Back from our Christmas trip

Actually we got back home on Sunday night, but I've been busy catching up on various things - like laundry, groceries, blogs, sleep, the cats, etc.  

The cats have kept us busier than usual.  When we got home and were greeting the cats, it was quickly apparent that Shadow had an issue - he had a huge lump on one side under his neck.  My mom had been faithfully feeding the cats  - and even bringing her newspaper over here to offer up a lap to any interested cat, but usually it was Pounce taking her up on the lap offer.  She said that she hadn't petted Shadow since Christmas eve and he didn't have a lump then.

Trip to the vet was in order for Monday, and from what the vet said, he probably hadn't had the lump on Wednesday.  Seems that Shadow got into a cat fight and ended up with an abscess.  So, he got shaved and poked (antibiotics) and we get to give him hot compresses and ointment multiple times a day.  He doesn't particularly like the treatment, but he forgives us and will come back and warm a lap within the half hour often.

We had a wonderful time visiting with all of D's family over Christmas - all of his family was there.  Lots of talking, good food, a few games, lots of fun.  But I'm glad to be back home now in my space.  Traveling at the holidays is tiring - there's even more to remember to pack than at other times.  And, of course, we managed to forget something - nothing big forgotten on the trip up, but we forgot 2 games and the fruitcake pan on our way home.  

I've got some pictures to post, but that will have to be for another day...

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).

gold mining

Our first full day of camping we actually left the park and went into Dahlonega. We went to see the Dahlonega Gold museum, which was quite interesting, but not very photogenic. Then we had a choice of 2 different gold mines. One was a tour of a gold mine (getting to go into an old mine), with panning and the other was looking at some equipment, but mostly panning for gold and gems. D and I agreed that while we would probably prefer the gold mine tour, that the kids would rather do the gold and gem mining. So that's what we did.

Here's M and A at a (fake) mine entrance.

Panning for gold.  We each found 6 or 8 flecks of gold.

The gold is actually from this mine, which is still being run, albeit only for generating sand for tourists to pan.

D and A are still panning for gold, while M has finished that and has moved on to screening his dirt for gemstones.  The gem mining was definitely the kids' favorite - enough so that we bought an extra, large bucket for them to do some more.  They both ended up with a nice collection of various rocks, including some emerald.

What's funny is that the gem dirt is from Franklin, NC - which is where we initially took the kids gemstone mining back when A was about 4, so probably 5 years ago.

As a final bit at the mine, they had a still.  D is trying to explain distilling to A.

Gone to the Falls

We're heading off tomorrow for a bit of a camping trip.  The weather forecast looks great, mid to upper 70's for highs and low 50's at night - couldn't ask for better camping weather.  We're heading off to Amicalola Falls for a few nights.  We'll see the falls, go visit the Dahlonega Gold mine museum, hike a bit (much to M's disgust - though he generally has a good time once we're actually hiking), sit around the campfire, etc.  Generally relax and not be bothered by phone, computer, chores, etc. 

I'm looking forward to getting out of the house for a few days, even if I'm not enjoying the packing right now!

A's home

It's good to have him back home. I picked up A and my mom at the airport this evening - almost perfect timing - I got there less than 5 minutes before they came up the escalator from the "secure" area. We had to wait a bit for A's luggage to come through (stupid system - you have to retrieve your luggage, clear customs with it, and then recheck it through to the main baggage claim - all because they now have international flights coming in at the far terminal, not the older "new" international terminal, where it used to work smoother). Anyway, I was there less than an hour, so not too bad - we got out of there about 2 hours after their flight landed.

I can't wait to hear more about the trip, but A was exhausted - it was 2 am London time by the time we got back home and he hadn't slept on the plane. I'm looking forward to spending some time with him tomorrow and letting him catch up on his sleep.

Globetrotting

A is off for another trip, globetrotter that he is.  He and my mom took off for London on Tuesday, not quite a week after we got back from Japan.  They will be visiting with my aunt in London and then going to a Elderhostel program together in Oxford - discussing children's literature - Harry Potter, Narnia, the Hobbit, His Dark Materials, among others.  A has been reading much of this material over the last year (and so has my mom).  

My mom took M on a big trip to London when he was in 4th grade, during February break - which they both thought was a wonderful trip, but cold and dreary.  She has said all along that she would take A also, but not in Feb. again.  So when she saw this trip and knew how much A likes Harry Potter, she arranged to take him.  Only, due to our trip to Japan, she had to plan for the end of July here - where A will actually miss the first week of school.  Oh horrors!  Not like they will do anything useful the first week anyway.

I talked to A and he is having a great time - they saw the tower of London today.  I hope they are taking lots of photos so I can see them when they get back.

