The Heat Is On

Competition locally also got under way this morning as the Don competed in the YMCA Tall City Triathlon.  Though perhaps the word 'complete' was more on his mind that 'compete'!

What real athletes wear

Swim 500 yards + bike 13.7 miles + run 3.1 miles = 1 sprint triathlon.  All over in 1 hour and 38 minutes.  And it looked a lot harder than it sounds, even at 07:51:30 when it was already 30 degrees C.

We're proud of you daddy!

All worth it for the t-shirt!

Rule, Britannia!

Despite receiving the t-shirts (thanks Grandma) and bunting and cupcake holders (thanks iChum) in time, we missed actually celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee a few months ago due to another special event.  So today, in time for tonight's opening ceremony, we decide to embrace our Britishness and bedeck, bake and bunt:

GO TEAM GB!

Special thanks to our fourth aerial awkwardly positioned for receiving NBC*.

* And as we watch nothing else on NBC, the aerial can't stay in the middle of the corridor on the floor on a daily basis, the Olympics is only on for 17 days and it cost us $100, I'm thinking it's gonna get returned within our 30 day grace period.

Pool Party

Toots, Tiger and Lightning took part in Midland County Public Library's Summer Reading Programme this year.  Helped greatly by Oma, the girls 'read' 100 books within an eight week period to gain entry to a pool party hosted by the Library this evening at one of the City's public pools.  It was quite clever really - every twenty five books read the kids were given a prize (free Chick-Fil-A meal or entry to the ice-cream party) - with the ultimate prize (certainly for my kids!) of getting to the swim party.  The t-shirt and bag they also got at completion they didn't seem so fussed about...

As the kids get older the books count differently, so next year when Toots can read I think she'd count chapters read rather than books. Which maybe we should have counted this year too, given that she read Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox and Esio Trot which only counted as two books over a three week period or something.

Braving the slide alone

Ooops, missed that shot!

Anyway, I'd have said my girls would read 100 books during that time anyway, but when you actually start counting you realise that it can be quite a challenge.  They get a book or two read every night, and Toots always has a book in her hand, but actually she likes to read them herself and rarely asks you to read it to her.  On the other hand, Tiger would have books read to her non-stop, and so reached 100 with ease.  Lightning reached the grand total of twenty-five, but was still invited to the party ;)

Washington Pool itself was nice, though the water was freezing (a bit like the pool at Graben, though with very little shade).  And given that it was 7pm when the party started, the sun wasn't shining quite as hot as it could have been.  But the kids had a great time, and thankfully I didn't have to get more than my knees wet.  When they turned purple though, we decided it was time to enjoy some of the other freebies on offer...

Warming back up while enjoying the pizza and 'cheedows'

It's A Hard Life

Life in West Texas this summer:

Can't Get You Out Of My Thoughts

Dreaming: it's something I'm struggling with at the moment.  Or perhaps it'd be more accurate to say nightmares.

In the past, pre-marriage and kids anyway, I used to like dreaming.  I always found that if I woke up in the morning and remembered my dreams, I'd had a better, more satisfying night's sleep.  At the moment though, dreaming only means a night full of tossing and turning and trauma.

I've always been one for processing my thoughts during the night.  I'm a sleep talker, though only occasionally, and I know that if I have a lot to plan I end up thinking through the different option during the night.  It makes for a restless night certainly, but not usually one full of nightmares. I also know that I'm affected a lot by things I watch particularly, and sometimes read, which is why a lot of movies and TV shows are a total no go for me.  Call me a wuss if you will, but even the new Batman, much to the Don's disappointment is too much for me.

Anyway, about a month ago during a swim trip to a new pool, Tiger was caught floundering in a jacuzzi without her swim vest on.  I was quite calm at the time, but that night I woke up with as close to a panic attack as I've ever had.  For two hours I just lay awake, because every time I closed my eyes all I could see was the consequences of the floundering.  For the next few nights my mind kept remembering that jacuzzi and creating more and more scenarios including other swimming pools and other kids and on more than one occasion I woke up during the night making a grab for one of the kids.  And apart from having really interrupted sleeps, and being even more tired as a result, I have to say it's made me that much more anxious about swimming with three kids and lots of other families.  And I'm not an anxious person by any stretch of the imagination.

