaken up. (Brings to mind the lecture I got from my dad one day about the power of flowing water - even a little bit of water).

(We're definitely glad we have the roof on the back deck - this summer it has definitely paid off since we love to sit out there and listen to the rain and relax outside without getting wet.

...although we did find that we have a couple small leaks where the seams of the roof are. But we'll get those fixed soon...or we won't sit under them and just enjoy the rest of the deck. :)

Here's looking out our front door. The rain just keeps coming! Anyone know how to build an ark?

That's why we spend more time on the back deck. Better view, and we don't think about all the water running under our house, etc.

Our dogs are such chickens when it comes to thunder and lightening. It's the only time we see Flurry show fear. (Chessy always looks worried, but she's slightly neurotic).

(Chessy had to have a turn in Paul's lap, too).

Family of 12...(plus 2 dogs)

2007-07-07T07:48:00.000-05:00

Paul and I have 10 "children" this summer. Their names are Rodgers, Jong-seok, Sarah, Andrea, Meredith, Aaron, Curry, Ashley, Sarah, and John. (Yes, we named 2 of them Sarah - we just really liked that name).

Okay, so we're not really their parents. But when the camp staff has "family nights", we all get together and act like a family...sibling rivalry and all. :)

A fun mini-trip that we got to take with them a couple weeks ago was to see the Round Rock Express minor league baseball team play. (I don't know much about baseball teams, but from what I can tell, they are the minor league team that feeds into the Houston Astros, and I think their mascot is a fast train which is kinda lame in my opinion, but better than some other choices I guess).

We had a really good time, despite the rain. It rained the entire way from Giddings to Round Rock (outside Austin), but over the diamond, it was sort of like a bubble poked through the clouds and kept the game from being cancelled. I'll admit that some of us were in improvised rain coats for the first 30 min or so, but then it cleared up and they played all 9 innings. It was great!

The home team made a great effort and were winning for most of the innings until the 7th when the other team pulled ahead. And it was over from that point on - we never recovered and lost. But they still showed fireworks after the game anyway, so that was fun.

How might one who rarely cooks at home feed 12 people you ask? Well, it's kinda complicated, but last night we had Cinnamon and Lime Chicken Fajitas (which actually turned out really good), and Cherry Berries on a Cloud (even though I had to make the meringue part twice). The first meringue turned out great, but I left it in the oven overnight as instructed, and forgot about it on the next day. Then I pre-heated my oven to 400 degrees while it was still inside and burned it up. Hence making it twice.

I was kinda nervous about having enough food for everyone - especially the guys. But the whole group probably only ate half of all the food we prepared, so now Paul and I have tasty leftovers for this week - even better!

(In her dreams)

We decided to have a surprise birthday theme even though it wasn't anyone's birthday. It was fun - we had hats, and blow things (that didn't make noise, so we had to make the noise ourselves, but that was fun, too). And we had crazy twisty straws, which I always loved as a kid.

Flurry didn't appreciate the hats, but Chessie actually kept hers on for almost the whole night. I was very impressed.

And of course we took advantage of the back deck being finished - roof and all. It even started raining at the end of the dinner, but we were able to stay outside and enjoy the sound of it hitting the roof for a while.

We couldn't hear each other talking though, so eventually we went indoors to eat dessert.

Then most of us stayed to play Jenga Truth or Dare, which of course was mostly dares. So we invaded David and Jennifer's house (next door) and did ballerina twirls, and stole an item of food - all while David and Jennifer had their own extended camp family over for supper. And we invaded Billy and Janice's house to sing the national anthem, which I think sort of perplexed their family as well. The rain/mud made everything interesting - we kept telling everyone to take off their shoes before invading each house. Lots of fun. We ended the evening by watching "What About Bob" because several of our kids hadn't seen it before.

All in all it was a great family night. Even though we discovered that one of our kids doesn't know the words to the Star Spangled Banner. How do you get through elementary school, middle school, and high school and miss learning that? I think a parent-teacher conference is in order so that we can address this omission in the school curriculum. Then again, it was probably our fault as the parent for not being involved in their schooling and for supplementing the school's efforts. Oh well, maybe we'll do better with the next batch of kids. :)