It’s been almost two weeks since we dropped Daelynn off at the airport as she jetted off to Calgary for three weeks. Being a contrarian, or possibly better described as a photo-oddarian, I enjoy taking pictures of people taking picture of other people. (If I end up getting a couple of the iPhone packing kids in on the act and positioned people correctly maybe we could get into recursive photo taking).
So without any further blather, her are some pics of the photo shoot at the airport.
On Sunday afternoon, we were at another family’s home for a birthday party. They love on a couple of acres and have goats and chickens. But those animals are not what this post is about. The neighbor’s dog, Skeeter, was over and brought his not-altogether-hygienic tennis ball with him. While Brock was a little hesitant (see the picture of him tentatively reaching under the dog to get the ball), he played a little throw and fetch with Skeeter.
Forget that you read the title of this post. You just went and re-read it didn’t you. You do know that re-reading it will make it harder to forget, right?
Anyhow, in some remote country side area (like Lego-Kansas or somewhere), lives a simple Lego farmer with his old fashioned hay pitch fork. He’s going about his business (feeding Lego-hay to Lego-farm-animals who can’t eat it and also don’t make a whole lot of Lego-manure) which given the parenthesised description is somewhat pointless (unlike his pitch fork). Let’s call him “Farmer”.
One of the rides that we had really looked forward to going on was the wooden rollercoaster, “the Boardwalk Bullet”. Grandpa Ron and the boys didn’t go on it, but everyone else did, once. It was quite the ride, going 50+ mph, a 92 foot drop, and a lot of bone-jarring, head-ache inducing, whiplash type of stuff going on. Daelynn and I went back in the afternoon and rode it a couple of additional times. We tried one run sitting in the front of the ride and one in the back of the ride. I liked going in the front better as you could see where you were going and anticipate things a little more.
The train ride was interesting and it took you all around the boardwalk area. Since the boardwalk is owned and run by a restaurant company, there was quite a lot of restaurant advertising during the tour, and indeed there were a lot of restaurants handy.
The Rockin’ Rocket was a fun ride for the younger set; it didn’t get too exciting, but we went on it a few times.
I don’t have a picture of it, but some of us (Dad, Danaya, Daelynn, and Mikaela) went on one ride a handful of times. It was one where you were belted in, and then were lifted up a pole and dropped from a couple of hundred feet up (it felt like about half a mile, but I don’t think it was that high) to free-fall for a couple of seconds before splatting on the pavement being brought to a gradual halt.
Another one of the fun rides was the boat swing, in this case with a Pharoah theme. The first time that I went on it I was with Brock. It was a little much for Brock and he hung on for dear life.
Brock: “I’m just like a guy who works in a gift shop. I’m decorating gift wrap.”
Notice that the sticker on his back assures us that he is Organic, thanks to sister Mikaela’s apple.
So fun doing lessons with this guy
Heidi makes Dutch Babies for our lunch.
You probably can’t see the cute little green frog in Brock’s net, but he is there.
Davison enjoys a spring day
Nighttime swimming
Some backyard views
Behind the rosemary plant is one of our new baby Meyer lemon trees.
Our new baby pomegranate tree
More babies: a blueberry bush, a lime tree, and a Meyer lemon tree
Our two baby peach trees
And, sadly, our dead tree
Afternoon of the wildflowers
Rainy days with friends and a crackling fire
Thanks for joining me as I roam through a few weeks of pics!
On the Friday before Valentine’s Day, we participated in a church sponsored progressive dinner for couples, being the final stop, serving desserts. Being inspired by the photo booth at Grandpa and Grandma’s 50th anniversary party, we decided (the day before) to do something similar. We happen to have a lot of dressup clothes for girls, ladies, Knights, monkeys, dogs and M&M’s – but not a lot of dressup clothes and props for grown men. So we scrambled for props, and managed to come up with a few. Meanwhile, Danaya and Daelynn were focused on making the desserts to serve our guests. They baked up a wonderful set of desserts including cheesecake, creampuffs, a chocolate caramel flan, and something else I think. We realized after that we missed taking a picture of the food layout.
Here are some pictures of our kids (with friends) taking advantage of the photo booth setup and props.
One of the areas at Space Center Houston that the younger set enjoyed was the kid’s play area, with an Angry Birds theme. Many thanks to Daelynn who took most of these pictures.
I am way, way behind on my Hubcrate posts (I have a bunch to pull together including Mikaela’s birthday, some from the visit of Cam & Coralie Koch & family, and Brock’s birthday). But in the meantime, here are some pictures that I found on the camera.
And with a bit of down-time with American Thanksgiving, I’ll try and get some of those other posts queued up.
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.
Newberg, Oregon has a couple of really fun playgrounds. Following is a sequence of pictures that Lori took at one of them.
