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.