Last night I started reading Stephen King's The Stand - the complete and uncut edition.  Despite having read only two of the seventy five chapters, which makes up about 2mm of a 5.5cm thick book, I had an awful dream about everyone basically dying and I was left, along with a few talking foxes and rabbits, to burrow in to the ground so my family and I would have some protection.  Meanwhile, the Don and another dad were playing baseball, oblivious to it all.  Which perhaps is less about the book and more about other things going on in my life!

Anyway, if anyone has any solutions to a better night's sleep, I'd be happy to hear them!  I don't drink caffeine before bed, I rarely eat cheese, and generally I deliberately don't watch things or read things that I know will affect me.  But this book I want to read, all 1439 pages.  Maybe I'll just need to find time during the day to indulge myself.  Ha!

Don't Know What You've Got (Till It's Gone)

And then you find it again, even at a cost of almost $3 a tin.

Yummy.

No Surprises: Part II

Funnily enough, yesterday (15th July) the Don finished reading One Day, which was the day the book is writing about for 20 years. Even more funnily, he actually enjoyed it, which I'm assuming his brother also did since he was the one that gave it to the Don last Christmas.  He was "rooting for Dexter", he says, whereas I just found the bloke a bit of a .... can't think of an accurate but polite enough bloggable word!

The difference between men and women?

Walk Of Life

Our wee Lightning is walking!  It's still in the Frankenstein arms out-stretched, lolling from side-to-side stage, but so adorable.

(I've never been able to upload video for some reason so pictures are gonna have to do)

And it's been so lovely seeing him learn, and so different from what I remember of the girls.  In fairness, I can't actually remember that much about either of them - at the time you think you'll remember it all but you really don't.  Toots though, she never crawled.  In fact, she didn't figure out crawling till about 18 months, even though she'd mastered walking by fourteen and a half.  But she could cruise anything, and got round a room and from room to room faster than many of the crawlers.  She never walked though until she could definitely cross the patch, and I distinctly remember the first time she actually paused and changed direction, because it was so unusual.  She was normally one side to the other no stopping. Tiger on the other hand could stand up in the middle of the room, turn around, sit back down again, then stand back up, but still didn't want to actually walk.  Her balance was incredible, and she could crawl and cruise well enough, but didn't seem to want to walk until, well, she wanted to.  Which is very her.

Lightning on the other hand, he seems to be pure boy.  About a month ago he started taking his first steps, but after a couple he seemed to stop walking and just launch himself for either the Don or I to catch.  He managed a few more and a few more, but seemed to enjoy more the launching at the end, to the point that it got a bit scary when he was heading to the table in the middle of the room with its sharp edges, or towards the tiled floor.  Still, he knew he would get smiles and claps and shouts of glee whenever he walked himself, so the steps continued and the launching increased, always ending with him grinning madly from the floor.  And he's so in love with the attention.

Anyway, he's been getting better and better and just after Oma left he started walking from room to room.  I have to say he still likes to fling himself on the floor, and at least today crawling is still way quicker so if food is offered or daddy has just come in the room his walking is abandoned in favour of speed, but he definitely loves his new found freedom.  As do the girls.

A Sign Of The Times

Jeffrey Archer.  Love his books.  I really do think he's a "master storyteller", as his book jackets are wont to describe.

But I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about his most recent books, the 'Clifton Chronicles'. So far he's written Only Time Will Tell and The Sins of the Father, with two more coming out over the next couple of years.  And they're good stories, and I'm looking forward to finding out what's gonna happen, but it's a sign of the times I think that he's writing these as a chronicle, and not as one long story like his earlier books Kane and Abel, The Prodigal Daughter or The Fourth Estate.  Now those were great, long, books that covered the eighty years of whatever that this chronicle also seems to cover, but then they were written in the seventies and eighties when I'm guessing trilogies (and their cash values) weren't all the rage.

But as much as it annoys me, I'm still gonna read the third and fourth book like!

Goodbye Blue Sky (again)

And then it was time to say goodbye, cheese and onion tart style...

...but not before the Don and I got one last night out (finally, after a year and a half!) at the drive-in.

Spiderman, in case you can't tell

Thanks Oma, for everything!

