Cousin fun

Amelia and John had a three-day weekend last week because their schools were closed Monday for the Texas state fair. We used the break as an opportunity to visit grandparents and the Boekenoogens in Gainesville. The kids and I left early Thursday morning and returned to Texas on Monday evening. The entire weekend was fun and super-relaxing - the prefect mid-semester break that we all needed.

Thursday evening Laura and John hosted us all over at their house for dinner and play time. The cousins decided it would be fun to race each other up and down the sidewalk. I can't remember how this activity got started but it ended up being perfect because all four could participate and have fun together - from Henry (the youngest, age 3) to Amelia (the oldest, age 10).

Cousins lined up below - John (age 7), Henry (age 3), Jack (age 6), and Amelia (age 10). On your mark, get set, GO!

Jack and Henry went to school on Friday and Uncle John went to work. But Laura took the day off so we all got to spend time together enjoying Gainesville. Following a delicious lunch at Satchel's, the craziest and most delicious pizza place in Gainesville, Laura took us to Lake Wauburg. Lake Waugburg is a recreational facility that is part of the University of Florida campus, where students, faculty, and staff can play sand volleyball, have picnics, and rent boats next to a very pretty lake.

We rented a paddle boat and took turns going out into the lake for a pretty ride. Later John got off the boat and Amelia took his place pedaling up front while I rode in back with Laura. There was a nice breeze out on the lake and it was quite peaceful.

Peaceful at least until we spied this guy hanging out along the shore. You should have heard Laura scream (!!) when we realized there was a baby gator in the water ahead of us. But we were distant enough from the gator that we never got too close for this to be scary, and seeing the gator was just a perfect Florida experience.

I thought paddleboarding looked like fun and I would love to try this sometime. However, I am not sure how I would feel about finding the alligator friend in the water while paddleboarding. The gator was just to the left of my camera lens in this photo and the paddleboarders were headed straight for him.

Friday evening we all met on the UF campus to watch the Lady Gators Volleyball team defeat the Kentucky Wildcats. The volleyball games at UF are electric and well-attended, with thousands of fans shouting and cheering the entire match. Great shot of the four cousins below with the mascot, Alberta. 

The large poster in the background of this photo shows how high some of the star UF volleyball players can reach when they jump vertically. Amelia and John each took a running jump towards the poster. As you can see, they got about half-way up to the height that the very tall and athletic players can reach with their arms.

Thursday and Friday were great days spent with family in Gainesville. More fun to come!

The very weird story that is true

The Very Weird Story That Is True

By John Wilson

There once was a very weird ship. The ship had shells for models and did not have a fish for a pet. Instead of a fish they had a shark. And instead of trees to suck up the pollution they had mushrooms.

John brought home this writing assignment tonight (I corrected the spelling errors in my translation above). I asked John why the story was so strange and he said that the assignment was to use as many "sh" words in the photo when writing the story. Hence why he used non-boating words such as mushrooms.

John had a huge smile on his face when he read the story. You could tell he was definitely proud of his work!

John's fall sports

John has a crazy busy fall sports schedule this year. For September and October John is playing in a Y flag football league, is on two club basketball teams, and is also playing fall chamber baseball. Scott and I disagreed over how intense John's sports schedule should be this fall, and you can tell that in the end I didn't have much say over how our family should handle John's love of sports. Scott won (not that I had a chance).

Needless to say our family has been busy with lots of practices and games. A few photo highlights are below.

John is playing baseball this fall with his same team, the Yankees. John is blessed to be on a team with one of the best coaches around and is surrounded by a whole crew of sports-like obsessed boys like him. I love this team and was more than willing to encourage John's participation this fall with baseball.

Below John is at bat. His hitting skills have improved so much in the last couple of years. This past Saturday John hit two singles, a double, and struck out once in his four times at bat. Not bad for a little guy (age 7) playing machine-pitch baseball!

