Sunflower

After losing most of our garden to a few hard storms that knocked down the corn and battered the snap peas, we have one beautiful and strong sunflower.

This is probably the tallest sunflower I have ever seen. It is getting so big that it is having a hard time staying all the way upright. What amazes me is how during the day it turns to face the sun and follows it all day long. It almost looks as though it is straining to keep its neck upright. Then at night it is droopy as if it is resting until the sun shines again. I will be sad when this sunflower has finished its cycle, but I think the boys will be excited to gather the seeds and feed them to the birds. We will have to save some seeds to plant next year.

Working for the Weekend

This past Saturday was one of the busiest in recent memory. We started out at 8am at the gym for the Fitness Fair. Essentially, they were offering free sessions of their pay services, so Liz and I stupidly signed up for BOTH a one hour workout with a personal trainer AND a one hour running class, back to back. Liz's trainer mostly tried to sell her on hiring him (and flirted with her a little, I'm sure), while mine mostly punished me as much as he could. After the first 15 minutes or so I started paying close attention to how much he would let me rest in between lifts, and it was never more than 60 seconds. Liz had lower back spasms the rest of the morning from all the ab stuff she was doing. Needless to say, we both felt the effects for the rest of the day. Below you will see why this was such a bad idea.

The best part of the day was lunchtime, when our good friends from Wharton, The Stanworths, came to visit. They were in San Antonio for a weekend of Sea World, the Riverwalk, and shopping at the best outlets I've ever been to, in San Marcos. We were delighted to have them and their adorable girls over for lunch and glad they took time out of their schedule to stop by. The boys had a lot of fun with Savannah and baby Kate and we enjoyed reminiscing with Marc and Jenn about the good old days in Philly.

After the Stanworths left we readied ourselves for my 9-year-old Sunday School class party. No less than eleven 9-year-olds came over for two hours of complete mayhem. I thought it would be a good idea to let the kids set the menu, so we let everyone choose one thing to eat. Well, the joke was on me, because we ended up having sushi, shrimp, octopus (I think that one was a joke, but I made the poor kid eat it anyway--that'll teach him), chocolate cake, honey-roasted peanuts (random, I know, but that's exactly what she wanted), strawberries, barbecued chicken, pizza, and root beer floats.

The kids played outside in the backyard for a while. We even had a five-on-one basketball game, with me versus five little girls. Needless to say, I smoked them 5-1 and had about 23 blocks. They pretty much just stood right next to each other and squealed while they handed the ball back and forth 20 feet from the basket.

We also had a PS2 SSX Tricky tournament that the kids were excited about. But the funniest part of all of this is how much Charles and Joey insisted on being in the mix at every step. The funniest/saddest part was while two of the kids were playing PS2 and Charles was loudly coaching them and getting more and more excited as the kids neared a difficult part of the course. His advice went something like this: "no... turn... no wait... turn to the left... NO... you have to TURN... the river is COMING... jump over THAT HILL AND TURN... NO... NOOOOOO... (SIGH) NO NO NO NO NO You have to JUMP over that HILL and TURN or you'll fall in the RIVER!!! YOU HAVE TO JUMP NOW OR YOU'LL DIE IN THE RIVER!!!! JUMPJUMPJUMPJUMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!" At that point, one of the kids that was trying to play finally snapped and said, "just SHUT UP!" Those words are very against the rules in our house, plus as a parent you always have a protective streak that makes you want to go and pop the brat that tells your sweet 5-year old to shut up (plus, the kid didn't turn at ALL, I mean, how hard IS IT?). But before Liz could do anything, Charles, who had walked all the way up to the TV during his tirade, spun around, looked at the whole room of 9-year-olds, and indignantly declared in a very strong voice, "YOUUUU don't say that to MEEE!"

For yet another dessert and as part of the "craft" activity they requested, we made sugar cookies for them to decorate with frosting and sprinkles. Once all the kids got out of the way, Joey stole away to the table with the cookies, frosting, and blue sprinkles. He didn't do a bad job with the frosting (I expected him to just eat it straight), but he must have shook those sprinkles for five minutes, because he used the rest of the container on his cookies. I walked up on him happily eating away and snapped these pics.



He actually lost interest after only about half a cookie. Our kids rarely get a lot of sugar, so maybe he was grossed out by all of it (think butter cream frosting). Liz has us eating very healthily and, although they get their little treats from time to time, they rarely eat HFCS-filled stuff. So, this seems like as good a time as any to also post this picture from a few weeks ago when Joey was given a popsicle treat (that he talked about for a few days). You can see he is really enjoying it.

