Christmas is Coming Early

I've got an early Christmas present for all of you, my loyal readers. You have to check out this awesome new website  www.allthingsjudd.com

Let me know what you think!

I'm Here

We just got back from a week of camping last night. We had a wonderful time celebrating Thanksgiving and Robert's birthday.

I mentioned awhile back that I was having difficulty uploading pictures to my blog. Well, I finally got a message last night when I tried to upload again that I've hit my limit for picture storage. Bummer. If I want to continue to use blogger, I have to cough up the cash for more space. Chris has been pressing me to switch to wordpress, but I'm really lazy and don't like change so I've resisted up until now. Still not sure if I'll switch or not, but we'll see.

For now, I think I'll keep writing posts so I don't get even more behind and then add pictures later. After I tackle Mount Laundry that is. Hope everyone had a lovely holiday!

Corinthian Vintage Auto Racing

Hold on to your hats, folks. Chris, I repeat, Chris, the man who has never even commented here (ahem), has written a post for my blog. Maybe his first blog post deserves a first comment from a fellow race fan that I know reads here. wink wink

This post has been reviewed and approved by Kelsey.  Since I'm the one galavanting around while she stays back and cares for the family, I thought I'd try my hand at a blog post.

~Chris

This past weekend I accepted an invitation from one of my co-workers to join him as a corner worker at the last (and first) CVAR race of the season.  Saturday was the last races of the season and Sunday was the first races of the 2013 season.  Corinthian Vintage Auto Racing is a racing circuit in Texas and Oklahoma featuring 4 tracks and 6 weekends.  3 of those weekends happen to be at Texas World Speedway at College Station.  TWS is an oval and circuit track built in 1968.  

Notable events at TWS include:

• Mario Andretti set a world closed course speed record in 1973 which held for 12 years
• A.J. Foyt won more races at TWS than any other driver, including winning in Stock Car and Indy Car on the same day
• Ferrari introduced its new F-50 model at TWS in January 1996

Texas World Speedway Leader board
Non-functional along with everything else

The sad part is that TWS is run down.  I think the grand stands are even condemned.  The track is still used year round, but with bigger tracks with better facilities, TWS just couldn't hold up.  There are rumors of the track being up for sale for land development, but nobody wanting to touch it because of the cleanup costs of tarmac, cement and the 1000's of tires.

CVAR racing is limited to race and street cars built and operated before 1972.  This opens the field up to so many affordable cars.  I spoke to people who said they have an annual investment of less than $1500 (including travel and hotel) and others who paid over $9000 just for a replacement engine.  Many of the production cars were "Race Prepped" which means all interior was removed, headlights removed, glass replaced with a high density plastic and hood hinges were removed to allow the hood to be completely removed.  Others were driven to the track and still had license plates on them.

This Corvette was a blast to watch run.  It wasn't very powerful but had quite a bit of torque combined with lots of wheel play.  Seeing the driver come through the corners twisting the wheel back and forth made me tired just watching.

This is 2 of the 4 Formula Atlantic cars that were there.  Compared to many on the track, they were very fast. They ran Ford Cosworth engines and sounded great.  You can't tell it by this picture, but the rear wing is way behind the car, actually mounted on the back side of the transmission.

Now to my job while I was there.  Corner workers have one main responsibility which is to facilitate communication between Race Control and the drivers.  Since drivers are working hard just to keep their cars on the track, the communication has to be simple and is delivered to the drivers through flags.  There are 6-7 different flag colors that notify the drivers of conditions.  For example, if a driver spun his car on the track, it was my job to immediately put up the yellow flag to warn the other drivers and then radio back to control to let them know who spun and what the situation was.

For the most part, I was paid to get very tired and sore from standing while getting to watch some very fun racing in very old cars by some really cool people.  Not a bad gig.

Wings Over Houston

We attended the Houston airshow, Wings Over Houston, yesterday. It was a first for me and the kids. Truth be told, I've never had much of an interest in going to an airshow. Chris has become friends with some of the guys from a company called Check 6 that does consulting work for Chris' company. They've been working together a lot lately in these training sessions Chris has been traveling all over for. We were invited to come out this weekend and hang out at the Check 6 tent. Most of the employees of this company are ex-pilots and one guy was a former Blue Angel.

I figured, why not? It was free, including parking. Um, yeah, we had VIP parking right behind the tents that were set up along the runway. We came in right behind either a military or government motorcade that was being escorted by police. So yeah, we were close.

How cute is he?

The weather was perfect. We had food and drinks under the tent and plenty of tables and chairs set up close to the action.

Not long after we got there, a reenactment of the attack on Pearl Harbor started. None of us were expecting the "bombs", especially Robert. The first one hit and he started screaming his poor little head off. Between the bombs, planes and gunshots, it was a little overwhelming. I quickly located the noise reducing headphones we brought and got them on him quick. It was like flipping a light switch. He immediately calmed down and enjoyed the rest of the day.

Here's Clara with her official Check 6 Capri Sun koozie. She is a lover of all things free, so we laughed when we spotted her sitting there with her koozie. I wasn't thrilled to see her drinking some water out of a Bud Light plastic cup. Not sure who gave her that. Hmmm, I hope it was water. She thoroughly enjoyed having free reign to go back and forth for drinks, chips and cookies all afternoon. We eventually had to cut her off.

The kids enjoyed waving to the pilots as they came back in after their shows.

I could get used to this VIP treatment. Seriously, have you ever seen a porta-potty with seasonal decor? And a flushing toilet? I was in heaven. That was the one thing I was dreading with a newly potty trained little one. I think I have a bit of a porta-potty phobia. Not this time though. Chris was like, "You took a picture of the bathroom?" and I was like, "You didn't?"

