Surfing Safari

Josh and Logan were both really into shark week, and that gave way to being really into pretending to surf (among sharks) in our living room.

They are wearing black Spiderman suits, with a swim shirt on top, as their "wetsuits." And skateboards for surfboards. It's a pretty good costume, in my opinion. Very creative. Earlier in the week, these same Spiderman suits (without the swimwear, but with coats for some reason) doubled as their spy outfits. But now the spy games are long gone, and it's all about surfing and catching sharks.

Here are Josh and Logan catching a wave:



Josh swims out (with his mask on) for more action:



Logan battles some tricky waves and looks for sharks:



Josh attacks a shark (with his stuffed dinosaur) before it can attack them:



They have very healthy and active imaginations!

More fun in the Ladybug tent

Who's coming out of the tent?



It's Lucas!



Who loves their cousin(s)?



Josh, Lucas, and Logan!



(I love this picture.)

Stockyards Stagecoach

During the visit, Logan, Josh and Lucas took a stagecoach ride with my mom around the Stockyards. They had a good old stagecoach driver to spin yarns:



And did lots of waving:



Even Lucas poked his head out:



Josh and Logan are great pals:

Rangers vs. Red Sox

As part of our visit from Logan and my parents, my dad, Logan, John and Josh went to see the Rangers play the Boston Red Sox. Here is Rangers Stadium as they approached:



The game sold out, and by the time we purchased tickets, only the upper reserved section was available. Turns out, their seats were two rows from the top. So it was upper upper. But that also meant that they were under the overhang (since the stadium does not have a roof), and in this 100+ degree heat, that was a very good thing. John said with the breeze and the shade, it must have been the coolest spot in North Texas.

It was a good game. Lots of home runs, lots of lead changes. In the end, it went to extra innings and Texas won. All in all, a very fun night.

Josh and Logan practice their mad skills in the road leaving the stadium.

Logan Rides the Bull

Our niece Logan is visiting from Virginia. We braved the heat for a trip to the Stockyards and saw the longhorns go by, then Logan took to the mechanical bull.



She lasted a good long while:

Day 2 of Boating (cue foreboding music)

One of John's friends from high school was also vacationing at Lake Almanor with her family. We last saw them three years ago, when Lucas was a newborn. They have a son Josh's age (and a daughter who's a year older than Lucas), and Josh always loves to find a playmate on our trips. And John, Curtis, and Suzanne enjoy catching up as well. So on Wednesday, Suzanne and her family, Curtis and Jeni, and John and our family, rented a pontoon boat together to enjoy an afternoon cruise.

It started well enough. Because the pontoon boat goes more slowly than a ski boat and rides so smoothly, Lucas was into it right from the start. And he was so proud of himself too; he kept saying, "This is fun, Mommy." He even eagerly got in the water with me for a swim at our first stop.





After this swim, we met up with another couple that John, Curtis, and Suzanne grew up with, who were in a ski boat. Josh and his buddy (Guillermo, or Memo for short) decided to go for a tube ride behind the pontoon boat. Josh had been too scared to try kneeboarding our first day out, so it was fun to see him so excited to try tubing. Having a friend to share the ride with helped, as did the very non-threatening nature of the pontoon boat.



But somehow they didn't get tied up to the pontoon boat. They were tied to the ski boat instead. At first, the driver took off too fast for having two 6-year-olds in the tube. But he realized that and slowed down, and Josh and Memo were really enjoying their ride outbound away from the pontoon boat.

But as they came back toward the pontoon boat, they came in too close.

Although the boat went (closely) by, the tube was running wide, and was going to crash into the back of the pontoon boat (with Josh and Memo still aboard). In the split second I had to react, I envisioned various atrocities possible when the tube and tow rope came in behind a pontoon. I scrambled over the back of our boat and stuck my leg out to try to deflect the tube away from the boat. But the tube came in fast, and the force of the tube pushed my foot into the back edge of the pontoon and then essentially bent my foot around the pontoon. It hurt like crazy. (The tube did go off to the open side of the boat after that, and the boys were fine. I like to think my effort to push them off in that direction helped.)

My foot immediately bruised, and then very shortly thereafter started to swell. It hurt a lot, and I thought I probably had some adrenaline or other natural pain deflectors at work, and once those wore off, the pain would be unbearable. So we headed in, to the local ER.

Cell phone photo of my foot taken in the ER. The bruising runs in about a three-inch-wide swath from just below my big toe diagonally down to my outer ankle. Imagine turning my foot clockwise until my toes point to the right and the bruise line runs vertically, and that's about how it was positioned along the edge of the pontoon as my foot bent around it.

