family

Fire and Ice in Houston

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We made a quick trip to Houston this weekend to see my Dad for his birthday.  Kit stayed home to study for some big doctor test coming up in August.  We were in Houston for one full day and a morning.

Highlights included ice skating at Memorial City Mall, Molly’s first time to skate.  It took about 30 minutes for Molly to make her way around the edge of the skating rink while she held to the side on for dear life.  On Claire’s turn, she didn’t fare much better.  Both girls really liked the American Girl store across the hall from the skating rink.

Also, there were hours of swimming in the townhouse pool, featuring the big deep end and lots of sunshine (and lots of sunscreen).

We had chocolate pie and James Coney Island for my dad’s birthday.  He and my mom went to the Astro’s game while the girls and I headed back to Austin.

Before we left, I managed to do a quick baseball home run session with Eric in the blazing sun at our old junior high.  Eric’s five-year-old son, Luke, took a few solid swings but didn’t connect for a homer.  When Eric and I were batting, Luke was in the dugout, safe from the flying hardballs.  But we did have a couple of game delays when Luke yelled “Firefly!” and ran out into the field to chase a firefly.  What a great little kid moment, even if it was someone else’s little kid.

Fourth of Juliowa

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We made it up to Iowa for a Fourth Of July family reunion (Kit’s mom’s side) this year.  This trip was Molly’s first to Iowa and her first time to meet most of the Iowa side of the family.

The girls had a blast.  They met their first-cousin-once-removed, Jayvon, who was a boy but was close to Claire’s age and was lots of fun.  He and Claire really hit it off and spent lots of time playing tennis, basketball, and just goofing off during the boring family farm meeting at the hotel.  Molly tagged along some with them too.  I keept an eye on them, but Claire didn’t want me to hover too close.

The whole family got to ride in the (locally) famous Yale, Iowa 4th of July parade, which really was a heck of a parade for a tiny little farm town.  We set off daytime fireworks on the family farm.  We spent hours in the hotel’s indoor pool.  Molly was the lucky recipient of a swimming noodle with a head and tail.  We named it Hydra, and she spent hours riding it around the pool.  Hydra got silly and mad and tired.  I spent 95% of my attention making sure Molly didn’t drown herself, so I didn’t get to play much with Claire in the pool.  Luckily, Claire got to play with Jayvon and his dad, Scott, who had some really good ways to splash and toss the kids.

Here are some photos of the fun and patriotic weekend.

Minka

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Minka
Minka

Over dinner, when Kit is not yet home from the hospital, Claire and I often find ourselves playing different fictional characters that we just make up as we eat.  Molly does not really join in, but she does seem to enjoy the amateur performance.

Our favorite characters recently are a father (me) with a heavy Russian accent.  I am simply known as “Papa”.  I speak of my time back in fatherland Russia, where “if you want to eat, you do not go to grocery store.  No.  You chase down dinner and eat it.  Or maybe if you’re not so fast, it eat you.”  I have no idea where this comes from.

I tend to carry on about dinner.  “I work and work and make good dinner, and you turn up nose!”

Cubbie
Cubbie

Claire is Minka.   Minka is my daughter, but she is not Russian.  By her accent, she seems to be from South America or maybe Southern Asia.  She grew up in America and is spoiled by things like grocery stores and chicken nuggets.  Something is not quite right with Minka, who is afraid of televisions, iPads, or really anything electronic.  And she gets confused by forks and spoons.

Minka loves her dog, Cubbie (Muffin).  I adopted Cubbie back in the fatherland, where she helped me survive on the tundra by hunting down dinner with me every night.  Cubbie joined me on my trek to America and is always kind and patient with Minka.

Molly is Minka’s little sister.  We tried to include Molly in this story, but she does not want to join in.  We tried to name her Pepe, but she insisted that she is Molly.  Molly is “normal American kid who loves chicken nuggets and television”.

We’re not sure what happened to Minka’s mom.  She may be back in Russia fighting her way through the frozen tundra.  Or maybe she’s stuck at the hospital.  We’re not sure which is worse.

