April 2014

Andrew and Mary are in the Indian Princesses; an organized daddy-daughter group who take occasional camping trips.  They are in the Dakota Tribe.  Once a year there is a family camp out where everyone is invited to participate.  This year the trip was to Garner, so I tagged along.

packed and ready!

The weather was much better than during our March visit so everyone spent most of Saturday at the river.

daddy-daughter activities

Every time we go to the water, we are reminded that we need to buy a kayak.  Then we go home and forget all about it.  Having said that, our rubber boat does a decent enough job.

I naturally assumed these camping trips were very basic.  After all, they are run by a group of dads.  I imagined the kids living on chips/crisps and candy and wearing the same clothes every day.  Turns out they have an established "Food Truck", make fully cooked breakfasts and dinners and even have an outside movie screen.

Everyone had their face painted.

Indian Princesses is rife with bizarre rituals involving drums, processions, and meetings.

Daniel learned how to swim! Or, survive, depending on how you look at it.

April also played host to a Run or Dye event in Midland, for which we signed up to volunteer.  The Big Brothers, Big Sisters program received $50 for each volunteer, so we decided to help them out.  It turned out to be a lot of fun, once we got past the 05:00 start time.

This was our first Run or Dye type race.  For those not familiar, it is a 5K run/race made more interesting by placing several "dye stations" throughout the course.  At these stations, volunteers throw a harmless cornstarch-like dye at you as you run through.  For the runners and volunteers, it is a lot of fun.

 Mary's station ran out of yellow dye and so they started rolling around on the ground and 

offering "dye hugs" to runners.

Until someone showed up with red!

In other April news...

Mary had her braces removed!  

The before and after shots.  Perfect teeth!  

Chewing on jelly beans for the first time in forever.

We visited a local Easter egg hunt and decided to give up on these community egg hunts.  The adults get more anxious than the kids and end up "helping" pick up the eggs instead of leaving it to the littles.  Also, this was a church sponsored event and Mary returned from the stage area to tell me that they were whipping a water melon to demonstrate what had happened to Jesus.  I'm not one to judge but... Weirdos. 

"Look, I fought off three grown women and six bearded men for these eggs!"

We spent a day dyeing eggs and making Easter decorations.  Andrew took his very seriously and ended up producing the best decorated egg.  He is wasting his talents working as a geologist and has a much more promising future as a novelty cake decorator.

Andrews elephant butterfly blows my bird out of the water.  Am I bovered?

I went to see Gladys Knight with a friend.  For a 70 year old woman, she can still rock it!  

Mary got a free ticket to see Victoria Young play at the MOSC night at Wagner Noel so I bought a ticket and we went together to watch this amazing 13 year old pianist.    

We went to see Pippi Longstocking at MCT

... and a Rockhounds baseball game.

...and to check out the new Cinergy complex.

...and to see the Sleeping Beauty Ballet at Wagner.  No photos allowed, boo.

Midland experienced a pretty strong wind storm.  After examining our tree for a few minutes, Andrew diagnosed it with Blown Over syndrome.  Mary did a brief search and rescue for distressed birds and their nests.

Andrew and I went to see Les Miserables at Wagner.  It seems to be the fashionable thing to say how amazing it is but we both felt it was "okay", it certainly didn't blow our minds.  I probably should have read more on the themes and motifs before going to see it because I was only able to identify a couple and so I left feeling like it wasn't substantial enough to warrant all the praise.  I'll embrace faux pas and just watch the movie.

I took Mary to see Carsten Peter, the photographer, at the Petroleum Museum.  He shoots for National Geographic and has worked with storm chasers such as the late Tim Samaras.  His talk was interesting and his photography was amazing.  There is a neat gallery on his website: http://www.carstenpeter.com/index_en.php

I just included this because it cracks me up.