Fun Day

We spent all day playing with friends today at Amazing Jakes. It's getting too hot to do anything outside, even swimming, so I was glad our friends found this great indoor fun place. We met for the yummy lunch buffet, played games and rode rides until dinner, then ate dinner before heading home. All inside and all for one reasonable price. Excellent!

Kayla scaled the rock climbing wall effortlessly for the first time. Even with a jammed finger. She's not yet tall enough to drive the go-carts, but luckily she has a great big brother who drove her around the track recklessly with her screaming in panicked excitement the whole way.

Cal had a "girlfriend" within 10 minutes of our arrival as usual, so everyone got a kick out of making fun of his flirtiness all day.

As for me, I had good food, good moms to socialize with, and a great time watching the kids have fun. Another great summer day!

Summer View

This is my view of Summer 2010. Perfection. My family, sun, water, and great books.

So many people don't know how to respond when they ask me what I'm doing with all my free time this summer and I answer, "As much nothing with my family as possible!"

I think they expect a list of big projects. "Remodeling my kitchen!"

"Building my own compost pile and complete garden!"

"Learning to speak fluent Mandarin!"

That all sounds great, but how could it compete with spending an entire day lounging around with Cal in his room while we procrastinate cleaning it? Or strolling all over town with Kayla looking for someone to teach her how to knit my cousin's baby a blanket by August 3, and the perfect frame for the pictures she wants to give her best friend on July 13 (Best Friend's Day)? Or spending hours playing with puppies at Operation Kindness because there's nothing we have to watch the clock to rush home to get ready for, and being there when our friends decide to adopt the extra special one we've fallen completely in love with? Or spending an entire day with all four of us on the couch watching movie after movie after movie?

Unscheduled time is the best thing about summer for me. I spend enough of the school year telling the kids, "No, we just don't have time for that this week, now hurry up - we gotta go." And telling James, "That's a great idea! Just find an empty spot on the calendar and we'll do it. How does 2042 work for you?"

It's like one of my favorite quotes says:

When the mind is not crowded


By imaginary things,


It is the best season of your life.

Summer is definitely the best season!

Party in the USA

Kayla and I had a great time at the Miley concert with her best fried and her mom. I love Miley. I think she's fun, and her music makes me happy. I'm pretty sure that of the 4 of us, I was the most excited about the concert. Kayla is sitting here saying, "Not true!", but I still think I was.

We ate at California Pizza Kitchen before the concert. When we got there, we were excited at how great our seats were - 13th row on the floor. The girls had a hard time seeing at first, but we quickly learned how to position them standing in the chairs so they could see everything.

At one point, she came right over us on a zipline singing a song. Then we were extra happy with our seats. I was surprised at how entertaining it was. She was very creative and had a lot of special effects and extras.

I also just love watching Kayla and Aden together. They're such great friends to each other. They love and enjoy and care for each other. They are the living definition of the perfect friend and have been since they met in Kindergarten.

Best Class Ever

We weren't sure about me being Cal's teacher this year. It could have easily been a nightmare. We set up all these rules to prevent us from embarrassing each other. The main one was that once our ID's were on, we were just teacher and student. When the ID's came off in the afternoon, then we were just mother and son. Here's us on the first day of school.

Of course it had to be 4th period, the longest period of the day by 15 minutes. Luckily, the class was incredible. He was pleasantly surprised that I'm not as mean at school as I am at home, and that the class was kind of interesting. I was pleasantly surprised that he behaves better at school than he does at home, and he is a smart, inspiring student and a great leader in his class.

Here's one of the assignments he really got into. They were telling the class a folktale from their heritage. I tried to warn him to choose a different Czechoslovakian folktale, since his had a fairy princess for a main character, but he wanted to stick with it, so here he is telling the story to the class. My little fairy princess! :)

His best friends come from this class. I enjoyed them so much every day. There was only one day when I embarassed him. They were all hyper and wouldn't settle down, and we had something we had to get done that day, so I had to get mean and give some consequences. After school he told me I had been mean to them and he didn't like it. But it was only that one day out of the whole year, which tells what a great class they were. We took these pictures on the last day.

