Mom’s raspberry bush is coming on strong. She picked 4 cups in one day recently. The only problem is that Mom and Alice are the only one who will eat raspberries and Alice doesn’t like them all that much. The strawberries did OK but not great this year (which we all liked) but they’re done for the year it seems. We have been eating a lot of split peas as well. What hasn’t come in for Mom are tomatoes. This is primarily because some critter likes to eat tomato plants. Not the tomatoes, but the entire plants. Mom’s only hope is the “upside down” tomato plants she has on the back porch.
After Corwin’s camp concert I headed out for the annual rocket club rocket launch. Unfortunately I had not spent any time in the last year on fixing my rockets so my fleet was very thin. I ended up only doing two flights, both on the same rocket (which is the main one I flew last year as well).
Corwin had two or three flights on his rocket from Webelos. I spent most of my time helping out the club mainly by running launch operations and Corwin can prep and launch his rocket without my aid so I am not quite sure how many flights he had. But at least two.
Coincidentally Alice was attending a birthday party at the vocational college next to the park so Mom gathered the crew and dropped the Boyen off with me while she and Alice went off to party1. After the party Charles left so it was just Corwin and me until closing time. I made Corwin help shut down but he wanted to look at the single vendor who had shown up. In the end Corwin persuaded me to buy him a mid-power rocket kit and some motors. We’ll see if it ever gets put together.
1 Literally true for once!
Corwin ended his week at music camp this morning with a final morning concert. It was good, especially for a group of kids who have only been practicing for a week. I tried to take pictures but Corwin spotted me and looked the other way as much as possible. I found it easier to take pictures of his seatmates than him. Seatmates who turned out to be mostly girls, which is probably why he may well not have actually spoken to any of them the entire week. Certainly Corwin never confirmed doing so, despite being asked about it multiple times.
We think Corwin enjoyed the experience, although it would definitely be better if we could find some other kids he knew to attend with him.
Alice can jump off the fence on to the swing on her own. Mom even rigged up a bit of twine so that Alice can pull it up to herself once she is on the fence.
Corwin is spending the week at summer music camp. It’s at the local university with lots of out of town students. For them its an away camp but Corwin just commuting in. It’s right near Alice’s day care but Corwin has to be there long before Alice can get ready in the morning. Fortunately we can pick them up at the same time.
We had hoped that Corwin would participate in some of the evening activities but that’s been a losing battle. Now we just hope he speaks to one of the other students while he’s there. Unfortunately no one he is friends with is attending so it’s a bit of a forlorn hope.
The kids have been enjoying a revival of Nerf activity. This made Charles sad because he didn’t have the right darts for one of his guns. Being the kind of Dad who likes to see his children properly armed, I ordered him some more darts plus a medium sized military style ammo box for the darts. Charles really liked the box, although it didn’t end up on the Sleepy Time Crew (it was close, though).
The kids spent a lot of time playing Nerf with their male cousins which was a good way of keeping them busy and occupied. We could also keep them busy by sending them out to collect all the darts that ended up all over the house.
We effectively celebrated Father’s Day on Saturday. Mom took the kids out for some shopping while I relaxed at home, recovering from vacation. They returned with a Father’s Day card and a gift. Mom didn’t want to give the card to me herself, as I am not her father, so she gave it to Alice to give to me. Alice promptly put it on the table so she could show me some of the drawing she was doing. However, the gift was nice — a drum set for Guitar Hero: World Tour. I played with it for a while then let Corwin try it out. He failed! Which leaves the drums to me. Bwahahaha!
We were able to try band mode. Mom plays guitar and we put Charles on bass, on the theory that someone who plays the cello is best suited to playing bass / rythm guitar. Charles had some emotional issues when he didn’t do as well as he wanted. However, we found that this version has a “beginners” mode which ignores which fret is active so as long as the player presses something and strums it counts. Charles was able to do that and play along. Later he tried “easy” again and had some struggles with it but is now able to (mostly) not fail. Mom and I think he likes that, as he displays what I think of as his “sternly happy” face, the kind of look he gets while he’s doing something that appears to cause him pain but he insists on doing repeatedly. All we need now is Alice on vocals! She likes to play the drums with the game turned off but she told me that her instrument was going to be the piano.
