Air Show

We went to the Wings Over Houston air show on Saturday (thanks for the tip, Dan!) and had a lot of fun.  Just a warning, I took a ton of pictures (just to give you an idea, I deleted over 300) so this post is going to exceed my ideal 5-6 pictures per post limit.


The air show is held at Ellington Airport, which is home field for NASA, Texas Air National Guard, Texas Army National Guard, and US Coast Guard, so they had lots of fun things to look at.  NASA had a few fun things, like one of the jumbo jets they use to fly the space shuttle.

They let us go in and take a look around.

Here's NASA's Super Guppy, used to shuttle space station pieces.

They also had a fun kids section where you could take pictures of yourself on the moon, or in a real space suit.

And of course there were lots of other cool aircraft to see on the ground.  Lots of little planes, a few helicopters, and plenty of fighter jets.

They also had a few non-flying vehicles there, probably just because they were cool, like jeeps and tanks and even a few classic sports cars.

We had gotten there pretty early, but still didn't get to see everything on the ground because they started the actual flying and it lasts most of the day.  We got all set up in our chairs and everybody was happy to watch parachuters and stunt planes and a simulated Coast Guard helicopter rescue.

Then they stepped it up a notch with recreations of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the battle of Midway, complete with explosions.  Click the first picture to see all the planes flying around.

They even flew in a few of the big bombers.

It was actually a really moving experience.  It made me realize how tremendously frightening it would have been to experience.  The girls were getting a little bit less excited.

We took a stroll after that and missed some of the Hueys and other Vietnam-era craft, but in our wanderings we scored some good seats right behind the rich people's port-a-potties just in time for the fighter jets.  They started off with a solo Air Force F-16.

Then a solo F/A-18 Hornet from the Navy.

By this time, Carmen was not pleased (but mostly because Mommy couldn't hold her and eat a gyro at the same time).

The final act was the Air Force Thunderbirds, and it alone was worth the price of admission.  They flew in tight formation doing all sorts of tricks and fly-bys, with a few solo runs scattered throughout.  Very entertaining.

Their famous diamond formation.

One of the simplest, but most impressive tricks is when they'd come screaming by low, then pull straight up and be out of sight within seconds.  Here you can see contrails forming from the huge pressure change as it goes up.

Not a Photoshop job...

Here's another fun trick, angling the jet so it goes really slow.

And away they go.

Except for the hour plus delay getting out of the parking area, it was a fabulous day.  Here's a little video compilation of some of the acts so you can be even more jealous.

Idea: Plot

This would actually make a good writing prompt for a class or writing group.  Write a story in which the protagonist is bestowed with a lucky charm/talisman/blessing of some kind and has high hopes for a specific goal.  Soon after receiving it, he or she encounters a series of seemingly unlucky events and circumstances that lead him or her to the brink of discarding/disavowing said lucky charm/talisman/blessing, only to culminate in the discovery that each of the misfortunes led in a previously unforeseen way (flashbacks!) to the intended lucky result.

That seems too easy to have not been done before.  Who am I ripping off?

Carmen Talk

I meant to write a post about this at least a week ago, when it first started to happen, but about 2 or 3 weeks ago Carmen decided that she was going to talk.  She'd been saying a few essential words like Mama, Dada, eye, and shoe before, but now she's decided to actively try to mimic words.  I got a small sampling of her vocabulary on video today.



She knows a lot more than that, obviously, and it's been fun to have her communicative.  She has such a funny personality, I'm excited to hear what she has to say.

Fire Ants

This is what happens when you stand in an ant hill in Texas (and Florida, I know...)

That's Olivia's foot from a few days ago.  She's feeling much better now.

Fuzzy green caterpillar

I came home yesterday to find this little guy on my front door mat.

Complete with racing stripe.

Take a look at those spines, it's like a fireworks show.

And here's its... uh... cute little face.

Camping

We took advantage of an absolutely beautiful weekend to go camping.  Since it was the girls' first time, we went to a local forest park with the standard campsites.  I used my scout skills to get a fire going and soon we were eating hot dogs grilled over an open fire.

We didn't have a whole lot of time before it got dark to do much besides take a few steps into the woods, but it was ok because Olivia was so excited to sleep in a tent that she kept telling us it was time for bed.

We lucked out (of course) and were right next to the loud campers with the huge fire, but they finally quieted down around 9 or so.  The girls were excited to "sleep" in the tent, and probably spent an hour or more climbing around, on , and over us until they finally wore themselves out and Amber and I could sit out in the perfect weather and chat under the stars.

After a short night, Amber and I were informed by Olivia that it was day (which was technically true) and that we needed to get up.  Carmen heartily agreed by climbing all over us again.  Soon we were out and eating breakfast.

They had a sandbox for the tent, so you don't have to sleep directly on the ground, and Olivia was almost more interested in the sand than the forest.

But we eventually got out on a trail and hiked for a while.

I know I really enjoyed it, and Olivia seemed to have fun.

For Carmen it may have been a more meaningful experience, since she decided, unprompted, that she wanted to literally become a treehugger and bestow embraces such as this to many of the trees we passed.

Now that the trial run was a success, I'm looking forward to some more camping adventures soon.

Some more pictures

And just to get caught up to recent times, here are a few pictures of the kids.  The first ones Amber took after giving them some candy (obviously).

And here are some I got while we were playing in the backyard.

Jason

We got a surprise visit from Jason shortly before his infamous birthday.  He was in town on a business trip and was able to spend two evenings with us.  The first night we had a had a barbecue at Dan's house and the second night he treated Dan and me to dinner at Saltgrass Steakhouse.  We planned on going bowling afterward, but the bowling alley was full, and the mini-golf place was closed, so we decided to watch football instead.

Since I get off work a little earlier than Dan, he came over to our place for a little while to just hang out.  It didn't take very long for Olivia and Carmen to warm up to him.

And soon he was doing his uncley duty.

And his husbandly/fatherly duty of calling home (while Olivia amuses herself).