Monster Jam

A while back I heard that the Houston Opera was going to do "Carmen", and I thought it would be fun to take Carmen to see it. Then I thought I should take the other kids on fun dates too, and so when Monster Jam ads started appearing I decided to take the boys.

Traffic was really bad because it rained heavily on our way there, but we had left early so we got there right as it was starting.

We all had fun watching the initial races and jumps.

The best part, though, was the freestyle competition, where we got to see some cool tricks and crashes. Our favorite was the Monster Mutt dog car, which had a great run, although the car itself was pretty trashed.

It went pretty late so the boys, especially Miles, were pretty tired by the end. They fell asleep on the car ride home.

Carmen's cross country season

Carmen just wrapped up the cross country season. She decided she was going to take athletics this year instead of PE, mainly for cross country (although she is trying out for all the other sports, too). She made the team and was chosen to be at all the meets since she ended up being the best girl runner in her grade.

Her first meet she got 32nd place. As with most, it was a two-mile course and she ran it without too much trouble.

Over the next couple of races she made steady improvements to her placements and her times, getting into the 20s, then teens. She improved her running mechanics and also learned a lot about race strategy. She got boxed in early in one race and decided to get to the front of the pack early on in the rest of the races to avoid that again.

Her second to last race was at her home course at Timberwood. She hung with the leaders in that race and achieved her goal of getting a top 10 finish (8th) and ran the two-mile course in a little over 15 minutes.

The last race was a larger meet that included some schools outside the district. She didn't replicate her success from the previous meet, but did really well and wrapped up a very successful season.

New kitchen table

Ever since we expanded the dining area years ago, we've been talking about getting a new kitchen table that seats more and fits the room better. We had a free Saturday this past weekend, so we went table shopping to replace the table we bought to fit the old space.

In the past we liked the tables from Gallery Furniture, but they were very expensive, so we stopped by a few other furniture stores like Ashley and The Dump (our previous table's source) first. We found a few candidates, but nothing that tempted us to pull the trigger.

Gallery had two good candidates, a very large, quite fancy table that we ultimately decided would be a little too fancy (and probably too big) for our house, and a smaller, simple one. We opted for the latter table (despite the Gallery prices) and as promised, Mattress Mack had it delivered later that night.

We originally wanted to get 8 chairs, but they only had 6. Otherwise, we've been very happy with it. It has two leaves, which allows us to expand it for guests. The leaves are stored in the table itself, and the opening mechanism has metal gears so the table opens very smoothly. Underneath, it has a little shelf, which Pepper was quick to claim as her own.