Camping at High Falls

It was family camping weekend with the Cub Scouts this past weekend. Not a huge turnout, but in some ways that is better. We had about 8 family groups - some just one parent and Cub and some 2 parents and 2 or 3 kids. Probably about 25 people total. It's much easier (and faster) to cook pancakes for 25 than for 75!

We had a visitor in our tent:

We didn't have any organized activities, so while some of the group went fishing (we didn't have poles (and none of us are really that big on fishing)), we went down to the creek to climb around on the rocks.

I didn't get a picture of the little waterfall behind them, but it was about 4 feet high.  A was climbing around above the falls and slipped.  Oops - over the falls he went!  It was a bit scary, especially since we couldn't see him for a minute and it was too noisy to hear each other.  He popped up in just a moment though and gave me a thumbs up (in response to my thumbs up question).

After that trip over the falls, A was soaked, so we headed back to camp.  Then D took the kids off for free comic book day (M was insistent that the comic book day had been booked prior to the campout, so it should take precedence.  He would have preferred to stay home with comics and computers, but after we made arrangements to go to a comic store near the campground, he stopped being actively against the trip.)

After lunch, the Cubmaster was telling the kids about this cool place where you can slide down the rocks - yep, the same place where A went over the falls.  So most of the group headed back down there, in swimsuits (or clothes they didn't mind getting wet in).  A had to get back into his wet clothes, since he "didn't hear me" tell him to pack a suit.

The kids had a much easier time going over the falls than the adults - mostly due to weight I think - they sort of floated over more.  I finally let M talk me into going over.  I wish I hadn't - I still have a lovely bruise on my backside and scrapes and bruises on both elbows.  I didn't take my camera this time as I knew I was planning on getting in the creek.  We ended up all hanging out in the creek for probably an hour and a half.  It was warmer than I expected - and a good month before I'll usually get more than my legs in the neighborhood pool.

M with a nerf machine gun.  One of the adults brought it out and the kids ended up playing with it (of course).

All in all a good trip, even if I still have tent pieces draped around the house (they were still wet when we broke camp) and I haven't quite finished the camping laundry yet.  Oh yeah, and there is still random stuff in the back of the car.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll take care of all that...

Pack Meeting with pie?

A had his monthly pack meeting recently. The Webelos were responsible for opening and closing with the flag ceremony.  Here A is trying to hide in the flag:

At the end of the meeting, it was pie time!  All the kids who sold at least $600 in popcorn in the fall got to pie a leader of their choice.  I think there were 8 kids who earned the priviledge (out of 50+ in the pack).  A's leader thought he was going to be out of town, but luckily (or maybe not for him), he wasn't.  A chose to do the 'top of the head' pie.  I love the shaving cream goatee!  

It was a very messy meeting! A few extra people got "pied" and lots of people got collateral damage in the form of shaving cream here and there.  It was tons of fun to watch and A was certainly glad he got to participate in the pie-ing!

SNOW!

We'd been hearing that "S" word on the radio recently - you know, the word that gets the kids all excited. But we'd heard it several times already this year and nothing had come of it before. I refuse to get too concerned until it is definitely less than 24 hours and they are still predicting it.

This morning, though, they were still predicting snow/rain mid-afternoon. Hmmm, might actually happen. Big topic of conversation at breakfast at church - who had heard what and would it really amount to anything.

Well, when church was over, we came out of the sanctuary and could see outside through the big windows - big, fat, wet snow. It was hilarious to see the kids all go rushing outside - all ages, from 3 or so (as young as the parents would let them out there alone) all the up to older teens - dancing around, catching snowflakes on their tongues. I wish I'd had my camera with me then!

On the drive home, it fluctuated between wet snow and rain, looking like we were going to have driven out of the snow. But it had started snowing again just as we entered our subdivision. Here is a photo M took after we'd been home about 30 minutes - the snow is just starting to stick on the deck:

Here's M maybe an hour later - the snow is starting to stick on the ground, but not really on the driveway. You can see the big fat flakes.

M's snow sculpture - specifically built to be taller than M!

M and I had gone out mid-afternoon to check out the snow and found that the snow on the grass was good for packing. So we made D come out to join us. The 3 of us made a big tall snowman - who was fatally unstable. We were working on adding eyes, buttons, etc when he toppled. M and I tried to put him back together, but no luck. So, M built this snow sculpture.

Here is a tree in front of our house - note the large amount of snow accumulated on some of the branches - and how some of it already looks icy. I think its going to be very interesting tomorrow morning...

Edited: we received an automated call telling us that school is cancelled for tomorrow, so we can stop checking the websites and turn off D's mental alarm. Hooray!

It finally stopped snowing sometime after 8 pm tonight - I think that's the most time I've ever seen it snow before (at least down here). Usually if it snows, it does most of it overnight, not during the day.

