Paul's Down-Home Page

Faithful readers may have been wondering what happened… one minute, I was on vacation; the next, dead air. We finished our vacation (summary: the Naval Aviation Museum is still great, the New Orleans sun felt terrific, and there’s a wonderful po-boy place called Radosta’s that will be a touchstone of every future NO trip I take). Then we came home, celebrated Easter, and packed Arlene off (with the usual suspects) to the American Quilting Society annual convention. In the meantime, I’m taking the boys to fun places (the eye doctor, the grocery store) and their usual events (baseball, primary activity, school, and so on). That’s cut into my blog time pretty severely, since I now work when the baby’s asleep.
I did manage to snag a new home theater system, which has greatly improved the feel of the Xbox and the few movies I’ve had time to watch. It’s not nearly as fancy as the system I wanted, but it’s a good starter, and the price was right. It’s really hard not to crank up the volume on Halo when the kids are asleep, though.

We had a great day yesterday! We began with a walk on the beach (pictures to follow once I get to Betty’s high-speed connection– this modem bidness is the pits). Matthew didn’t care for the sensation of the surf on his feet (which he calls “tickle tickle”), but he liked the sand, and he thought the seagulls were quite all right.
After our beach foray, we loaded up the truck and took the ferry over to Dauphin Island. We visited the Estuarium, a terrific hands-on marine museum. All three of the boys were enthralled, particularly with the jellyfish and the petting zoo tank of fish. On the return ride, we saw several pods of dolphins. Matt didn’t seem to care, and Tom had trouble spotting them, but David was delighted (and told everyone about it, loudly). After a tasty hot dog lunch, everyone took naps, except for me: I slaved away over my laptop. We made a foray to the pool, which was too cold for Matt’s liking. Are you sensing a pattern here? We made an emergency grocery store run, after which Arlene baked some chicken and made a salad and fixins’ while I took the boys for another beach walk. After dinner, the boys played for a while and hit the sack. So did we (but not until we watched the tail end of Married By America— after all, what’s a beach vacation without guilty pleasures?)

Saturday dawned, well, early. That was OK, since Arlene and I both had separate breakfast dates. She got together with Pauline and Susan at Cracker Barrel, and the boys and I headed for Waffle House, followed by the Space and Rocket Center. Coincidentally, the day we were there was the 10th annual running of the Great Moon Buggy Race. We saw a couple of buggies plus lots of rockets and stuff; our friends Jonathan and Daniel joined us, then Daniel left and we had a delicious lunch at an old favorite. Later we joined the Wagners for dinner at their (really lovely) new home, followed by a visit to the local go-kart park. Then to bed.
Sunday morning, everyone got up, packed, and showered, then we headed off to the good old Athens ward for church. We had a wonderful time seeing our friends, but it was only a brief visit because we had a looooong drive in front of us. The drive was torturous painful well, it was seven hours in a car with three little kids. Thank goodness for Hank the Cow Dog, the one audiobook that would actually play on our CD player. We arrived at our condo, unpacked, drove back to Gulf Shores for dinner, and went to bed. Tomorrow, the beach!

Day 1 was pretty uneventful. We loaded up all of our considerable arsenal of crap, then Mom drove us to the airport. Our flight from Toledo to Cincinnati was perfectly uneventful. We had a delicious lunch of airport-kiosk soft pretzels in Cincy, then flew to Huntsville. Matthew was fussy on the airplane but a nap soon cured that. Afte rour arrival, we picked up our rental, a Chevy TrailBlazer. It’s a bit smaller than what we were originally promised, but it seems pretty nice so far– especially since we can drive it from here to New Orleans and drop it off at no extra cost.
We had a backyard barbecue with our friends the Huffords. I’m not sure whether the boys or I were happier to be outside in the sunshine, but we had a delightful time and some very nice steaks. Afterwards, we went to the Athens ward building to see one of our friends’ sons receive his Eagle Scout award. It was well-attended, so we got to see a goodly number of our friends from Athens. The ceremony went on for a while, though, so it was easily 9:30 by the time we got the three wise guys in bed. They all slept well and woke up this morning full of beans. More tomorrow.

Ahhh, family vacation. Right now everyone’s still asleep, but I expect that to change shortly. We’re off for a week: to Huntsville today, where we’ll get to see a number of our friends. On Sunday, we drive down to Gulf Shores to spend a few days at the beach, then to New Orleans for a short visit, then home again next Friday. The boys don’t know where we’re going yet; they’ve been told it’s someplace with electricity and good food, and that it’s possible that we might see penguins (at the NO aquarium). Updates here will be more sporadic than usual. I have a number of things to write about, including some comments on Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer-winning Army at Dawn, a sharply drawn and very readable history of the WWII campaign in North Africa) and a review of my earlier posts on where the military comes from. However, I have a nagging feeling I will be too busy eating shrimp, going to my favorite museum, and keeping the boys from scaring other vacationers. Maybe I’ll get to find out which truck stops really have WiFi– that guy from T/A never called me back.
Two quick notes: thanks to Anders for the cool blockquote style, and brother-in-law Paul has a new blog.

Update: Anders asks if I can attribute this. No, not exactly; my pal Kim Cameron-Webb sent it to me, but she got it in email. If anyone knows the original source, let us know.