Carmen volunteering at assisted living facility

A few weeks ago, Carmen needed some service hours, so she got some friends together and they played music at an assisted living facility.

She thought it was fun, so she went back again a week or so afterwards to do it again, this time bringing the accordion and some games.

The director of the facility contacted her recently and asked if she would be interested in making Easter baskets for the residents. She agreed, and she dropped them off Easter Sunday, bringing along her brothers and the Goldrup bunnies.

Back to the Future: The Musical

I saw some advertisements for Back to the Future: The Musical and it looked entertaining, so Amber and I went on Saturday.

The music was good, but not super memorable. The writing was great, with lots of tongue-in-cheek references, and the stage production was incredible. There were a lot of really cool effects, culminating with the Delorean actually flying at the end.

Overall, it was a fun performance and we went away happy.

Milking a cow

The kids did their church camps during the first few days of Spring Break. When they got back, I took a day off work so that Amber could redeem her birthday present to milk a cow. We drove a couple hours west to La Grange to the Jersey Barnyard.

It's a working dairy farm, and we got to take the full tour. We started off with some of their smaller animals, like goats, chickens, and rabbits.

We paid a little extra for bottles of milk to bottle feed the calves.

They had two groups and we had to wait a while, but they gave us free Blue Bell ice cream cones for our trouble. After our wait, we took a hayride to the cow milking area.

The farmer brought one of the cows, gave us a lesson about the cows, and taught us how to milk it.

Carmen took to it naturally of course.

She got the milk flowing for the rest of us.

It was a fun excursion, and Amber was happy to finally get her wish.

We bought some raw milk to take home with us. I was hoping it would be amazing, but other than a slightly different flavor, it wasn't too much different than HEB whole milk.

Visiting Olivia

Olivia has spent enough time in her program that she gets "passes" to go out and do things, so we drove up to Plano on Thursday to spend some time with her. There's not a lot to see there, but she found a local train museum that seemed like a good option.

It actually ended up being pretty interesting. It had all the history of the private interurban electric railways that ran people, cargo, and mail between Texas cities until after WWII.

They even had an old train car that had been salvaged from someone's private collection and restored.

Afterwards, we stopped at some interesting-looking Asian markets to find some snacks, which we brought back to the ERC.

Olivia seems to be doing well, and it was good to see the facility. Amber and I were tentatively planning on staying in a hotel, but we were done early enough that we just decided to drive home that same night.

Gingerbread creations

With all the things going on before Christmas, we barely managed to find time to bake and decorate our custom gingerbread creations just a couple days before Christmas.

Amber and I made the Alamo, Olivia made a pineapple, Carmen made a standard house, Damon made the coaling station from my old train set, and Miles made a Rubik's cube. Carmen helped put the Texas flag on the back of the Alamo, which I thought was a nice touch.

Hot Wheels Legends Tour

We had a free Saturday, so I took the kids to see the Hot Wheels Legends Tour. We went three years ago and this one was very similar. The event was held in a Walmart parking lot and featured lots of interesting cars.

My favorite was this car that was cut in half lengthwise, then put back together to make it narrower. We talked to the creator for a while. He said he has a regular-sized version also, so this one is Flaca and the regular one is Gordo.

Of course there were a bunch of real-life Hot Wheels cars.

The Tour is sponsored by Mobil 1, so of course I had to get a picture with the Mobil 1 branded cars.

They didn't have as many activities as the last one, so after we looked at all the cars, we got our "package" picture, then got a snack in the Walmart before heading home.

Speed cubing competition

Miles has really gotten back into cubing recently, so I took him to go see a speed cubing competition that was being held at the University of Houston. Carmen and Damon couldn't come, so it was just the two of us.

As I knew to expect from previous experience, it was a supremely nerdy affair. They had all the standard sizes from 3x3x3 to 7x7x7, plus one-handed and blindfolded 3x3x3.

After a while it was obvious that there was one kid who was obviously the best so we made sure to watch each of his attempts. 

We walked to Burger King for lunch, then watched for a few more hours after lunch until Miles was ready to go. We checked after we got home and that kid ended up winning every category.

Gingerbread creations

We designed and constructed our gingerbread creations on Saturday, then decorated them on Sunday.

Several of us took inspiration from our recent London trip. Damon made Tower Bridge, Miles made Big Ben, and I made a London Bus. Olivia made the Millenium Falcon, Carmen made Applejack's barn, and Amber made an experimental curved gingerbread baked over a bowl, which we decided looked like a turtle.

Taste of the Town and Pickle Festival

We had a food-themed weekend. First, Amber and I went to Taste of the Town at the Humble Civic Center. It was fun sampling foods from all the different restaurants and we were stuffed by the time we left.

On Saturday we went to the Kingwood Pickle Festival. It wasn't too different from years past. Olivia drove herself because she had to be back earlier, but the rest of us found plenty of pickled items to enjoy.

Blueberry picking

On Saturday we drove to a blueberry farm in Conroe to pick blueberries. We got there well after opening so there were already people leaving as we were parking, but we didn't need to worry because there were LOTS of blueberries.

We walked in a ways, found a good spot, and started filling our buckets.

It was easy to lose each other while climbing through the bushes, and I had to chase people down for pictures.

A lot of blueberries ended up in our mouths, but we still ended up with way more than we needed.

We realized when we went to pay that it was cash only, but luckily someone there offered to trade us cash for a Zelle transfer and we were able to take our haul home. We've been gorging on them, we've given some away, and we're planning various blueberry treats in the next few days!

Ostrich and camel races

The stars finally aligned and we were able to go back to the ostrich and camel races over the weekend.

We had fun picking random horses while waiting for the real races to begin.

The ostriches were first, and it was beautiful chaos.

We got some fries and watched some horse racing until it was time for the camel races. It was a photo finish.

Gingerbread houses

Despite a week where we had something planned nearly every night, we were able to fit in our Christmas tradition of making custom gingerbread creations.

Olivia made Baba Yaga's chicken hut and Carmen reused an old design to make a ship.

Damon opted for an engineering challenge with the Gateway Arch, while Miles went big with a stadium.

I made a birdhouse (based on Amber's Lego set). Everyone had a fun time and they turned out great!