In other old news…
Charles built a new mothership. He actually disassembled his “old mother ship”: because it was “obsolete”. I think the new one is modeled on the Kuun Lan
Corwin broke his violin. His strings were getting worn or dirty or something and Mom gave him new strings to put on the violin. It turns out, however, that it’s a Bad Idea to replace a violin’s strings by taking all of the old strings off then putting the new strings on. Once all the strings are removed, the bridge falls off and sounds posts inside the violin topple. The bridge we had some hope of putting back but the sound posts — those were a bridge too far. This was of course a few days before a recital leaving no time for it to be sent off for repair. Luckily Mom managed to locate a graduate student in music who had the tools and expertise to make the repair (which is just positioning the posts in the correct location then putting strings on, but if you don’t have the tool to reach inside or any knowledge of where the posts go, it can be a bit of a challenge). This also had the good side effect of not encouraging Corwin to repeat that style of string replacement in order to avoid practice for a week.
We sent Charles’ cello in later for bridge work as apparently the humidity of the summer here caused his bridge to swell enough to make it very difficult for him to push the strings down to the fret board. Corwin was quite envious of Charles’ instrumental lack.
We have started forcing Corwin to go to the health club / gym. Given that I am strongly unmotivated to do so myself, this has been challenging but I think Mom is up to it. Jack is also a member and we have suggested arranging to go together but Corwin just mumbles non-committally.
Alice had her screening for kindergarten a while back, to see if she’s ready. Mom thought it would just take a short time but she ended up staying there for quite a while. The problem, it seems, was that Alice had too large a vocabulary. The test for that required continuing unti a sufficient number of wrong answers out of a set was achieved and Alice just wouldn’t miss enough words. Clearly we will have to tone down our linguistic efforts in our domicile in order to ameloriate consternation for future occurences of this phenomenon.
Mom has decided that because we’re spending the summer without external help and no swim team, the boys need to do something besides electronically entertain themselves. One thing that came up was learning Spanish. From previous efforts, we have a Windows based Spanish learning program, and one for the Nintendo DS. For no apparent reason Charles decided he would try out Spanish on the DS. He seems to like it well enough so far, enough that he undertook to translate the Santa Theme from Invader Zim in to Spanish.
se inclinen, se inclinen, antes de que el poder de Santa.
o se pondrán aplastado, se pondrán aplastado por … las botas de alegre condenado!
Alice has also taken to this because one feature of the DS version is that it will record your voice so you can play it back to check your pronunciation or compare to a recording of a native speaker. Alice doesn’t pay attention to that, she just uses it as a voice recorder to hear herself saying rude things.
We saw “Corwin Tile and Carpet” on the way back.
Alice learned to buckle herself in to the van, which is very nice.
While we were waiting in lines for the Town Lake Bats, Charles spotted a BNL cup on top of a cabinet across the room in the boat on the water behind a partially closed door. It took me a bit to spot it even after he pointed it out. But Charles’ eagle eye immediately picked it out from the clutter. It’s good that he’s learning what’s important in life.
As we close this adventure, I will end with a Five Dolphin Salute to Texas —
We’re trying to adjust back to the daily grind of life at home. Alice had dance class this evening, the first scheduled event since our return (I forgot about Boy Scouts for Corwin — bad Daddy!). Mom got in a bit of trouble for not having Alice’s hair correct, since she missed last week. It must be in a ballet bun and have a silver or grey scrunchie. Apparently it’s like martial art belts.
We spent the entire day driving. Besides Mom dodging some serious weather and potential tornadoes with her mad driving skillz, here’s what the kids remember best from their time in the car.
We spent the morning packing, met Uncle Bruce for lunch, then watched Dawson play some indoor soccer. In Texas this means that you can bounce the ball off the side of the arena which makes for a much faster game, although a bit harder on the goalies.
Oddly, the traffic from Georgetown to Dallas was thick with frequent stops, but once we hit down town Dallas everything cleared up. We were stopped for an hour on the road by a nasty traffic accident — a truck hauling a camper had flipped over, both truck and camper. A medevac helicopter flew in to take people away.
After all that, we still made it to Texarkana before midnight.
