This weekend Bay and I visited the UT campus for their annual Open House event. There were lots of kids there, from all over the state. Basically the UT students have activities for the kids to do, based on the students’ specialty. Bay and I had looked over the schedule of events in advance and decided that we should check out the engineering and science areas. The engineering school looked pretty cool, and Bay made a “robotic” hand out of cardboard, rubberbands, and masking tape. He also participated in a fossil dig at the Geo-sciences plaza area.

It was actually the first time for both of us to walk around the UT campus, and it was a lot of fun. The campus is pretty big, and many of the buildings were really cool. Bay seemed to be interested in UT, and of course living in the area, you are constantly seeing the longhorn logo everywhere, so I am thinking that UT will probably be #1 on his list of schools to go to, and that’s fine with me!

This year we celebrated Chinese New Years at the Hsiang Yun Buddhist Temple. Koa performed with his Kung Fu class, and there was an amazing Lion Dance. In the evening we ate a great vegetarian Chinese dinner, then went to the Lantern Dharma service. It was a long day, but lots of fun!

The kids and I were at the pool last weekend, when Koa says to me, “Papa, you have a moustache under your arm.” I thought that was funny.

I took the kids to the pool a couple times this long weekend, and they both can swim on their own (using water-wings)! A major milestone has been achieved. They can move around the pool, albeit at a snail’s pace, which is good for me because I can relax more instead of having them clinging to me the entire time.

An excerpt of my conversation with Koa (4) this morning on the way to daycare:

Koa: I want old McDonald’s.

Me: Mom’s cheeseburgers are much better. She makes them with love.

Koa: No, french fries!

Me: Oh yeah, and french fries.

Koa: And poop!

Bay is in 1st grade this year. One of the big milestones is that he has become a “collector” of items. Whenever I am doing the laundry, I have to check the pockets of his pants, otherwise the bottom of the washing machine will be filled with trinkets. It’s always a little scary digging into those pockets, even though I haven’t found anything gross like dead frogs or bugs. Mostly there are things like erasers, acorns, pebbles, beads, papers with drawings, and the occasional penny or two. About 20% of the time, there’s a bunch of sand or dirt in there as well, and I have to dump it out in the trash. I remember when I was growing up, my mom had a box on the dryer, which had some coins in it. I guess the box was to collect all the phat lewt that us kids had collected and stuffed in our pockets! Bay is a pretty clean and tidy boy, so I am not surprised that his pockets have relatively harmless things in them, but I can imagine Koa will be collecting more “extreme” items, like dead scorpions, broken glass, and rusty nails. I can’t wait.

“How do you spell ‘iCup’?” Apparently this is hilarious at elementary school these days.

Yesterday I went on a little fishing trip with Bay, my friend Jeremy, and his daughter May. Jeremy got the hot tip from the saleslady at the sporting goods store, and she steered him away from the place we were planning on fishing, and told him about a great little pond that “is filled with tons of fish”. Perfect for the kids! So we headed out to the small pond at about 5pm. The weather was really nice: warm and sunny, with no wind to speak of. There were a few ducks there, but they weren’t aggressive and let us have the fishing spot. There are basically only two really good places to fish from in this particular pond (it’s a secret!) because there are reeds and weeds all around the pond except for at these two places. But, as we were the only ones fishing, it was perfect.

We went with a plain bobber setup, with a size 8 hook on my virgin Daiwa ultra-light rod/reel combo. 4-pound test seemed to be perfect for small fish. We alternated between pieces of nightcrawler and canned corn kernels, but it didn’t matter which one we used, because the fish were biting either one. In fact, about one second after I cast into the pond for the first time, the bobber was going under! I didn’t hook the fish that time, but a few minutes later, we had our first catch! I let Bay reel in a few after I had hooked them, and he really enjoyed it. And when May caught her first fish, she went bananas! It was awesome to see the excitement of the first-time anglers. (Bay actually caught a catfish before at a carnival, but it just involved lifting up the line, so that doesn’t count.)

I hadn’t fished at a lake or pond in a long time, but it was so fun, and I am looking forward to doing it again soon. There are a few places we want to check out nearby, and hopefully we’ll have the same kind of luck. If not, we can always go back to the secret pond for some more bluegill!

Here are some photos of our fishing trip.

Just got back from the ER. Bay scratched his eye at J-school this morning. Apparently he was pulling a folder out of his backpack, and it came out kind of fast and the corner hit his eye. The doctor put in some yellow dye, then looked through a big magnifying glass that had some black lights on it, and showed me the scratch. It just looked like a tiny dot. It’s not serious, but we have to put some eyedrops in 4 times a day for a few days. Bay was a little disappointed that he doesn’t have to wear an eyepatch.