Spring is being quite fun this year (albeit pretty rainy). In the picture the tree on the right is in our back yard, while the two farther to the left are in our neighbor’s yard. I think the dark pink one is a peach tree. I have no idea what the tree in our yard is, but it dropped a lot of leaves and pods into the pool over the past few months.
On this Saturday afternoon Mikeala and I were taking a walk in the next door park. We came upon huge patches of clover, and we kept seeing beautiful flowers and picking them until we had a bouquet full of wildflowers. We talked about how God can make such little details, and how thankful we are for them.
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.
it is starting to be springish here in Houston, and I’ve been out doing some yard work. In our front yard there is a section which used to have a couple of large trees in it (as you can see in this picture from Google street view).
Here is what that part of our yard (to the right of the driveway) currently looks like.
One of the things that we’ve done in that area is planting a couple of peach trees. It will be at least a couple of years until we get any peaches, but here is a picture of one of them with some blooms on it.
This one had blooms on it when we purchased it so, We can’t lay claims to having green thumbs yet. We also planted some raspberries and grapes in the back yard, and are also hoping to plant a lemon and a pomegranate tree as well.
On Christmas morning (after we opened stocking stuffers, but before we opened presents), we sang some songs, read a scripture passage and then did a wee bit of reminiscing about Christmas’ past. Here’s the video of the reminiscing part.
Hmm, according to my thesaurometer, I’ve already used up my quotient for the year for the word “reminisce”.
Ben
One of our family traditions is to open stocking stuffers during breakfast on Christmas morning (and to make sure everyone has a few small stocking stuffers). Part of this tradition is that the Huber guys get one or more matchbox cars as part of their stuffers. For your enjoyment is a timelapse video of our fun Christmas morning breakfast together. The young man in black with his back to the camera is Rett, who was able to spend a couple of weeks with us around Christmas this year.
I opened one of my regular gifts before breakfast, as I knew that it was a kit for the iPad which provided a tripod mount for it. I setup the iPad on a tripod, and kicked off the time lapse video recording, taking one shot every 5 seconds. Post video, there was some additional doctoring done to slow to down a bit (extending the video from the original 35 seconds out to about 2.5 minutes, adding some old video artifacts, and a (questionable) soundtrack.
Hope you enjoy it! Today we’re hoping to head off to Galveston and to hit Rudy’s BBQ with Rett.
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.
Spaceman Ethan
Davison experiencing zero G
the timid (or undertall) Brock Spaceman
The older kids having fun
Ethan and Davison flying space vehicle with very uncomfortable looking seats
Hard seats, joystick controls, space – here we come!
The ever ebullient Brock
Brock lands the lunar lander
Brock with sub-optimally placed control panel.
Brock in the alien building display
Brock building an alien
Brock checking out a display
Space travel mockup
Brock’s bearded alien
Brock’s long-beard alien
When dealing with the gallery format, you can get the full picture by double-clicking on it which opens a window with full gallery mode (which also allows you to comment on individual pictures). Enjoy!
The second stop on the tram tour was at the Rocket Park. Out front, they had some older rockets which were used for early Mercury missions and to push early satellites into orbit. The big feature was inside the building, where a Saturn V rocket was on display. This is the rocket that got men to and from the moon back around the time that I was born. My photos from this part aren’t really complete, as I was engaged in some other creative work, which will show up in one of the next couple of posts. But there are pictures of people here who you know and love, so if you want to find out more about just the rocket side, there’s some good sources on the Internet.
Rocket fuselage flagThis is a picture of the lower fuselage (I’m sure there is a more ‘rockety’ term, maybe ‘Stage 1 ancillary exterior’).
Mikaela, Kiersten, and HeidiHeidi, Mikaela, and KierstenEthan, Heidi, Mikaela, Kiersten, and BrockBy this part in the tour, the younger ones were done with reading exhibits and walking slowly.
The view from near the topLooking down the length of the Saturn V rocketA couple of pictures trying to capture the size of the rocket.
Rocket factsSome facts about the Saturn V rocket.
Lori, Danaya, and DaelynnSome of my most favorite people in the world.
Lori and Daelynn look at the detailsA larger viewDanaya, Dad, and Daelynn check out the nose section of the rocketAnd to finish off this particular post, here are some pictures of us looking closeup at the rocket. These pictures were taken of the top of Stage 2 showing the fuel (or possibly oxygen) tank, as well as looking up into the next stage. I haven’t taken the time to really understand how this rocket worked, but I’m guessing that the big open space that we are looking at was where the lunar lander was located during the trip into space.