We went to walk around for a while and Clara needed to use the restroom. You better believe she and I opted to walk through the massive crowd all the way back to our little piece of heaven. She almost peed her pants, but it was worth it. (I think I may have passed on my phobia.)

I have lots more pictures but blogger is not uploading them. I'll try to add more later.

Pumpkin Patch

The church pumpkin patch was last night. The weather again was just perfect. It was a little chilly, but not bad at all with the sun shining bright.

Here's Miss Piggy and Kermie. His costume came in the mail on Thursday and it was too small. I have no idea what they were thinking, but it was labeled size 2-4, but then on the packaging it said for ages 1-2. Oh well. We managed to squeeze him in it and he didn't complain, even though his hat barely velcroed shut. He did want to know where his red Kermit mouth was though. How cute are they!

And how lucky am I that I got one more year of coordinating costumes out of them? I don't know why, but it gives me great pleasure to have them matching for Halloween and I will be sad when they won't humor me.

This was during the trunk or treat portion of the night. Robert had just stuffed half a cookie in his mouth and ended up spitting it into Chris' hand. What a sport!

And then I handed the camera over to Chris. Every time I ask him to take a picture, he just starts snapping before I'm ready. Half the time he just lowers the camera, not looking through the view finder mind you, and starts snapping away. He'll take 20 pictures, and usually the one that has us centered and looking is blurry. This time he caught a perfect picture of me with my "I am not amused" face.

That's better. Clara eventually started shedding pieces of her costume. Her nose was the first to come off and I didn't even know she lost a glove until I found it on a table at church this morning with several other lost and found items from the night before.

Stuffing his face with a cupcake on the way out.

Camping With Friends

Camping is always more fun with friends. And we hadn't been camping with these particular friends since Clara was two I believe. Last weekend we went to Village Creek State Park and Glenn and Becky pulled her parents' pop up camper with our Jeep. Since they were bringing their dog Reggie and there's not a lot of space in the Jeep, Leah rode with us. I felt so bad leaving Kate all by herself, but we just didn't have room for one more. We decided to take a break from our dogs this time and had a friend watch them.

Here's a view from the front seat as we made our first unscheduled stop. Their trailer lights weren't working, so we headed straight for an auto parts store for a quick fix. Then Robert needed to pee but wouldn't go standing up, so I put him in a pull up in case we couldn't get stopped in time. I guess we only had one other bathroom break on the drive there, so not too bad. We pulled in right at dark, so we had a fun time getting two campers all set up in the dark. Oh, and it had dropped into the 50s too, so we had chilly kiddos who needed some pants and sweatshirts and who hadn't had dinner yet.

It got pretty chilly that night, so we got to try out our heater for the first time. Worked like a charm, so we were nice and toasty in no time. Someone else forgot to figure out how to work their heater beforehand, so they were googling it at 1 a.m. trying to get some relief. Not mentioning any names though.

The weather the next day was absolutely beautiful. We went on a hike to a sandy beach that's designated for swimming. It was about a 1.5 mile hike from the trail head so we got some good exercise in that day. We hadn't planned on letting the kids swim since it was such a long way to haul towels and clothes and such. They had a different idea though and they eventually ended up soaked after being told they could wade in the shallow water.

They did great on the long hike, but Robert had had enough about a half mile away from the car. I got to carry him a good distance, myself completely spent from the excursion. We made it back to camp, had some lunch and then I went to get Robert down for a nap.

That booger wasn't tired in the least! He was bouncing off the camper walls for a good 20 minutes. All the while, I kept dozing off. At one point, I woke just in time to see him creeping off the bed. I had to position myself so that I would feel him if he tried to crawl over me to get out. He eventually conked out and got a good nap in.

We just hung out and enjoyed each other's company for the rest of the day. The adults played a board game, the kids played and fought and ate and fought some more. We enjoyed hamburgers for dinner and then smore's on the campfire.

One thing I loved about this park was the two benches perfectly positioned by each campfire.

That night wasn't cold like the night before. It was very pleasant, as was the next morning. Robert sported Buddy Walk shirt number two on Sunday. After packing up, we had planned to ride our bikes to the playground before loading up to leave. There was a fair amount of drama at this point, so the group ride didn't happen and we decided to cut our losses and get on the road.

We're so thankful for fun times with wonderful friends.

Ren Fest 2012

We went to the Renaissance Festival this weekend. Jason, Chris and one of Chris' co-workers went camping for the weekend and joined up with us at the festival on Saturday. We let the kids get costumes this year. It was quite warm, so Clara's stayed on for about 15 minutes once we were inside the gate.

I couldn't believe she went and stood next to this guy for a picture. Ha! He stands by the entrance and has wads of dollar bills sticking out of his costume from all of the pictures he's taken. I wonder how much he rakes in. I also wonder what his day job is.

I made sure and stopped first thing to get a family picture before all of the costumes were shed. Yes, I was a fuddy-duddy and didn't dress up. I just wasn't feeling it. Robert actually kept his on the whole time and Chris had to. He didn't bring a shirt. He was a little warm.

The kids feasted on kettle corn, ice cream and Dr. Pepper and Chris and I enjoyed some apple dumplings. Mmmm. They were both really well behaved and there were no meltdowns. Could it be Robert is finally starting to outgrow the mandatory public meltdown stage?

Can you spot the leprechaun in this next picture?

My cutie-patootie pirate.

Clara was giddy while getting her face painted.

And she wanted to try the bungee trampoline again this year. After several attempts, she finally did a flip.

Between pushing a stroller, getting Robert in and out of stroller, chasing him, taking him for potty breaks, and all of the walking in the heat, I was exhausted after several hours. Apparently they were not. I thought for sure they'd nap in the car, but nope. I couldn't even get Robert to nap when we got home. I eventually put a movie on for them so I could nap. Where does all of their energy come from?