Aly & Bryan are always up to something…
It’s a snow day! The snow began to fall in the middle of Sunday afternoon, and by dark we had six or eight inches of white powder. I tried to take a silent bedtime walk in the quiet blanket of snow, but instead my walk because a sort of proving ground, a laughing kinetic experiment. Yes, they CAN ride polo bikes and municycles in the snow. Continue reading “Snow Day!”
I used to have great teeth. And then they absolutely went to shit. (This happened around the time Mandy was born, so I’ve always blamed pregnancy and nursing. I’m not sure if this has any foundation in fact, or if it’s just imaginative fault-finding.)
I kept up with dental work for awhile. But then there were the single-mommy-with-no-dental-insurance years, and it just wasn’t possible to take care of everything.
So, now that I have good insurance, I’ve been working on getting my teeth fixed. Last year, we did lots of cleaning and filling and a ridiculously complicated root canal. This year’s big project is to remove teeth that can’t be saved. Friday, I went to the oral surgeon and had four baddies cut out.
This is Bryan’s seventh New Years at Hamilton Valley, the Cave Research Foundation’s facility at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. For Mandy and I, it’s the fifth New Years. It’s become a sort of fixture in our family schedule. Mandy makes a big deal about having just the right kind of sparkling grape juice, which she drinks right from the bottle at the New Year’s ‘party’ with our friends.
This year, for the first time, our family was asked to handle kitchen duties for one day. We got up early to cook breakfast for about 40 hungry cavers. Then Mandy and I got ready to go caving, and Bryan stayed above ground to cook garlic chicken, rice pilaf, and the best lemon pie in the world.
For the first time, this year (because of newly revised guidelines) Mandy’s old enough to cave with regular survey teams in Mammoth Cave. (She went on a trip to Roppel a couple of years ago, but that was a special one-time deal.) So in addition to her usual long visits with friends, and helping a bit in the kitchen, and hanging around the edges of conversations with people she admires, she actually got to go caving two days in a row. She was a happy, happy girl. Continue reading “CRF New Years”
We don’t really do New Years’ Resolutions at our house – we’re just as likely to begin an exercise program in March, or set goals to be more organized in August, or try to eat better in October.
One thing we have been doing, though, is to set some specific goals for biking and hiking and ‘bag nights’ – nights spent in sleeping bags – for each year. This means that these goals are specific numbers to work toward rather than a soft idea (camp and ride more).
You can click on the graphic below to see how we did in 2010. Go ahead, your eyes aren’t good enough to read that tiny print.
For 2011 we’ve adjusted these goals a little:
Here are some other outdoors / exercise-related goals for this year:
And in the spirit of reaching those 2011 goals, Bryan and Mandy rode 34 miles on Saturday with our friend Kathy and seven other Arkansas Bicycle Club members. The temperature that morning was in the high 30’s and would wind up in the mid-40’s. (The down vest Mandy is wearing came off after the first couple of miles.)
We had a good Christmas weekend at our house. We slept late several days in a row, and we ate Chinese food at two different restaurants. We went on a long bike ride with a friend. It’s true that there were lots of presents – we worked together to choose and send gifts to family and friends, and when Mandy got home from her trip to Tulsa, we took turns opening gifts from other family members and friends, and gifts for us from each other.
At our house, Christmas isn’t a religious holiday. And while we do like presents, we try hard not to focus on them. We celebrate Christmas by taking the time to stop everything else we’re doing and be with the people we love. We drink eggnog together and we lay in a pile on the couch, reading, for hours and hours, because it is Christmas, and because these are the people we care most about in the world, and because what we want is to be here, with them, in this warm house, always.
Our nearby bike shop, Outskirts, had a holiday party / ride / bike-decorating contest this year. We all decorated our bikes. I was proud of mine – I zip-tied a mini-tree to the back rack, and wired the ornaments securely to the branches. It even had a tree skirt and a wrapped gift underneath, and I tied a ‘happy holidays’ tag to the saddle. At the last minute, I wrapped some tinsel icicle sheets around the bar-ends and secured them with gaffer tape. They look like the plastic streamers on the yellow banana-seat bike I had as a kid – but they’re prettier.
Mandy bought blue LEDs and Bryan helped her rig up a battery pack to run them. We attached a plain white box to her rack, to hold the electrical stuff, and tied it shut with pretty blue ribbon.
Bryan wrapped his bike with three dollars’ worth of silver garland. As a nod to Christmas in New Orleans, Mister Bingle rode on the front.
The party was everything parties should be – it had cookies, and it was very short. After a half hour or so, we went to a nearby neighborhood to ride around and look at the holiday lights. It was a fun ride – nearly thirty people, most of the bikes decorated in some way with garland and lights and bows, riding though a dark neighborhood together. A handful of people sang. At one house, we interrupted what appeared to be a holiday party – when our group rode back by, about a dozen people were standing on the porch to wave at us. We rang our bells and yelled ‘Merry Christmas!” back at them.
