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

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.

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.

July 4th pictures

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.

After two long years I finally took the time to put together a new picture collage for the home page. (I think it was Deanna who told me the one from 2007 was getting kind of old.) I used to construct them by hand using Adobe Photoshop Elements which was really a pain since I had to find the pictures and then manually cut and paste them all together, and get them in the right spot so it’s fits together. It used to take me a couple of hours to get it all done which is why I had been putting it off.

But a while back I started using Google’s Picasa as my photo catalog and they have a cool collage feature so all I have to do is select the pictures and hit the make collage button. It does all the hard work of puting the pictures together and making them fit together just right. Took me less then half the time to put this one gether then the other ones.

This year they had an after school chess program at school that Alex participated in. On the last day of class the parents were invited to come and watch and then be there for the end of year awards ceremony.

I took a couple of pictures of Alex playing and getting a trophy which I posted to the web site. He received a medal for trying to teach Andrew how to play and then a trophy for his tournament play. The teacher really liked Andrew and gave him a medal as well since he was able to name a bunch of chess pieces. Since that day he’s been picking up the chess set and tells us that he ways to play but I keep trying to direct him to Candy Land or something that he has at least a chance of playing without direction.

Andrew turned 4 a couple of weeks ago and we had the traditional family party at the house and a week or so later we had a party with his school friends at Boomerangs, the bounce house mania. He had lots of fun and I updated the website with the pictures.

We took the boys to the park last week to work on Alex’s baseball skills and Jen took some pictures of Alex, Andrew, and I playing which I posted here.

As an aside, I haven’t played baseball since I was in like grade 5 or 6 and I have to say I really, really stink.