Happy Father's Day 2012!

Today is Father's Day, and as the good earth spins into the final hours of this day, I realize how very fortunate I am to have such a wonderful family.  We celebrated the day with my wife and daughter taking me out to a very nice restaurant for an incredible Father's Day brunch.  This restaurant started its life in the year 1900 as a major railroad station which was an important terminus for bustling throngs of passengers traveling across the U.S. by mighty chugging coal- and water-fed steam locomotive trains before the days of the automobile.  It has been lovingly restored and is on the National Register of Historic Places.  My wife took a few photos inside (these 2 shown below) to show the beautiful interior and dramatic lighting.  We had an incredible buffet with outstanding food, and really enjoyed our meal, the ambience of this stately and historic restaurant, and most importantly, our time together as a family.

1900 Train Station - 112 year old restaurant

Gorgeous windows letting sunlight come inside

Mid-way through our meal, I got to open two of my Father's Day presents.  These were a very nice hand-made card and bookmark from our daughter, and, from my wife and our daughter, a framed photograph of the astronaut Edgar Mitchell standing next to the U.S. flag at the Fra Mauro highlands region of the moon (Apollo 14 mission, February 1971), which is autographed by Edgar Mitchell!  I'm really interested in the history of (and the future of) manned spaceflight, and the Apollo moon, Skylab, and Apollo/Soyuz missions of my infancy through kindergarten age in particular (space geek), so I was of course thrilled to have something like this autographed by the 6th man (out of 12 total) to walk on the moon.   My wife then researched online to find a really nice mission patch for Apollo 14, and she put it in the frame just below the photo, to make a really gorgeous presentation.  The hand-made card our daughter drew has a launching rocket and a Georges Melies "A Trip to the Moon"-style moon with an artillery shell capsule stuck into it, just like the 1902 silent movie (or, in her case, the more recent movie, "Hugo")... she knew that would delight her wannabe astronaut Papa.

The 6th man on the moon, Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14)

Edgar Mitchell autographed photo from Fra Mauro, Apollo 14

Check out the "Hugo" Man in the Moon!

After we got back home, my wife and daughter had one more present for me, which was just as awesome.  They custom framed a  wonderful work of art our daughter had made in elementary school, which detailed what they had learned about the Colosseum in Rome.  I really loved this gift so much, because our daughter really spent a lot of time and effort making it and writing all of the (really cute) inscriptions describing the Colosseum and gladiatorial combat, and my wife really spent a lot of time and thought selecting the beautiful color of the frame and matting.   I know it was a brutal place in its day in history filled with carnage and terror, but nothing can soften the harsh edges of history like the thoughtful and well-meaning crayon drawings of a creative little 8-year-old girl LOL!  The "World's Best Dad" tie I am wearing is also a gift from our daughter.

I love the captions on these drawings!!! Click on pic to read it better.

Last but not least, my wife ordered from our grocery store's bakery a special cake to celebrate the day... complete with a launching Space Shuttle (on which the baker put a smiley face)!  Yum! 

Space Shuttle Cake

Finally, we decided to take some family pics, but didn't really want to take the time to get out the ol' tripod.  So we just took photos of each other, with the one missing from the photo being the photographer... the one of my wife and I was taken by our daughter!

My girls on Father's Day

"Lazy bones" lap dog

Happy Father's Day 2012

Our daughter on Father's Day

Mama and Papa (taken by our daughter)

We had a wonderful day together, and having a loving, happy, and healthy family and being together is the greatest gift of all.

Memorial Day weekend backyard campout - pics at twilight

We had been meaning to purchase a cheap dome tent for our family for some time now.  The last one I had was a 3-man dome tent I purchased in 1987, which my wife and I used for some years during the early years of our marriage, then it got old and smelly and more or less dry-rotten.  Finally, about a week ago, my wife picked up a Coleman Rosewood 4-person dome tent at Target at a very good price with the intent of using it on occasion for camping, but also setting it up in our back yard for our daughter to play in it. Here's a link to the tent on Amazon.com:  http://www.amazon.com/Coleman-Rosewood-4-person-Dome-Newest/product-reviews/B00891M334

Here in the States we have an annual national holiday called Memorial Day, which mainly honors military who have given their lives for their country, veterans who have passed away, or police/firefighters etc. in service of community, and the 3-day holiday weekend also unofficially starts off our summer.   This year, tomorrow, Monday May 28, is Memorial Day.   When our daughter finally discovered the still-packaged tent sitting in its bag in our garage the Friday proceeding Memorial Day,  she immediately got really excited and wanted to know when I would set up the tent.  So yesterday (Saturday),  she helped me to set up the dome tent in our back yard, which didn't take us very long at all.  We had it completed in the afternoon, but it got really hot and humid outside just like in the  Philippines (about 92 degrees F or 33 degrees C), so it was too hot for us to go inside and play since it was in the direct sun.    I promised her that we would have a little camp-out in our back yard last night, which we did.  My wife got her new camera out and documented certain highlights of our little father/daughter outing, which are shown below.   My wife decided to enjoy a quiet evening in the cool aircon of the house (with an original plan to watch a Pinoy movies, but she later decided to surf the internet and watch TV), while we explorers were outside "roughing it" in the humidity and heat and mosquitoes.

When the sun started to set, I built a little impromptu fire ring in our back yard, and gathered up some sticks to build a "tipi" style structure that would make a small but intense and well-aerated fire.  With some good kindling from dry bark, it lit up quickly and soon we had a roaring fire.

My wife wanted to mention to my readers from the Philippines and outside of the U.S. what "Smores" are, and she laid out the ingredients to show.   They're actually spelled "S'mores", which is a contraction of "some mores", as in "I want some more of those".    S'mores are a campfire dessert often made at overnight campouts for kids.   You take a graham cracker to make a top and bottom like a sandwich, then put a marshmallow on the end of a stick carved to a point with a knife (or a long metal fork) and roast it over the campfire until it is blackened on the outside and hot and gooey on the inside.  Then, the partially melted marshmallow is put between the two graham crackers,  with a piece of Hershey's chocolate  put on top of the blackened marshmallow so that the chocolate will melt.   The whole thing is eaten like a little sandwich, with the top and bottom layers being graham crackers. 

My daughter and I intended to use a little lantern inside the tent to read, but by the time we were in the tent, it was already about 10:15 PM, and we both had a very active, hot and sweaty day.   Before we knew it we were both out like a light, slumbering away in our sleeping bags.   We had a good night's sleep, as it had cooled down a bit from the hot humid day, and 3e enjoyed our little "long-distance" camping trip a few footsteps away from the house.  Here are the photos; all of which were taken by my wife before she got run off by the mosquitoes!

Bring on the night!

Gimme Shelter

Checking out the new tent... backyard camping

Coleman Rosewood tent at twilight

A quickly constructed fire ring and fire

Twilight through the trees

Burnin' like a flame

Nothing like a hot fire to warm yourself up during 91 F/ 32 C weather

The 3 ingredients for S'mores

Dome tent illuminated by fluorescent lantern

Magic lantern

Contemplating the fluorescent lantern

Soft sleeping bag - pretending to be asleep inside the tent