Even though Wednesday was zoo day, we could not keep Jake from playing with the animals. Today he was practicing his grooming techniques with the chimps. We were suprised to find that Busch Gardens had such a wide selection of animals to see. Typically people relate the Amusement park with their rides. The most popular at Busch Gardens Tampa are: Gwazi (wooden roller coaster), Kumba (roller coaster), Rhino Rally (safari ride), SheiKra (coaster), and Montu (coaster). Jake was brave enough to try SheiKra and Kumba with friends - Molly and Sarah cheered them on! We hear that Scribbles is trying out Gwazi as this is being written!
This white tiger had us covered - literally. The tiger enclosure had a really cool feature - you could go under it and pop your head up in a plexi-glass box in the enclosure. It just so happened that there was a tiger laying on the box while we were inside it... we got an interesting picture of a tiger belly. All the while the tiger just laid there looking a bit bored.
Jake got this shot of the full moon over the Morocco Palace. We had just finished catching a few of the musical shows offered in the park when we looked up, and there was the moon begging us to take its picture. It was a stellar -or lunar- way to end a busy day.
On our first full day in Tampa, Jake, Molly and Sarah went to the Lowry Park Zoo while Scribbles did whatever the band was doing. We found some cool critters there. Jake was racing through the zoo trying to see everything. We got him to slow down long enough to make friends with a few sting rays though.
So we can only assume this guy is thinking "What's the deal with all the unhairy critters looking at me?"
We wanted to include Scribbles today since it is because of her we are in Tampa. She's somewhere in this photo of the band on the competition field. They put on a great show. We will find out tomorrow evening how they scored - the highest scoring band gets to do the pre-game show on New Year's Day. Cross your fingers!
Scribbles' band is competing in a competition in Tampa, Fl so the entire Pohick family decided that would be a great place for a getaway. Little did we know in the planning stages that the trip would require a 3:30 AM wake-up and 4:30 drop off for Scribbles. Since the rest of the family was up already, they took to the Pohick mobile and started their adventure - pausing only briefly on the 11 or so hour drive for this photo!
Merry Christmas from Pohick Ya'll. We had a great Christmas this year. We celebrated Christmas with a candlelight service at Messiah Lutheran Church in Madison, Alabama. After church, it was home to hang the stockings by the chimney with care in hope that Saint Nicholas would soon be there.
The girls are obviously getting old because this year instead of waking up Jake and Molly, Jake and Molly had to wake up the girls. Jake waited until he just couldn't stand it any longer. After opening up some gifts, we celebrated with a traditional Christmas dinner of stuffed shells and garlic bread. What? Who says that isn't traditional. Since we had a large traditional turkey dinner while Jake's mother was here last week, we decided to have something just a little different. For the rest of the day, we just hung out and enjoyed each others company. A perfect Christmas.
While Grandma was visiting from Pittsburgh, PA, we didn't just make cookies the whole time. We also did some of the touristy stuff in Huntsville, AL. Our visits included the Galaxy of Lights and The US Space and Rocket Center. While at the Rocket Center we received our very own VIP Tour from our very own personal VIP Tour Guide. On Saturday we plan to head up to Burritt on the Mountain.
For the last several weeks, Grandma has been visiting us from Pittsburgh, PA. We have enjoyed having her stay with us. Last week she and the girls conducted a cookie making marathon. They made sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, butter scotch cookies, peanut butter cookies, and gingerbread cookies. Jake can eat a prodigious number of cookies, but even he has admitted that he has met his match.
Alas another Halloween has come and gone in Pohick. It was a good year though. Last year we only had 27 Trick or Treaters. This year we more than doubled the number of ghoulies and ghosties with 66. There were two really large groups who came as a pack. Safety in numbers I guess.
So what was new this year you may ask. Well, First we added 7 new songs to the sound track. These songs included:
Next we synchronized the light display with our updated soundtrack. We also added a new fog machine. The old one hadn't been working right for a couple of years. We also added some plastic but realistic looking Jack-O-Lanterns. Many of the folks who stopped by commented that Jake had the best decorated house in the neighborhood. This of course went straight to Jake's head and he is already trying to figure out what he can do next year to top this year's "Show". Hmmmm... Does anyone know if it is legal to import live vampire bats? Gonna have to think about that for a bit.
Friday, October 16, 2009
The view from my hotel room in denver.
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When we first arrived in Alabama two years ago, the state was in the middle of an extended drought. According to the US Drought Monitor, the drought in our area has been over officially for quite some time now. After the rain we been having this month, we have decided to endorse the US Drought Monitor assessment. The little trickle of a stream behind our house has been busting at it's seams the last while. We considered going rafting in the stream, but there have been too many stories in the news lately about folks being sucked into drainage pipes. We decided that as much fun as rafting in the stream would be, it would be awfully embarrassing to end up as a statistic on the nightly news. I guess we really haven't hit the 40 days and 40 nights stage yet, but it is starting to feel like that.
This may not be a surprise to those of you who have been members of a marching band or who have had children in a marching band, but marching band is very time consuming. This was a surprise to Jake who was never in the marching band. Marching band started in July with two four hour practices each day. That's right. Four hours in the morning and another four hours in the evening. These practices were conducted before the school semester even began. Once school was in session, band became even more intense with band class every day, rehearsals after school twice a week and a football game every Friday night. But wait, there's more. The band also participates in parades and has three band competitions scheduled for the year. Now we just found out that the band has been invited to participate in a college bowl game which is going to cost a not insignificant amount of money. Of course the kids have been given to an opportunity to sell pecans to help pay for their trip. Pecans? Really? Do you know how many pecans it takes to send a 200 member band plus staff to a college bowl game for a week? But at least the football season will mercifully end in November right? Wrong! The football team has gone undefeated during their first 5 games and is likely to advance well into the playoffs if not all the way to the state championship. And did I tell you that Jake and Mary are supporting the band by selling hot dogs and pop corn the in concession stand? Yep. There were 6000 people at the game last week. Do you know how many hot dogs and boxes of pop corn 6000 people can consume? Lots! It's OK though, because Jake has always wanted to utter the phrase, "I'm with the band." And now he gets to say it every week. At least until the football season is over. "Go Team!"