A Corpus Christi Christmas

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Had had a rare Christmas week off the year, something that will only happen once a decade or so.  Since she could travel this year, we decided to head down to her parents’ house in Corpus Christi for Christmas for a change.  The girls will stay on in Corpus for a few more days of their winter break before heading back home to Austin next week.

In Corpus, we had Kit’s parents, Kit’s uncle Bob, and my parents.  We had a great, slow Christmas day with the whole family.  We stuffed ourselves on ham, green beans, salad, and pecan pie.  We watched Home Alone and sat around chatting while the kids played.  It was a good day.  People were curious and excited about my new job at Whole Foods.  We also headed down to Corpus Christi waterfront for a sunny afternoon walk and to let Molly try her Plasma Car on a big, wide sidewalk.

We also got to visit our friends, the Carroll’s.  The highlight of that visit was Claire and Ze doing a “science experiment” from one of their Christmas presents  in the Carroll’s bathroom.  They overdid an ingredient from the experiment and clogged the bathroom sink, left a mess on the hall carpet, and ruined some bathroom towels.  We were concerned that the kids might have gotten some science goop in their eyes or mouths, but it turned out alright.

 

This year, with Kit working 70-hour weeks leading up to Christmas, and me starting my new job the week before Christmas, we were overwhelmed and frankly almost did not get all the presents we needed.  We just eeked it out this year!  Basically Kit and I need up with a two-hour window on the Sunday before Christmas to focus on shopping.  We had between 3:00, when Kit was done with her work, and 5:00, when the babysitter had to leave, to talk and shop.  This was not for lack of planning.  Kit and I had been trying to do this since Thanksgiving, but we barely had time to talk about it, much less actually shop, at least when Kit was in a state where she could spare the brain cycle for it.

Anyways, Santa managed to find Claire a remote controlled indoor/door min-drone.  It is a quadra-copter about the size of your palm, and with practice, you can fly it around the house.  It was a tough start, getting hung up on the ceiling at first and later getting tangled up in Muffin’s tail hair.  But Claire started to get a hang of it with practice.  Santa gave Molly a Plasma Car, which is a 4-wheeled scooter you can ride around the house or a sidewalk.  It was a perfect fit for Molly, and she spent most of Christmas day wheeling around the house.

The pile of presents from each other was huge and sweet.  A highlight was a hand-made book telling the history of everyone in our family, both Purdy’s and McGonigle’s.  It was meant for Claire and Molly to have and read decades from now, but we all got a copy of this amazing book.  There were lots of other presents, everything from Playmobil sets to fitness bands to the Claire & Molly annual art calendar that I normally make.

The morning after Christmas, the girls and Kit stayed back in Corpus while I headed home to my new job and to try to restore some sanity to the tornado scene that is our house.

Sunshine State (Part 2)

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After the big family meet-up in Siesta Key, the four of us headed towards Clearwater, Florida.  While in Florida, we had to meet the most famous dolphin in the world: Winter!  Winter is the real-life inspiration for the movie A Dolphin Tale, a favorite of 8-year-old girls around the globe.  Claire had even donated some of her allowance money to Winter in the past.  That is how much she likes Winter.

On the way up to Clearwater, we toured Sarasota a bit.  We spent the morning at Selby Botanical Gardens, which Kit really enjoyed.  The girls got to see some amazing tropical plants.  Kit had also been scouting great local dining locations, and we ended up having some fantastic lunches at little restaurants like The Serving Spoon in Sarasota.  We headed up to a family-ish resort called Tradewinds, in St. Pete’s Beach.  It was not as cozy as our house in Siesta Key, but it was nice to have a swimming pool and a beach cabana.  We did the paddle boats around the resort too, and the girls loved feeding the swans as they followed us.  Kit nearly had a heart attack when she realized that her iPhone had slipped out of her pocket on the paddle boat.  By almost freakish luck, the phone ended up safe and dry on a little inch-wide lip on the exterior of the boat.  It was a quarter inch from becoming swan food.

