Happy Holidays!

We are all doing well and hope this finds you and your friends and family enjoying the holiday season. We’re bracing for some real winter weather coming soon, and it just may be a white Christmas for us!

 

We stayed fairly close to home with our travels this year.

 

In August we took Kendra and the boys on a four day trip to Fredericksburg and the National Museum of the Pacific War. The boys are both very interested in all things military, especially the history of WWII, so we knew they’d love this experience, and they did.

 

As a bonus, our campsite in the city park was adjacent to the small local airport, so the planes coming and going were great entertainment.   

 

The Airport Diner is filled with model planes and paintings of planes, and the food is pretty good too!  

Kendra and the boys enjoyed the pool at their hotel, as the weather was typical for August…. HOT!

 

We did manage to keep busy with a variety of projects  in spite of the hot weather.

 

I spiced up the summer by raising a small pond (wading pool) full of tadpoles, eventually releasing them into a real pond near a local nature trail. 

 

Steve has kept busy with rebuilding a back porch and thinning our rapidly growing forest of brush. ‘Seems like no matter how much we cut, there’s always more!

 

 

In October we visited California to spend some time with Steve’s mom, Daphna, and his brothers, as well as Daph's siblings. 

 

Daphna is doing well at 94. 

She does require assistance to leave her room, but does as much walking as she can. One of our visits with her was an outdoor picnic and the menu was In-N- Out burgers… her favorite!

 

Daph's sister Dawn joined us for Thanksgiving.

We were lucky and had great weather for the week, so tucked in a couple of day trips before the big dinner.

 

This month marks the one year anniversary for Kendra and the boys in their new home. The boys are still being homeschooled, with the parents each focusing on different topics, and that seems to be going well. They’ve met other kids in the neighborhood and are finally settling in now that they have a few playmates

 

So that’s how our year went! We hope you had a good year too, and are looking ahead to good things in 2023.

 

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Toads are said to attract good fortune and prosperity

 If it is true that toads attract good fortune, we're in reall good shape! 

I usually think of tadpoles as a "spring thing" but it seems a mama toad in our neighborhood was inspired by one of our recent rain showers. 

August 13 - A couple of days before we left for Fredericksburg (see earlier post) I was cleaning and filling our bird water pots. I had two cleaned and refilled when I had to stop. The pot in the front yard was full of toad eggs! Lovely strings of them. Ok, no disturbing them!  

When I checked the next day they had already started to hatch. In two days they were all hatched out and swimming merrily around their little 3 gallon world. Yikes! Three gallons is not big enough for this many babies!

We don't have a pond on our property, so for the sort term solution I scooped up two measurings cups of tadpoles and moved them to the pots in the back yard. Temporary for sure, they all now had a total of 9 gallons to swim in.  They looked so tiny, I thought I had a little time to figure it out. 

August 25

It was becoming obvious that I needed another "temporary solution", so Steve reminded me we had a wading pool under the porch - instant pond! It took a little time to furnish it properly with resting places and hiding spots. I moved all the tadpoles from the original water pot into this wading pool, as I had only put a few in the other two small pots.

I learned that this species (which I strongly suspect is the Gulf Coast toad  "Incilius nebulifer") likes a vegetarian diet in their first few days and that can include carrots and cucumber. I had some of each, so that was easy. 

That made them happy for about two days, at which point I went to the pet store and found algae tabs forumlated for ominvore fish (no frog food was available) so I tried the algae tabs and they flocked to them. I don't know if pollywogs typically "flock" but these did.  They also scrubbed all the algae off the rocks that had been in the bird water pots and growing algae on their surfaces. 

Considering their size those little critters can really eat!  It soon became a twice a day routine to drop in some thinly sliced veggies and algae tabs. Even so, I suspected they could have been eating more. 

All went well and the little wigglers grew rapidly, though the few tadpoles that remained in the two smaller pots in back seemed to be growing a little faster than those in the wading pool. 

By August 31 it was time to clean out the two small water pots in back. Some ripe Texas Persimmons had fallen in a started polluting the water.  While changing the water I noticed a couple of the larger tadpoles had started developing hind legs. That meant they were developing their breathing and needed access to air, so I made adjustments to the various rocks etc. in the "pond" and smaller pots. They were all growing so fast, and eating so much! that it was clear some of them needed to be thinned out if any were to grow to a good size and be healthy. 

September 1 - We live near a small natural pond, which seemed like a likely spot for relocation, so I dipped up a larged number of pollywogs from my wading pool pond and put them in a bucket full of rainwater.

One quick trip down the hill to the pond and they were happing settling in to their new home. The water is lower than I've ever seen it, due to our ongoing drought, but it will work for them I think. I hope they enjoy the space! I don't think there are any fish in this little pond, so their only dangers would be larger frogs and birds, and maybe the occasional water snake. I plan to move a few more in a couple of days, perhaps to a different site if I can locate one that's close enough. I do want to keep a few to see them into the adult stage. 

If you are interested in a few more photos of these little creatures check out the photo album. There are even a couple of short videos of them exploring their environment. 

Fredericksburg with the family

Planning an outing this summer has been a challenge, primarly due to the unrelenting heat! We finally decided to just knuckle under and do it! 