New Reading Pose

Yet another strange way to read.

I know I've posted other interesting poses that the kids get in for reading, but they never cease to find new ones I guess.

geocaching in VA

While we were visiting in VA over the holidays, one day we went out geocaching. The first two caches we found relatively easily (one very easily), without really needing the GPS.

But then the next ones were in a much more wooded areas and further off the road - we would never have found them without the GPS.

We tramped around quite a while (and through some mud we didn't need to have gotten into), before we found this cache. It included a disposable camera to take a photo of ourselves with the rubber chicken. We took another with our camera.

Here's M getting really silly with the chicken.

For as big as this cache was, it was hidden really well - it took us a good while to find it.

The last cache had us scrambling up and down hills and ending up in someone's backyard before realizing that we needed to be on the other side of the river. It was getting dark by the time we finally found it. Cousin B was really excited to claim a pocketknife out of the cache (she left some Japanese yen that I'm sure someone else will be thrilled to find).

Polar Bear Plunge 2009

The intrepid plungers before:

They are shivering and telling us to hurry up and take the pictures!

and after:

Brrr! It was cold out there.

This was the 3rd annual polar bear plunge, but we missed the 2nd one last year somehow. M and D both participated in the first annual plunge in 2007. I think it was colder outside this year, but I'm not sure how much difference there was in water temperature. Both times it was awfully cold - colder than I'm interested in, for sure!

Silly Supper Story

At dinner tonight M wanted to play a game. Not the usual thing at dinner, but this wasn't a usual game either. He wanted to have us each take turns helping to tell a story. We decided each person could add anywhere from a partial sentence to several sentences.

Our story started with an alligator and a ninja. It then included dimensional portals and sock puppet ventriloquist dummies that come to life. I'm sure the kids would correct me and tell me I got details wrong, but it included gems such as:

• the alligator escaped through a dimensional portal into the past where he became very rich, because no one had ever seen a talking alligator
  
• the sock took the dimensional portal and ended up in a fridge, next to some butter (which was really something else in disguise), which talked and the sock said "I can't believe you're not butter" (this one had me laughing more than it really deserved)
  
• the sock was looking for its one and only mate, but unfortunately it had been morphed into a meatloaf, so then it looked for a portal to another dimension and found it easily in the dryer (of course, we all KNEW the dryer sent stray socks somewhere else!)
  
• the voice of god came from the cloud saying something to the alligator, but he didn't like that, so he shot the voice and declared himself to be a god, to go along with the fact that he had declared himself king of a small country
  
• and on and on
  

The kids, especially A, have gotten much better at this than the last time we tried it. That must have been 2 years ago. I can see it coming up again - especially on our long trip to VA for Christmas.

20 Years

Sorry for the hiatus, but once I haven't posted for a few days, then it seems like I'm way behind and I don't know what to post.

Anyway, D and I went to Houston over the weekend for our 20th college reunion from Rice. A friend had warned me that we might not see that many people we know - and in a sense that was true. But since D's brother and his wife (both Rice grads with us) and our friends from Houston (also both Rice grads) were all there, it didn't really matter if we saw other people we knew or not. Oh, we did run into other people we knew - some we all knew, some only some of us knew, most that one person knew and the others kinda-sorta recognized. Other than the friends/family we had talked to beforehand, there wasn't anyone there that I was really delighted to see.

But, still, it was fun. Relaxing! A weekend away from home, without the kids, with interesting people. And Rice even won the homecoming game. I think they are now 6-1 in conference and guaranteed a bowl bid. Though, as usual, the first half was better than the second half.

Half-time was fun. Rice has a tradition of naming unconventional homecoming king and queen. This year was no exception. Homecoming queen was a VP of some sort at the school. Homecoming king was Hurricane Ike! They had someone wearing a hurricane symbol running wildly around the field. The crowd loved it!

We got to eat Turkish food one night and Persian food the other - neither of which we can find easily around here. There are some around Atlanta, but not anywhere near where we live. The Turkish place, though, we walked to from Rice. We had walked from the hotel to campus and then after the alumni gathering we walked out to the village - it was the first place we saw and it looked good (and it was good).

My son the reptile

M's new thing when he gets bored at school is to draw on his hand.  This was from Friday.  Evidently he was quite bored as he covered the whole front and back of his left hand.

 

Today he only got about half his hand.  So was it only half as boring?  Luckily it washes off fairly easily, so if I cared about what his hand looked like, we could take it off.  For the most part, though, I don't care.  Just random silliness.  And at least its less obviously rude to the teacher than reading a book during class (which he has also been known to do.  ahem!). 

