Tag Archives: website

Thanksgiving in New Orleans

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For the first time in a couple years we travelled to New Orelans for the Thanksgiving holiday. We started the Thanksgiving festivities by running in the 101st Annual Turkey Run put on by the New Orelans Track Club. Alex and I ran the 1 mile fun run while Amanda and Ben ran in the full on 5 mile event. I’m sure I wouldn’t have run in it at all but Alex really wanted to run and he wasn’t going to do it by himself so I ran with him. We ran a 10:07 which I think is a pretty respectable time for a six year old. It was also the first time I’ve run in the past year and I have to say my legs were a bit sore the next day, especially going up and down stairs. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the couch watching football and eating a fantasic turkey meal.

The following day we took part in a New Orleans tradition and went to the Fair Grounds to do a little wagering on the horses. We didn’t end up winning any money but let me tell you, we were this close. That night we finished up by going to the opening night of Celebration in the Oaks at City Park. We rode on some rides, we walked through the light displays, and took a night time train ride around the park.

I’ve posted a couple pages of pictures from the weekend which you can find here.

And, since I haven’t had time to sit down and sift through the post card collection I figured I would add this one of the St. Charles street car which we picked up last year to send but never got around to it. I think my collection of “purchased with the intent to send” postcards is as large as the ones that I’ve received. This one even has the stamp on the back so this one got reasonably far in the process.

What’s happened in the past couple of years is that we let Alex and Andrew pick out a couple cards with the intent that we’ll sit down and write them to grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and we usually get one out the door and consider it a success. The rest end up in the lonely pile of forgotten postcards.

Fall Campout

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It’s a website bonanza this week, first with the Disney pictures and today I’ve managed to get our fall campout pictures done.

A couple of weeks ago Alex and went with our Adventure Guides troop on our Fall Campout to Oklahoma.  Alex always enjoys going on the campouts so he had fun even though it was very cold.  We went hiking, horseback riding, did some archary, and for the first time they actually cooked their own dinner over the fire.  Usually we just eat the food in the mess hall but this time the boys roasted hot dogs on sticks over the fire.

You can find the pictures here.

Balloon Fest Pictures

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For the past couple of years we have made it a tradition to go to the Plano Balloon Fest.  The launch field is right across the street from Andrew’s school so he gets the see the preparations going on the week before and sometimes they get to see a couple of the balloons out on the field.

I asked Andrew a couple of questions about Balloon Fest.

Dad: What was your favorite part of Balloon Fest?

Andrew: Jumping in the bounce houses.

D: What was your favorite balloon?

A: Animal one, and buffalo one, and that’s all.

D: Is there anything else you want to tell me about Balloon Fest?

A: Um, I saw a dragon one, a panda one, and a daisy one.  They didn’t go up.  I just saw them flash.  I also saw the fire and I liked it because it wasn’t burning anything.

Here are a couple of pictures I took from the night we went.

New Orleans Trip – From Way Back in August

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I was thinking to myself the other day that I didn’t post any pictures on the web site in August and that I don’t recall actually taking very many pictures. I started going through the camera’s and found that there were a bunch of pictures from the August New Orleans trip on there. I had completely forgotten about the trip.

Jen and the boys spent a week in New Orleans while I stayed back to work. Kelly was in town during the week as well taking care of stuff before her move and through a series of events I ended up missing my flight and driving with Kelly from Dallas to NOLA.

Here are the August New Orleans trip pictures.

Trip to Canada Web Site Update

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Over the July 4th holiday weekend we decided to take a trip to Canada to visit the family. We looked into flying up but air fare was totally outrageous so we made the decision just to drive. We left here Friday night and took three days for the drive there with a stop in Chicago on the second night to see Amanda and Ryan and crash at their place. (Thanks guys.) Then we had five full days in Canada which we used to visit family and go around and visit all sorts of cool stuff. Then on Saturday we turned around and drove back home in two days, a very long two days. We ended up driving a total of 3200 miles (5150 km) after all was said and done.

