Camping

Miles was so excited to go camping with me this last Friday. It was the annual Father and Sons Campout, held at the Church-owned ranch near Kissimmee. The whole drive down he kept saying "date!", referring to how excited he was to be out with Dad. I've been taking Abbie and Anna on "Daddy-Daughter Dates" for a few months, and Miles is about old enough to start going out too. I'll have to think of a different term for it tho, because "date" sounds a little weird for me and Miles....

Last year's campout was Miles's first exposure to more of Mother Nature, specifically, playing with Sticks. He likes to just run around and poke things, including people. It must be some innate joy for boys, because I remember being the same way when I was a kid. What's better than poking a fire with a sharpened stick?

The weather was really humid and started off warm, and I woke several times throughout the night because I chose to set up the tent over a bed of roots or something. It was not a pleasant night. The girls have been bugging me to go camping, too, so we'll have to do that sometime soon before it gets any warmer.

You can view more photos from the campout here.

Happy V-Day

Nothing's ever good enough...

So, I'm getting a little sick of my computer monitor at home. The lack of color depresses me. It's not a horrible monitor, mind you, but lately I've started paying more attention to detail. Call it a by-product from work, where we have an $8000 monitor calibration system for our awesome Dells. Polish a turd much?

Oh, Happy Chinese New Year everyone! I took the kids to a "celebration" at "chinatown" last Saturday. I was trying to make up for last year, when we showed up an hour too late and saw a bunch of cards leaving the parking lot. Parking lot = Chinatown. I'm not even kidding. Well, at least we have a parking lot. I suppose some places just have the local dirty Chinese restaurant where an Asian-ish looking kid (whose parents must own the place, why else would this kid be here because he looks bored out of his mind) mumbles at you and then acts like he doesn't understand English.

We had popcorn shrimp (totally Chinese) and a beef noodle soup. Actually, I should say that the KIDS had the shrimp, and I hogged as much of the beef noodle soup as I could until the shrimp arrived. They had little wooden skewers to spear your piping-hot shrimp, and I feared for Miles's eye a few times.

The Chinese New Year demonstrators (the area was roped off with yellow police tape) lit off a few long strings of firecrackers, and the place was like a war zone for the next 20 earsplitting seconds. I actually watched a young mother turn to shelter her small child, clamping her hands over his ears and shielding his body with hers as her face contorted from the mortar rounds, I mean firecrackers. I held my hands over Miles's ears and acted all brave even though I nearly got burned by a few flying pieces of firecracker. Yeah, we stood a little too close.

I took a bunch of pictures, but have been too lazy and depressed about the color on my monitor to process them. Besides, a turd's a turd, right?