Here are some additional pictures from our volunteer work last week at the Poodle Rescue Society of Houston.
Archive: October 2014
Poodle Rescue of Houston
One of Mikaela’s long standing dreams is to be more involved with dogs. Shortly after we moved to Houston, she began researching Houston organizations that allowed 12 year olds to volunteer. The only one that she was able to find was Poodle Rescue of Houston. After we purchased our Houston home, we discovered that Poodle Rescue of Houston was located very nearby, in fact about 100 yards as the crow flies; slightly longer if you aren’t allowed to climb a fence to get into the back end of the property.
Poodle Rescue of Houston currently has over 140 dogs that they are looking after (in a facility geared toward handling 70 dogs). Last year they adopted out over 500 dogs, pretty much all with a reasonable cost to the adopters, so they are not giving the dogs away, but are trying to ensure they are going to good homes.
A couple of Saturdays ago, Daelynn (who apparently also likes dogs), Mikaela and myself (Ben) attended the monthly volunteer orientation session. It turns out that 12 year olds can volunteer, but need a parent with them until they are 14 years of age, which resulted in me filling out the volunteer form as well. We will probably be going a couple of times a week for volunteer work with the dogs. This consists primarily of taking dogs from their cages to a larger area, letting them run, and then petting and cuddling them for a while.
Here are some pictures from our first volunteer and training visit. (Lori had to go too due to the need for adult supervision).
One Year Ago Today
Layne and Elissa, October 19, 2013
A Beautiful Wedding
Concentration
Layne With His Younger Sisters
Layne With His Younger Brothers
A Beautiful Day, and a Terrific Wedding Party
The Calgary Brothers (we sure miss them)
This Looks Fun…
A Beautiful Reception (in a fantastic location!)
A Great Candid Shot Of the Newly- and Happily-Wedded Couple
Many Happy Memories From That Day
Congratulations On Your First Anniversary!!
A Few Pics From Our Recent Trip:
Strolling Through the Glenmore Reservoir Park
Frisbee: The funny thing was, a family stopped and watched us for several minutes.
As has been mentioned before, if there’s a river, lake, creek, stream, swamp, ocean, or other body of water, the Huber family traditionally throws rocks into it. Ask one of us what happened this day…
You can see why we miss these guys.
Wetsuit time at the Huber pool
Things are cooling down in Houston, although it is still 81 degrees as I write this just before 9:00 pm on a Friday night in early October. The cool down includes the pool, so last Saturday we got out the wetsuits (originally purchased way back when for our Oregon trips). In Fact over the years, you’ve probably seen pictures of all of the kids wearing them. They work quite well in cutting down the chill from the water. But they also provide some extra buoyancy, which is welcome to some of our kids who have heavy bones and don’t float well (like Davison).
So here are a couple of pictures from this evening. They aren’t very good as I took them with my iPad (no flash) and then used Photoshop Touch to jack the light way up.
Galaxy Trucker Revisited
In my last post I talked about the fun that we were having with the pass and play portion of the Galaxy Trucker iPad app. Over the last couple of days we (Dad, Davison, Brock) have been exploring the Campaign mode of the game. This is more of a longer term adventure where you are travelling around and exploring a galaxy (well in all likelihood it will be a very small galaxy with fifty locations or so). On each leg of the trip you are competing against 1 to 3 other ships in building your ship and then going through a number of adventures cards trying to accumulate credits and keep uour ship together. In this mode, the ship building phase is like the physical game where dexterity, speed, and mental clarity are all needed. I’m more of a meticulous ship builder, taking the time to get it, but usually being the last ship to be built which puts you at a disadvantage during the adventure resolution part.
Brock, on the other hand is rather haphazard, usually using each piece that he turns over (whereas you normally put them back in the pile if they don’t fit in with your plans) and building a less than complete and optimal ship. The funny thing is that he is doing it so quickly that the competing computer players also end up with rather haphazard ships as well. On one of the runs that Brock did yesterday, after he built his ship, he observed, “Oops, I forgot to give it any engines.”
Davison and I watched him tonight, and snagged the following screenshot of Brock trailing (that’s his ship at the bottom of the screen consisting of two modules. – crew module and an engine, the two bare essentials to finishing a run) with 3 adventure cards yet to turn over. Brock ended up winning this run, as the ship in front of him got blown to bits and his was the sole ship to complete the trip.
iPad gaming fun: Galaxy Trucker
A couple of days ago, the Galaxy Trucker app for the iPad came out, so I promptly spent the required $4.99 to pick it up. We have enjoyed the physical boardgame for a number of years (although my brain doesn’t seem to work as fast as the kids, and the speed/dexterity limitations encountered usually meant that I ended up with inferior pieces and usually launched my ship last). Last night, Brock, Davison and I had a pass-n-play game of it. We went three rounds which took quite a long time. The ship building mechanism is turn based so mental laggards such as myself have a chance to compete.
Brock enjoys building ships with the physical game, but struggled a bit more with this one where you had limited pieces initially available and had to visualize a little further out on what you wanted your ship to look like.
Anyhow, here’s some screenshots after we finished round two of the game. Brock had lost about half of his ship to asteroids and pirates. I think Davison (“Dude” in the screenshots) had lost a handful of components on the right hand (would that be “starboard”) side of his ship, and mine made it through intact. The iPad implementation of the game is very good.