Shuri-jo Castle

We went to visit Shuri-jo Castle yesterday, on the southern end of Okinawa. It was really cool (well, cool to see, but very hot temperature wise).

I think M was a bit disappointed that there weren't any swords, but we saw lots of the history. And the kids collected stamps at various way points, which they turned in at the end to get a page of stickers.

Initial entrance into Shurijo Castle:

One of the lions (lion-dog?) guarding the entrances, with A:

Another lion at a different entrance, with cousin B:

A, M, and B getting their stamps, showing that we have been to all the different stations around the castle:

interesting sights in Okinawa

We saw this strange fruit on a tree at the beach. I have no idea what it is:

A with the large suit of armor in front of a store.

Dragons are very popular here. This was in the middle of a shopping mall/arcade.

In the arcade, M and A decided to play a definitely non-American game, taiko drumming. They were supposed to follow along the beats and hit the drum at the appropriate time. As far as we could tell, they weren't penalized for extra hits though.

More taiko drumming. It was hard to figure out exactly what to do because none of it was in English, but they had a good time.

B loved watching TV or anything else "with my cousin".

Visiting the tidal pools

We've safely arrived here in Japan, currently visiting with K & I, and niece B. We're having lots of fun and mostly getting over our jetlag. Actually I seem to be the only one having much trouble with the jetlag. Both kids are sleeping fine (according to them). They (well all of us) went to bed around 9pm. The kids were still bouncing around. I was dragging. We were all up between 5:30 and 6:30 this morning. Unfortunately, I was also up from 2:30-4ish.

Yesterday we went to visit the tidal pools. Lots of fun.
We were all wading , mostly in ankle deep water or less.

a sea cucumber. We saw LOTS of them.

A really cool blue starfish. We tried to get it further out from under the rock - but no luck.

We saw lots more cool stuff - maybe more photos later...

GA Nature Center

Part of the reason to go camping this past week was that D had seen a reference to the Georgia Nature Center. It looked quite interesting - solar power, carnivorous plants and a "next generation home".

This is the guy who founded the nature preserve, in front of his solar panel array.

He's holding a carnivorous pitcher plant. He cut a dead one open for us so we could see the remains of the bugs it ate last season. cool. I managed to win us a tiny Venus flytrap plant. I hope we can keep it living. M tried to feed it already but the ant managed to escape.

Those 2 solar panels basically power the whole place (along with a small wind turbine that was down for repairs while we were there). They are "off the grid", so I guess if they get a bunch of rainy days they know to cut way back on power consumption.

He showed us his organic garden. They had a really pretty apple tree with light and dark pink blossoms - and red flesh! We didn't get to see the apples this time of year, of course, but D looked them up and WOW. Sometimes the apple flesh is really red!

He asked for some volunteers to "act like a deer". M and one of the high school seniors on the tour with us got picked. The 2 of them ambled towards the garden, and then squirt came the water. M got soaked!


He wanted to go change shirts then, but we were in the middle of the tour and a ways from the car. By the time we got back to the car, he was basically dry again.

Most of the organic garden was currently planted in a cover crop, but at the edge he had a bunch of blueberry bushes just loaded with blooms. And in front of them was some purple asparagus. I'd never seen purple asparagus before. He picked some and offered it for us to try it - yes, raw. It was actually quite good. It tasted a bit like baby pea pods. I wish I had a sunny spot for an asparagus bed!

Next up was the "next generation home". It looks really cool. I didn't get a good photo of it myself, so I borrowed one from their website:



The house is 1000 square feet - the top floor is all glass and the bottom floor is mostly underground - you can see that there are windows into the basement so its not all cave-like down there, though. It has all energy-efficient appliances, propane where applicable. No A/C, instead there is a geothermal earth tube to help heat and cool the house.

We were lucky that our tour group was quite small, so we were able to go inside the house. You couldn't have fit many more than the 15 of us on our tour inside comfortably and still been able to see things.

The kids got a little bored at times, but really overall they were quite interested, as were D and I. We spent about 2.5 hours on the tour and got to see lots of stuff. As usual, I could have spent more time, but it didn't feel too rushed. We all enjoyed the tour.

Camping Excursion

We finally got to go on our camping trip (delayed from Monday's not so nice weather).  It was beautiful weather. We left here early afternoon on Wednesday and made a pleasant stop at the next county's library (thank you, thank you, thank you for connected libraries and library cards good in multiple counties!) Armed with 3 bags full of books, we were ready to head on.