Cousins, for no particular reason
Corwin made pancakes for us this morning, and Mom discovered why it can be a bad idea to teach a young chef to cook on an induction stove and then let him loose on a normal stove. When Corwin was done, he simply turned off the pan and left it just like he would at home. Naturally, the remains were baked on to the pan. On the other hand, it’s a great “when I was your age, stoves didn’t instantly cool down when you turned them off”.
After that we had a slow morning and then went off to have lunch with Mimi at Auntie Nong’s restaurant, a Thai one in downtown Georgetown. The best part was crushing Uncle Evil’s fragile ego like the ego of an insect that it is. Mimi decided to pay for lunch and went to get her credit card. At this point Uncle Evil trumped her by having his credit card already out. He, of course, like a standard villian, decided he should take the time to gloat. While he was pointing out the cleverness of his pre-emptive action to Mimi, I gave Nong my credit card behind him. By the time Uncle Evil finished gloating, I was signing the check. The look on his face at that moment is something I will treasure for years1.
Then we wandered around the Georgetown square which had some kind of farmers / artists market. We had to a picture of a market for Alice’s class. While we were there, we ran in to Kimberly looking just as cute as ever. I tried to get a picture of her with Corwin but Corwin refused to get within 10 feet of her. I susppose telling him I was going to sell him to Kimberly’s father for $12 didn’t help with that. Uncle Evil even tried a compliance grip on him but it wasn’t enough. Kimberly, observing this, said in a voice tinged with excitement and wonder “he’s afraid of me?”.
We high tailed it out of there to visit some a former and once again co-worker, his wife, and their 6 week old baby. Then we went back to Mimi’s house and got some pizza. Uncle Evil and I were sent out for it. While we were there Uncle Evil started a chest thumping contest and I think the local staff thought they might have a bar room brawl on their hands.
After pizza we watched Mimi feed the raccoons and then headed back to Uncle Craig’s to sleep. He and his family had long since crashed out.
1 Another family member pointed out that perhaps Uncle Evil was playing a deeper game, because on what basis is it reasonable to presume he would pay for lunch in the first place?
We didn’t hurry this morning but we managed to get on the road by 9 AM. Dawson and Charles even managed to get waffles at the free breakfast which they had missed yesterday. It was a easy drive back despite the fact that Mom and I were groggy from Alice’s sleeping style. With seven of us in one hotel room, we ended up having Alice in our bed. The first night wasn’t so bad but last night Alice was a little whirlwind who kicked me in the head at least twice and had a strong need to stay in touch with my back via her knee. At one point she woke me up with too full a bladder to get back to sleep and when I returned from the bathroom I could see she had attached herself to Mom in the interim.
We hung out at Uncle Craig’s when we got back for a while, then went out for some Putt-Putt in the blazing Texas heat and sun. Corwin didn’t do so well overall but he did get the first hole in one.
We went back to Uncle Craig’s house with a plan to bother Mimi in the evening but Mimi was concerned about the weather. Last night they had some quite fierce weather with high winds and strong hail, although we didn’t get a drop in San Antonio. Another large thunderstorm cell had developed and Mimi thought we might get swept off the road or have our cars trashed from hail so we just stayed at Uncle Craig’s. We saw lots of dark clouds and lightning in the distance but no actual rain or hail locally.
P.S. Both Uncle Craig and Ashlyn found scorpions in the house today. Craig put his in a cup so the boys could see a live one. They were thrilled, especially to think one might crawl in to a shoe overnight.
We were able to sleep a little later this morning because we were only 5 highway miles from SeaWorld. We got there just before 10 AM, got great parking, and went in with the initial crowd. There wasn’t much open so everyone went to feed and touch the dolphins. We did more rides, saw the penguins and puffins, and other things.
Our main morning excitement was Corwin gouging his knee while walking on the edging bricks of one of the walkways. I forbade him from doing that anymore until his knee healed. He didn’t pay much attention, but when I called him on it and he asked “why do the other kids get to do it?” I could just point at his still oozing knee.
We all attended the Shamu show because, hey, it’s SeaWorld! How can you not see Shamu? Plus, Charles’ previous day’s excursion to the gift shop had resulted in a request to buy a stuffed Shamu for the Sleepy Time Crew but Mom decided he should at least see the real Shamu once before being acquired in stuffed form. It was a good show, although I got splashed a bit more than I anticipated since Mom had told me that they didn’t really splash that far back. On the other hand, when they called for kids to come down front to get totally soaked by the orcas, our boys were first in line. They got the splash they missed at the ski show.