Water Town Town

We also ventured out of Fredericksburg to see a few sights in the surrounding area:

Natural Bridge Caverns

About half way between San Antonio and New Braunfels lie the Natural Bridge Caverns, one of the state's largest underground formations.  Its name comes from the 60ft natural limestone bridge that spans the entrance, and inside (where it's always 70 degrees F and 99% humidity - which meant curly hair by the time we came out) you walk down and back up the equivalent of 18 stories.

The natural bridge

New Braunfels

New Braunfels (named for its Prussian founder, Prince Carl of Solm Braunfels) was the first German settlement in Texas.  It's best known for (tubing down) the cool and easy-flowing waters of the Guadalupe and Comal Rivers, and for Schlitterbahn Water Park, though small children, summer holidays and long queues meant we did neither.  Instead we discovered Landa Park, and what a find.

A second ride, up front, for free - just for being Scottish.

And if I had to recommend one thing in New Braunfels, it would be this park, in particular the proper swimming pool within it.  If we'd had more time we'd definitely have gone, but it looked absolutely ace for a fun day out, and infinitely more child friendly and cheaper than Schlitterbahn.

Gruene

Four miles north east of New Braunfels lies Gruene (pronounced 'green'), a sweet little community that has been "greatly resisting change since 1872". It's best known as the oldest, continually operating dance hall in the State of Texas, and known throughout the world as a music venue. Gruene Hall has seen Jerry Lee Lewis, the Dixie Chicks, and Garth Brooks play, and been in the movie 'Michael' starring John Travolta.

Needless to say we didn't don our stetsons and boots and dance the night away, but we did have dinner in the next door Gristmill River Restaurant, situated inside the brick remnants of an 80-year old cotton gin.

German Studies

The Independence Day mid-week holiday also gave us a good excuse to have a long weekend away.  So off to German influenced Frederickburg we went, where Oma could enjoy some sauerkraut, bratwurst, rye bread and German conversation, even if main street itself still looked like it was straight out of the wild west.

Our home away from home...

Which also included NBC (which our TV doesn't pick up), so the Don could enjoy some of le Tour and the Wimbledon Final live.  Bonus!

...and it's massive metre high bed.

Fredericksburg

Fredericksburg is located in the Texas Hill Country, 65 miles north west of San Antonio and 70 miles west of Austin.  The town was founded on May 8, 1846 by 120 German immigrants under the auspices of the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas, and derived it's name from a German nobleman, Prince Frederick of Prussia.  The first colonisation was of New Braunfels in 1845 (about 60 miles south east) and during the early years over 5,000 colonists from Germany settled in Central Texas.

Vereins Kirche

The original Vereins Kirche (society church as it is translated) was the first public building in the settlement and was locating in the middle of Main Street.  It was to serve as town hall for meetings, as a schoolhouse, as a fort for protection ahainst Indians and as a church for all faiths.  The original structure was removed following the town's Golden Jubilee in 1897, and the reproduction, currently used as a  museum of Fredericksburg history, was constructed in 1935.

Admiral Nimitz Museum and the

National Museum of the Pacific War

Charles Henry Nimitz, Sr purchased this property in 1855, and the steamboat facade was added in the 1870's when the hotel expanded. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz of World War II fame spent time in his grandfather's hotel so a museum was built here commemorating his life.  

The next step seemed to be to build an enormous museum commemorating the Pacific War, which houses big planes, big boats and big artillery.  And I mean enormous.  It seemed to go through the Pacific War battle by battle, ship by ship and plane by plane, after summarising the long history between China and Japan.  And although it was interesting, there was a bit too much detail, killing and horror for the 34 year old in our group, let along the 3 and 4 year old.  So needless to say, we stayed away from the third part of the complex, which was the South Pacific Battle Zone.

Memorial Walk

The Plaza of the Presidents

Old Tunnel Wildlife Management Area

One of the other fun things the Don and I managed to do, was visit the Old Tunnel Wildlife Management Area where over three million Mexican free-tailed bats make their home.  From May to October, at around dusk, you can watch the colony of bats emerging from an abandoned railroad tunnel.  Or so they said.

Of course the night we went it started raining, which makes the bats less than keen to come out, and it was nearer dark than light when they did finally emerge so were quite hard to see, but still, you could appreciate it was a lot of bats....

They are there!

Viewed through the infa-red camera

Pure coincidence