Car Talk

29 Jul 2011

Here is a conversation we had in the car today.

Jared: So which root beer does everyone like best? Barqs or A&W?
Tyler: Barqs! Barqs! Barqs!
Me: A&W.
Holly: Sopa?
Derek: Yay! Root beer double!

So there you go.

Carlsbad New Mexico

30 Jun 2011

So our big summer vacation begins. We started out by driving to Carlsbad, NM. Normally we try to stop in New Mexico as little as possible, but this time we thought it might be neat to check out the caves. We were right. They were VERY neat. I'm so glad we went. When the kids get older we will have to go back and go on some of the guided tours off the main trail.

This picture was taken with my camera's timer. The problem was that the camera was really far away from the family and so I had to run pretty far to get in the picture. I kept telling everyone to look at the camera until they saw the red light flash but they didn't listen to me. We took four pictures and this is the best one - I promise.

Cave creatures.

An awesome photo of the cave.

Derek as a park ranger. We took this picture at the visitor's center above the cave. You have to ride in a VERY OLD elevator to get down into the cave (I think you can hike too but it was really hot.) While we were at the visitor's center I did two telephone job interviews. Jared did one at the hotel that morning. We did two more on the road just after we left Carlsbad. I'm happy to report that we eventually got all the jobs we interviewed for. Yay us!

Dinner at the Carlsbad, NM Chili's. It was terrible. Slow service and microwaved leftovers. This was where I remembered how much I don't like New Mexico.

Mmmm...after a long day all we want to do is lay down quietly and go to sleep (ha ha). Not Holly though. She wants her eyes to start glowing so she can pretend to be haunted.

North Padre Island National Seashore

16 Jun 2011

Here are some pictures of us at the beach in Corpus Christi. We were really wondering about this sign. Shouldn't it say 'Beach Closed'?

Here is a super cute photo of Holly and Tyler and ... Derek's butt.

Derek and Tyler spent a lot of time making castle-ponds for the little crabs that I was catching out in the surf. Doesn't the background of this picture look like a painting?

The water was VERY warm.

And ta-da! The Holly and her hair have arrived! Now we can get this party started.

Texas State Aquarium

June 15, 2011

While we were in Corpus Christi to see the baby sea turtles, we went to the Texas State Aquarium. It was so cool! They had all the best kinds of animals, penguins, turtles, dolphins, otters, sharks, etc. and a fun splash pad for the kids (that we didn't know about until we got there so we had to skip.) What a great place to visit.

Baby Sea Turtles

6/14/2011

Last weekend we took a trip down to Corpus Christi to see the rangers release the baby sea turtles on the beach. The most endangered type of sea turtle is the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle and its natural nesting ground is messed up or something, so 20 years ago they started releasing babies on North Padre Island. Eventually the females came back and started laying eggs. People find the nests and the park rangers take them to an incubator and then release them when they hatch. They are soooooo tiny and super cute.

The turtles have to be relased at sunrise (cause they run toward the sun - not really, but I guess they are supposed to) so we had to get up super early. Tyler was thrilled.

Here's the rangers getting the babies out of the coolers. This was just one nest and it had 100 eggs. All of them hatched.
The volunteers held nets up over the babies to keep the birds from taking off with them.

They brought the turtles around for all the kids to see.

One of the volunteers used my camera to take this amazing picture.

I just LOVE this picture. I think it's so beautiful.

Aye! Sea Turtles!

6/14/2011

When I gave the volunteer my camera I didn't realize that I had it set on video. He was really nice and did this video as well as taking some pictures.

Snake Farm

6/13/2011

A few months ago we took the kids and Nancy to the Snake Farm. We saw it on an episode of Dirty Jobs and since it's just down the street we checked it out. It was very cool (well hot actually) and very snakey. The kids liked finding the top 10 most venomous snakes in the world and I liked the petting zoo - which only had goats and the like - not snakes.

K - you can't really see it in this picture but I have NEVER seen a snake as big as this albino python. It's over 9 feet long!!!

Derek was afraid of the goats at first but they were pretty pushy and he eventually gave in and just held out his hand so that they would stop chasing him.

Feeding this llama was weird because it has three lips and they are kinda scratchy. It's hard to describe, just believe me, it's weird.

These goats didn't want us to leave.

Tyler's Joy

6/7/2011

Here is a triumphant picture of Tyler at our ward's Easter Egg Hunt in April.

Jared Is A Good Science Teacher

6/6/2011

I am really jealous of how good Jared is at teaching. Almost everyone in our ward has a testimony of his gospel doctrine lessons, he got all "excellents" on his teacher evaluation at school, and he works for half as much time as me and is getting better grades in our curriculum development class. He tries to make me feel better by saying that he does well because he went to school for a really long time and that I do better than him at taxes. Hmph! It doesn't make me feel better. I want to be totally perfect at everything the first time I try it! I even had a nightmare last night where Jared turned in a paper with three sentences on it and got an A and I wrote over 10 pages and got a 68. (I might have a problem.) Well, at least I didn't have Jared's dream last night. He dreamed that ugly fat witches were attcking our house and casting spells on him :D

For the classes he teaches, Jared likes to make scale models. Here is a scale model of the layers of the Earth's crust.

