spring break

Today is the last day of spring break. Maybe it went better than I or anyone had expected. Sometimes a boy like me needs school or other highly structured activities to keep content.

On the very first day of spring break, my mom and I visited a friend's ranch to survey the environmental destruction of a nearby development. As sad as that is, I do love to see heavy equipment working. There, I met someone who used to operate gantry cranes in Saudi Arabia; unprompted, he confirmed what my mom tells me frequently: I need to have top-notch math and physics skills. We've been working on that whenever I need breaks from reading and spelling lessons. 

On prior visits to the ranch, there was nothing but thousands upon thousands of acres of trees to look at from the hilltop. Now we see nothing but rooftops and roads. It used to be so quiet that you could hear all of the cows and bulls and goats - most of which seem to have been moved on. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a nice stroll through the ranch and found some fossils and a deer skull. In this photo, I am standing in what should be a flowing river but the drought is still suffocating Texas.  

I took my first canoe trip. As you can see, I did all of the difficult work of paddling while my dad enjoyed a leisurely ride and took some photos of how great I am.

No school break would be complete without a trip to the Blanton. My dad has been taking me there since I was a newborn baby. It's a good place to practice being quiet and following rules. I only got lectured once by the security guard for sitting on something in the gallery that looked like a bench. If it looks like a bench . . .

We had the excitement of my mom's birthday waiting for us at the end of the week. She is often shocked, maybe even horrified, that black forest cakes simply cannot be found in bakeries here. (Those Americans don't know what they are missing!) My dad took the initiative to hunt down a black forest cake recipe and he and I baked the best cake in the world. (I didn't even realize that he knew you could get recipes from the internet nevermind that he could bake a cake from scratch. I will definitely put him to work as my helper again.) You probably cannot tell how massive this is but the serving platter is 16x16 and the cake is four layers. And it may be the richest cake ever with all of that whipped cream. oh my.

And then there is the sheer joy of having so much time around home without worrying about the hours-long commute to/from school or having to do anything or go anywhere really. I found a worm that kept me occupied for hours. I looked at some bugs and leaves in my creature peeper. I fixed up my yard and my columbine is healthy and only days away from blooming. The best part of this spring break is that the obnoxiously hot weather hasn't set in quite yet. Some days were even cool enough for me to wear pants.

The alarm clock is set for 5:00am tomorrow.