This was the second and last stop on the tram tour, I think I have two more posts and then we’ll be done with Space Center Houston.
On the tram ride, there were two buildings that we stopped to tour. This post is about our tour of the
Space Vehicle Mockup facility. We were pretty happy to get there, as we were all pretty cold from the Tram cross-campus trip. the Space Vehicle Mockup FacilityThis building is one that the astronauts use to train on different space vehicles, mocked up in real life. The tour consisted of walking down a second floor hallway with full glass windows overlooking the facility. I didn’t see any astronauts, but took pictures of some of the other nifty things.
Soyuz capsuleThe Soyuz capsule is the current way to get to and home from the International Space Center. (At this point I need to make the caveat that the knowledge being shared here is not extensively researched, but is from my memory, so while I believe it to be the case, it may not be strictly true). It is launched on Russian rockets from Kazahkastan, and currently is the primary vehicle to and from the ISS.
future Astronaut BrockI’m not sure what to say about Brock, other than he and I stuck closely together during the tour.
Non-cutting edge stuffSome of the things, particularly the work areas didn’t look really cool. You’d probably never try and sell lockers as “designed and used by NASA”, but I guess to keep costs down, you don’t really need outer-space looking designer lockers, computers, screens or tools.
NASA approved sewing machineOn one of the tables, were two of these sewing machines. Just image the sales pitch that you could come up with for those… “Singer sewing machines, used by astronauts for holes in their suits, just imagine what they could do for you”.
Vehicle docking trainerThis particular item was used for training in docking vehicles. Apparently, the docking apparatus has to be pretty versatile, as I guess you don’t want to bounce off it, or dock haphazardly in space. It looks less unwieldy (maybe you could say “it is more wieldy”) than the apparatus seen elsewhere used for docking supply ships to Skylab.
Robotic prototypesI didn’t quite catch the tour guide’s talk about these, but I’m thinking that they are different robotic prototypes that were in development at some point, or are really great and will be used going forward.
Quadtaur? Centquad? Decoy?Here is a bigger picture of the quad-sort of thing. I’m not sure what use it would be, other than the obvious quad like functionality that it seems to have. Do you talk to the robot front half of the machine? “Let’s go a 2.3 miles southeast, but watch out for barbed wire”. Do you pull on his ears to steer? The seat also looks a bit uncomfortable for bouncing around the lunar landscape.
Book reading robotI also am not sure the functionality of this particular robot is or was. The tour guide talked about how sensitive the touch and movements were in that the robot could turn individual pages of a book. Come to think of it, Brock can do that too!
Orion capsuleThis one is interesting as it is one of the new Orion capsules, the first of which they just flew on its first test-flight this week. It is supposed to be the next version of NASA space vehicle, likely more functional and comfortable than the old Mercury and Apollo capsules ever were.
Space habitats of the futureThese were possible future space habitats, maybe picture them on the surface of the moon or Mars, or the pages of a Popular Science magazine from 30 years ago. I guess if you are going to live on the moon you have to sleep and eat somewhere. They seem like they would feel a little constricting though.
NASA space buggyThis is a possible vehicle for getting around some distant planet, moon or asteroid, maybe while wearing a bulky space suit. The tires and undercarriage seem like massive overkill- they remind me of the wheels and tires that we used to install on cultivators (an oversimplification of my Dad’s business while I was growing up). It would have been fun to have seen someone trying to drive this around, but alas no astronauts were training that day. I guess that astronauts get Saturdays off as well.
That wraps up the first building of the tram tour. Please forgive any mocking tone that you detect while discussing NASA technology. I’ve heard (but need to get this post done without being sidetracked any further, so am not researching this) that the computers in the space shuttles were 386 computers, like the one that I bought in 1990. Given that the last one flew in 2011, that’s pretty old technology.
I didn’t get a picture of this, but one of the strange things about driving around the Johnson Space Center campus were all of the classic-type bicycles (i.e. pre-dating 10 speeds, anyone remember those?) parked around the campus. My take is that people use them to get around the large campus from building to building, or maybe ride them from their cars to their offices. There certainly wasn’t room for any of them to hop on the tram.
Brock: “I’m just like a guy who works in a gift shop. I’m decorating gift wrap.”
So fun doing lessons with this guy
Heidi makes Dutch Babies for our lunch.
And, sadly, our dead tree