And as long as we're posting pics, here are a few of our sweet girl Tori.
She is increasingly mobile every day and has shown a startling ability to pick up new tricks very quickly. She's already pretty much mastered scooting/crawling, and before we know it she'll be running along side her brothers. Poor Liz.

Beach Party!

This past holiday weekend we went down to South Padre Island. Being from California, our expectations were admittedly low but South Padre exceeded them nonetheless. It's a pretty easy drive down the coast from San Antonio, and we lucked out Pricelining a great hotel with private beach access and free breakfast. Except for a little rain Saturday morning (we were in the waves, so it didn't bother us much), we had excellent weather. The water was warm, waves were fun, sand was great, food was delicious, and we enjoyed some side trips in the area on Sunday.

We went to Church on Sunday morning at the small branch in Port Isabel. It reminded me of Spain since they met in a small space in a shopping center. The meetings were conducted in Spanish and the boys got to wear headphones for the shaky translation from one of the missionaries. Joey took it off immediately, but Charles stuck with it for a while, intrigued at the idea. He kept listening and staring at the speaker, taking them off for a second, putting them back on, looking back at the missionary translating--you could see the gears turning in his head. Here is a picture of the marquee outside the branch. Can you find the Church?


Then we took a little trip down to Brownsville to visit one of my projects next to the University. Of course, we had to stop by the Vermillion restaurant so I could have Liz try the ceviche. Ceviche is one of my very favorite things in the whole world, and the Vermillion serves the best that I've had outside of Spain. Liz agreed that it's the best. Also, beside the ceviche and seeing the project, the trip down there was made worthwhile when we saw two roseate spoonbills, which are very rare to see in the wild in the U.S.

After Brownsville, we decided on a lark to drive up to the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Reserve, which has a staggering number of rare and endangered species. It's the only place in the US where Ocelots and Jaguarundis exist, and the last place that Leopards were found in the U.S. (yes, leopards were once indigenous to South Texas. I know, I was surprised too). On our little visit, we saw ospreys, a sandhill crane, a wood stork, a Texas tortoise that I almost took home, crested caracaras, green jays, golden-fronted woodpeckers, roadrunners, a green kingfisher, dozens of other birds we couldn't identify, and alligators. Yes, that's right, there are alligators there, and we actually ran into two of them, as you can see in this video:



And here's a picture of the boys with the gator in the background:


The rest of the time on Saturday and Monday we spent relaxing on the beach, eating a lot of good seafood, and walking the huge fishing pier in Port Isabel where we saw a guy catch a 26 pound red drum.

Blackbeards (or the Pirate restaurant, as the boys called it) has probably the best calamari (another one of my favorites) I've had outside of Chipiona, with Pirates Landing's (or the Pirate Castle restaurant, as the boys called it) calamari coming a close second. We had fresh Gulf shrimp with every meal--so much so that on Monday Joey asked "where are we going to go eat shrimp?" instead of "where are we going to eat lunch?" I think the boys had shrimp every day for lunch and dinner.

The kids had a blast and we practically had to tear the boys away from the beach on Monday. Tori squealed with delight all weekend long and slept through the night in the hotel. We were sad to leave. In fact, since we've been back, Joey keeps asking, "when are we going back to the hotel?" Soon, I hope.

Now, tons of pictures:

Here's a bizarre entryway for one of the many beach shops

And a picture of my three favorite girls (the third being our car, Jenny B, in the background)

Here is the gang at Pirate's Landing in Port Isabel:

And Charles helping steer the ship:

Of course, we did the obligatory 'bury the kids in the sand.'

Then I made a sea turtle for them to ride.

I tried to get Joey to sit on the sand and let the waves hit him. He wanted no part of it.

Instead, he just danced around on the sand.



Charles was much braver in the surf:


I love the anticipation on his face in this picture

He even caught a few waves himself and was fully stoked--then he got planted face first in the sand. By the way, is it wrong that I was laughing for like 15 minutes after Charles got bent? We've all been through this before, right? Right?? Here is the video:

And here's my gorgeous little baby girl. I really just can't get enough of her--as evidenced by the dozens and dozens of pictures we have of her. Every time she sees me, she smiles as big as she can, wiggles her arms and legs, and squeals and squeals.

Cool pic of Tori with cho-cho in the background:


Another fun thing this weekend--Tori popped her first little tooth:

Here they are again--mom and daughter. Am I not the luckiest guy in the world?

And of course, my favorite picture of all (at least half of it).