Christmas Offering

Sean joins the Southwest Hills Community Church band on Christmas Eve for Paul Beloche's 'Christmas Offering.'

Letters to Santa

Brian and Sean did wait a little later than most kids to write their letters to Santa ... they wrote them tonight, Christmas Eve, as we waited for dinner at Nuevo Leon. Luckily, Santa is magical and I'm sure he knows already what they want.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Holiday piano recital

Sean and Brian performed at their holiday piano recital on Sunday, along with friends Joseph and John Michael. A special thanks to Ms. Lee for her tutelage.

Science Fair success

Both Brian and Sean did very, very well at the Mills science fair. Sean won first place for 3rd grade and Brian won 2nd place for fourth grade.

Sean did his project on photovoltaic cells, and Brian did his on a trebuchet. The both were fun, but we got to launch things with Brian's. Woo Hoo!

Sean's Blue Belt Test

Sean continues to amaze as he advances through the belts of Tae Kwon Do. He recently went had his Blue Belt test with Joseph and Dylan, who also happen to be in his Cub Scout Den 8.

Pack 61 Veteran's Day Parade 2006

Pack 61 again participated in the Veteran's Day Parade. It was Sean and I as Brian was at a soccer game. It's good to see Sean bonding a little with his den.

Also, photos from the Pack 61 Fall Family Campout at Pedernales Falls State Park.

Chik-fil-a

It was customer appreciation night. Free milkshakes! And we met up with Pablo. Fun!

Brian's 10th Birthday

Brian celebrated his 10th birthday at East Metro Park east of the airport with his friends Blake, John Michael, Joseph, Logan, Matt and brother Sean. They had pizza rolls and ran round on the rock wall and playground ... nothing fancy: Brian didn't want a planned party, he just wanted to play.

Texas vs. OSU

I don't go to Texas Longhorn games very often ... Thanks to Michael for inviting me.



Pre-game warmup.



More pre-game warmup.



Godzillatron is the second largest screen in the world. It's, um, big.



The team's return at halftime.

Happy Halloween!

Camping at Blanco State Park

Brian and I went camping at Blanco State Park with Den 13. You can read about it here, and here are a couple of photos.

Mornin', Glory

The morning glories and moon flowers in our garden are just wonderful!

1-mile run

Brian did a 1-mile run that a lot of elementary kids competed in. I think it's called the TX10IC run, but we could never figure that out.

Anyway, he ran hard and had fun.

U10 Academy Soccer

Brian has been playing with the Austin United Capitals U10 Academy team this season. It's a little different level of soccer, with coaches instead of dads.

The past couple of weeks he's played goalie, and he really enjoys it and wants to play more and more.

Sept. 9 game at Slaughter Creek

Oct. 14 game in Cedar Park

Catching up

Catching up on some past fun ...

Toward the end of the summer, we visited Landa Park, a really neat park in New Braunfels, Texas on the Comal river. There is an interesting slide, a rope swing and azip line (closed that day) and other fun, all in natural water from the river.

In August we had the first big Pack 61 event of the year, the Cubmobile Derby. We held it at Southwest Hills Community Church after many years at Seton Southwest. It was fun ....

The boys also had their first piano recital. It was real cute, and a lot of their friends had their first recital, too ... Joseph, John Michael, Aubrey, Brian and Sean.

TPWD Expo photos

The Flying Eagles trekked to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Expo this past weekend and had an absolute ball. Here are some photos from it. There is so much to do there, I think we would have to go both days to come close to seeing it all. The boys caught trout and catfish, watched dogs fetch, studied live raptors, made string baskets, won lures, played with sea cucumbers, molded seed balls, ate foot-long corn dogs, slurped shaved ice, learned about soil conservation, squirted pollution, touched a dead shard and a live stingray, talked with Buffalo Soldiers, climbed on a helicopter, and an airboat, and an ATV, and every kind of hunting blind you can think of. And the list of things we didn't get to was even longer!

But know it was Fun!

(Cross posted)

Reyes family barbecue

Quick post of some photos from a recent get-together with the Reyes family.

Chicago vacation

Writing about our trip to Chicago will have to follow in the days to come, but here are the photos from our most recent adventure ...

Scrapeboarding

Logan brought over his new grinding rail to add to Brian & Sean's ramps, creating many opportunities for pain. They are funny boys.