We spent some time at the “Journey to Atlantis” ride. The boys had spent a good hour or two there yesterday because while the ride is OK, every time it makes a run people standing in a gallery get wet or soaked (depending on where) from spray. The boys enjoyed that more than the ride and I thought Alice might like it as well. So Corwin, Bryson, Dawson and I went off to ride while Mom watched Alice try the spray. At first Alice stood in the light spray area and ran away everytime the spray started to hit. But she gradually stayed for more and then moved over to the heavy spray section. Charles spent all this time huddled near Mom.
After that we all went to see Shamu, then lunch, then penguins, then Mom, Charles, and Alice went off to the water park while the rest of the boys did a couple additional rides and then to the water park. Mom and I mostly let the kids run around on their own. Corwin took off first and we didn’t see him until the end of the day. We hadn’t put sunscreen on him before that so we spent the afternoon in anticipation of a very crunchy Corwin but he actually remembered to put it on by himself! The wave pool was popular again and “Castaway Cruise”, a lazy river. Alice didn’t like the latter yesterday, but with the addition of a couple of cousins (and freedom from an inner tube) she thought it was great. I even got to do a turn on the lazy river before I had to watch kids and equipment again.
We closed out the park again and one thing I noted too late was that most people leave before closing. There was a big exodus around 5 PM and by 5:50 most of the line had disappeared, although that could be because they stopped letting people in line. I was busy dealing with final gift shop requests, Bryson and Dawson insisted on getting some souveniors which turned out to be 4’ tubes of colored powerded sugar. I wasn’t willing to allow that but they said their mom would do it. So I said “why don’t we just call your mom and ask?”. They called my bluff, I called their mom and she approved the purchase. The boys then spent quite a long time getting just the right sequence of colors in their sugar tubes, although I wouldn’t let them have any until we got back home, first because we were about to go out to eat and two I didn’t want colored powdered sugar all over my van.
Charles also achieved fulfillment by purchasing a plush Shamu, which he named “Tim”. Alice had recieved a plush puffin in a purse earlier as her gift shop item. Corwin was upset because he alone of the children had not enjoyed the piquant pleasure of gift shop purchasing. He insisted on buying something even if he had no idea what he wanted or even if he actually wanted the purchased item. It was about the act, not the result. Anyway, he eventually settled on a psuedo-cowboy hat after a facetious suggestion from Mom. She’ll be more cautious in the future.
For dinner we went to Genghis Grill again because Corwin insisted on it and got Bryson to support him. and I almost got something Charles would eat (just beef and fried rice) but I mistakenly used the tasty marinated beef instead of the bland intended to be mixed with other flavorings beef. I liked it though and had a second bowl instead of desert. The manager was very friendly and dropped by our table, remembering us from the previous evening. It was a nice place and I unreservedly recommend it if you’re near SeaWorld.
We saw a number of military overflights, mostly fighters but once a cargo plane. Mom didn’t notice them the first day, probably because some of the rides sound almost identical.
Today was the Big Day, setting off for our Big Adventure at SeaWorld. In addition to our usual crew we had Bryson and Dawson along.Ashlyn was unable to sally forth due to other committments. She did a good job of hiding her deep, bitter disappointment, but I could tell she was heart broken. What 14 year old girl wouldn’t want to spend a couple of days couped up in a van and hotel room with her 12 & 8 year old brothers and cousins?
We got on the road on schedule (around 8 AM) for the long drive to San Antonio. The kids were tolerable, drugged in to slack jawed endurance by electronic games and Invader Zim. We took a longer route, up north and then back down, to avoid the rush hour Austin traffic as the most direct route is straight through the entire city. Still, we made it to SeaWorld in under 3 hours just before 11 AM, when most of the rides open (SeaWorld itself opens at 10 AM).
