Danielle's Birthday

Today we celebrated Danielle's upcoming anniversary of birth. The fun began with reviewing some past photos of her younger years.

She opened her presents starting with small and working up to large.

The jingle bells-fluffy pencils caused a timeout for a happy dance.

Great-granddad's gift was next.

The big wish-list item was baby doll bunk beds with wheeled animal toys.
The doll is climbing into the upper bunk.

No birthday is complete (at least around here) without the traditional birthday sundae and candles.

... and lots of chocolate syrup!

Happy Birthday, Danielle!!

Lime Harvest

Our little lime tree did better this season. It worked had to produce more limes than ever.

We had used a few limes already, so we had more than two dozen! Hooray.

Grandcamp East

J. and T. went to the Smokies for a short holiday, so we got to have a Grandcamp with John and Christopher.

As soon as Mom and Dad were out of sight, we headed to Chik-fil-A for dinner and exercise.

Of course, a little goofing around happened sometimes.

We went to the Clemson City Park where there is a great spider web climbing structure. More exercise.

Exercise requires lots of calories - like in ice cream sandwiches.

One of our chores was to take some things to the recycle center. They had some really neat dragster tires in the tire pit.

Recycling requires lots of calories, like a chocolate chip funny face pancake at IHOP.

Sometimes we had quiet time after lunch.

We spent some time at Ashley Dearing Park. John decided to climb over the 6-foot fence around the ball diamond. Several times.

There are other things to climb on, too.

And a forked slide.

On our last morning, we had a Skype visit with Cousin Ada (and Aunt Jessica and Uncle Mark.)

Ada and John played their Gravity Tubes for each other. It was awesome!

CAF Air Show

The Commemorative Air Force (formerly Confederate Air Force) visited the McKinney airport recently. Here are a few of the World War II aircraft that flew in for the show.

North American AT-6 Texan

Boeing B-29 Superfortress

 Curtis P-40 Warhawk

 Douglas SBD Dauntless (I think)

The CAF fleet contains over 140 vintage aircraft, of which about 100 are in flying condition at any given time. Their primary mission is "To acquire, restore, and preserve in flying condition a complete collection of combat aircraft which were flown by all military services of the United States, and selected aircraft of other nations, for the education and enjoyment of present and future generations of Americans".

Grandcamp West

Grandcamp commenced with a run of 'device usage'. A really cool part of this was Naomi learning how to do simple programming Monday night before bedtime, using an iPad app called "Cargo-Bot".

Danielle enjoyed some of Aunt Jessica's old puzzles.

Naomi had a soccer game on Saturday. Everyone warmed up first.

The other team was short of players, so they played 4 on 4. The game ended at 0-0 with a lightning alert, as the cold front moved in.

During the game, Mimi and Danielle went and fetched Chik-fil-A for our ride home. We drove through some really nice rain showers.

For our Sunday outing, we wagoned over to the local donut shop for breakfast. Haut cuisine!

It was a bit chilly.

Sunday afternoon was beautiful. We played outdoors with things like the sticky ball catch game.

After getting bonked on the cheek (thanks a lot, Pa...), Danielle adopted a strongly defensive style.

By the time we made the trip home to get ready for school, someone was pretty tired.

Tuesday morning, everyone was up, dressed and ready for a session of PBS kids by 7 o'clock. We can't figure out why 'someone' gets up tight about getting ready for school! (hee hee)

We had a good time, and handed off the Grandcamp baton on Tuesday.
Thank you, Grammy and Grandpa!!

Pancake Machine - The Movie

Clemson - Summer 2013

On our way to visit the Penna clan (during the making of Dracula in Louisville), we spent our 'road night' at a Holiday Inn Express. They had the latest in Pancake Technology: an automatic pancake maker! Push the button, and two minutes later you have two hot pancakes on your plate!

In Atlanta, we stopped by to pick up a top box for Pa's motorcycle. In the office, someone named "H" had painted a wonderful wall mural of a swirly motorcyle.

One of our outings was a tour of a nearby housing/shopping/office community development project. Our favorite feature was a learning center for ages 50+.

Saturday was 'screen time day'. Great for togetherness and bonding... NOT.

Since then, we have focused on non-aggressive activities as much as possible (e.g., not Plants vs Zombies. Yes, we know it's about defense of the lawn, but you ARE destroying them in various ways!)
We're having fun!

Big Boy 4018

The Museum of American Railroad moved their Big Boy #4018 steam locomotive from Fair Park to Frisco. We went to see it while it was parked in Irving.

Lots of rail fans came out to watch the move and take lots of photos and videos, like this:

You can see more images and a play by play description of the move on the Museum of American Railroad facebook page.

In Pursuit of Perseids

Last night was forecast to be a good time to see lots of meteors from the annual Perseid meteor "shower".

I waited until after midnight and drove out to Erwin park, about 6 miles north of our house, looking for a dark spot. When I got there, the cloud layer had moved in and there were no stars.

When I got home, the clouds had broken up some, so I stayed up and went outside around 3:45. This time I just laid down on the driveway and waited.

Hooray: in the next 45 minutes, I saw four very nice meteors, two of which actually left a brief trail, plus two more which were short and faint enough that they barely registered.

Hardly a shower. I don't know if I will try again tonight - there is just too much light around here, and one would have to drive a long way to find real darkness - Wyoming, for example.

Anyway, this could have been photo of a meteor, if my reflexes were better:

Long, long ago, at a Birthday Party far away...

Great Granddad's 92nd

We celebrated Great Grandad Martin's 92nd birthday (again) today, with an after-Church brunch with friends Carol and Barry and Sue.

Mimi prepared a wonderful meal, featuring a sausage/egg casserole with gluten-free biscuits and German Chocolate cupcakes.

We didn't get a good photo of his "main" present, but he seemed to enjoy it. We'll add a picture soon. (building suspense...)

John Adams

The book John Adams by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster, 2001) is an engaging and descriptive portrait of the life and times of a truly remarkable man. John Adams was a plain man, but a brilliant and courageous warrior for God-given right of personal liberty of all people. He did not seek fame, but he never shied away from the call to serve the greater good of his country, at great personal expense and risk - as did many of the patriots of his time. He was one of the most upright, honest and selfless men, ever. Additionally, his devoted and extremely intelligent wife, Abigail, was his equal partner in every way, deserving of a large share of the credit for his tremendous contributions to the founding of the United States of America.

Oh, that we today had but a few statesmen of John Adam's stature, who truly placed the good of the people of the whole country above personal gain and power.

Birthdays

We had a Birthday Barbeque get-together to celebrate Naomi's and Grandpa's birthdays.

There was birthday ice cream, with candles.

Naomi seemed to enjoy her new Lego Friends kit.

Happy Birthday Grandpa and Naomi!!