Life Jackets

Last week I mentioned life jackets in conjunction with kayaks. We've created an environment with out boats that is like bikes and helmets and cars and seat belts. One does not exist without the other. The last statistics I read said that 90% of drownings could be prevented if life jacket laws were obeyed. Buy a good life jacket that fits and get them used to wearing it. Splash around in it. Swim in it. Jump out of the boat while wearing it. Really get used to it. You might get so used to it that you forget that you even have it on. It's been known to happen.

This is not just a recommendation, it's a rule, almost a law. Fish guts are serious business.

Big

Sometimes the world makes us feel very small. Big mountains, big lakes, big responsibilities all make us feel like we're dealing with things that we can barely wrap our minds and our abilities around. Sometimes though, when we slow down, and look down, we can see that the world is also very very small, and that we are in fact the big ones.

Kids Kayaks

My wife and I bought two kayaks in college. We've paddled them on and off for the last 10 years and enjoyed them. As the kids got big enough we'd stuff them in the hatches (with the covers off) and head on our way. We finally reached the point where we needed more boats. Last summer we picked up a couple of little sit on top kayaks by Pelican called the Solo. It's a really small boat, only six feet long and rated for 140 pounds maximum capacity. If you're an adult, they're impossible to paddle, you pretty much submerge the boat. But if you're little, they're perfect. All of the kids can paddle them on calm water. From three to ten years old, they're about the best thing you can buy. They were $100, they're indestructable, and I don't think I could recommend a kids boat any more highly that these. Buy them, love them. Wear a life jacket.

When we come up from the beach we have a bucket to wash the sand off of our feet. This leaves wet foot prints on the porch. Sometimes small children like to leave other prints. See if you can guess what's going on. Very funny stuff. High humor. Much giggling.

Walking the Rocks

I can't even watch.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers love rocks. Big rocks. They quarry them and move them about and put them all in a row. The ones we get to walk on are used for erosion control by lighthouses. It's not a new thing, I walked on the same kind of rocks used for the same reasons by different lighthouses when I was a kid, and they were fun. Running along, hopping from rock to rock, trying not to slip. It always freaked my parents out, my mom especially. You would have though we were playing catch with explosive porcupines from the look on her face. Come on mom, we're just hopping on rocks!
But now I'm a parent and it freaks me out. The rocks are slippery and my kids just don't seem coordinated enough to pull this off. They trip on legos. They fall when walking down the driveway. How can they hop from rock to rock and not end up in the hopital? I think it really would be safer to play with explosive porcupines.

Address Labels

Sometimes we get free address labels in the mail. My wife is a genius, and when we moved to this house she had a self inking return address stamp made. This makes all of those address labels useless. Well, useless to me, but not to little girls. They can always find uses for them. It's the only junk mail that we like.

July 7th

Happy 7th of July. I hope you're having as much fun as we are. Usually we'd be celebrating this stuff on the 4th, but the 4th was Wednesday, and you just can't have a parade and fireworks on a Wednesday. It's downright un-American! So it's been moved to the much more rational, if slightly untraditional, 7th. Today we've got the parade and the fireworks. The fireworks are fun, and are really the highlight of the day. The kids get to stay out really really late and ooooh and aaaaah at the show. Earlier in the day is the parade with it's floats and thrown candy and the Shriners. There are two awesome things about the Shriners. The first and most important is the network of burn hospitals throughout the country that provide free pediatric burn care to children under 18. There is no way to overstate how important and wonderful this is. The second is happy old men in go karts. I honestly don't know what I want to do more with my life, volunteer in the burn hospital in Galveston, or be a happy old man driving a go-kart in a parade. Hopefully I'll be able to do both of them in time.
Happy independence day to you all.

Licking the Beaters

Half the fun of baking is licking off the beaters. I'd call it a true highlight of childhood, but that would be underplaying it. Licking off the beaters is a highlight of life, no matter what the age.

Beach Treasures

Sometimes really weird stuff washes up on the beach. Things like individual shoes that make you wonder if there is a shoeless body coming soon. Then there are things that you'd expect to see come out of the water. Shells, driftwood, fish parts, that sort of thing. When you're a kid, it's all amazing and worth inspection and sometimes that's hard to remember as a grownup. I just hold my nose and make them wash their hands. Ewwww.