Firecracker Triathlon

On July 4th, Brian ran in the Firecracker Triathlon in Fredricksburg. The race races money for the swim team there. It was the first time Brian did this, and he came in third in his age group and 6th overall at the distance.

The race consisted of 100 yard swim, 2.4 mile bike and .6 mile run. Brian really kicked it in for the bike, with the fastest split of anyone.

2006 Dick Nichols' Devil Rays

Brian and Sean again joined the city's summer league swim team with the Dick Nichols' Devil Rays. Dick Nichols is so popular and so big, they have to cap the enrollment, split the team in two and still both teams are the biggest in the league. With 120 swimmers on each team, it takes a while to swim our meets.

Both Sean and Brian did great again this year. They both challenged themselves with swimming the Individual Medley at least once during the year, and they both improved through the season.

The really do have fun at the meets ... It's like a picnic with their favorite friends, and they just take breaks to swim events every once in a while.

There were some interesting times this year, like when I had to climb up too high to tie up backstroke flags. Drawing on the kids' back is always an adventure. And Brian's friend Logan joined the team so there are some photos of him as well.

Mission trip to Kiln

I spent the last week of June on a mission trip with members of my church to Kiln, Mississppi. We joined Samaritan's Purse to provide relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, still hurting 10 months after the storm.

You can read more about it, and see photos from the trip, in my other blog.

Brian's Baptism

Kind of out of order, but Brian was baptised on June 4, 2006 during a ceremony at Southwest Hills Community Church. Pastor Greg Hill did the baptism, and Brian was accompanied by his children's pastors Ben Jarrett and, well, me ... though I was mostly taking photos.

Brian was proud and happy to do this and did it of his own will. We are excited that he has accepted Jesus as his personal saviour.

Cub Scout Resident Camp

Brian and Sean went to Cub Scout Resident Camp at Camp Tom Wooten with Pablo and Matt. We had a fantastic time, packing to sooooo much stuff into three days and two nights. Among the activities: Land skis, snowball toss, bb guns, nature trail, swimming, archery, Native American lore and geology. We chanted and screamed, saw skits, were chased by penguins, saw an outdoor movie and got rained on. We ate lots and lots, slept little. We painted totem polls, pet rocks and ice cream. And ate more ice cream. We visited the Boy Scout camp and learned more about scouting that we had ever known. It was simply a wonderful, exhausting trip. And the boys can't wait to go back!

Sean's Green Belt Test

Sean has advanced quickly in Tae Kwon Do. He works really hard learning the forms and terminology and practicing with his mother most every day. His hard work has paid off. Master Cha says he is an excellent student.

Last week he took his Green Belt test, with it's usual board-breaking. He held is own sparing with an advanced blue belt and recited the Korean terminology like a dictionary. He enjoys and excels at the sport.

Van the man

Oh ... my ...

Van Morrison is coming to Austin.

Yes, that Van Morrison. Leaked last night and officially announced today for ACL fest. Oh, and Willie, and Tom Petty and the BoDeans and String Cheese Incident and Ben Harper.

Needless to say, we plopped down for two three-day passes today.

Any babysitters out there available Sept. 15-17?

:-)

The Panda Project

Brian and his classmate Emily did a class project on pandas. They wanted to do it as a news report, so we filmed a video. Since their classmate and friend Drew Sposeep moved to China this past December, they e-mailed him to see if he could help. It so happened that they were visiting the The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding that next weekend, so they took some video.

So, we want to thank Drew! (And Eric and Dana, too)

Pack 61: Graduation Campout

On May 6th, Pack 61 had their Graduation Campout at Cub World at Camp Tom Wootten on the Lost Pines Scout Reservation in Bastrop. Whew! ... a mouthful.

We had a wonderful time with Native American games, archery and making Coup sticks. We had our graduation ceremony at Fort Houston.

Cub World is a fantastic place to camp. Really, really cool for the Cub Scouts.

What we missed was the pool. We did all our other programs first and then a storm rolled in so we were not able to swim in the very awesome Cub World pool.

Thanks to Sayeed and Bill for supplying photos. I was too busy to take pictures.