Below John is on third base (after hitting a double and then running to second after another player hit a single, I think). Scott is serving as third base coach this season. Most of the parents think Scott is going to throw out his shoulder from continuously motioning the boys through to run on to home plate as they round second. 

Our team is very strong so Scott has many opportunities to bring the boys home. I am glad he is involved with John's sports and find it amusing to watch the wind-up action around third base from my comfortable perch on the bleachers.

Finally I get a sweet smile out of my boy in the dugout. John was lunging at me screaming, "no pictures, mom!" in this photo. But you can't tell, and we can see a smile as a bonus.

 John is #13 below, warming up as his teammates take the plate.

Playing third base below.

John is playing on two basketball teams - the Hurricanes and the Next Years Stars. Both are relatively challenging leagues where the boys have to demonstrate their interest before being asked to join the teams. First photo is from a Next Years Stars game. I find it really difficult to take good action shots with the rapid action of basketball, despite the fabulous camera I use for most photos of the children.

The last two photos are from Hurricanes games. Despite all of the orange, I have never associated the basketball Hurricanes with Scott and John's beloved Miami Hurricanes.

I could write a whole other post about John's basketball shoes, but if he were able to record a podcast to describe them this is what he would say. "I have these customized basketball shoes that I need to do my best on the court. My dad bought them for me off of the internet because I am a good basketball player. I chose bright colors for my custom shoes because I want to stand out on the court. Players know I am coming because I am really good at basketball. I really love my crazy colored basketball shoes, plus they say "King John", just like LeBron's shoes say "King James", inside."

Whew. I love John's interest in sports, but this fall is a beating with so many practices and games on the schedule. More to come as this fall is just the beginning.

Amelia's movie

Amelia created a movie on her itouch today. Truthfully, I didn't know that she knew how to do this but I thought the result was pretty creative. The movie stars Leo (her cat) as an attacker of an evil large stuffed dog. Apparently Amelia got Leo to move around her room by winning him over with cat treats. And since she has been making movies for a couple of hours today, I wonder how overstuffed Leo's belly is with treats?

Grilled pizza

Scott has experimented with grilling pizza this year and the results are delicious. I love when Scott gets creative with his grilling and cooks things that are a departure from a large piece of meat cooked over the flames (charcoal grilling only in this household). 

Saturday night Scott grilled two pizzas. One pizza was topped with marinara sauce, spicy Italian sausage, sautéed mushrooms and onions, and shredded mozzarella. The second pizza, the one pictured below, was topped with homemade pesto (made with basil from my overgrown end-of-summer basil plant), sautéed mushrooms, onions, and yellow pepper, sliced Texas tomatoes, chunks of soft goat cheese, and a little shredded mozzarella. I'll bet you can guess which pizza components Scott selected and which ones I suggested!

Making a grilled pizza is a lot like baking one with the exception of using the flames on the outdoor grill instead of an indoor kitchen oven. I made the dough in my bread machine and let it rest on a floured mat for awhile so that it would roll out easily. After rolling the dough into a small circle I placed it on Scott's pizza handle with a ton of cornmeal underneath the crust.

You can see the hot pizza stone on the grate of Scott's grill behind him. He is adding more cornmeal to the stone before sliding the pizza off the pizza handle and onto the stone. The cornmeal is important in preventing the crust from sticking and it helps the dough slide off the handle more easily too.

Scott leaves the pizza on the stone on the grill with the top of the egg closed, which I think is an important step. The photo below was taken just after the lid was raised and just before he used the pizza handle to grab the pizza from the grill.

The finished product! Admittedly this one got a little too black on the crust, but the pizza was delicious all the same.

Perot Museum of Science

Amelia, John, and I enjoyed a fun day at the new Perot Museum of Science on Labor Day. The Perot Museum has actually been open for almost a year, though this was our first chance to visit. The museum was insanely crowded when it first opened late last year and the ticket office still sells timed tickets to keep the number of visitors to a reasonable level. 