When we got to the park, we registered and started looking for a space. The rangers confirmed that we had a registration and said to just find an empty space. So, we start driving around. First loop, all the spots are full or have a little tag on the post. Same thing with the second loop. and the third. and the fourth and final loop. Umm, we do have a reservation and checkout is supposed to be at 1pm, and it is now 4pm, so where is our space??? We went back to the ranger office and ask for assistance. One guy finally goes off to do a reconnaissance. When he comes back, he has to confer with the other ranger for a bit before deciding that space 4, which says someone is still there until the next day, is really empty (the guy checked out a day early). So, finally we can go get set up.

Luckily, by now the kids are old enough to be of genuine help in setting up a tent. They may grumble a bit about helping rather than reading a book, chasing a lizard, poking each other with imaginary swords - but they can and did help. And in no time, we had the tent up, air mattress inflated, and sleeping bags and pillows in the tent.

Next stop - nature trail. Again, maybe not their first choice, but we all had a good time.

We found a cool tree where we all took a rest:

M decides to get silly with camera angles:

M is probably plotting how to get A!
 

As we continued on around the trail, the kids would race to touch the blazes on the trees. or cross a bridge first or whatever. A climbed under one bridge to be a troll. I guess that made the rest of us the 3 billy goats gruff?

A found a cool hole where a tree had been uprooted:

Here A is "king of the hill"

Every time there was a fallen log (and believe me, there were a LOT of fallen logs), A wanted to walk the log. Sometimes the log was too small, and there was one log that was cracked and broke while A was on it, but mostly the walks were just fun. A little out of the way, but what's a little extra log-walking, then running to catch up when you're 9?

Postponed

We were planning to go camping today. We'd been watching the weather to see when it looked auspicious. Yesterday afternoon, we checked and it all looked good, so we reserved a site for tonight. Then this morning, it didn't quite look so good. Chilly, misty and the outlook had changed from mostly sunny to all cloudy. Plus, the nature center we wanted to go to didn't have any tours today or tomorrow. So, change of plans. Now we're set to go out later in the week, when the weather might be more cooperative and when we know we can get a tour of the nature center.

If the weather had been better OR the nature center open, I think we would have gone anyway. But the thought of hanging out in camp in a drizzle didn't sound so appealing.

We're still trying to come up with a camp dinner that will appeal to us all. and that isn't hotdogs. Part of the problem is that most of the recipes I find for dutch oven cooking make way too much food for the 4 of us.

Almost Spring Break

Tomorrow is the last day of school before spring break. I'm ready for a week of sleeping in! I'm sure D is too, and maybe even M. M has been harder to get up the last few weeks - maybe his body is moving towards teenage sleep patterns. Or maybe he's just staying up too late and being lazy in the morning, because some weekend mornings he still tends to be up and moving plenty early.

We have some potential plans for being away during break, but they're very weather related. So its hard to know when we might go away. The weather forcasters don't seem to be able to agree day to day when it will rain or not. Plus its still the awful pine pollen season - everything is coated in yellow. Even the rain hasn't helped much. We had a downpour a few days ago which helped wash away the pollen for a few hours, but its back in force. Today's drizzle just accentuated the yellow mess. I hope we get another downpour and wash it all out - the pollen has a very annoying habit of getting in my eyes and under my contacts - ouch!

Planning a trip to Japan

We're hoping to visit D's sister and family in Japan this summer. This is the second time they've been stationed there and the rest of D's family visited last time, but our kids just seemed too young. This time around, however, at 9 and 12 (next summer) seems like a much better age - old enough to remember it and appreciate it.

M is getting particularly excited. He is hoping to see Samurai swords and something/anything about anime and manga. However, he is not so excited about the prospect of Japanese food. A isn't saying much about the trip yet, but he is interested in it and looking forward to eating more sushi.

D and I are pouring over the guidebooks he got from the library today and trying to figure out where we want to go exactly. All the recommended itineraries seem to have you bouncing all over the country every day or 2. Not what we're really looking for, especially with kids. Then there was an itinerary for families with kids in one book - perfect, I thought. Until I read it. It was all amusement parks - and not even Japanese ones really. They had Tokyo Disney, Universal Studios Japan, and Japanese Tivoli. No castles, no temples, no shrines.

Lots more looking and thinking to come. And hoping for some airfare sales!

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...

Wildlife

We saw various sorts of wildlife while we were in the Smokies.

Wild turkeys:


Deer. Lots and lots of deer.

We saw 2 deer in the campground the first evening, just 2 campsites over from us.

Then when we went on an evening hayride (in a flatbead 18 wheeler, or so it seemed), the person counting deer, supposedly counted 89. Wow. There were a LOT of deer, but I'm not sure there were really 89. 50 at least, though.

Squirrels aren't so odd to see, but this one came up really close. He stood right next to D's chair. If D had reached down, he could have touched the squirrel.