• Sayeed Anam's photos


• Bill Mohondro's photos

Brian's first BMX race

I took Brian to the last day of racing at Capitol City BMX track in Round Rock. It was his first experience at BMX racing and he really liked it. I think it is something he would enjoy doing on a regular basis if there were another track near. Two are scheduled to open soon. Special thanks to Nate and Brandon Barto, who helped show us the ropes.

The Family Portrait

The family portrait. We'll need to work on the lighting a little.

Easter 2006

Our neighbors, Darlene and Darrell Case, had a wonderful neighborhood Easter Egg hunt where they included the TRUE story of Easter. There were twelve special eggs hidden with all the others and each had a piece of the Easter story hidden inside. It was a really nice way to spread the Gospel in a neighborly kind of way, and the kids had a ball ... even our bigger ones.

And of course we also had our own hunt inside the house on Easter morning ...

Grandpa helps fly a kite

Grandpa Ted came to visit for a weekend, and we crammed as much fun in as we could, including kite-flying time at Mabel Davis Park and some Monopoly. Did the boys realize that Grandpa is a Relator?http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Crafty Boys

The day we discovered Model Magic, a colored modeling clay from Crayola. Brian wanted to make a claymation "Onion Man" character and we happened across this fine modling clay at Michael's. It is really easy to use, but it hardens within about 24 hours to preserve your creation.

Also, Sean had his caterpillar project for 2nd grade. We made Junkapillar out of soda cans, bottle tops and the like. This is the same project Brian did last year, when we created Grassapillar.

2006 Shockers

This is the Shockers in their true element. They are all about playing for fun ... and there is nothing wrong with that. Here are some shots from the last couple of games ...

Nephew loses battle, but gains the cred of legend

My nephew Simon came up from Houston for this Lakeway teen battle of the bands (fresh from winning a battle of the bands at the Village Fair in League City.) His band is called BB Aeroplane.

I was IM'ing him, asking him about how they did at the Lakeway gig ...

Simon: we played way better than all the other bands except for this one jazz band, who i think should have at least taken first or second but they got 3rd.
then this stupid emo band who did nothing but scream and make random noise got 2nd, and this ok rock band, whose parents were part of the judge panel, got first

Simon: but it was cool because chris layton walked out on the judges when they refused to give us a better place

Christian: chris layton of double trouble?

Simon: yep

Simon: heh

Simon: we got to hang out with him for a bit

Simon: he told us we were doing really well but that we should pursue things more in our own direction

Simon: he's a really nice guy though.

That's Chris Layton of Double Trouble, as in Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble. That's kinda cool.

HMNS overnight overview

On April 1-2, 60 members of Pack 61 attended a most excellent adventure at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. This was an action-packed overnight ... just a wonderful time. We crammed in so much ....

While scouts were able to roam the museum on Saturday before we gathered, our first official event was the Cool Chemistry show where Scouts got to play with liquid nitrogen, watch different chemical reactions and see other wonders of chemistry. It was a really neat show and we all got a kick out of it. I was really impressed that they used so many volunteers for the show.

Next up was a pizza dinner and a discovery scavenger hunt where the scouts had to answer certain questions based on the science displays in the basement.


Then we split into two groups ... the younger guys ran the simulator on a trip to the moon in the Challenger Center while the older guys played with indicator paper, made slime and other gross stuff. Then they switched.

I can't say enough about the flight simulation. The boys had to perform experiments and work their way flight emergencies, all communicating together and with Mission Control. It was amazing.

The classroom work was a lot of fun, too. I mean, what's better for an elementary kid than making slime! Oh, and did I mention they LEARN during all this!

And if that wasn't enough, we watched Earth's Wild Ride in the Burke Baker Planetarium and went on a flashlight and glowstick tour of the dinosaur hall.

And our sleeping accommodations? Golden! As in we slept in the light of the displays in the Gem and Minerals hall of the museum. Getting to sleep was no problem as we were all wiped. Staying asleep? ... Well, I personally thank Ken for the foresight to bring earplugs to help stem the snore fest.

The next morning we had coffee and donuts (Above and Beyond, Allison - Thank you!) and were able to again explore the museum at our leisure.

This really was a great trip ... more than one person said they thought it was better than the U.S.S. Lexington overnight that we did last year, which is a very good trip, too. I enjoyed them both, for sure, but I have to say that Allison and the HMNS crew put on one heck of a program, and we'll be back!