Our grandsons are both fascinated with WWII history, primarily the weapons, ships, vehicles, etc. They're not quite into the biographies yet. We proposed a trip up to The National Museum of the Pacific War, in Fredericksburg. It's a little less than a 2 hour drive away, so even the boys don't mind driving for that long. We departed  mid-day on Tuesday, August 16 for the 4 day trip. 

Fredericksburg city has created a wonderful city park complex that includes a campground, and much more. It seemed like a perfect place for us, and we arranged a hotel room 6 minutes away for Kendra and the boys - knowing the pool would be a big hit. 

Steve drove the rig while I picked up the family in the van. When we're staying fairly close to home this arrangement works well. It gives us much more flexibility when traveling in close quarters like city attractions. It also gives us the option of going two seperate ways in smaller groups. By 4:00 we were all settled in. Kendra and boys were swimming and I was exploring the city park with the dogs while Steve took a much deserved break.  

The city planners did a great job, in my opinion, of arranging the design of the entire park area. It includes not only multiple types of athletic facilities, including a golf course, baseball fields, etc. but also a nature center with several very interesting hiking trails and group facilites all over the park. 

A short hike down one of the closest trails was the perfect way to get the blood moving after the drive. The dogs loved it of course, but were annoyed that I kept stopping to take photos. 

The "nature center" aspect of the park includes an emphasis on butterfly attracting plants, so I learned about some new natives I hadn't encountered before. There is no physical "center" as such,  but several plantings that feature special plants and landscaping features are scattered around the park.  There are several "twig" structures, ornate garden ornaments, and areas of carefully tended native blooming shrubs to attract both animals and humans. This twig enhanced ramada covers a comfortable bench with a view of the garden.  

After a swim the family came to the campsite for dinner and a bit of relaxing. The camping area is adjacent to the Gillespie County Airport, which is just busy enough to be interesting. With a few private planes and some fire fighting planes taking off the boys had airplane spotting as evening entertainment. Texas A&M Forest Service has a Fredericksburg office at the airport and houses several of their planes there, so during the high fire season, as we're experiencing now, they are quite active. Activity seems to stop in the late evening so noise isn't a problem.They have several of the Air Tractor AT-802F model, shown here at takeoff.

On Wednesday we went straight to the main feature, the Museum of the Pacific War.

 Fredericksburg was the birthplace of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who commanded Allied air, land, and sea forces during World War II. Justly proud of the connection, there is a lot of support in the community for the museum. The museum is a complex that includes several seperately housed collections featuring not only the war but the man Nimitz himself. 

Part of the the museum is contained within the hotel that was owned by Nimitz's grandfather, and in which he lived for several years. The museum displays are interactive, appealing to young visitors, with several short videos and many examples of vehicles, weapons and equipment. Informational posters include historic details, for those who want to move slowly and absorb more of the history.

Some of the many displays are just too large to capture in a photo! further impressing the boys.  Jaxen especially has studied many aspects of WWII, so was really excited to see displays of specific battles he knew something about. Raylan was more impressed with the tanks, guns, planes, and the various Q&A interactive displays that he knew (almost) all of the answers to. 

We finished the day with dinner at the Auslander.  The restaurant is a fixture in Fredericksburg, established 20 years ago. The name means "foreigner" reflecting he fact that the community was settled by German immigrants. This restaurant serves a menu reflecting the area of Germany known as Bavaria. And excellent food it is! We really enjoyed our meal. 

The next day we headed over to the Pacific Combat Zone museum, which is part of the overall museum, but housed in a seperate building a block away. 

Displays here include a TBM torpedo bomber 

displayed as though waiting to be armed while on the hanger deck, a model of the USS Enterprise, the PT-309 named "Oh, Frankie" after the skipper of the boat met Frank Sinatra prior to shipping overseas.

There is also a large amphitheater for presentation of reinactments and other programs. 

We had seen all the displays in time for lunch, so headed back to camp. We had been looking at the Airport Diner across the tarmac from our site and decided to give it a try. 

It's a 1940's style diner, very comfortable and they've really set the mood with model planes suspended from every light fixture, and some wonderful watercolors of planes done by a local artist Lance Von Prum. You can see some of his amazing work here.

Unfortunately the light reflection makes a big hole in the one that was near our table, and Jax isn't really sad, he's just hungry!

On our final day we made a quick return to the Pacific Combat Zone in order to watched a presentation of a M2-2 flame thrower. 

The setting is very realisitic and gives the reinactors plenty of room to simulate actual battle. You can see the palm trees suffered greatly from our freeze last winter. 

A group of reinactors introduced themselves and their roles on the "combat assult team", descriping the actions they would take in actual battle. They then gave us a demonstration of the weapon's (literal!) fire power. The heat could be felt all the way back into the audience and the boys were quite impressed! I can only imagine what the operator feels while using that weapon.

Following the demonstration everyone scurried to the fire extinguishers. The two tanks of fuel carried on the operator's back were totally consumed during the short burts. In the time it would take him to load new tanks he would be very vulnerable to attack, one of the many aspects of team work that presentation covered.

Normally the reinactors actually do a simulated battle, 

but the weather was so hot and humid that they begged off, and I don't blame them. One last quick tour through the gift shop and it was time to depart. 

The trip home was uneventful, and I think we all had a successfful trip. The kids very much enjoyed the pool and time to swim, and as it turns out, a highlight was the snack machine at the hotel. They'd never used a vending machine before! Time to unpack the RV now!

more pics in the photo album here