We even saw 2 bears - yearlings, we think. I took a picture, but can't for the life of me actually SEE any bears in the photo, so I won't post it here.

Good eating while camping

It was quite interesting getting ready for this camping trip. D and I discussed it as we pulled out the kitchen boxes - we think it was 3 years ago that we took all the kitchen gear on a camping trip. Wow. I can't believe it's been that long.

We've been camping plenty of times since then - just usually with the Scouts where they handle all the cooking needs. When we went camping this summer, we took a cooler and the marshmallow sticks (cooked the hotdogs on them for dinner one night too), but not the cooking boxes (we didn't have room for them in D's car). We've camping generally twice a year with the Scouts for going on 6 years now. And some years more often - though usually if they camp in the dead of winter I stay home to keep an eye on things. Yeah, right. I just don't like camping in freezing weather.

Anyhow, we decided to look for recipes for our dutch oven. We found a great one for lasagna. Only one problem - it feeds an army. This is after dishing out servings to each of us:

We did all go back and have seconds (the only other thing for dinner was bread, heated near the fire), but there was still a LOT of lasagna left! Enough that we all had it for dinner back here at home last night. And one serving that M had for lunch today.

We debated whether we could reheat the lasagna there at camp. We didn't end up trying to, but I think I will look into the idea. We all enjoyed the lasagna, but... there really was too much of it. I would definitely make it again if we had more people.

We made one other meal in the dutch oven - German pancake. Yum. D mixed up the batter here at home, so all he had to do in the morning was start the charcoal and cook the pancake. The recipe calls for dusting it with powdered sugar, but we hadn't brought any, so oops. I had thrown in some honey sticks at the last minute, so we each had a tube of honey on our pancake. Quite tasty.

Other meals weren't quite so fancy. We cooked sausages over the fire one night. Followed, of course, by s'mores. Sandwiches for lunch each day. And a mish-mash of fruit, sweet breads, yogurt, oatmeal, cocoa, coffee and tea for breakfast.

Just back from camping in the Smokies

The kids are on fall break from school this week, so we decided to take some time and go camping. We headed up to the Smoky Mountain National Park for a few days. We had a great time, but there's always lots to do to unpack from a trip - different from packing for the trip, but not necessarily easier.

We saw some great views of the mountains.


I've got a lot more pictures, but blogger is being very slow about letting me post them - so hopefully more tomorrow.

Now to sleep in my own bed!

A had a GREAT time at camp!

D and M and I headed up to North GA Friday night, so we could be closer to camp Sat morning. It was a great idea - we had about a 45 min drive to camp instead of 2.5 hours. That's a lot of difference on a Sat morning when we needed to pick A up at 10 am. We camped at Unicoi State Park. It was really nice, but unfortunately you have to go through Helen to get there (or at least that's the easiest route) and Helen is a parking lot on the weekends.
We got to camp and got A. He was very happy to see us - and full of stories about how much fun camp was. He had lost a shirt and towel (exactly why I send old towels to camp), but we were able to find both in the enormous lost and found bin. He was particularly happy to find the shirt as it was one of his favorites. Oh, and when we picked him up, he was wearing the yellow shirt again. Same one as in several pictures from camp. Yes, this one:


This was Sat night eating s'mores back at our campsite.

A tells me that my guess of soccer at camp was partly right - it was 6 ball soccer. Sounds wild!

After getting A at camp we headed to Dahlonega, hoping to do a gold mine tour/panning for gold and then some tubing. All the driving around to get A from camp and then the saga of having to go back to our campsite to try to snag another night's reservation (bad us for waiting so late to make campsite reservations!), we only had time to do one thing. The kids chose tubing - so tubing it was. It was fun. The river (creek?) was a bit shallow in places so we had to push ourselves off rocks at various times. Rather different from previous tubing I've done where the river was more like knee to waist deep and with a faster current. Though with the rocks right near the surface, this had a little bit of rapids feel - but just enough to be fun. No pictures from tubing - not going to take the camera tubing with me...

PR Fruit

A in front of a small banana plant.

The banana plant is not actually a tree, although some plants get to be more than 20 feet tall. Each plant grows one bunch of bananas and after those bananas ripen, the plant dies. This is a relatively small bunch. Our host said that some of their larger bunches weigh as much as 100 pounds!!! That's a LOT of bananas ripe at once. He said they eat a bunch, give their guest as many as they want, make banana bread, share with the neighbors. And when they are dealing with 100 lbs, often the neighbors goat gets some too.

This is a breadfruit hanging in the tree.


This is an avocado tree. They should ripen up sometime this fall, I think we were told.