Josh skating (live and in action)

(click on triangle to play video)

Lucas skating (live and in action)

(click on triangle to play video)

Boo!

Happy Halloween!

Josh won second place for scariest costume at his school carnival Friday. He made a great vampire!



And Lucas, like every 4-year-old boy, was a superhero:



We've been busy with festivities, so they've been in costume every day since Friday. Friday was the school carnival; Saturday we attended a progressive costume party (three houses worth); Sunday we went to Boo at the Zoo; and tonight, we trick-or-treated!

Hope you had a fun night too!

Josh's school carnival

Josh not only placed 2nd in the costume contest, he was also a runner-up (and the only boy in the final four) in the dance contest:

(click on triangle to play)

It's Pumpkin Carving Time!

Josh's sketch:



And his finished product:



Lucas's sketch (the drawing next to the eye is Josh's; only the pink crayon part is Lucas's sketch):

And his finished product:

Very good execution! I love how Josh's pumpkin suggests a snaggle-tooth, just like Josh. And I love the expression Lucas created, it seems so much like a real face with that expression!

The reward for our hard work: freshly made apple pie!

American League Divisional Series Game 2 -- Rangers vs. Rays

John and Josh were lucky enough to get to see the Rangers play the Tampa Bay Rays in the divisional playoffs. Even better, the Rangers won the game, and went on to win the series and advance to the league championship!

Here's Josh in his Rangers gear on the way to the game:



GO RANGERS!!

Something's missing

Compare and contrast these two pictures of Josh, taken 2-3 weeks apart, and see if you can find the difference.





Tooth fairy visit #3 finally arrived!

Dallas

We had a little bit of time for sight-seeing before I had to drop off Bud for his conference on Monday. Our first stop was the impressive collection of longhorn statues downtown:









Then it was on to Dallas's most famous site, Dealey Plaza -- the place where JFK was assassinated.

This is the former Dallas School Book Depository, now known as the Sixth Floor Museum. It is believed that Lee Harvey Oswald fired upon JFK from the far right window on the sixth floor. (This is a seven-story building, so the sixth floor is the second row of windows from the top.) Kennedy's motorcade was traveling on the road just behind Uncle Bud.

And this is the famous "grassy knoll." It's smaller than you think it would be. The area with the trees is where people believe the second shooter was hiding.

Thanks for visiting Uncle Bud! It was a lot of fun.

Stockyards with Uncle Bud

My uncle Bud came to visit us for the weekend before attending a conference in Dallas on Monday. Naturally, we headed to the Stockyards.

In addition to the cattle drive and other usual offerings, there was an antique car show going on as well.



Either my dad or my grandfather (I'll have to check on who it was) used to drive a car like this:



Josh and Lucas:

Here come the longhorns!

More fun in the Stockyards

Yee haw! Josh took the first turn on the bull ride and showed some fine form:



And Lucas was right behind him, and thoroughly enjoyed his ride too. He is not quite ready to raise an arm, but he leans back and holds on very well!



Then it was on to the jail:

Rangers game

Due to the oppressive heat this summer, you could find great bargains on Rangers tickets, since no one wanted to sit out in the hot sun for 3-4 hours in the afternoon. When the heat wave finally broke just before Bud's visit, I snatched up tickets to the Rangers game on Stubhub before the prices went up, and we had lower-reserved seats on the third base line for $15 each.

Best laid plans. Unfortunately, despite a forecast in the 80s that day, the heat returned and we were dying out there. It was a fun game after we spent the first two innings adjusting to the sweltering heat. We used the ice from our cooler (yes, the Rangers let you bring a cooler in, so long as you don't bring alcohol!) to try to cool off, and a couple cold beers and popsicles helped too. Still, by the time we left, my clothes were soaked through with sweat. Gross.

It was September 11, so the promotional give-away was Patriotic Caps -- hence our matching hats in these photos!

Uncle Bud:



View from our seats:







To escape the sun beating down on us during the game, John took the boys to the kids play area for a couple of innings. They have a wiffle-ball park behind the "batter's eye" in center field, and Josh and Lucas enjoyed getting a chance to hit a homer in Rangers Ballpark!

Despite the heat, it was a really fun day!

Fall 2011 Soccer

Both Josh and Lucas are playing soccer again this fall. Both of them returned to their previous teams and coaches, but everyone got new jerseys this year.

Lucas is #12 on the U5 Jets (royal blue jerseys), stretching here before the start of the first game of the season:



He scored a goal in his game and was very happy!