Alex and Andrew did really good on the drive and I don’t remember hearing too may “Are we there yets”. On the second day of the ride home Andrew got a little upset but that didn’t last long since he fell asleep.

After a couple of weeks of sifting through the pictures, getting them organized, getting some additional pictures from Deanna and Doug, (thanks!), and it’s all done. Whew.

As an aside we played the license plate game and I think we ended up doing pretty well. 32 US States, 4 Canadian Provinces, and 3 Indian Trip, who would have known they have their own license plates.

US Plates Canada Other Special Ones
Arizona Maryland Oklahoma Alberta Cherokee Nation
Arkansas Michigan Oregon Manitoba Muskogee Nation
California Minnesota Pennsylvania Nova Scotia Wyandotte Nation
Colorado Mississippi South Dakota Ontario
Florida Montana Tennessee Quebec
Illinois Nebraska Texas
Indiana New Mexico Virginia
Iowa New York Washington
Kansas North Carolina West Virginia
Kentucky Ohio Wisconsin
Maine Wyoming

Baseball Pictures

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Alex finished his baseball season a couple of weeks ago, well, it’s probably been just over a month now, but I took loads of pictures and just haven’t done anything with them yet.

Last night I tried to figure out the easiest way to get them all posted and decided to try something new and put them in a fancy photo gallery. It’s kind of the lazy way out since I didn’t edit any of the images or add any comments to the pictures but there were just so many of them I decided just let it be.

You can find all the pictures here. You can scroll through the pictures one at a time by clicking on them or there is a “Play Slideshow” button in the bottom left corner that will automatically scroll you through the pictures. This album also happens to support PicLens which is way cool browser add on for scrolling through lots of pictures at once.

Boy’s Yearly Pictures

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Last month we continued our annual tradition of taking the boys yearly pictures and we’ve finally gone through them and picked out the best ones.

Here is the set from Alex. We had to get creative this year to keep Alex out in the yard to get a good set of pictures because after out thirty shots he figured he was all done. We tried bribing him with “Let’s get some action shots with you kicking the ball.” “How about one more, just move over here.”

Here is the set from Andrew. Right now Andrew is all about making goofy faces when the camera is on him so it made getting this years pictures a little challenging. In the end we had all sorts of pictures with him making funny faces but out of the bunch I think we managed to get a couple of good ones.

Andrew’s Birthday Pictures

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A couple of days ago I finished pulling together the pictures from Andrew’s birthday party. He’s really into animals right now and wanted to have a party with animals so Jen found the Owen’s Spring Creek Farms where we could have it.

We rented an air conditioned room at the farm where we could have the cake and drinks and open gifts which turned out to be the greatest decision ever because on party day it was 96 degrees outside. First they visited the stables and saw the horses and pigs, then it was on to see the turkeys, chickens, and donkeys. This was followed up by a hey ride around the property which Andrew described as “bumpy” and it finished up with feeding the sheep and goats.

Overall it was a big sucess but in the days since the party Andrew has mentioned to us many times that next year he doesn’t want anyone to eat any of his birthday cake.

Alex’s Hockey Pictures and Andrew at Gymnastics

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What a bonus, two web site updates in one day.

The first page is Alex’s Hockey/Skating lessons that he had been taking over the past couple of weeks. We managed to get him signed up for a free learn to skate/introduction to hockey class where that included all the equipment and skate rental. There where 30 kids in the class and only three coaches so there wasn’t all that much instruction going on but Alex had a blast. So far he hasn’t expressed any interest in going out full time for hockey and for that my pocket book is grateful. Later in the summer he is signed up for another learn to skate class through the City so maybe that will be enough.

The second page has pictures from the Gymnastics class that Andrew and I went to over the past couple of Fridays. It was a 45 minute class where the instructor did an overview of the exercises that we would be doing for the day and then it was pretty much free time for Andrew and I to go around to the ones he liked the best and do those. When they pulled out the trampoline I thought I was never going to get him off it but he was way more interested in jumping off the mats and swinging from the bar.