And guess what? I won the ‘Best Decorated Bike’ contest! I have a great new super-bright headlamp for my bike!
Once again our family drove out to the Bradbury Christmas Tree Farm (9427 Donna Lane, Mabelvale, AR) and cut down a live tree. Mandy and I really like fresh trees so we haven’t fallen prey to the fake tree craze that everyone else seems to buy into.
This year we DID get a wreath, though, and trimmed it to match the tree. We hung our stockings over the fireplace (and the cats’ stockings over the litterbox.) We carefully set the cards from friends on the mantel, where they fall down every time we walk past. And now, we’re ready for the holidays!
Today, Mandy turned thirteen. She and I spent the day in a silk-staining workshop on campus, and we enjoyed it.
After stretching silk scarves on frames, some people sketched directly on them with marker or pencil. Mandy, who wanted to do a koi-pond scene, thought she’d do better sketching the elements on plain paper first. Continue reading “Birthday Silk Painting”
We always go to New Orleans for Thanksgiving.
We enjoyed the lunch on Thursday with family and friends, and after lunch Bryan’s grandma Schambach and I went for a walk all the way to West Esplanade, trailing Mandy on her unicycle. That afternoon, we had a quintuple birthday party with presents and cake for Mandy, Aunt Dot, Juliana, Aunt Julie, and JD. (Emma blew out the candles.) Then we went to Bryan’s Aunt Lynn’s house for Thanksgiving supper with his mom’s side of the family.
It rained most of the day Friday. On Saturday morning, we went on a bike ride on the trail along Lake Ponchartrain. (The trail is closed, which we handled by just yelling “Over there!” at the policeman who tried to talk to us, and continuing to ride.) We rode across the 17th Street Canal to the site of the break that caused so much damage after Hurricane Katrina. The repair in the floodwall is clearly visible, and it’s obvious that a lot of homes that used to be in this neighborhood are gone now. The houses that have been repaired or rebuilt are on tall footings.
Late on Saturday afternoon, we got together with Bryan’s brother Michael and his girlfriend Juliana at City Park. We didn’t have a lot of time before dark, but we used the light that was left for some portraits.
My favorite shot was really an afterthought. The light was gone, we’d finished with what we wanted, and we were headed back to the cars when I saw a warm yellow wall, the outside of the old casino. Juliana sat in an opening in the brick wall, with Michael behind her. We wanted his face next to hers, but it just didn’t work out that way, so Bryan just shot what he saw, and serendipity gave us the best portrait of the evening.
Later, we came back to City Park for Celebration in the Oaks. Beginning each Thanksgiving, an area of the park is lit up with holiday lights and carnival rides. One of my favorite things to watch is the restored carousel, with carved wooden horses and brilliant lights and cheerful families bundled up for the evening.
Bryan’s mom, Mandy, Julie, and little Emma rode the train around the park. While they were busy, Bryan and I wandered through the park, taking photos.
The park was crowded, but we were able to find quiet moments.
It’s a big place, with lots of lights that almost but not quite totally don’t go together, a sort of cacophony of Christmas lighting.
Storyland is an area of the park set aside for little ones. It’s got lots of scenes from children’s books and stories, as big as life, and only slightly creepy. When the train ride was finished, we met up at Storyland to watch Emma play.
Emma’s a big fan of slides, but her favorite spot at Storyland seems to be the pirate ship.
We didn’t leave New Orleans until mid-afternoon on Sunday, so the drive home was one of our traditional late-nighters. But the extra time spent visiting with Aunt Dot and buying a supply of andouille and beer at Dorignac’s is always worth the midnight drive home.
LRBP learned a lot in Austin and then we learned even more in Lexington, KY at the 1st Midwest Open bike polo tournament. Nathan, Dan and I asked the organizers questions, we asked the computer programmer guy questions, we participated in the refereeing meeting and we helped ref several games. We paid attention to how the registration and the after-party was done. We also had a great host who loaned us his apartment and some of us discovered FourLoko (just in time for it to become banned).
With these notes, we should be well prepared to put on our next tournament and show our polo friends a good time!
The courts in Lexington were very nice (and blue!) and a lot bigger than our home courts. This led to me feeling like I was always chasing the ball around. Our passing game was pretty good due to recent practicing. I think we played good defense but our shooting wasn’t up to par. And the larger courts led to us getting tired and allowing goals to be scored in the final couple of minutes.
We went into this weekend wanting to score at least one point in every game and we accomplished that. Our scores from Saturdays games:
1-3 them
4-2 us
1-3 them
1-4 them
3-2 us