Here is a scale model of the solar system that he put up on the wall of his classroom. I really liked it. The yellow made his room seem so happy.

Derek the Builder

6/2/2011

Yesterday morning Derek was playing with the K'nex downstairs while I finished sleeping. He kept coming into my room to wake me up and ask me to take little pieces apart and put them together. At 8:30 I finially came downstairs and found the "grandfather clock" from the instruction book almost fully constructed. I helped him connect the three major pieces that he had built together and voila! A pretty cool toy. I'm really impressed in my son's mad construction skills. He told me that his secret to success was to "just follow the arrows Mom."

Jared's Little Bird Told Him...

5/31/2011

Jared bought a humming bird feeder. Now our back porch is a humming bird hot spot! Yesterday we saw five of them all fighting to get the goods. Jared says that he's been filling it up with sugar water every other day. So cool (and a little expensive :)

Die, Die, Die!

5/29/2011

Tyler is such a super kid! This week we found out that he was commended for both his Math and Reading scores on the 3rd grade TAKS test. For all you Utah and Idaho people, that means that he got above a 90% on his end of year standardized tests. In Texas the TAKS is a really big deal and kids and teachers all work really hard to study for them.

We also found out that Tyler was accepted into the GT (gifted and talented) program in the Northside Independent School District. This is a really big deal. It will allow him to take accelerated math and science classes as well as test out of some of the required high school credits. He's very proud of himself and insists on referring to himself as "a genius." We keep telling him that bragging all the time isn't really a genius thing to do...he's still learning...

This week the squash vine borers attacked my zucchini plants. I thought that I could avoid it this year by wrapping the base of the stem with a paper towel tube. I guess not. Every branch I broke off had a wiggly little grub in it. I had to rip out the plants and I was really upset.

Tyler and Derek sensed my distress and thought that they might be able to cheer me up by drawing pictures of bugs dying terrible deaths. It actually worked. When I look at these, I feel so much better!

Ants Under Attack - Tyler (age 9) Killing June Bugs and A Snake With Spray - Derek (age 5)

The Home Depot - An Actual Home?

5/28/2011

Family home evening...Texas style!

We spend A LOT of time at Home Depot looking at poisons that we can use to kill bugs. The kids usually come along and get bored. Not this time!

She Calls Herself "Lolly"

15 May 2011

So my little Holly (or Lolly as she calls herself) is a regular stinker. She's got this wild curly hair that I can't tame. Nancy does a little better than I do, but she usually ends up looking like she just got out of a wind tunnel. She loves to play jokes on us and has a little bit of a temper. The other day I wouldn't let her get in the car to go to the Fathers and Sons campout with the boys. She was so mad at me that she put her blankets in her backpack with a bottle of water, took my phone, sneaked out through the garage and got two blocks down the street before I finally caught up with her. When I did she said, "Go away Mom!"

She likes to stand on the arm of a bench at the top of the stairs and look down at us. It's very, very, dangerous.

Relaxin' with wet hair on dad's pillow.

Holly LOVES to go for rides in the car.
We ran out of baby clothes (and barrels) so Holly had to wear a Little Einstiens drum.

This is my favorite. While I was grading papers I let Holly play with my graphing calculator. After a few minutes she gave it back to me with this message.

Oh dear, my sweet baby, what have you done?!

Poteet Strawberry Festival

2 Apr 2011

Today we went to the Poteet Strawberry Festival. It's the biggest and best festival in South Texas. I was skeptical of something so far out in the country but it was wonderful!

Here is the Poteet yellow cactus flower of Texas. Here is the Poteet hay field of fun.

Here are the kids posing with "Freckles", the Poteet Strawberry Festival's mascott. I didn't want to wait in line to get a picture of his front, so we just stood in the back. It was basically the same.

Derek's first experience with bumper cars. Tyler didn't have as much fun during his turn because the cars didn't have pedals and it was hard to control them with just the steering wheel.

Holly was bound and determined to get on every carnival ride that she saw but she was too short for most of them. She was actually too short for this one too, but we convinced the guy at the gate that we would keep her safe. She LOVED it!

I loved this! I have always wanted to go into a mirror maze and this one was great. I followed the boys through and it was so funny to see Derek running head on into all the walls. Holly kept running into the dead ends on purpose so she could see herself from all sides.

The view from the top of the ferris wheel. Yes mom, I went on the ferris wheel. As a side note, I really dislike ferris wheels. It's not the heights, it's the swinging. I've been scared of them since I was little. This one was okay. It didn't swing too much.

Holly aparently LOVES ferris wheels.

I'm pretending to love ferris wheels. The boys are excited.

Hot and sweaty Holly. It got up to 100 degrees today.

Our last ride was a little kids roller coaster. Holly climbed up the stairs 10 times or so because she was so excited to ride on it. However, we couldn't convince the guy to let her on. So Derek and Tyler went on the ride while Holly stood at the gate crying and crying. The boys said it was really fun. Tyler didn't like the "down and turney parts." Derek said, "It was great!"