Best class ever!

Break a Leg!

I can't believe it's been a year since I added anything here. Reading back over my last few posts made me realize how valuable it is, though. For some reason, doing anything with pictures just completely drains my energy. I don't know why that is - but it is. So it makes sense that I haven't had the spare energy needed in a year - the last time school was out. It took me a full 3 weeks to decompress. What a lifesaver summer is!

Kayla performed in her first play today. She took an exploration academy class called "Goldilocks on Trial" where they learn and perform a play on stage and with costumes and props and everything. She enjoyed the whole process, wasn't freaked out to perform, and did an outstanding job! She was confident, loud, clear, animated, and very entertaining. She's a natural! I foresee many more plays in her future.

Her part was Detective Clorox. She testified against Goldilocks, acted out the flashbacks, and eventually got called out for eating too many donuts to be a reliable witness.

And her teacher was one of my teammates at school, so that was fun, too.

I'm so proud of myself for figuring out how to get these pictures from my phone to the computer to the blog. Whew!

Luckily, Kayla also took a photography class at exploration academy. Hopefully she can help me with my cameraphobia!

Hill country vacation

I don't have many pictures because we were in water most of the time and didn't want to worry about the camera. We started the vacation on July 2 celebrating our 1 year wedding anniversary. We went back to California Pizza Kitchen and Dave and Buster's like we did after the wedding last year.

On Friday we woke up, packed, and headed for Austin. At the last minute, James talked Gaga And Grampa into coming with us for the weekend. Friday night we ate at Freddie's, petting the dogs and playing washers. Afterward we wen

t to Amy's ice cream.

We spent Saturday at Barton Springs. There were a ton of people there, but it didn't feel at all crowded. There was plenty of shade, the water kept us cool, and everyone was just relaxed and happy. I could have stayed all day, but we decided we should go to the hotel to rest before our late night of fireworks at auditorium shores.

We were so glad that we had such a convenient hotel for the fireworks show. Again, there were a ton of people, but we just walked right over, easily found a spot to lay out our blankets, and listened to the symphony music and people watched while we waited for the show. We were sitting right by the port-a-potty line, so we got a great parade of people to watch.

The kids even got to see our favorite Austin "character". There'

s not really a name for him, but anyone who has spent much time in Austin knows who he is. I just call him James' boyfriend. On this particular evening, his ensemble included a leopard bikini bottom that revealed plenty of crack, a denim vest, and a cowboy hat. Of course he was carrying his rolling luggage with him, so when it was his turn for the bathroom, he left the door open so he could keep an eye on his luggage. It was fun to watch the kids' faces, as well as several others in line who were obviously experiencing their first such sighting.

The fireworks were great. I was surprised by how cool it was to see their reflection in the new glass buildings on the shores. It made it look like the f

ireworks were exploding inside the buildings. Afterward, we easily walked right back to the hotel, thankful we didn't have to fight the traffic.

Sunday we ate our Embassy Suites breakfast and went to the Hyatt Hill Country Resort in San Antonio. It was a great mix of family/spa/waterpark/luxury resort. We enjoyed the lazy river and the water volleyball.

Kayla and I decided to get out hair braided. It was SO tight! Kayla only lasted for a few hours before taking hers out. I lasted a little over 24 hours. It was nice to not have to think about or wash or brash my hair for a day. Is that what it's like to be a boy?

The kids decided to make Monday a lazy day. We spent a few hours at the pools, but most of the day we layed in bed watching movies and ordering room service. It was nice to just hole up in a little room with just the four of us.

Tuesday was Sea World. We spent most of the day in line. It was extremely hot. But the rides were fun and we saw some good shows. The waterskiing show was good and there was also a dolphin show. That's all I've got to say about that.

