At Home With Dad

I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of the family: our 2011 Jayco 26BH.

We really enjoyed our last trailer (Jayco 23B), but the set up on it was more than we were up for so we looked for simplicity. The 26BH allows us to pull into our camp site attach the water hose and electricity and start camping. Whew…

The 23B was much bigger on the inside so we had to make some trade-offs in that department, but not having to fold out the beds and make them every time we went camping was worth it. Plus, we have real ducted air conditioning now. Woohoo!

The kids have bunk beds now and are enjoying them so far, but the tent is still their favorite. And, Mom and Dad have a real bed. We’ve only had the trailer a couple of weeks and have already taken it out twice. On the horizon is a trip to Galveston and Destin, FL. Gotta get some sand in it, ya know.

The Kelley side of the family decided to get together for a weekend of camping and family fun. So we headed to Jellystone Park in Burleson for a great weekend. This was our first time camping in a “resort” camping facility and we were really impressed!  Full RV hookups, two pools, doggie park, and activities for the kid. Sure beats the state park!

All the Kelleys are doing great and enjoying life. Catching up what everyone is up to was great!

As a bonus, we were able to celebrate Rachel’s Dad’s 60th birthday together.

Worms… Yeah, I like composting with worms. The downside to the worm – even the 5 tray worm factory I use – is it is pretty darn slow. It can take months to turn food scraps into compost. So I looked for an alternative and found the black soldier fly!

These little black soldier flies – or more specifically their grubs – can break down food scraps in just days! Right now I’m adding a large salad bowl of scraps each day to these little guys and they are eating it all!

The BioPod houses the little guys and makes life a little easier for me. Before my BioPod, I built a house for my little friends and it worked pretty well, but I wasn’t able to catch them when they would make a run for it. See, these little dudes are much like humans. Once they hit puberty, they sneak out of the house to procreate. It is at this time – much like the father of a teenager – that I want to catch ‘em.

Why?

Well… I feed them to my chickens. The little grubs make a perfect protein for the chickens. Besides, at this stage of their life they are ready to morph into a fly, mate, and die. Then, their short little life cycle is compete. As for me, I let some escape to sow their royal oats and keep the life cycle going. And, others become chicken food.

I love these little guys so much I’m thinking of letting my worm factory go completely. The black soldier fly composts so much faster and easier – not to mention my chickens love ‘em. Sorry worms. It was a good run.

Learn more about the black soldier fly at Black Soldier Fly Blog and Wikipedia.

After hitting the Lakewood Parade in the morning, we headed to some friends house for some fireworks fun in the evening. First, we had the kids play with some small fireworks and then headed to the high school for a big fireworks show.

This 4th of the July we took the kids out to the local parade. While rain threatened to halt the festivities, the parade wasn’t not deterred. Instead we had a great time!

The summer has a whole ‘nother routine around here. Most days we eat breakfast and run Faith up to swim team practice. Then, come home for more swimming followed by lunch followed by more swimming. Yes, swimming is pretty much the event of the summer. With the heat bearing down on us, the parks are too hot after 9 or 10am. So…. we swim.

Sorry for not posting more, but honestly there isn’t a whole lot going on ’round here.

Nicole’s first ballet recital was fantastic. She did really well and was overwhelmed with all the attention. As her family, we were deemed the best family in the world for giving flowers. With Jamma in town for the big occasion, Nicole was so excited to be on the big stage.

See for yourself…

Tonight is Nicole’s dress rehearsal for her ballet recital.

Watching her learn ballet has been amazing! She has just flourished with her teacher and loves every minute of dancing. So nice to find an activity that she loves and excels in.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat through a quick run through of the recital and just saw all Nicole’s hard work come to fruition. Hard to explain, but it was one of those moments when it all made sense. She was elated. And, as her parent, I couldn’t have been more pleased.

So tonight, Rachel and I will sit and watch the rehearsal with the goofy grins reserved for only the sappiest of parenting movies as we prepare ourselves for this weekend’s big show.

A few months ago my wife heavily drugged me and begun a line of questions that has drastically impacted my entire family’s life the last week or so.

See, one unspecified evening a few months ago, my wife apparently asked me about her mother coming for a visit. Great! A few days with grandma (a.k.a. Jamma) would be fantastic. The kids could play with her. See the kids in their “activities”. Sounds like a winning idea! Apparently though I agreed to 20 days with Jamma. (Ok, it was really was my idea, but for the sake of this post I’m sticking with the drugged idea. Much better story.)

Well… we are at day 9 of the 20 day visit today and… well… you might think things would be starting to unravel around here, but, honestly, the visit is going really well – which probably means she is ready to shoot me. But, from my perspective the visit is going much smoother than I was prepared for (i.e. I’ve only drunk half a bottle of wine and haven’t even needed the other 3 cases yet). The hardest part has been getting the kids to bed with all 4 of them crammed into one bedroom, but we knew that was going to have some issues. (That reminds me… I need to pick up some more duct tape at Home Depot.)

Jamma has seen a little swimming (with the swim team and in the backyard), ballet, soccer, guitar playing, chickens, and countless other “things”. She is enjoying watching the kids and the kids love having her there. All parties appear to be happy. Who’d have thunk it?

Yesterday morning, I noticed something odd when looking into the backyard. Apparently some of our neighbors are very excited about the chickens’ arrival.