"Vacation Part TWO!"

Yes, Part Two of our exciting time away from Arlington is here! Since the majority of our vacation was meant for Seaworld, I decided to make that part the finale` if you will. A few pix:



Here we are first thing in the morning. And by first thing in the morning, I'm referring to 10:45 in the morning. We had to sleep in a little, plus we got to have breakfast at the "Sporting News" Cafe which had a breakfast buffet which was awesome! Eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon, oatmeal, biscuits and gravy, and, well, I could go on and on. Feels like I already have. Hey, we need to start out full, right?



Zach: "Hey Dad, this shark is trying to eat me!"
Me: "What!? That's impossible son. Plush animals have no nervous system."
Zach: "(sigh) I know Dad, I was trying to be funny. Thanks for ruining this moment of comedic gold!"
Me: "Anytime!"



Dolphins!! They had this entire pool of them that could not get enough to eat. Fortunately, they sold itty bitty trays of fish for $6 each that you could buy and feed them with. I think we spent about $60 on fish. Wow.





A water park right in the middle of Seaworld? Too cool. Good thing Zach and Emmy brought their swimsuits because they did not want to leave.



Water skiing! We didn't do any of it, but they had a lot of people doing tricks on jetskis and motorboats that was pretty cool. For instance:



The jetskis kept spraying water on everyone. Fortunately, we were smart enough to sit outside of the 'splash zone'. Of course, it would have been nice to get sprayed, since it was incredibly hot outside.



Somewhere, a women's libber is complaining that the men are carrying the women.



I was really looking forward to seeing the penguins, so imagine my dismay when 1) all of them are behind 6 inches of bulletproof glass and 2) it was so dark that I had to use my flash which caused bright spots on all my pictures and couldn't get any good shots of them. This was the best one.



Shamu!! This was actually a pretty cool auditorium they built for the whales. This was definitely the highlight of the day.



Until you see this up close, it's hard to believe they can jump out of the water completely. I took about 30 shots trying to get them jumping out, and this was the one that survived. I like how the rainbow formed on her back.



I love this shot! The reflection on the water made it really hard to get a clear shot, which is why this one looks a little fuzzy, but the light coming in makes a really cool background. This next one really got her best side...



This one is currently our desktop wallpaper at home. Just a great shot.



Nemo! A bunch of them actually. I used a non-flash setting to take it, then forgot which one I used for later shots! Oy vey.



This is Azul, a beluga whale! The show was really more about the divers and swimmers than the whale himself, but occasionally he popped up.



Shamu: "Okay kids, let's make this fast. Ol' Shamu has a date with a hot dolphin in about 15 minutes."
Zach: "But, aren't whales and dolphins mortal enemies?"
Shamu: "Nah, not this dolphin, if you know what I mean..."
Emmy: "No, we actually don't know what you mean. Explain please."
Shamu: "Okay that's it, show's over, everybody scram!"



Sea lions! We missed the show the first day due to the intermittent rain and thunder that kept rolling in and out, but we caught it the second day. Apparently there is a mystery of someone keeps stealing all the fish in the warehouse and there was a diner waitress who wanted to be a detective and needed the sea lion's help to find out who it was. Turns out it was a weasel. Big shock eh? They got the sea lions to do some pretty cool tricks:





Something else, I know. Amazing what animals will do for free food.



Shark-feeding time! I never did see any sharks around, which is probably a good thing. Something tells me sharks feed first and contemplate the decisions they made later.



Pettin' time!! I avoided touching them like the plague, but that didn't stop the other three. I took about 10 shots before I got this one. So proud of me.



Considering I took this one with my iPhone, I think it came out really well. The dolphins were constantly bobbing and weaving so it was tough to get decent shots of them.

Wow, we did a lot! We needed a day to relax when we got back. But it was a lot of fun. So glad to be able to take the family to fun places every now and then. Plus, I just counted the number of days until my 16 day Christmas vacation. The tally is...

148!

Next week, I'll feature some pix of Emmy's birthday dinner we had at Olive garden!

"Vacation Time Part One!"

Yeah, that's right. Part ONE. When we do so much that I have to split it up into two posts, you know we had ourselves a gay old time, to quote one Fred Flintstone. Let's start...with Monday:

Moody Gardens!!