The photos:

• The Cool Chemistry Show
• Classroom activities
• Challenge Center flight simulation
• A little of all the rest

Visit with the Schultz's

We went on a whirlwind tour of Houston this past weekend.

We started out of town at 3:30p on Friday, but didn't make it to the Seabrook waterfront until after 8:30p. We had dinner with my brother Jeff and his family (no photos ... silly me) for the worst meal at Pappadeaux ever (not a normal occurance, but the service was awful ... it took at least 45 minutes to get all the food to the table), stayed at a hotel in Clear Lake, had breakfast at IHOP and then went to Andy's house to see the family.

We caught them on what seems a typical Saturday ... Little Andy had been to a soccer game and was just darling in his too-big soccer uniform. We remember those days! Adrienne, Sara and Olivia were out at Sara's horseback riding lesson, which really sounds cool and she says she likes it.

We all hooked up for pizza lunch and play time. It was fun to see all those age groups playing together.

Then it was off to the Museum ... next entry!

CdLS Picnic

A cross post on all my blogs ...

My childhood best friend helped host a picnic in Round Top for kids with CdLS (Cornelia de Lange Syndrome - http://www.cdlsusa.org/). What a great blessing to families who could really use the fellowship.

You can read more about the picnic and Olivia here.

Sean's 8th Birthday

Sean has really been into Star Wars lately, so we had a Star Wars birthday party for him, complete with a Jedi Training School. The boys played a game "Guess the character" where they picked a name out of a hat without looking, and then had to ask the other guests questions to figure out who they were. Next, we had a little force agility test as they tried to walk around and sloloam course whie blindfolded. Then a quick jumping test (remember the Jedi's jumping from skywalk to skywalk?) and a balance test, because, after all, Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the Force. Then it was more Force training as we floated ping pong balls above a hair dryer, then light saber practice with baloons. Would there ever be cake? Of course ... with Star Wars characters, of course.

Cultural Arts Day

Every other year (?), Mills Elementary has a Cultural Arts Fair where the kids learn about other cultures, from martial arts of Korea to food of Italy to the dance of Mexico. The second-graders also put on a program for the school, singing songs and doing dances from different cultures. They really enjoy it.

Pack 61: Blue & Gold, 2006

Pack 61 held the Blue & Gold banquet at Small Middle School. The theme was movies, and Brian's Den 13 had Harry Potter. Sean's Den 3 had The Chronicles of Narnia. They both had awesome tables, though we didn't get many photos of them. It was a great banquet.

Regional Science Fair

Brian's science fair project moved on to the Regional Science Fair at Palmer Events Center, where he was awarded a 1st place ribbon for excellence.

Pinewood Derby

Catching up on a real old one here from January ... the Pack 61 Pinewood derby. Sean's car was pretty fast and we thought we would get something, but alas not. It was a sleek back truck. Brian made an ice cream sundae, which was awarded the most original (I think.)

Marathon Kids Finish, 2006

Brian and Sean finished their Marathon Kids final mile at Chaparral Stadium in Westlake. The kids run a marathon over the course of a year during school, beginning with the first quarter-mile at UT's Mike Meyers stadium, and then ending with the last quarter-mile at Westlake where they get a medal.

Science Fair, 2006

Both Sean and Brian did great in the Science Fair this year. Sean did his on polution and plants, where he made pollution solutions to water his seeds with. He won third place at school. Brian built a wind turbine and learned about alternative energy, especially wind energy. He won first place in the alternative energy category and will go on to the Regional Science Fair on Feb. 25th.

Sean's Orange Belt Test

Sean has really taken to Tae Kwon Do, and today he had his Orange Belt Test. He is an excellent student not only of the moves, but the terminology, the attitude and everything that Master Cha tries to instil in his students at Flying Tigers Martial Arts.

The highlight of the test, of course, is breaking a board. It took Sean a couple of tries, but that isn't unusual. He was so proud after, as we all were.

Sean has really taken on a leadership roll with Tae Kwon Do, leading other students in class, and even helping them before and after and during free time at home. We are very proud of him. And huge kudos to Cory for working with him and making sure he does his black belt best every day.

A title for the Longhorns

The UT Tower the Saturday after Texas won the national championship.

Super quick posts for galleries

Just a super quick post to publish these galleries. Hopefully more information to come later:

• Decorating our Christmas tree


• Starting science fair projects


• Enchanted Rock


• Christmas morning