News

I know I haven't posted an update in the while. Surprisingly, it's not because I don't have time, like you might think.

No, it's actually because we have set our machines to sleep/hibernate to save electricity. We have saved lots of power.

But one interesting side-effect is that since my machine is usually off, and I have to deliberately turn it on, I use it less. And since I use it less, I tend to get a few things done before I'm called away, and then it goes to sleep again.

So, I have had time to post, but just have been doing other things instead. Somehow, that feels like a good thing.

But, to get you up to date:

• Charlie is in to everything. He is crawling, pulling himself up, and walking along as he holds on.


• Neo went on vacation with Nanna and Poppa and a couple of other families. He had a really great time and came home with a pet hermit crab that he named, "Hermit".


• Christian and I made a do-it-yourself Earthbox. An earthbox is a pretty neat little invention for growing produce that uses minimal water and fertilizer and requires a minimal amount of tending to. I'm really excited about it and how easy it is. We have started some cucumbers, tomatoes, and jalapenos. If you would like to learn about the earthbox, check the website here. For a version you can build youself, just search on google. We made one in about 30 minutes.


• Neo and I have been playing Zelda on Wii. Neo is really good. We managed to work through the entire game/story. The game involves lots of reading, which was great summer reading practice for him. We just finished the game this morning with Neo beating Ganon. It was really exciting.


• There are some new pictures in various folders. Just click around.

So, that's it in a nutshell. Things are really good around here.

Labels: Charlie, gardening, Neo, vacation, Wii

We are back from our trip and had a great time. The plane rides all seemed to work out well. The hotel stay was nice. The rental car worked out. We did have a few hiccups, but overall, it had to be considered a great success.


Our view of the shuttle launch was brief like I said in the previous post, but the night launch was truly spectacular. You can see our view in the video below:



After the launch, we did quite a few things. We swam at the hotel pool and made a brief trip to the beach.


We also went to a interactive science museum called "Wonder Works". Probably the coolest part about the place is that the building is built as if it is an upside down house that crashed into another building:


We also went to a dinner magic show there that we all really enjoyed.

The trip also included a few games of putt-putt, a father son go-cart race, plenty of time in the car, fun in the hotel room, and ice-cream.


These few pictures don't really do the trip much justice though. You should really check them all out here.

Labels: space shuttle, travels, vacation

What an amazing launch, even though it was short. The low cloud layer caused the rocket to disappear pretty quickly, but for that short moment, we watched what seemed like the sun coming up. The sky lit up like a hole in space expanding to let in a light behind it.

I have a small video from my camera that I can post when we get back.

Overall, even though it was short, and the wait was long. It was worth it.

Now we are just enjoying the time remaining: relaxing, swimming at the pool, and having a good time.

Labels: vacation

On Friday we left for Bastrop State Park. Earlier in the week, I was able to book the last remaining cabin there for Friday night and Saturday night (Spring break just started so most places are full).

We left Friday afternoon and managed to get there before the sun went down. Thanks to my handy dandy Texas State Parks Pass that my brother got me for Christmas (great gift bub), we didn't have to pay to get in (which probably saved us close to $70 bucks for 3 days at 2 state parks). After checking in, we got to our cabin and unloaded. The cabin was very cool: it was one of the older cabins that was built in the park in the 1930's. It is a stone and log cabin made entirely of native woods. Right outside the cabin is a picnic area and fire ring which was nice. Reading some of the brochures, it looks like building the first 5 cabins like this proved to be way too time intensive and expensive than was planned, so the remaining cabins were wood framed.

Neo and I took off into the woods with his metal detector and searched around for about 45 minutes. At first we were only able to find pennies (we found 4), but then we found a ring (Christian said it was marked as 14K) and a musket ball/bullet. Not bad for 45 minutes. Neo was very excited. I was too... it's like treasure hunting :)

We built a fire and roasted some hot dogs for supper. Afterwards, we all fell asleep at different times... it was obvious we were all very tired.

The next morning, after some breakfast, Neo and I kicked the soccer ball for a bit, and then we walked around in the woods for a while. After we got back to the cabin, we loaded up the truck and took the scenic drive over to Buesher State Park. It is a beautiful drive down some very hilly and winding roads. Beautiful as it was, it was making Christian car sick, so we didn't do that again. At Buescher, we played at one of the playgrounds and had lunch. On the way back, we picked up some bait for fishing in the afternoon.

We went to the cabin and rested before heading back to Buescher to go fishing. Even though there is a nice lake right outside our cabin, we couldn't fish in the lake at Bastrop because it was closed to protect the breeding of the Houston toad.

Fishing at Buescher was great. As usual, Neo caught more fish than I did.

