Day 15, Jan. 15, 2009
This is a stack of about half of the books that I’ve started and then forgotten about, for various reasons. Either I got bored, or the road trip ended, or I lost the book under the bed for 8 months. I still want to finish these though. Really, I do. There are other books that I start and can never get into, and I don’t even bother pretending that I’m going to finish those. Many of Oprah’s book club books fit into that category, yet I’m still drawn to them because they inevitably have intriguing covers and I’m a sucker for a good book cover.
The main goal of neighborball is to kick a soccer ball back and forth over the fence until one or both players get sick of it. Hands are absolutely not allowed, and you foul if you hit the fence.
Our neighbors are moving in a few weeks – I’m sure we drove them out with our incessant all-night partying, wine boxes, and heathen children. We’ll be sad to see them go – we’re not close friends or anything, but they are the nicest family, and the kids play together pretty much every day (we even occasionally let them socialize without a fence between them). And they’re taking their basketball goal with them. Travis will miss that basketball goal.
Neil and I will miss the fence repairs, and the occasional freshly-raked lawn, courtesy of the kids next door (our kids usually return the favor).
Tanner approves of neighborball.
Filed under: holidays, kids, music | Tags: easter, kids, parenting, Pat Green
Smart girls DO rule! And so does the Easter Bunny. Even for the skeptical.
Easter started early at our house, after Neil and I got home from the Pat Green concert at Nutty Brown. What a great show – it was a perfect spring night, with a full moon right over the stage. Nutty Brown is a step above The Backyard IMO, but like every other concert venue, they could use a few more bathrooms and a more efficient will-call line to pick up tickets. Still, there was plenty of room (even for Neil’s jumbo-sized UT camp chair), and the sound was perfect.
Most of my pictures turned out crummy (we were about halfway back from the stage, and being somewhat vertically challenged doesn’t help). But when Brandon pointed out the full moon over the stage, and I managed to elbow my way up a few rows to get a decent shot.
That’s Django Walker on the left (Jerry Jeff’s son), who wrote Texas On My Mind. I will say that Pat Green puts on an entertaining show, despite (because of?) being drunk as a skunk. And he doesn’t look constipated in all of the photos, just most of them.
I really dislike country music as a rule, but I make an exception for Texas singers and songwriters. And Hank Williams Jr.
Anyway, after we finally got home and put a couple of exhausted kiddos to bed, we got hoppin’ with the Easter Bunny goods. Sara and I came up with the scavenger hunt clues this year, and she designed these stinkin’ cute clues. I printed them out, stuck them in plastic eggs, and hid them all over the house. This takes more brain power than one might think, since you kind of have to work your way backwards, starting with the Easter baskets (hidden behind the shower curtain), and putting the clue to that spot in the egg that you’re hiding somewhere else. Ok, it doesn’t sound all that complicated now, but at 1 AM, it took some concentration!
By all accounts, the scavenger hunt was a huge success. And it let us stay in bed for at least 10 more minutes. Win-win all around.