Japanese TV silliness

We turned on the TV one morning to see what Japanese TV was like.  We found some rather amusing shots.  We're not quite sure why the large bunny was helping with the weather report.

Ditto the bear? panda? here.  It was also on the morning news show.

M thought he needed a photo of the new iPhone.  We saw loads of people in line for the iPhone when we were in Tokyo.

Through Buddha's Nose

As promised, here are videos of the kids climbing through the hole the same size as Buddha's nose on the great statue.

I tried to go through the hole, but my shoulders were too wide.

Silly M!

This morning at bus time, I handed M his coat.  

M: No, it will just make my backpack too full this afternoon

me: but its cold out there, almost freezing

M: I'm fine (as he goes out the door)

30 seconds later, M runs back in.  Is he cold?  NO, or only at his ankles

M says something like, I'm still wearing my slippers.  Why did you let me go out in my slippers?

(me, breaking out in laughter)

Ummm, because I didn't notice...  Maybe next time I should get you bright red slippers so we would notice.  

M didn't think it was funny.  He raced to put on socks and shoes - and luckily still managed to catch the bus!

Friday Night Fun

The kids and I had a wonderful, silly, fun evening tonight. I had initially thought we might go to M's school for their "family movie night", but he declared that he didn't want to see that movie. So, hmm. I didn't want a night of kids on computers. So what to do?

Get the whole family on electronics together! We had a Wiiment (Wiinament? Wii tournament).

A chose a boxing tournament. He beat us both.

M chose a bowling tournament. Close match. A won again.

I chose a golf tournament. A pulled that one off too, beating me by one stroke.

Then we each did our fitness age. I won that one, even beating my actual age.

Then we came upstairs and had luscious fudge-topped Ghirardelli brownies. Ummmm. *

After the brownies, M got silly. He was dancing around singing "Oh, do you know the muffin man?" So, I got silly too. I did a different dance to "Oh yes I know the muffin man". Then we danced together to "Yes we know the muffin man". Then we made A get into it too. We had to take the dance out into the living room so all 3 of us could lock elbows and sing and dance.

You know, reading that, it doesn't really sound that great. But really, it was fun and silly and terrific. We got all crazy-silly and had fun. And then the kids went and brushed their teeth and went to bed. (OK, they tried to procrastinate, but didn't get far with that - and really they went off to bed quite nicely.)

* and in the middle of writing this post D came home, so here I am finishing it up Sat night. D and I had a good long catching up chat and then went off to snuggle in bed. The kids were so quiet this morning I wasn't sure they were up (A was, M wasn't yet). And now, off to bed tonight...

Pie in the Face!

A had his Cub Scout pack meeting tonight. The one he's been waiting for for months - where he gets to pie a leader in the face (the prize for selling over $500 worth of popcorn).

First 2 of the leaders had a pie demonstration. The straight-forward pie in the face, the pie from below, the pie on top of the head, etc.

Here is the "pie sandwich".

When I've seen this done before, they've used whipped cream. Not tonight - it was shaving cream. Yuck!

A's leader, Ms. S, whom he chose to pie. She's ready!

Now, she's really ready, holding the nose and all.

The pie to the side of the face. A certainly looks like he's having fun!

The aftermath...

I wanted a picture of A with Ms. S, but he kept edging away, afraid she would smear him with "pie", so she got her messy hands out of the way.

A little bit of snow

On Friday, everyone was saying we would gets lots of snow on Saturday.  Yay!  Whoopee!  WOW!  Predictions were for 1-3 inches in our area.  Weather.com said it would snow all afternoon.  M was supposed to have a math tournament Sat morning, which D was also helping out at.  So, early Sat morning, D checked for messages to see if the tournament was still going on.  No messages, so we figured maybe they would just run the morning session and cancel the afternoon (tie-breakers and awards ceremony).  But no, they got up there at 7:30 only to find that the county had cancelled it.  So, they helped clean up a bit (and M got 2 donuts) and came home.

Meanwhile, we were settling in for snow-watch.  And sure enough, along about 11:30, it started snowing.  Big fluffy flakes.  Not sticking yet, as the ground had been a bit too warm recently, but lots of snow in the sky.  After a while, it was starting to accumulate on raised surfaces, so M and I went out for a bit of snow play.  We had a bit of a snowball fight and then thought about a snowman.  A snowball directly to my face (after we had announced a ceasefire), caused a break.

I thought we'd go inside, warm up, let some more snow accumulate.  After all, we now had about 1/4 inch and it was still coming down pretty hard.  An hour passed and hmmm, you could still clearly see where we had harvested the snow - in fact, you could see the under-surfaces quite clearly.  It was still snowing, and hard at times, but it had gotten very wet.  M and I eventually went back out and built a very small snowman (and got our gloves absolutely soaking wet).  Meanwhile, A was out playing in the snow with a friend.