Pretty fancy pyramid yes? There's actually three of them, one for their aquarium, another for the rain forest that we wound up visiting, and another for some kind of learning experience about the human body...with real cadavers! Sounded a bit gross to me, but to each their own. Once we got inside from the 95 degree heat, we discovered the rain forest had their own 95 degree heat plus extra humidity! Luckily they had A/C vents blowing cool air so it wasn't all bad. Man was there plenty of things to take pictures of:



I just saw that Zach had spilled his "Bellywasher" drink all over his pants. He did not - I repeat - did not wet himself. But it took everything in him to not manhandle the giant geode.



A blue duiker! Never heard of it but it was really cool that all these birds and animals were all around us and not just behind six inches of bulletproof glass, ya know?



These...monkey things...ran right by Zach and me! Turns out they weren't even monkeys! They were members of the monkey family though. Surprisingly, they didn't jump on anyone and attack them. I guess Rise Of The Planet of The Apes was just make believe then?



A lizard!! A chameleon actually. I had to take this picture in almost pitch black conditions. I think it turned out pretty good!



Hey, that's a really good shot of us! I like the birds in the background too. I think I even insisted on the guy getting them in the shot. I'm planning on printing up a bunch of these and re-filling the different picture collages in the house.



Bats! Weren't a whole lot of them in their little cave but I like the close-up I got. I figure with the new Dark Knight Rises movie coming out I'd better feature some nocturnal animals!



Zach: "Help! I'm about to fall in this pond!"
Me: "Oh wow, how deep is that water?"
Zach: "Um...only 23 feet."
Me: "You can swim that, can't you?"
Zach: "I can, but it says there's snakes in this water!"
Me: "Oh you'll be alright...just remember not to get bitten!"



Chrysalisses!! I think that's the plural term for it. If you look closely, you can see one of the butterflies hatching! We got a butterfly growing kit a few years ago and they looked pretty creepy.

Next stop...

Kemah Boardwalk!!



This is a cool place to get a good picture right outside of the Aquarium restaraunt we ate at last year. We considered another place to eat, but in the end we enjoyed this place so much last year that why mess with what works eh?



Aww, this is a great shot of me and the boy. It looks like he's giving me a hug, but I think I felt a bit of a choke hold there! What did I ever do to him, ya know?



This is a really good shot of Cari and me. Although...I wonder what she's trying to grab ha ha. I wanted to tell her "Hey, my wallet's in my BACK pocket!"



Emily: "Eeeww, this fish is so slimy! Will you dry it off Dad?"
Me: "Oh sure...just let me use my shirt."
Emily: "Really? You'd do that for me, your only daughter?"
Me: "No! Get real man..."



It took a few tries to get a good background shot of Emmy on the ferris wheel, but this one wins the prize! What prize was that? Zach won a snake or something and Emmy won a bear. Zach of course didn't think his prize was as good as he should have gotten, but what kid is ever satisfied with what they have, right?

Next week, I shall dip into my cream of the crop pictures from Seaworld! And man I took some beauties! But this post is in danger of running out of control, so I will wait a bit and feature them later. But we had a really good time. My bed felt so good. My kingdom for a king size bed in a hotel room!

"All About Zach This Week!"

Well, when Emmy is out of town on one of her camping trips, Zach seems to get most if not all of the attention. Not that he wasn't busy this week. He had his church vacation bible school:



I asked him to look nice and smile, and he gives me this look like "Ey! Wassamattah you!" For every nice picture of him I have, I have about 30 silly ones. Like the shirt too. Nothing wrong with hot air balloons.



This was a puzzle that Emmy got back when she was 4 or 5, and when she outgrew it, she let Zach have it. Well, he's got a mind like a steel trap, and that can only help him do puzzles, so he did this one in about 5 minutes. But he sure was proud of it.

Both kids had somewhere else to go last weekend, so Cari and I had some alone time and made a trip to...



...Winstar World Casino! We usually play this Goldfish game that has worked pretty well and I actually won $80 on it right out of the gate, but I tried to win more and lost some. So I found this Deal or No Deal game and won $111.11 exactly! All in all we won 50 cents exactly. Ah well. If we had lost our entire $100 we would have been bummed out. So it was a pretty fun trip. Sunday we picked Zach up from Mom's and had some pizza and swam.