The ER doctor found no bone fractures in my foot or ankle, thankfully. He diagnosed a bone bruise (meaning filaments or something inside the bone broke, but the bone itself did not) and a foot sprain (torn ligaments). He fitted me in a fiberglass splint with crutches, and told me it would take a week before I could put weight on it again.

Unfortunately, it's taken longer than that. (And it's possible he said at least a week; they made me wait to see the one and only doctor in the ER before they would give me any meds, and that took a few hours, so when they finally gave me pain relief they gave me a double dose. I felt very tired and out of it after that.) It's been two weeks and I'm still on crutches. But I do see little bits of progress every day, so I'm hopeful I'll walk without crutches soon. But unfortunately, my October half-marathon seems certainly off. I don't think there's any way I can make up the lost training time now, esp since I don't know when my foot will be strong enough to run again.

Also unfortunately, I wasn't the only Markley in a big foot mechanism that week:

Curtis was severely injured at Lake Almanor as a child (caught in a wire erected about a foot off the ground by some property owner, so that when Curtis rode his bike through without knowing the wire was there, it caught and dug into his foot -- making a hole -- and caused significant damage). His injury has been flaring up this summer, and when he had it checked out, the doctor found a stress fracture and other problems, so he was relegated to a boot for a few weeks to try to heal the fracture. Jeni dubbed us the Cripplesons.

So the second boating day was a mixed bag. But my mind still goes to what could have happened, and I'm glad I was the one injured and not Josh, and I'm glad my injury was not worse and will (hopefully) heal fully with time.

Other fun activities

This was Josh's second year of participating in tennis lessons at Lake Almanor. He wasn't quite as attentive this year. He still did well, but at times he intentionally tried to lose challenges because the winners went back into the line, and the losers had to (or got to, depending on your point of view) chase down the balls. He preferred chasing to waiting in line. And who wouldn't? But the fact that he was intentionally hitting balls out of bounds made us question whether the lesson was really teaching him anything (anything useful, anyway). Still, he looked awfully cute out there.

Here he is warming up.





And taking one of his turns hitting over the net:



Lucas was too young to participate, much to his chagrin, but a nice cold popsicle made it all better.



Josh also loved playing Uno with Gammy and Jenga with Curt and Jeni this year, and he learned checkers too, which he'd constantly try to play against anyone willing to challenge him.

The day after I was injured (to be discussed in another post), John and his dad took Josh bowling. They had a great time.

Gene's fine form:

Josh's:

And the results of Josh's attempt at showboating:

Josh didn't want to leave:

Meanwhile, back at home, Lucas napped with me and then worked on his hockey skills:

The deer

These two we spotted on a trip to the "point" at the end of the peninsula; that always seems to be a deer hotspot. On one of my runs, a deer crossed the street right in front of me in this area, just about 10 feet away. I stopped and watched it for a bit. It's a very serene feeling to stand so close to a deer.





These pictures below are back at our lake house. The lot next door is vacant and also seems to attract deer. Last year, Gail planted some flowers in our porch planter boxes and the deer immediately came and ate them; although she was disappointed, the boys were thrilled to have deer right in our front yard. This year we didn't (inadvertently) bait the deer so we had to settle for them visiting next door.

Once again, Josh was convinced he could get close enough to pet the deer if only he moved very slowly and quietly. He also tried some Avatar (Airbender, not James Cameron)-style moves to try to calm and/or freeze them. Alas, they didn't work, and he never managed to touch one. But he did get surprisingly close.

Here he starts his approach on a mom and baby (a few feet behind the mom):



Pretty darn close, considering how quickly a deer can and will move away (esp. one protecting her young):



Little brother was thrilled for him.

Vacation play

The house we've stayed in the past couple years at Lake Almanor has a nice grassy back yard (rare in this mountain community) for the boys to play in. Uncle Curtis brought a football tee, and the hammock stand made for a passable field goal crossbars. Curtis was such a wonderful help at playing with the boys in the back yard every night.

Setting up:





The ball is in the white V shaped part of sky in between the trees here (see it?), making its way toward Uncle Curt and a field goal:





Lucas found his own brand of fun. After a few days of practicing his swing, he came up with a variation: Swing really hard, then stumble around as if losing one's balance, and fall magnificently to the ground. He fell over and over and over, and laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world every time. He was super cute.



He would also play with his monster trucks: