Family - What I did over spring break

It was March 14th, 2010 and my wife and I had a surprise planned for our daughter. We had found it kind of hard finding things to do during spring break. It seemed like every option was either a movie where you can’t talk to one another or an arcade where you feed quarters for entertainment. Finally after a bit of searching, we found it.. Family fun like my kid has never had.

I can’t count the number of times we have driven past a church carnival and my kid has almost clawed the window wanting to go. The sight of all those kid-sized rides, the lights and the smell of popcorn was enough to drive her crazy. When we saw the pictures of the attractions at Sandy Lake, we knew we had to take her.

We didn’t tell her anything about our destination or even that we were doing something special when we headed out. As we turned onto Sandy Lake road, we started passing by some of the rides and she immediately perked up and said “oh dad! That looks like fun.” I knew we made the right decision. I put on my blinker to pull in and the squeals began.

The lady that took our money asked if we had been there before. When we answered no, she actually got excited. She eagerly explained that the place worked on the ticket system, where we could buy them and that you can park anywhere you want all over the park (within reason of course) and we were off.

As we rounded the first corner, we were hooked. The entire place dripped with comfort (for lack of a better word). The feeling we got as we pulled up is hard to explain but the closest I could get would be if my parents owned amusement park rides and just set them up for the day at a city park for us to play with. We saw the pony rides, carnival roller coasters, picnickers, waving kids with hot dogs and cars parked right up behind the rides. I took a moment wondering to myself if this is what it was like when my parents used to go to county fairs.

We pulled around back of the bumper cars and barely got the car parked before my daughter’s door exploded open and she started happy dancing.

Ponies:

With my key still only half way in my pocket, I was being pulled towards the ponies while trying to explain two things. 1. She would probably be too tall for the ponies and 2. We needed to eat real quick first. Our compromise was that we would check her height before eating and do ponies immediately after if she was below the max.

Uh oh.. First problem.. Thanks to her two 6 foot tall parent’s, my kid was a bit over the max height.. She was a tiny bit disappointed but with the lure of the other rides she quickly recovered and we went to get food. While we were eating, a very polite gentleman in a Sandy Lake shirt introduced himself and told us he saw us trying out the pony rides and he had good news for us. The man turned out to be the owner who told us he had just purchased a bigger pony for just such an occasion and asked if my kid would like to be the first person to ever ride him. I could actually FEEL my daughter’s every atom jump up an excitement level so the decision was pretty much already made :-).

When we got done eating and arrived at the corral, we found the owner and an employee hitching up “elmo” the super-pony. He recognized us, took our tickets and helped my kid up on the horse.

We weren’t worried about the pony being so new. You could tell all of the horses had wonderful dispositions and they are all connected together anyway. Still though, during that first ride the owner’s hand never left the horses bridle and he never left her side which was a fact I appreciated and respected.

pic from her second (or was it third) ride:

The dragon:
My daughter almost floated down to the ground after the pony ride but it only took the few seconds while we thanked the owner for her to begin yanking me towards what we called ‘the dragon’ roller coaster. This would be my kid’s first coaster experience and I was so happy she was tearing towards it and would be riding it by herself.

On this occasion, the first of an eventual eight rides on the dragon, she chose to sit near the middle. Very sensible for her first time. The ride began and my wife whipped out her iphone for pictures like a touch-screen ninja. Immediately, we realized that from the front of the ride you can’t see your kids face very well.

It was at this point that we noticed the lack of walls\fences\rails\shrubs that force people to stay in one spot like Six Flags has. We both ran around the side of the ride and got some awesome pictures of the kid riding her first coaster!

The train:
She was exiting the dragon when the train passed by and I tried to offer her my left hand this time so maybe it would stretch to the same length as the right. The arm yanking began and we headed to the station.

I have always loved trains so we take the opportunity to ride any one we come across. The Fort Worth Zoo train, the Trinity express, the train at Frank Buck Park in Gainesville. . We ride them all. I love any kind of train ride but my favorite ones have playful conductors. I could tell with the conductor’s “all aboard” call that this was going to be a favorite.

The conductor gave his talk as we circled the park and his performance was perfect. We rode the train another time later in the day so I know he says the same thing every trip but you don’t get that feeling. He told a story about a tree (that I think my kid believed) and other such tall tales.

The tilt-a-whirl:
After the train ride, I was the one dragging my daughter to one of the rides we had seen. You can’t be in a carnival-like atmosphere and not ride the tilt-a-whirl. My wife (wisely) decided to just watch as the kid and I boarded the red and blue carts. We had screams of delight and LOTS of “weeeeee”s as the iphone ninja kept snapping photos.

I am not sure what the age to g-force limit is but I worried once or twice that I might be passing it. Therefore, my wife took the next shift and road “the spider” and “the white coaster” with her. My daughter decided to brave the white coaster on her own and I used my new found trick of walking around the ride to find the best camera angle. Keeping in mind that I am only an apprentice iphone ninja.

The bumper cars:
Here is where my wife and I had the most fun. We didn’t even ride the cars but we knew how it was going to go. All of us old folks know that the steering on authentic bumper cars is kind of hit-and-miss. Turn the wheel too much and you’re doing doughnuts. Turn it all the way over and you reverse. Well imagine that plus being nine years shy of a license and you can picture how well the kid did.

It was also here though that we noticed it wasn’t just the owner who cared about kids. The employee on the ride stopped the cars probably 6 times to point her car forward but each time, he actually gave her a driving lesson. He pushed the car toward the wall and asked “how are you going to make the car turn and miss the wall” to teach her about the steering. That was really cool.

The other parents and kids were cool too. A young girl deflected a few bad hits while shouting driving instructions and even the other side-line parents were shouting “you’re doing great” and “turn the wheel”.
Because of the low-key atmosphere, I was free to laugh myself into a stupor while shouting “now you turned it too much.. turn the other way”. I am still laughing about it now.

The haunted house:
On our way to mini golf, we stopped by the haunted house. My daughter, who just braved every other ride was actually a bit frightened of this one. Luckily when we got to the top, there was a kind looking grandfatherly figure sitting in a folding chair. As we got closer, he could read it on my kids face and he shouted “don’t worry honey, I am the scariest thing on this ride”. He seemed to know the exact right words and she calmed down immediately.

The People, the times and the impression:
After the ride, we sat and talked with the man for about 10 minutes. I am not usually one to get gooey and philosophical about things but with this man and every other employee we chatted with, I began thinking what a shame it is that younger people sometimes miss out on talking like this. The guy was hilarious as he described his years of working the fun house and I am pretty sure he made a permanent friend with my daughter. She even asked if she could donate her werewolf costume to the guy to help him with “his” ride.

We chatted with a few employees like this and they all seemed to genuinely enjoy working there and making kids happy. The location is amazing. It is so close to all the big cities but as soon as you drive through the gates, the trees cut all the noise and you actually feel like you are in a less hectic time. The owner mentioned that the place has been in business for 40+ years and I really believe going there today feels the same as it did 40 years ago. As a computer guy, I LOVE technology and up-to-the-second equipment but this place was different. (brace yourself for the sap ahead) I actually felt a kind of connection with my grandparents and what life must have been like for them at my age before everything got so modern and complicated. I feel like this place is what it must have been like before amusement parks became like the walmarts of entertainment. It was personal, friendly and just plain simple fun.

I am going to remember the feelings of this spring break for a long time. The laughs and squeals we got weren’t because paid Hollywood to babysit us for an hour or we exchanged a quarter for a ticket at Chuck-e-cheese. They were generated by my family being together and having the freedom and time to enjoy our company.

Thanks Sandy Lake and we’ll see you soon,

the Man, the dad and the husband

Family fun in the Dallas area

Family - Spy Next Door movie

So we went to see Spy Next Door last night and found it to be about as we expected. The wire fighting scenes were goofy at best but if you went there looking for a great karate\spy film, you probably get disappointed a bunch. :-)

This movie turned out to be a cute little kids movie with some Karate thrown in which is perfect for my kid right now (7 years old). It won’t shock you Jackie Chan fans that there were, of course, fights involving a ladder, household items and a chair (shocker) which I have seen in every Jackie Chan movie I have seen but it was cool to see my daughter watching these for the first time.

She is in Karate and digs it completely. It is the one thing she actually slows down for and listens to instructions. With that in mind, we took her to this movie knowing it would be her first “karate movie”. She had her eyes wide open and laughed out loud at several little kid jokes such as when the bad guy gets kicked in the junk. It was after this movie that she decided to be a spy instead of a vet\artist.

I had to chuckle at the guy behind me with no children that said “about time” at the end of the movie. You have to go in thinking that this movie realistically. That is knowing that this movies is about half way between Jackie Chan in his prime and where ‘the Rock’ is now (hint: the rock is wearing a tutu in tooth fairy). If you go in with the expectation that the story is going to be bad, the acting tolerable and the karate fairly funny, you will enjoy it.

Ps.. Be prepared for almost intolerable accents (and I am not even talking about Jackie).. The bad guys have Boris and Natasha accents and one of the good guys (or is he) is friggin Billy Ray Cyrus. Just saying..

Man – the medical problems

I have said in a few posts now that I would explain “the medical problems” when I got a chance. I suppose that if I don’t do it now, I never will so here it goes.. Keeping in mind that I am compressing 4 years of crap into a one page post so I will be glazing over a bunch of the details.

What the heck happened?

My wife and I had always had our share of problems and we laughed them off as they came. For example, when my kid was 2 months old my wife fell and broke both elbows. Let me tell you that when a spouse breaks both arms at the elbow, you get closer to them than you ever wanted to be.

I fed all 3 of us, bathed all 3 of us and was on diaper\bathroom detail for all 3 of us. And when my wife says “we breast fed our kid”, she actually does mean WE.. I had to help with that too and as far as I know, the ‘nipple nazis’ in the hospital still tell stories about us when discussing how important breast feeding is :-D

When my kid was 2, I got kidney stones for the first time and had to have the ‘go get them’ surgery. Not to bore you with the details, I will just say the word urethrascope and let you use your imagination.

Even with those problems, we were still in almost inappropriately good spirits.

About a year after that though, is when ‘the medical problems’ began and they were very hard to smile through. I woke up with kidney stone pain on the same side I had stones before and went to the ER again. After a CT scan, they told me that I didn’t have any stones on the right side so the pain must be something else. Thus began the land slide.

During the next 3 years, I had:

• 6 nerve surgeries on my back
• physical therapy
• 6 CT scans
• an MRI
• a bone density scan
• bone marrow biopsies
• pain management doctors
• passed one stone I had on the left side
• had surgery for another stone on the left side
• had shingles about 4 times
• 2 colonoscopies (I am only 33 for goodness sakes)
• About 8 ER trips for pain
• And a bunch more things I can’t even remember.

Each time I went to the ER, they found some other weird crud for me to add to the list. This or that would be bad which would spur more tests and worries. We went from thinking it was kidney stones all the way through leukemia to lupus and then to neuropathy (pain in your nerves for no reason).

I went from 170 pounds to probably 200 more than that, from having no debt to ridiculous amounts and from being a workaholic to barely able to function. Medication wise, I went from viccodin all the way up to oxycontin to control the pain.

The Results: Eventually, I just asked my doctors if they thought whatever was going on was going to kill me any time soon. When they said no, I told them all to jump off a cliff and began ignoring the pain and putting our life back together. I have been doing that for about a year and am making some progress with losing the weight and have dropped all pain and numbing medications. I’ll get there.

There are a lot of things during that time that I am proud of. For example, I worked from home so I never missed a day of work, I never took the pain meds when I didn’t need them and I fought my way from oxy (oral morphine!) back down to excedrin simply because I got pissed enough.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of things I am not proud of too. In another post, I mentioned that I felt like I let this journey break me. I can almost pinpoint the moment it happened too. It was when I had everything taken away from me except my wife and child and my doctors began talking about my pain maybe being skeletal\bone cancer. They told me I wouldn’t be able to pick up my toddler any more and shouldn’t run or do anything else that might aggravate my body.

At one of the lowest points in my life I felt like someone was trying to move me out of the picture little by little. Then when I had almost nothing left, ‘they’ started taking my family from me as well which was more than I was prepared to handle.

It was at that point that I just gave up completely. I won’t tell you what life-changing moment I had since that is probably the only deeply personal subject I keep to myself but I can tell you what it was like afterwards.

I made my first rule of my new life. “God will never give you more than you can handle but the bible doesn’t say you have to handle it yourself”. I had always had God in my life but before this moment, I had prayed for him to help take care of my family – not me. Also, though my wife helped me without ever being asked, I learned to ask for her help when I needed it.

I also came to grips with my second rule. God doesn’t cause the pain in our lives but if you let him, He can use that pain for His purposes. It really helps to know that, with your cooperation, what you’re going through isn’t for no reason. That being said, God is big enough to handle it when you get upset so it is ok to say ‘this sucks’. He understands what is in your heart.

It is my belief that I may never know what good will come from my trials. It could be that 2 years from now, someone finds this post on the net and one sentence is the exact one they need to hear at that time. I don’t spend any more time wondering why it all happened because I trust that some good has already come from it and God’s plans are much greater than I can understand.

Even though in the big picture I may never know the answers, I have learned to take the good out of what happened. I realize that I didn’t get beat by this and I feel like I have survived a threat to my life even if that threat didn’t turn out to be a medical one in the end (that I know of). I am not scared of failing, dying or living any more and my ability to get upset by little things is now broken. I find myself taking less pictures than I used to.. I don’t want to look at photos to reminisce because now I bask in every Kodak moment and remember every second I have with my wife and daughter.

During my bad times, I was most upset that for half of my child’s life, I was hurting, having surgery or on medication. Now I realize when you’re seven, 4 years is a huge chunk of time. If I am around 23 good years until she is 30, 4 bad years will hardly be remembered.

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That normally would have been the end of my post but I wanted to add the following. If not for my wonderful wife, I wouldn’t have made it. With her broken arms, I helped her and kept her from having to call someone else but that was 6 weeks. My wife stood by me for 3 years of CRAP and 1 year of recovery so far and I would like to publicly thank her like I try to do privately every day.

I love you babe and thank God for sending me you.

Family – Christmas when you can get it – Man, dad, husband

It was the night before Christmas . . . But wait you say, this post is dated Dec 25th.

When you are the husband of a nurse, you learn to take Christmas when you can get it. My wife has to work at least one of the Christmas holidays so that means that she either misses Christmas Eve or day each year. This year, it was the 25th she had to work so we asked Santa to come on the night of the 26th instead. Luckily, I think he appreciates the ease of his work load with a chance to do some kids on another night so he said SURE!

Therefore, this morning was a bit different for dad and daughter than other people. She and I woke up about 8am and put on all of our winter gear (literally all of it.. We only have one set of long underwear\gloves\etc) and went out to mess up the blanket of snow before any one else :-).

We had the BEST time building snowmen, throwing snow at each other and making snow angels in the park. When we got to the other side, we met another ‘working widow’ whose husband is a pilot. Her and her son David were at the park for the same reason we were and David had a SLED!

Granted that this is Texas sledding which means about 2 feet but the kids had an awesome time.
David’s Mom and I were talking about how odd it is to know that we are by ourselves while everyone else was waking up and opening presents. She and her husband did Christmas the night before and dad left for the airport before the weather got bad. It was so nice to find someone else who understands the ‘Christmas when you can get it concept’.

Even though there is a touch of sadness for dad and mom about being alone ‘on Christmas’, I do like that our kids are picking up that the holidays are ANY time you can get everyone together for a good time. David loved getting all of his stuff a day earlier than his friends and my kid loves that her Christmas lasts twice as long as everyone else’s.

Apart from that tiny bit of sadness, I wouldn’t have changed today for anything. I wonder how many dads have precious time like I had this morning with my kid and don’t just savor every delicious minute of it.

On top of the wonderful day I am having today, I can’t wait for mom to come home from work and for the fun to really begin.

Family - Making Ornaments

This Christmas, my wife wanted to bring back a childhood memory to share with our daughter. We are big on traditions in our little 3 person family so my duty as man, dad and husband required me to participate. The shocking thing is that this activity was ridiculously easy, cheap as heck and loads of fun.

The wife pulled out her mother’s old recipe for making Christmas ornaments and after purchasing a few supplies, we had an entire evening of Christmas music, baking, painting and talking for less than you would spend at the movies.

Salt Dough Ornaments
2 C. flour
1 C. salt
1 C. water

Mix salt and flour. Add in half the water, then gradually add the remaining water. Knead until the dough is smooth, this can take up to 10 minutes.

For flat dough ornaments roll out the dough on baking paper. You can also be creative and make odd shapes and wreaths (takes longer to bake.) Use cookie cutters, cut-out templates, or just use your hands.

Dust dough with flour and begin to add details to the ornaments with a toothpick, popsicle stick, and knife.
Don't forget to make a hole so you can hang the ornament.

Baking: Time varies based on thickness of ornament
Temperature: 325°F.
Time: 1 1/2 hours - or until dry

Let cool before you begin. Paint with acrylic paints. Glue on beads, buttons, or any fun accessory. Coat with acrylic varnish when everything is dry.