Mom took Charles and Alice off to do something or other while I served as a pack mule for the other boys. We were supposed to meet the others for a show at 1:30 but the kids got stuck in a line for a ride and didn’t finish until almost 2. First they waited in line for an hour, and then discovered they needed a parent along, so I had to find a locker and then hustle over to ride with them. At least they held a place at the front for the boys. As compensation, I let the boys put coins in the water guns set along the track so they could feel better by spraying random strangers on the ride as finished the last big drop. A woman, seeing their efforts, gave them some extra money to spray her family as she took pictures of it. So you can make money with water canons.
We met up for a very expensive lunch. My crew hit another ride and then went off to a ski show. During the show I got a frantic call from Zina’s mom about the power to our house having been turned off. The music was so loud that I couldn’t get far enough away to really hear but I finally got the gist. I tried to hustle the boys off to find Mom but of course, it was precisely at this time, out of the entire day, that she had gone off to the water park and had to leave her cell phone behind. I took the boys over to the water park which was a stressful operation as “hurry” was not a concept for which they were prepared. Eventually though I managed to get them set up in the water, Of course, Mom had called during this time but the noise and hurry had kept me from noticing. I was concerned because our basement gets a lot of water and Mom had told me that it had been raining hard back home and without power, we would have a flooded basement again. After multiple phone calls and Mom desperately searching for a spot in the park quiet enough to use a cell phone reliably, we got it straightened out. Due to a bank change over in their bill paying system, our payment was delayed, which caused a shut off yesterday but then the check arrived today so they turned it back on, without removing the “off” notice.
By this time the park was getting ready to close and Mom had Charles and Alice ready to go, but I figured we might as let the other kids finish off the day in the water. I asked Charles if he had had fun, and he said “maybe”, but “it would be a perfect day” if he went to the gift shop. Mom took him off to that but didn’t let him buy anything before he saw more of the park. I was left with the other boys, who managed to make leaving the water park such an effort that Mom called me a couple of times to verify that we were, in fact, trying to leave. In the end, though we made it out alive.
Mom, Charles, and Alice spent their time mostly on animals and shows. Charles was able to feed some dolphins and actually touch one. They saw some walruses, including a 1200 pound bull walrus, and saw a show with a pacific white sided dolphin1, the same species as Timmy from the Sleepy Time Crew. Alice’s primary new experience was getting her first brain freeze. Mom decided to buy them ice cream and there was only one size, really big. Alice consumed hers with such gusto that she froze her brain. It was an amazingly long lasting freeze, persisting for most of the rest of the day.
At the water park Alice was able to enjoy the water by herself with the aid of a life jacket. She even went down one of the medium sized water slides, although she didn’t like it much. There was a smaller one with just one loop at the child pool that she really enjoyed and would stand in line and ride it all by herself. Charles didn’t like the larger slide either, but didn’t ride the small one much either. He liked the floating objects in the kid pool best, followed closely by waves in the large wave pool (an Alice favorite as well).
After SeaWorld we went to the hotel and discovered that we had made our reservations for next week, but Mom was able to get them moved up. For dinner we went to Genghis Grill (at this location) because I really like that sort of food and Mom thought I deserved to get a break. The kids liked it very much, except for Charles, who hated all 12 different sauces (his preference would have been just plain fried rice). But even Charles loved the deserts.
P.S. Dawson was concerned about the hotel and whether it had a free breakfast because his parents had given him and Bryson some money and he didn’t want to run out and not be able to buy food. The hotel did have an included breakfast and so Dawson was saved from starvation.
I liked the ski show but the boys didn’t. However, when I was showing Mom the pictures later, the kids were asking “wow, when did they do that?”. Their main complaint, though, was they didn’t get any water sprayed on them by the performers which (as far as I can tell) was their main goal in attending.
1 Charles insists this is the other way round, that the cetacean in the show was a Timmy.
Somewhat of a lazy day today. We got up late (or at least, I did). The kids played Nerf and Rock Band for most of the morning. I jammed with the kids a bit, filling in on guitar or bass as needed and of course thrilling them with my way cool axe handling skillz.
After a quick lunch at the house our gang went over to Mimi’s house to hang out with her so she could see her grandkids. I ended up spending my time working on Mimi’s computer problems.
After that we tried to rejoin Uncle Craig’s family for some swimming at a local park with a lake. After some misdirection we managed to converge on the site with the beach only to find that it was closed due to low water and the facilities falling down after rotting away. Instead we went to a local park that had some water but no swimming. There were a lot of ground nesting birds there, which Corwin as is his wont, chased about. We told him that if one ofthe geese bit him, we would all just laugh, which tempered his activity a bit.