The exterior of the museum is remarkable. The building sits next to a highway in the center of downtown (most of the skyscrapers in downtown Dallas are behind the vantage point of the person who took this photo), so you can't help but stare at the building in awe as you drive along the highway. The diagonal block on the side of the building is a glass enclosure for the escalator that takes visitors to the top floor of the building.

Amelia and John are in the photo below, riding the escalator up to the top.

The museum is fabulous. We were there for about four hours and did not get a chance to see everything we would have liked to see. Nearly everything has a hands-on component to keep things interesting, especially for the children. I didn't take my good camera so the photos below are from a vintage iphone, but they'll still help me tell the story.

One of my favorite areas was the bird hall and one of the coolest features was this 3D flying simulator. John thinks it was similar to an XBox 360 with motion simulation, which of course I have no idea what that is, or how he would know what that is. But anyway, the visitor stands in a special spot on the carpet and somehow the camera records the person's movements while they simulate flying like an eagle above the mountains. The participant watches an animated 3D video of a bird flying that is making the same movements that he is making. For example, if John were to lean to the left, his bird would arc to the left. If John bent his back backwards, the bird flew up into the sky.

Amelia's arms were longer than the wingspan of all but the two largest birds.

The museum had a dozen dinosaur skeletons on display in the massive hall on the top floor.

We all enjoyed the Sports Hall, especially John. Check out this video of John racing against a professional athlete. The line to participate in this exhibit was 20 minutes long, yet John wanted to enter the line and run the race over and over again...

Another area of interest for our family in the Sports Hall was the video area. Participants could engage in a variety of activities, from throwing a football (John is doing this below) to kicking a soccer ball (what Amelia did) to performing a cartwheel. The participant was filmed performing the activity and then he/she could compare his/her performance in slow motion against a pro. Below is John's video of him throwing a football as compared to Roger Staubauch, formerly with the Dallas Cowboys.

That was way cool to compare and contrast on video versus a pro.

We loved the exhibits at the Perot Museum and look forward to visiting again in the future!

Amelia's Birthday Celebration

Amelia celebrated her 10th birthday this year in two stages. On the date of Amelia's birthday we were on our family vacation in Boston. Amelia selected our family activities for the day - a visit to the Museum of Science in the morning and a whale watching cruise in the afternoon. What an action-packed day!

The Museum of Science was amazing, and we had to drag the kids out unwillingly after 3 1/2 hours so that we could get to our whale cruise. The cruise was very long because you have to travel over 90 minutes out to sea in order to get to the area of the water where the whales swim. During the first 30 minutes of the boat ride we were able to enjoy fantastic scenery of Boston Harbor and the Maine coastline.

And then the next 60 minutes before we arrived at the whale spotting area of the ocean looked like this.

Finally we were rewarded with several views of whale fins. I did not take the photo below (I downloaded it from the website of the whale cruise operator) but we did see one whale who showed his fin to us like this. I was not able to get any good photos on my camera because it as too crowded on the boat decks to get a clear view with the camera. We also saw several smaller whales as well.

We got back from the whale cruise pretty late so we kept things simple that evening. A quick pizza dinner out with birthday ice cream for dessert for the birthday girl.

Stage two of Amelia's birthday celebration came last weekend when Amelia hosted a birthday sleepover for her closest friends. We waited until the start of the school year to have the party since several of Amelia's friends were out of town for most of the summer. Amelia planned the event and I supervised while Scott and John enjoyed a boys' evening out. First stop was a pottery painting studio where each girls painted a piece of pottery. From left to right - Olivia, Elle, Lydia, Amelia, and Elsa. 

Painting pottery was actually a really fun activity and the girls did a great job with their selections. After our painting experience we returned to the house, where the girls played, ate pizza and cake, and settled down to watch one of the Harry Potter movies. All of these girls love the Harry Potter series and when they talk amongst themselves I sometimes can't understand what they are saying because of all the Harry Potter references and inside jokes.

From all the laughter coming from the guest bedroom where the girls were watching the movie, I would say that the party was a success. Happy 10th birthday sweet Amelia! We love you!