I have photos, but Blogger isn't wanting to post them now.  I'll try again tomorrow.

Wow, do I feel silly!

I went to the eye dr last week to get my prescription checked. I figured I needed new contacts - after wearing the virtually the same prescription since I was 14. I figured that the dreaded middle-age vision problems were already starting to hit me. Ugh.

Well, the dr checked my eyes and my contacts and had me do all the various tests. Then when he handed me back the contacts, he told me to switch eyes with them. Yes, evidently I've been wearing them in the wrong eyes for months now!! Who knows how long? The funny thing is, that the left eye can seemingly see fine out of either contact, but the right eye is much better now that they are switched back. Still not perfect, so I'm getting a new pair (one contact is 8 years old, the other probably 15, so, its about time to retire them into reserve status).

The dr promised that the new contacts would have some sort of dot or hole to keep me from switching them.

Christmas Card photo shoot

I took the kids over to my mom's the other night to try to get photos for our Christmas card. Why her house? Well, her tree is up and decorated, but ours is not even purchased yet. We had thought to go on Saturday, but it started raining. Nope, standing in the rain, trying to find a tree just didn't sound like so much fun. So, we'll go tonight.

Here are some interesting shots that won't be included with the card this year...

M tired of all the photo shoot (or just not looking forward to it)

Being silly:

And more silliness:

Finally Zen-like acceptance that pictures will be taken...

He ATE a bug!

Actually A ate 3.5 bugs today. In Entomology class. With great glee and gusto. He came home with a pin proudly proclaiming "I ate a bug".

He says that he had 2 chocolate covered crickets ("They're yummy!"), a mealworm and the thorax of a roasted cricket (not so tasty). He also came home with a recipe:

1. Buy crickets at bait store
2. Roast crickets
3. Melt chocolate
4. Spoon on wax paper
5. Add cricket
6. Cover with chocolate

A says that there should be a 7th step to the recipe: Eat cricket

I don't think I'll be following this recipe any time soon (ever?!). Besides, what temperature do you roast crickets at??? I'm sure none of my cookbooks will tell me. Also, putting live crickets in my oven. Uhhh, NO.

Interesting side note - I had to sign a permission slip for A to be able to eat crickets. It seems that the exoskeleton of a cricket is similar to the chitin in shellfish, so I had to declare that he was not allergic to shellfish. Seems to be that the exoskeleton would be similar to the shell of say a shrimp, but not to the shrimp itself, but what do I know?

Sticker? What sticker?

Another interesting visitor on our camping trip was the lovely "Stinky Sweatsock Casserole" sticker. It was just lovely to have along. M got it out of one of his magazines the day before our camping trip. M put it on someone, they put it elsewhere, etc.

Well, Saturday night before we went, M put it on my pillow just before he went to bed. When I discovered the sticker, I snuck into M's room and put it inside his suitcase. HA.

So, when M went to get something out of his suitcase Sunday night or Monday morning, he found the sticker. "Hey, who put this in here?"

And then he put it on someone else.

Of course the whole idea is to put it on someone without their being aware of the sticker. We all wore the sticker at various times - some of us longer than others.

Here M realizes that he's just been "stickered".


Here's A with the sticker, not realizing quite yet that he's been "stickered".


And M wanted to make sure there was a picture of me with the sticker. I realize that the only way you can tell its me is by the hair, but still, there I am with a sticker.


At one point, the sticker tore when D took it off his back. D then managed to put half each on M and A. A didn't realize it and wore his sticker on his back for several hours. If you didn't look closely, it just looked like a graphic on the back of his shirt.

I think the other half got thrown away.

M was always pretty good at noticing the sticker on himself right away, so I had to resort to other placements. On his pillow in the tent. On the bottom of his sleeping bag. And the last one, on the way home, inside the pillowcase on his pillow - not to be discovered until he went to bed here at home. I haven't seen the sticker since then, so maybe I got the last laugh. Or maybe I just haven't discovered the sticker's new home...

Weekend with D & K

Here are the birthday boys just after lunch.


Uncle D had a good time being silly with both the boys.


Here Uncle D is getting ready to try to toss M into the air - just before they are getting ready to leave.


Aunt K enjoyed the boys too, only not with quite as much rough-housing.


We hadn't had overnight visitors (at least not of the adult variety) in a long while, so our guest room had been overtaken by its other uses - mainly my sewing room. It also does duty as gift wrapping area at Christmas. The bed makes a pretty good staging area for my projects. This is not even quite as bad as it was, but you can see that there was a long way to go before it was suitable for hosting guests.


By the time they got here, though, it was looking reasonably presentable.

I think I should put up something on the wall behind the bed - it looks altogether too bare.