Once in Clearwater, we spent most of the day at Winer’s home, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, which is really a marine animal rescue and rehab hospital that suddenly got famous with the Dolphin Tale movie.  Claire had talked about seeing Winter for years now.  We got to see Winter floating around in her tank.  The poor thing was indeed missing her tail and was somewhat lethargic.  Having come all this way to Florida, Claire got do a special (as in expensive) “dolphin encounter” with Hope, who is Winter’s friend and apparently the star of the upcoming Dolphin Tale 2.  Molly was too young to do the dolphin encounter but was familiar with the movie and enjoyed seeing Winter and all the sea animals.  Molly got a Winter stuffed animal, unique with its missing tail.  

After many hours at the Clearwater aquarium, we headed off for our last night of the trip, near the Tampa airport.  Kit had picked out a local Greek restaurant for a nice final meal.  When we finally fought our way there through the St. Petersburg sprawl, hungry and thirsty from a long hot day with only a small snack or two, the family restaurant was closed for two weeks for vacation.  This was a disappointment to us all, especially our stomachs.  Trying to avoid a small riot, Kit directed us to a family-owned Italian restaurant nearby.  It was also closed for two weeks!  We all started to complain bitterly, and Kit even went so far as to say that it was “Un-American” to just close like that.  Late and now really hungry, we found a Chili’s on the iPhone and headed there, mostly on the grounds that it would probably be open and have, you know, food to eat.  Mercifully, they were indeed open, and we stuffed ourselves on steak and pizza and even shared a big dessert.

Then next morning, we flew home.  Claire and Molly spent the next two days resting up from our big, busy family vacation in sunny Florida.

Sunshine State

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To celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday, the family met up at his favorite place: Siesta Key, Florida.  Phil and Noni flew in from Houston, Uncle Tim and Aunt Cindy came down from DC, and Kit, me, and the girls flew in on on our first family flight since last summer to the two Washintgon’s.

What you’ll find below is lots of pictures of this great but brief family gathering.  We all stayed in a cozy off-the-beach house together.  We had only one full day all together, and a couple of nights, but it was really amazing to have everyone together, especially for an occasion like my dad’s big birthday.  His official birthday meal was a “taco bash”, which meant a huge volume of taco meat, shells, and fixings delivered to enjoy on the sunny patio, truly Phil-style.

A few quick notes, and then on to the pictures…

  • Claire was fanatical about swimming on the beach.  She was brought almost to the point of tears when we had to leave each night.
  • Molly was fanatical about the beach toys that came with the rental house.  Her favorite was her little plastic beach wagon, which is featured prominently in the pictures.  There was also a little plastic dinosaur, which Molly named Rexi.  Molly built entire sand castles for Rexi and carefully took him around everywhere.  Tragically, at some point Molly lost Rexi to the sea.  She handled it pretty well, and we hoped that a mermaid might adopt it.
  • Molly also had a project make the ocean “less deep” by dumping one tiny shovel-full of sand at a time into the ocean.  She got her little scoop of sand from a spot about 20 years inland and carefully carried each scoop to the sea, making sure not to spill any until she actually got to the water.  She did this for nearly two hours.
  • Besides Rexi, we also lost two pairs of goggles (mine and Claire’s) during the trip, plus Molly’s at home just before the trip.  When Claire lost her goggles to the sea, she was in a near state of panic because it meant lost ocean swimming time.  After some negotiation, Molly kindly agreed to share her replacement goggles with Claire.

Quick Trip to Houston

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With Kit on vacation this week, we were able to make a quick trip to Houston to see my parents, for the first time in about a year (they had been to Austin several times, though).  We were able to leave Friday after school and spend two nights at my parents’ house.  This gave us all of Saturday in Houston, where we went to Hedwig Park, had Mexican food, and visited Kit’s cousins Cindy and Duane, who were in town at the medical center.

Claire was anxious to go swimming while in town “because it’s a tradition.”  It is true that we have had many great swim sessions at my parents’ big, warm community pool, but this time it was February and not warm outside.  I was not enthused, which is rare for me and swimming, but we brought along our swim suits and tried swimming at Cindy’s apartment complex.  It was maybe 60 degrees outside, and the pool was too cold to be fun.  We all dipped our feet and legs in the pool and eventually, much to Claire’s disappointment, called it a day, opting to explore the apartment complex in bare feet and swim suits instead.

We’ll get back to Houston in the summer sometime, so we can swim and splash in the warm water all day!