Wow, can you believe that was me 33 years ago? People think Zach looks like me at that age. There's a slight resemblance I guess. The truth is, he's a lot more like me than he knows. He's a sensitive kid like me and when something really troubles him, he cries about it. Wednesday night he wasn't being very well-behaved which resulted in him not getting to sleep in the living room (which he loves to do) and had to sleep in his room. He was clearly upset about something and after I managed to calm him down, he said that he was afraid that me or Cari were going to die and wouldn't be around to watch him grow up. Wow, what do you say to something like that? I just tried to reassure him that we will try our hardest to be around for a long time and that he has nothing to worry about. But man, it's hard to know that your kid, all 6+ years of him, has this stuff on his mind. Hopefully next week will turn him around some. It is vacation time! I can't wait to get to Seaworld so Emmy can see some dolphins up close and Zach can...well...see some stuff he wants to see. He can be a handful at times, but I wouldn't trade him in for anything in the world.

"It is...Fireworks Time!"

Yes, the 4th Of July has come once again, like we all knew it would, and with it we usually have a Rangers game and some fireworks mixed in there. Now, the last two games we went to the Rangers lost! But not this time. Playing the lowly Oakland A's last Saturday, we managed to stomp them 7-2! Here are a few good pix:



Martin Perez! He's only 21 but he managed to start and win this one for us. Him and another pitcher Tanner Scheppers were mentioned a lot as trade bait last year in our pursuit of the missing piece that will get us to the World Series again, but if both of them can make a decent contribution then there may not be anything stopping us.



Ahh, Josh...alone with his thoughts. If we could hear them, they'd probably sound like this...
"Man I sure could go for some peanuts..."
"I wonder if clouds are wet..."
"Why aren't chips sold with dip? Why are they always separate...?"

Tuesday night we made the trek down to Leavitt Pavillion in downtown Arlington to see the fireworks show and also hear the concert in the distance from whatever garage band managed to be playing that night. We actually sat on blankets instead of chairs and it was really cool because the fireworks were actually over our heads! We kept thinking the burning embers were going to fall on us, but they never did. Here are a couple of cool shots:


This was kind of a cool shot of the train rolling right through the festivities. You can see the outline of it but not the train itself.


Use the Force, Zach. Actually, this was one of those $10 lightsabers that he just had to have. I'm glad I bought it for him, because I got these cool shots:


Zach: "Dad, what's happening to me!?"
Me: "Hmm, I'm not sure. According to the girls we bought the lightsaber from, if you wave it at a 45 degree angle and shout the secret words 'Dee-Dee Butthead', you open the portal to another dimension! It looks like that's what you've done."
Zach: "Do they have school in this dimension?"
Me: "I don't think so..."
Zach: "See you in 12 years!!"


Zach: "Well, I'm back Dad...man, what a trip!"
Me: "Well? Tell me everything you saw! Were there flying cars? Was there time travel?"
Zach: "Well, I don't know about any of that, but they had this Krispy Kreme store that was ten stories tall!"
Me: "Wow...now THAT'S impressive!"


This shot looked the coolest out of all the ones I took. A little Christmas in the air, I say.

Then, Wednesday, we went over to Grandma's house for our July 4th cook-out, and as usual, Dean was behind the grillin':


Me: "Hey Dean, do you think the burgers are cooked enough?"
Dean: "Nah...they could use a few more minutes over the fire."
Me: "How can you tell?"
Dean: "There's still a little bit of brown in the middle...they're not black yet"

In all fairness, they turned out really good. Dean had this sweet soy sauce he was going to use for a flavouring, and no one could figure out if it would be good or not. Well, he took a chance, and it seemed to work.


This was our contribution to the meal; the best apple pie Sam's Club had to offer. It fed us, Cari's family later on that night, and I took some for lunch the next day! Ohh...now I want another one...like...now.


Aunt Becky, who I found out a few months ago is going to have a baby!!, bought the Magic Mesh off TV. It's a screen door that uses magnets to keep pests out, but we had a heck of a time keeping it up. It uses Velcro sticky strips and Grandma's house isn't the best for attaching that kind of thing. As you can see, Dad is offering his 'help' ha ha.

All in all, it was a really fun week. And speaking of weeks, I only have ONE more week until my vacation comes around!! We've been planning this since April. Sea World, Fiesta Texas, and who knows what else. I want to take everyone to Lego Land at Grapevine Mills mall, so hopefully we'll be able to do that as well. Chomping at the bit...