Total cost looks like this:
Dough = $0.50 maybe
cookie cutters = $1
acrylic paint = $10
Acrylic varnish in a spray can = $4
1 bottle of clear acrylic sparkle paint = $1
Total for evening of fun: $16.50

Results: (while keeping in mind that I SUCK at painting)

Family - family fun for free blog

I have had so much fun writing this blog so far, I thought I would begin another.

Good Clean Educational Fun will contain the information that I posted here about geocaching for a start. Then I am going to start adding all those little science experiments me and my daughter do. Potato clocks, making butter, capillary action and all those other nerd moments I have shared with her will now be unleashed upon the world :-).

Time to start building the other site along with this one.

Family - on the stray dog - revisited

Happy Thanksgiving!

I may have something to be thankful for in regards to our stray dog. Only one day after my previous post talking about how quickly my kid attached herself to this dog, I got a hit on a possible home for him.

We will know by Monday if they want the dog and I already talked to my kid about it. She asked if we could give him the presents we bought for him (chew toys) before he goes but understood that he would be happier with more room.

I will absolutely update you guys if I can get rid of the dog. Honestly though, you might be able to HEAR me scream woo hoo :-).

Have a blessed holiday

Family - on “not jack” the dog

Three months ago, my daughter performed a mission of mercy. We noticed a dog walking around the block and I was immediately pelted with pleas from my kid to ‘save him’. After just a little coaxing, we got this dog into our back yard with our two dogs which I thought was going to be our biggest problem. I suppose this would fall under the category of things you hear other dads talk about and don’t understand until it happens to you.

I made my daughter stay inside while I was getting my camera for some lost dog photos and the entire time, her nose was pressed against the glass watching him. Smiling and quietly congratulating myself on creating such a wonderful teaching situation, I returned to the door to be informed by my kid that the other dogs are being nice to “jack”.

I was stunned for just a moment until I realized who she must be talking about. At that point, my confusion turned to fear and I unconsciously switched into damage control mode. My very firm reminder that we would under no circumstances be keeping this dog seemed to fall on deaf ears as my kid giggled about him playing with our dogs.

The very next time she mentioned something about Jack, I explained very calmly that we would not be naming him since we wouldn’t be keeping him. She inquired quite logically what we would call him while he was here to which I replied “not jack”.

Fast forward 3 months, 43 craigslist posts and approximately 25 posters later to now. Not Jack somehow was given a tag with just plain Jack and I now have 3 dogs too many.

I can’t believe the power of subtlety and how quickly it all happened. Oh well, at least he looks happy.

Family - on geocaching - Fun for the whole family

My kid is in religion education classes right now. After one of her last classes, the teacher told me that she wanted to talk to me which immediately scared the crap out of me. It is bad enough when a regular teacher tells you that but a religion teacher opens up a whole new level of “what the heck did my kid say”.

Turns out, they were asking the kids what their favorite summer activity was and mine said geocaching. They just wanted to know what it was. (phwew!) I'm surprised it wasn't father and daughter activities like fishing or skating.

see my links at the bottom for some of our adventures.

Geocahing (pronounced geo cashing) is basically a treasure hunt for nerds using a GPS and a website full of coordinates. People all over the world hide small containers stuffed with a log file and little toys or coins. Then they post the GPS coordinates on this website geocaching.

People like us go there and look for caches (cashes) near us. Put the coordinates in and start hiking.

The general rules are:
• Sign the log book
• Take a small toy and leave a small toy
• Sign up online that you found it
• Don’t let “muggles” (non geocachers) see you when you find it.

So it’s free fun, they get a toy, they get to be sneaky and they know a secret that not many others know. My kid LOVES knowing that we have one we can see from the house and people are walking past it all day without knowing.

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Once you get good at finding them, hide one. You and your kid can read all the log entries from people who found what they hid. And for even another level of fun, you can order “travel bugs”.

Those are dogtags you attach to a toy. When someone finds a tag, they enter it’s code online and move it to another cache. In this way, your kid’s toy can go all over the world and they can watch it online. We had one that went to Hawaii and back twice and both coasts of the US. It was a lovely way to teach geography too.

Here is a link to one of my travel bugs and a photo gallery of where all he has been in his 8,000+ miles of travel. Then there is the cache cow that we hid. 124 finds and this is the oldest cache in grason county.

Mama isn’t horribly keen on this since last time she went she got covered in poison ivy but apart from that, we have all had so many good times, I thought I would share.