Then we went and ate at a little country restaurant called Maxine's. The food was pretty good, including some really good crawfish soup. It was made even better by the live blues music.

Our last day in Bastrop was the best one. After we checked out of our cabin, we got ready for a hike on one of the great trails. Right before we got on the trail, a gentleman hiking with his family (a large family) asked if he was going in the right direction to get back to the front gate. Now I knew that he was roughly at the midpoint of the circle, and he had a long, long way to walk back to the front gate. Not to mention, I had just drove it in the truck, and there were some really steep hills in there. I grabbed the map and showed him, and it looked like his heart fell into his shoes. I could see his wife and the rest of the kids approaching in the background, and I could tell that he REALLY didn't want to deliver this information. So I said, "can we give you guys a" and before I could say "ride", one of his daughters yelled "Yes!!". They all hopped in the back of the truck and we helped them get back to their camper.

After that, we went on our hike. The hike was really nice and a good workout. After we got back to the truck, we headed back to Buescher for some last minute fishing. This was awesome. We whipped out the coleman stove and Christian cooked some incredible hamburgers and bacon, and we had the best bacon cheeseburgers under an oak tree. Fishing with Neo was great. This time, he was casting and catching fish without any assistance at all. And of course, he caught more fish than me.

After that, we headed back to Houston. We had an almost perfect drive until we got to our exit in Houston. Right there, we sat in near standstill traffic for about 2 hours before finally continuing home.

It was a truly great and relaxing trip. It was so good, that I hardly remember that I was sick the entire time. That's how good it was.

The part I think I will remember most was while Neo and I were quietly fishing for the second time.

"Neo, you have to tell me how you catch those fish so good."

"Well, dad, you have to be patient." (I had been telling him this over and over when he would get bored or distracted.) "... you have to be patient, and watch your cork. And then... sometimes... sometimes you gotta kinda look at that cork... and you look at it... and you have to get mad at it a little bit."

"I need to get mad at it?"

"Yeah... you gotta get mad at it a little bit."

You can see the pictures here and you can see Neo's pictures in his March folder.

Labels: Neo, spring break, travels, vacation

Vacation pictures are up. You can find them here. Neo's pictures are on his page in his January folder.

Also, I started a personal blog for me. Many times I want to blog about technical stuff or personal things that don't really fit on the family blog, so I decided to make one for me, similar to Christian's blog. Today is also the first day of my diet and I want to blog about my successes and failures, so that was also motivation to start it. You can find it here.

Labels: technical, travels, vacation, website

I am sitting in the Orlando airport right now waiting for our flight back to Houston. Since we have quite a while to sit here, I figured I would check some email and also fill you guys in on our trip.

Overall, I am very pleased with our first big family vacation. I am anxious to go home and book our vacation for next year, although we have one last piece of information we have to settle before we can set it up. Not sure where we are going to go yet, but I do know we are going somewhere.

Neo had a great time traveling for the first time. He liked the plane ride and really enjoyed Disney World. He has taken a liking to roller-coasters and he and I rode all of 'em. He rode Goofy's Barnstormer, Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, and even Expedition Everest (Disney's new big coaster). It was so fun to ride those with him.

The cruise was also nice, although we dealt with a lot of health issues. Thankfully, no one got motion sickness although the boat was rocking like a horse sometimes. I started out with some sort of nasal infection. Neo picked it up as well, and eventually progressed to a full fever and he didn't want to get out of bed. Our last couple of days were spent in our stateroom trying to nurse him back to health.

It was almost funny how many things started to hit us during the cruise. The ship was bucking like a rodeo horse. Neo was sick. Then the paint and varnish fumes filled our room which made us nauseated. Then while we slept in the 8 foot waves, our closet doors would slide back and forth and slam up against the closet walls. Christian and I got up about 5 times to engineer different solutions using towels, shoes, luggage, life vests, etc. Neo woke up this morning and started walking like a zombie to the bathroom and made a very angry comment about the bathroom door rattling in the night... Christian and I were laughing pretty hard.

So, even though the cruise was not ideal, I understand that travelling with children will never be ideal. We made the most of it and made lots of good memories. Funny stories to ask us about... the banana in the bag, "take a left at the pineapple", and "if you want a cake, ask for one". haha... I'm laughing just writing them down.

I don't have pictures up on the website yet, but I will soon. We took pictures both with Neo's camera and with ours so we have quite a few. I will let you know when I have them up on the websites.

We had a good first trip, and I am looking forward to many more family vacations.

oh yeah... How bout dem Saints!!! Who Dat!! ... that made the vacation just a little bit sweeter :)

Labels: travels, vacation