Josh still insists on being #10, ever since learning that's the number the "team leader" wears in soccer. He is also still the go-to goal scorer on his team (the U8 Bullets), but the competition has gotten better and the goals are harder to score this year.



His first goal of the year was a great high kick over the goalie's head.

Miscellaneous

Lucas has begun to show a very active imagination. Here is one example. He is playing "dinosaur baseball." If you look carefully, you can see dinosaurs lined up at home plate (by Lucas), pitcher's mound (directly in front of him), and second and third bases. First base is out of view in this photo. Since the baseball playoffs have begun, he has gotten even more intense in his imaginary baseball play, but now he pretends to be the Texas Rangers and leaves the dinos out of it.



Here are the boys, along with their friends Jude, Jonas, and Sydney, at a recent dinner party we attended with two other families. The kids all know each other from soccer, and it was really nice to have adult conversations with our friends (the other parents) while the kids entertained each other.



After dinner, they discovered Sydney and Jonas's costume closet, and it was all over after that.



Lucas never got back out of the Spiderman costume. He even came home in it.



He spent the whole next day in the Spiderman hood as well. Watching TV through the eye holes, eating by lifting up the bottom -- nothing made him feel like he should just take it off. Bet you can't guess what he is going to be for Halloween.

For this last picture, I quote my friend Jen Weiers. "Just when you think your kid can't get any cuter, along comes footed pajama season." Indeed!



He LOVES his footies and wears them every chance he gets!

Bethany Hamilton

We stopped in the airport bookstore before our return flight from California and Josh asked if he could buy "Soul Surfer," the book written by Bethany Hamilton. She is a Hawaiian-born professional surfer who was bitten by a shark as a young girl and lost her arm in the attack. She returned to surfing and her story is very inspirational. But it is the shark and the missing arm that excite Josh and Lucas the most. The whole flight back, they just flipped through the book's photo pages again and again.

They stayed interested in the book even after we returned, so we also rented the Soul Surfer movie, which they watched about four times in the 24-hour rental period. Shortly after that, I was reading the news online one Saturday night when I happened to see a news item that Bethany was in town to speak at a church about 45 minutes away. So the next morning, I loaded up the boys and we headed out to this Texas mega-church, which was a unique experience.

Her presentation was very good. I only had my phone for a camera (we were inside church, after all, even if it was full of neon, stadium seating, cameras swirling around on wires, and a full-scale rock band), so these photos are grainy and not very good. But here is Bethany demonstrating how to use an Indo board, which is much more difficult than she makes it look.







Several minutes into her talk, Lucas leaned over to me and whispered, "Look Mommy, that girl lost an arm just like Bethany." I whispered back, "Lucas, that IS Bethany." I guess she is several years older now than her photos in the book, which is how he pictures her. He was surprised and pleased to get to see her in person, as were Josh and I. She is charming, positive, and down to earth, and I recommend her talks if she comes to speak near you.

Bowling day!

By popular request, our last day at Lake Almanor included a trip to the Chester bowling alley. It was lots of fun, but let's just say that some of our other bowlers should have joined Lucas and Josh on the lane with bumpers. Still, everyone had a good time.






The showman:



Papa Gene gets ready to throw a strike:

Mt. Lassen

We couldn't take our usual day-trip to Juniper Lake, because the forest road to the lake was still snowed under, so we decided to return to Mt. Lassen National Park to see the geothermal areas. Unfortunately, the hike to the big, impressive geothermal area also was closed due to snowbanks (and you do NOT want to end up off-trail in that area because you couldn't see the markers -- you will lose a leg or worse). So we made ourselves content with a drive along the main road, which still offered plenty of sights to see.

First was a steam vent:



And then a bubbling mud pot!



After suffering through the first 40 days or so of the record-breaking Texas heat this summer (which lasted a full 70 days with temps above 100 degrees), this trip to a high altitude with cool air was a very welcome treat!



We made snowballs.

We goofed around with lava rocks from the last Mt. Lassen eruption.

The boys with Lassen Peak in the background:

A glacial erratic, meaning this rock is a much different age than all the land and rocks around it, and was transported to this location when a glacier pushed it down Lassen Peak:

Lake Helen. That's right, that's a LAKE under all that snow. It was so pretty in real life -- the most amazing shade of blue from the mountain-clear water and the blue sky reflecting in the snowmelt.

We found a sledding hill!

It was a blast. Everyone was jealous when we returned to the Texas inferno and boasted that we'd been snow-sledding on vacation!