A couple of weeks ago we took a day trip over to Fort Worth to visit the Stockyards. We drove over in the morning and got there in time to watch the morning cattle drive, then hung out at Stockyard Station for a bit, ate some Bar-B-Q for lunch, Alex rode a mechanical bull, and we took our picture like an old fashion outlaw family.
We had lots of fun and took a bunch of pictures. Fort Worth Day Trip Pictures
and she doesn’t look so happy about it.
Just hanging out in the crib, and by hanging out I mean, wants to get out.
Alex: We made the statue of Liberty because it was almost the 4th of July and the end of school. You an see that we made windows on the Statue of Liberty’s hat. We also made the book in her hand and we also put the fire in the torch.
We also made the lines on the dress to make it look like it was real.
This morning Alex did his very first triathlon. We have been practicing for about the last month practicing the swim, the transition to the bike, and then being able to go from biking to running. It all went really well except that his bike is now a little on the small side and to get up any speed his legs have go around about a zillion miles an hour. (When he was at the bike inspection on Friday he tried to convince Jen that he really needed to get a proper triathlon bike.)
He said he had lots of fun and wants to do another one next season, and if you listen to him talk about the race this afternoon you would think he just competed in IronMan Hawaii. You can check out the pictures here.
Adobe has been busy the last couple weeks fixing security holes in both Flash Player and Acrobat Reader and patches for both products were just released. Take a minute to update your system to keep yourself safe. Additionally, if you use Adobe AIR they also recommend that you update that as well.
For Flash Player you need to be running version 10.0.32.18 no matter what operating system your using. To find out what version of flash player your running check this page. If your not running the latest download it from Adobe here. Remember, no downloading from any old web site, get it right from the source.
One thing to consider is that if you run Windows and you use Firefox, Opera, Chrome, or Safari as your primary browser you will need to download the update for those and then go back and do the upgrade for Internet Explorer. You get the same version it’s just that IE and the other browsers use different update mechanisms.
To update Adobe Acrobat start it up and select the “Help” menu item then “Check for Updates.” It should automagically update itself and when done you should be running version 9.1.3. If your running version 8, or heaven forbid 7 or even older, you might have to download the full 9.1.3 version instead of using the using the update feature.
If you have Adobe AIR installed you can find the update on Adobe on this page. Your chances of running this are a lot smaller and you would probably know if you have it. It’s used as a platform to create applications that run on Windows, Mac, and Linux boxes without the programmer having to worry too much about your specific system. If you download an app from the web that requires AIR it will automatically install it for you. If your curious and want to find out if you have this, on Windows box you can go to the “Control Panel” and select “Add or Remove Programs”. It will show up in the program list as “Adobe AIR”.
Not a whole lot to say, we went over to visit some friends for the holiday, hung out at the pool, ate some hot dogs, drank some beer, and then had our own little fireworks extravaganza. The pictures are mostly of us hanging out at the pool with one or two others thrown in for good measure.
I’ve been trying to get caught up on web site updates and I’ve made some progress in the last week or so.
First up was pictures from Alex’s baseball playoff game. I didn’t take any pictures during the regular season so when we had our first playoff game I figured I had better take a couple.
Next up are pictures from the Chick-Fil-A Cow Appreciation Day. Once a year Chick-fil-A hands out free meals if you come in dressed as a cow. Alex and Andrew really got into it and they decided to go with a Star Wars theme. (Imagine that.) After dressing up in their cow costumes they made up name tags with their ‘Star-Cow’ names and headed out for free chicken.
And lastly I finally got around to pulling together the boys yearly pictures. We took them ages ago but it was really difficult going through them to pick out the better ones since a bunch of them just don’t come out. I tried to take them early in the morning so the sun wouldn’t be beating down on us but then the trees in the backyard cast harsh shadows so that part of the body is in bright sun but then the face is all dark or vice versa. Anyway, here are Alex’s pictures and Andrew’s pictures.
This week we tried giving Caroline her first rice cereal and I have to say that she was not a real big fan. I’m pretty sure Alex and Andrew had the same reaction the first time they tried it but eventually they came around. You can see all the excitement here.
Friday night Alex, Andrew and I went to the Frisco RoughRiders game. It was a 7:00 start but even at that time it was about a 100 degrees out and by the time I ended up walking around the entire stadium looking for the will call window I was covered in a layer of sweat. Earlier in the day I had a larger lunch and between that and the heat I wasn’t even hungry but the boys were sure able to pack it away.
When we arrived they both got hot dogs and a drink which they followed up with ice cream in the third inning. (Not real ice cream though, I couldn’t find any in the whole stadium but they had those ridiculous ‘dippin dots’ stands ever couple of feet. I assumed that the dippin dots people probably had some type of exclusive deal with the stadium to deprive us proper ice cream.) In the six inning Andrew kept saying how hungry he still was and so it was off for nachos and a funnel cake. Nachos, it’s a 100 degrees out! I’m not sure what his fixation was with nachos but he wasn’t going to let me leave until he had some.
I took a couple of pictures of the boys during the game and since Andrew was getting a little tired he just kept telling me to “take another one” and he’d make a goofy face, we’d look at it and laugh, and we would do it all again. There’s a couple of them below.
Keeping with the baseball activities Alex finished up his baseball season today with two playoff games. They had a morning game which he played really well and got a hit for an RBI and then scored a run. They won the game in the last inning with an in the park home run that scored three people which kept us alive to come back and play in the second round of the playoffs in the afternoon. In the second game he got two doubles which is the best hitting he’s had all season. I took a bunch of pictures but I’ll need to sift through before I can post them online.
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Me: Here’s your second piece of art work, a fancy looking guitar, tell me about it.
Alex: The lines on the outside of the guitar are vibrations.
Me: Why did you decide to do a guitar?
Alex: We had to.
Me: So they didn’t give you a choice?
Alex: No.
Me. Ok. Is there anything else you want to share about your work?
Alex: Yes. I picked the colors red and blue for the guitar because they are my favorite colors.
Me: How did you pick the colors for the lines?
Alex: Are art teacher put expo sharpies into two buckets and we got to pick five or four at a time and we got to do whatever colors we wanted.
Me: Very nice. Anything else?
Alex: No.
Me: Ok, thanks.