In the evening all us plus Uncle Evil went out for some all you can eat sushi. It was good. We turned in after that, because the parents wanted the kids to get a good night’s sleep before the big adventure tomorrow.
We hung out at Uncle Craig’s house in the morning and then when in to town to take Uncle Evil to lunch. We went to a mostly authentic Mexican restaurant that Uncle Evil likes. Corwin ate well but Alice and Charles didn’t much like the food. After that we hit a park for a while, until it was time for Uncle Evil to go back to work. Uncle Evil spent most of his time demonstrating the offensive capabilities of various native plants.
The evening big adventure was meeting Blaine and family for dinner and then going down to Town Lake to watch the bats come out. It was interesting and all of the kids had a good time. After the guide warned us to not stare up open mouthed because bats poop on the fly, Alice proceeded to do just that in order, she claimed later, to show others what to not do. Fortunately Alice wasn’t hit.
There were a lot of bats, a claimed population of 1 million. It wasn’t initially impressive with one or two streams of bats coming out, but they just kept coming. It wasn’t long before the eastern sky looks like it has gobs of drifting smoke in it off to the horizon, all of which are really groups of bats. The first wave is out of sight long before the last wave takes to the skies. Our guide told us that the colony is 90% pregnant female bats, with a few token males who are sent out first to see what kind of predators might be lurking (just like penguins).
We hit a Starbucks afterwards for snack and Alice was bizarrely contrary in refusing to tell Mom what she wanted as a snack until Mom threatened no snack at all, to which Alice replied “Oh, all right, I will tell you”.
We got off to a reasonable start this morning and arrived at TexHome around 2 pm. Alice would frequently ask as we drove “are we at Mimi’s house now?”.
We let the kids trash Mimi’s house for a while with her and Uncle Evil, then went over to Uncle Craig’s new house for fajitas. The boys all played lots of nerf and electronic games. I relaxed and then went to sleep.
We survived the first day on the road. We managed to depart ahead of schedule, even though we had to potentially abandon POset who disappeared while we were packing up the van. We called Zina and Mara, who are taking care of POset while we’re gone, to check the house and see if she needed back in. It turned out that POset was hiding in the sunroom, even though Mom and I had searched that room at least twice each.
The kids were mostly good, with only one unscheduled rest room stop and no containment failures. The boys were pacified by their electronics. We thought of trying to bring along Alice’s GameBoy but since she can’t read we decided it would be more trouble than benefit.
We stopped at a rest stop with an attached park and Mom decided we should all walk around a bit. The kids wanted to stay in the car but Mom rousted them. After a few minutes it was time to go at which point the kids didn’t want to leave.
We stayed at a hotel in Texarkana. We had to persuiade Charles that even though he had three of the Sleepy Time Crew along, they didn’t need their own bed.
We spent today getting ready for our road trip to Texas. The kids whined muchly about having to exert themselves. The big thing for Mom was her pile of hard wood mulch which had been dumped in the driveway a couple of weeks ago. Mom over ordered a bit and was running out of places to put it while still having quite a pile left. Eventually she gave up and had me put the last of it under the tree house and we could put the blue car back in the garage. I’ll miss that pile.
We have had to change Alice’s style of dress for day care. She can no longer wear dresses without shorts underneath. Apparently Alice was quite the underwear flasher out on the playground, to the extent that students were stopping and watching as the kids played. Alice had mixed feelings about it. On one hand she has to put shorts on in additional to the dress. On the other, Mom had to buy her a bunch of new shorts.
Corwin had a recital last Sunday. The parent brought snacks for after the recital and our little monkeys were there first!
Oh, there was some music too, I think.
Mom mentioned to me the other day that Alice is spending time with the boys in her class rather than the girls. I asked Alice about this at dinner.
Dad: So, Alice, I hear you have a lot of boyfriends these days.
Alice: Only one - Andrew.
Dad: What about Willum?
Alice: He’s just a friend.
Mom: But you like to be with him at nap time.
Alice: I like his stuff.
Gosh, they sure pick that up early, don’t they?
