More Baseball

Here's a couple more photos and a video...

Here he is playing the "pitcher" position.  They play "coach-pitch" so he just stands there to catch the ball just in case, one time he did catch it and he was so happy, like he won the lottery :) 

 Yoda up to bat!

On first base, ready to run...

Baseball and a sibling-free day

Yoda is enjoying spring baseball.   Here's a couple photos, I'll add more later...

The look of shock after he made an awesome catch. 

One day while Parker was a camp counselor at one camp and Mimi was a camper at a different camp, Yoda called the shots.  First we took all his loose change and hit the toy isle. 

 He plunked in each dime, nickle, quarter and penny all by himself. 

 Then he used his very own gift card at McDonald's and so he bought his own lunch. 

 Then he requested a trip to the brand new Ikea for an ice cream. 

Post High Adventure Post

 

Parker and Greg had a grand time hiking through West Virginia.  Here are some photos if you're so inclined :)

 Their first night they hiked into and slept in a crazy large cave. 

 It has lots of history attached to it, including how the soldiers used it's resources in the Civil War. 

 Before

 After

 The next morning they drove a few hours to the Cranberry Wilderness in WV for a 20+ mile hike. 

At night they camped and most of the boys and adults had hammocks.  I think their camp looked like pods or something. 

 They carried all their own food, but hiked close to the streams for fresh water. Parker is on the right.

Parker is 2nd from the left. 

 Greg resting. 

 

 

Parker on the right.

 Parker is on the right eating his favorite hiking treat.  Ramen, separated, sprinkled with the seasoning packet, and eaten like a cracker.  hmmm...

Parker and Greg on the right. 

At the end of the hike. 

One last stop at an outdoor pizza place.

Frank Lloyd Wright

To honor Frank Lloyd Wright's 150th birthday I thought it would be fun to do a little round up of F.L.W. houses that we have visited...

Fall 2010 in Oak Park outside of Chicago

 

Spring 2016 in Springfield, IL. 

Spring 2017 Fallingwater in PA. 

And way back in 1999 at Taliesin West

Houses and this man are fascinating to me.  My favorite thing he said was; someone called him the greatest American living architect, he wanted to know why that person would put "living" and "American" in the sentence.  He meant to say he was the greatest architect.  

What luck to have seen a few of his houses.  There is a section of town not too far away with houses from the same school of thinking, what a treasure.  

And of all the dozens of museums I have visited, the Guggenheim is probably one of the very best ever. 

10 years of blogging, UPDATED a little

Greg pointed out to me that we hit the 10 year anniversary of posting to the blog a few days ago!  I hadn't even thought about it.  I had been looking toward our 1000th post though--but we're still over 100 posts away from that.

Here's some highlights from the past 10 years...

2007 Cheese poking
2008 Greg Gibby passes some exams
2008 Escape button fun
2009 Baby Yoda!
2010 Baby photo comparison
2011 Robots
2011 Yoda playing 
2012 Sick kids
2013 Parker climbing the walls
2013 Family Reunion
2013 Utah vacation 2014 Sorry Canada!
2015 Uh life...
2016 Slice of life
2017 Zzzzz....

Bonus...
Sonya mentioned her favorite so here it is.
And here's me blogging back in 2008!

Before And After / Preperations

Parker is now 14 and ready for a High Adventure camp out with his Boy Scout troop.  Greg and Parker have done TONS of preparation!  

One thing we did to prepare: hair cut!
Parker begged to put it off until the last day possible...

 Here he is before (with his loved-Kelly mug, thanks Sonya!)

 During...

After!  

********

Another preparation: food! 

They looked up recipes, shopped and then assembled all their food they will eat for a week of hiking in the woods.
One day they tried them all out.  They boiled water on their tiny camp stove and re-hydrated the food in the thick, plastic bags and chowed-down.  

We also made some fire starters, that was fun to experiment.

********
More preparation: packing...
 

 

 




 All packed up and ready to go.  Boots courtesy of Greg's dad and my dad!

********

 Another preparation: Greg's weight-loss.
I'm so proud of his hard work! 

Here he is in Dec. 2016

And here he is 30+ pounds lighter in May 2017.  

He's so much happier that he plans to keep going.  We'll let you know how it goes!  

(if you want to know what he did, it's pretty simple to explain, but it could be difficult to pull off: for 6 days a week he ate no grains, sugar, dairy, or fruit.   But he ate all the meats, veggies (including tomatoes and cucumbers), beans, nuts, and seeds that he wanted.  Then one day out of the week he ate whatever he wanted.  There were other rules, but I don't remember them all)

And they are off!!!