SparkDad

This morning I attended a funeral for a 8 year old Scout. Alex Vasquez. I did not know Alex, but a friend of mine that runs another Cub Scout pack did. Fifty Scouts and leaders were at the funeral. It was very sad indeed. He had contracted brain cancer six months ago. The disease took him quickly. At the memorial service some great music was played and wonderful stories told. He was a great little boy that lived his short life to the fullest. He touched many people and taught them more about God and love in his eight short years than some learn in forty. The experience will not quickly be forgotten by those in attendance. Young Alex had a peaceful journey here on earth.

With that I segue into Stickman and Pork Chop. They both entered the school district Rodeo Art competition this year and they both made it to the district finals! Neither of them made it to the actual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo but they both did great! Stickman’s art “Eight Seconds” shown to the right was a finalist. He did a great job on it!

Pork Chop’s work won first place but did not advance. It was very nice for a first grader. It was appropriate for this post because of the title of the work was “Peaceful Journey”. Those of you who know Pork Chop know that he is anything but Peaceful. He is a rambunctious little boy who is full of energy! He is constantly in “trouble” but that is OK. He is just all boy!

Now on to the controversy! I will admit when I look at our son’s art I am a bit biased. Everything they do is wonderful to me. But the winners that beat our Stickman’ art I would have to say that I would not have chosen over his. The cow on the left was chosen over Stickman’s awesome bull. What do you think? Comment on this post and let me know which you would have chosen : )

Be honest, I want to see if I am being totally biased and blinded by parenthood.

- Spark Dad

I think that I am a fairly productive stay at home Dad. I make sure the beds are made. I trudge through never ending hordes of laundry. I sweep and mop, dust and even occasionally clean the windows. But sometimes I sit down and the computer and let it consume my time, aimlessly searching the internet for something interesting.

Yesterday in my search for nothing I found a really cool site that sells sun dials. Now today they do not have much function but man they are very cool.  This one I found on www.1001sundials.com and at a great price of only $86.99.

I have a fascination with globes so the one that it pictures beside it on the link which is called an Armillary Sundial. Now if you are wondering what a Armillary is you can find a definition of it at Wikipedia here. Basically it is a “model of the celestial sphere, consisting of a spherical framework of rings, centered on Earth, that represent lines of celestial longitude and latitude and other astronomically important features such as the ecliptic”  I posted a photo of a armillary sphere to the right of the sundial. 

Sundials are often placed in gardens as decorations. I think they would be a classy edition to my new patio and fire pit.

Well I am off to take some continuing education classes for my insurance license…so boring!

- Spark Dad

There is one thing that is for sure, Stickman and Porkchop love Asian style dumplings. For the past six month I have, off and on, looked for wonton wrappers so that I could make some at home. Finally yesterday I found them at Wal-Mart. So I embarked on my first dumpling recipe.

I had 2 pounds of pork in the freezer so I decided to make pork dumplings.  ( This was WAY TOO MUCH! It mad almost 100 dumplings )

I used the recipe at http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Chinese-Dumplings and the recipe was pretty good, although is called for sesame oil in the ingredient list but never used it in the recipe : ( I used their triple boil method for cooking the dumplings which worked very well.

A couple of tips:

- Do not over pack the dumpling wrappers because they will bust open.

- Do not under pack the dumpling wrappers because they will bust open

I know! Confusing! You need just the right amount in there or they will be saggy or they will pop open! It just takes practice! We will be having these very often because the boys love them!

Lastly my new BBQ pit is wonderful but it is also stressful! It is very nice and I want to take good care of it so we bought a cover for it. Now this cover was a cheap one for sure but it protects it from the weather. The only problem with this cheap cover is that it keeps blowing off! In addition it is a light plastic and when we returned the holiday I noticed that it had become brittle and has a foot long tear in it, which is probably a result of it continuously blowing off.

So I set out to find a nice grill cover. I searched and found many sources for the covers but this one stood out.  It seems that the best ones have a heavy grade polyester on the outside and a plastic or PVC lining. They also have velcro adjustment straps instead of those cheap drawstrings. They are higher than I paid for my $14.99 plastic grill cover, but my $300 grill is worth it!  They even had a smaller one there in the same design for a smaller BBQ pit or kettle style pit.

I really like the chili pepper design so Mama if you are reading this post you can add this to my wish list.

- Spark Dad

For the second year in a row we have gone skiing. This year was much more fun than last year, mostly because I did not get elevation sickness.

Last year we skied at Santa Fe, New Mexico and had a great time. It was our first year however and the all day lessons we were in were quite frankly exhausting! By the time that the class was ready to head up on the gondola the students are simply too tired to do much.

This time we decided to go to Sandia Ski report which is right at Albuquerque where we were staying. The resort was a little smaller than Santa Fe but it was nice and the snow was great.

Stickman went up the mountain with Big Aaron, his cousin, who snowboards and came down the bunny slop twice before even took his second lesson.

Since I got sick last time I decided to do the never ever skier lesson again. I luckily remembered most of the things that I was taught last year. Mama moved to the next level up and got to actually go down the slopes. I should have moved up to the next class, but did not.

The problem with the lessons is that you spend all of your time “side stepping’ up the training hill to ski down and demonstrate some skill like slowing down turning, etc. After three hours of the lessons I was ready to go for a stiff drink, not ride up the mountain! So I did not ski down the mountain. Next time I will!

Porkchop did lessons and can perform all of the turns and slow downs. He is ready for some bunny slopes with a strong skier. I helped him ski around the area at the bottom of the hill since I could not take him up the slopes. He had fun and wanted to ski more when we were leaving. Next year he and I are going down a hill!

The day was a lot of fun! The entire family had a good time and enjoyed the cold and the snow!

We are thinking about going again for spring break so that should be fun!

If you are interested in going here is some information:

Sandia Peak – http://www.sandiapeak.com/

Santa Fe – http://www.skisantafe.com/

- Spark Dad

Christmas day was wonderful. The weather was very nice and there was no wind so it made for a nice day.

We travelled to Lamesa, Texas to spend time with my parents and sisters. Shortly after we arrived and ate lunch we all sat down for present exchange. The boys were very excited about that for obvious reasons.

I will preface the rest of this story with some background information. Stickman and Porkshop are saving for a super expensive toy. The Lego Deathstar. This set has 3,800 pieces!

Now keep in mid that Stickman is 10 years old as opposed to Pork Chop who is 6. The ability to see and work toward long term goals instead of short term happiness takes someone more mature. Well I know a lot of 30 year olds that cannot save for a goal either, so maybe I am off here : )

At any rate, when the presents started getting opened the boys got what they asked for, Lego Gift cards. Pork Chops face was long and he looked very distress! He was upset. He wans to buy what he wants with his gift cards, not the agreed upon Deathstar. Stickman is having a hard time understanding why Pork Chop would veer off course!  We will see how this one plays out.

After all of the presents were opened a few of us jumped in the car for some more Geocaching. Our success was more limited today however. We were looking for a more traditional “Take and leave” type of cache. We purchased some $1.00 items to put in any caches we successfully found. We looked for GC1M91P – “Lamesa Rodeo” and GC1ED2K – “la-mee-suh” but both of those were either muggled or we just could not find them.

On our last try we drove up to the Lamesa Skyview which is one of the only operational drive in movie theatres in Texas and were sucessful in finding GC22VH3 “The Big Show”. This one had a paper log and the coveted items!  Porkchop selected an army man and Stickman grabbed a cork. We dropped in two mighty beans, signed the log and drove away smiling!

Tomorrow we head to Albequerque and I am about to research some caches on our path!

Merry Christmas to all!

- Spark Dad