We've had a large number of Green Tree Frogs hanging out on our house today. This is something which we have not seen in the past. We can only assume that the abnormally high rainfall we've experienced lately is causing them to move to the high ground. Green treefrogs live primarily in the southeastern United States, from Delaware, south through eastern Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, southern Georgia, across all of Florida, west to eastern Texas and areas north along the Mississippi Valley to southern Illinois. In Alabama their distribution is essentially statewide. Green treefrogs prefer wet or moist areas such as swamps, lake sides and the edges of streams. Occasionally they are found in brackish water. During the day they are often found on vegetation near water or in other moist shady areas sitting quietly with their feet folded neatly beneath them. Breeding in Alabama usually begins in April and extends into August. Green treefrogs tend to congregate in extremely large groups. At night, males begin calling just before dark. The male’s call is a harsh, nasal “quank-quank-quank . . .” repeated about once per second. From a distance, these calls sometimes sound bell-like, which accounts for the local name “cowbell frog.” Females are attracted to the male’s location in a swamp, pond, or other water source where they deposit their eggs, 10 to 20 at a time in a jelly like envelope that is attached to floating or submerged vegetation. Females may lay up to 400 eggs. Fertilization takes place externally. Calling and egg-laying are particularly frequent after rainstorms. Larvae hatch in about a week, with tadpoles metamorphosing into adults 55 to 63 days after hatching.
Adults are opportunistic feeders, eating a variety of insects and small arthropods. They are often seen on houses around windows or exterior lights searching for insects. Tadpoles feed on algae.
Other great things that have happened on September 19th:
1778 – The Continental Congress passes the first budget of the United States.
1961 – Betty and Barney Hill claim that they saw a mysterious craft in the sky and that it tried to abduct them.
1959 – Nikita Khrushchev is barred from visiting Disneyland.
But the best thing that ever happened on September 19th was Jake and Molly getting hitched. When they got engaged, Jake didn't come up with the most romantic proposal. He basically said to Molly, "If you aren't doing anything for the next 20 years or so would you like to get married?" For whatever reason, despite that lame proposal, Molly agreed to marry Jake, and this year marked their 20th anniversary. So since Jake had technically only asked Molly to marry him for 20 years, this year marked the end of the contract. Jake took Molly out to a nice dinner and asked for a 20 year contract extension. Did Molly agree to the contract extension???? Yes.
So, what do Jake and Molly have planned for the next 20 years? Jake is trying to get Molly to agree to incorporate Talking Like a Pirate into their anniversary celebrations. Molly hasn't agreed to that yet, but Jake is still trying. Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate's life for me.
Today, the Pohick familiy joined over 700 people from the local area to participate in the Walk to Defeat ALS.
According to the ALS Association there are 30,000 cases across the county and every 90 seconds someone dies from ALS, a disease that has no treatment, no cure and the cause is unknown.
Many people in the community hope that won't be the case for long as they participated in the annual ALS Walk in Huntsville.
"ALS is a neuromuscular disease that affects the voluntary muscles. What happens is basically all your muscles die off and you become trapped within your body so your mind remains in tact the whole time," said Janet Wright the ALS Association Director.
Walk to defeat ALS
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The Borg are a fictional pseudo-race of cybernetic organisms depicted in the Star Trek universe. The Borg are cybernetically enhanced humanoid drones who are linked together against their will with a bunch of technology and wires. Much like the gentleman in this picture. The Borg have become a symbol in popular culture for any juggernaut against which "resistance is futile".
For years, Molly has berated Jake for what she considers to be his extremely loud snoring. Jake tried to explain to her that everyone snores, but like the saying goes, "Resistance is Futile." Jake finally acquiesced and asked his doctor if there was anything that could be done about his snoring. Jake's doctor referred him to a specialist who explained that he may be suffering from something called sleep apnea in which the snoring becomes extreme enough to have an impact on restful sleep. In order to determine if Jake actually has sleep apnea, he would have to undergo a series of tests to evaluate what is going on while he sleeps. Jake agreed to the tests without really knowing what he was getting himself into. The tests are conducted in what is euphemistically called a sleep center. I say euphemistically, because the first night Jake spent there, he did not sleep even a wink. Perhaps it was the weirdness of being wired up with all of the latest technology including a EKG, EEG, Pulse oximeter, microphones, airflow meters that kept Jake from being able to turn his brain off. Or perhaps it was the fact that he could not relax because he was thinking about the people who were starring at him all night using night vision cameras. In any event the first night was a total bust and Jake was feeling a little loseresque as he lamented that he couldn't even sleep right. Jake has now done three nights at the sleep center and has gotten much better about actually sleeping at the sleep clinic. It is much easier to sleep there when you just think of it as a hotel room which is indeed what it looks like. It is also easier to sleep there when you know what to expect. He also know all of the techs on a first name basis and could probably hook up and install all of the monitoring equipment himself if he was pressed to do so. Jake took along his own pillows, a good book, watched some TV and slipped into a blissful slumber. We must now wait for a diagnosis from the doctor, but we'll let you know how that goes. In the mean time, just remember, "Resistance is Futile"!
Friday, August 28, 2009
Friday night lights
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