After Sea World we drove downtown and stayed on the Riverwalk. The Alamo was right outside our hotel window. We ate at a Mexican restaurant on the river that was yummy.

Wednesday was Schlitterbahn. This was a great day. Long lines, but plenty of shade and not too crowded. Everyone was happy. It's just a different vibe in the hill country. If you're in a crowd, it's okay because everyone is chilled and happy and it's a good energy. If you're in a crowd in Dallas, it's a resentful, hurried, "get-outta-my-way-I'm-way-more-important-than-you" energy. Anyway, we liked the rapids ride in the original park, and we liked the Master Blaster and the wave river on the new side.

When we left we found a new yummy restaurant in Clear Springs. Calvin ate at least 20 ounces of steak, and we all completely stuffed ourselves. I have vowed to NEVER stuff myself again - I was so miserable. I guess that what happens when none of us eat all day.

On Thursday, we just couldn't decide what to do. We had planned to go tubing on the Guadalupe, but it was so low we could tell it would actually be drudging down what used to be the Guadalupe before it dried up. So we decided to go ziplining. I was being chicken for some reason. I think it was the heat I was afraid of. Every day was getting up to 106, and it had been okay since we were in water, but I didn't know what to expect here. So we went to go see how it looked.

It looked awesome, and it was half price day, and they had a spot for us in the evening if we came back at 6. That was perfect because we realized on the way there that Krause Springs was right down the road. So we went swimming at Texas' #1 best swimming hole.

Now we know why it was voted #1! You're surrounded by trees and rocks and waterfalls. It's cool,fresh spring water. There's a rope swing. And Cal went straight to the cliff diving without hesitation. I wish I could be that carefree. I watched him over and over climb up the cliff and fly off. I was so envious! It looked so fun! I watched people jump for about half an hour, getting my courage up. And finally I steeled myself to do it. I knew it would be fun - I'm just such a chicken.

So Cal taught me how to climb up using the tree branches, pointed out the hornet's nest and how to avoid it, showed me where to step to get to the edge without slipping, and the overhead branches to hang onto as I made myself jump. The scariest part was making sure you jump out far enough so you won't hit the cliff on your way down. It felt so great!

Then we went to eat at an awesome barbeque restaurant called Opie's. When you walk in the door they open up this huge smoker and ask you what you want. Pretty cool. It was really good, but we were all careful not to eat too much after Clear Springs.

Ziplining was even more fun than any of us expected. It's not nearly as scary as it seems. In fact, it's not scary at all-just fun! The only kind of scary part was the bridges you cross to get from tree to tree. We're looking forward to going back to do the Challenge course next time. We all agree that the unplanned day turned out to be the funnest day by far. Isn't that usually how it happens?

Friday was our last day. Everyone was pretty ready to go home. I did my town lake running in the morning. Then we ate breakfast at Kirby Lane and went back to Barton Springs for the day. I guess it was pretty hot again because I lost count of the people carted off by ambulances throughout the day. But we didn't notice. We just swam and basked in the sun and soaked up all of Austin we could before heading back the next day.

Friday night we met Kellie and her family at Baby A's. It had actually been 10 whole years since we had all seen each other together. Unbelievable. It was fun to be all together and hang out for a night.

Saturday we just got up and went. No breakfast, no nothing, just went. We were pretty ready to get home.

Cal's summer

I have a lot of catching up to do. I haven't updated since January. The computer started getting slower and slower and slower, and it was just a beating to do anything on it. So now we have a new one and I've got all the pictures transferred and I'm finally ready to get back to it. I'm not techy enough to be able to put it in the right order, so I'm just going to randomly catch up on the last 6 months as best I can. Waiting until I can do it perfectly will only lead to more procrastination.

So - Cal has been to several basketball camps this summer. These pictures are from the Mavs camp. It was amazing to see how much more smooth and deliberate he was after just one week.

The burnt orange really made him stand out. A little ironic since his team was the Oklahoma Sooners, but it was nice to be able to pick him out of the crowd so easily.