Smarty Pants: Geography

This video is oooolllld.  In fact, it's from April 15, 2013.  So Miles was 4 at the time.  We have these apps on our iPad-- Stack the States and Stack the Countries.  Because of these apps, Miles knows where pretty much every country on this green earth belongs, and has known all 50 states for a really long time.  I colored a map and laminated it for a place mat many moons ago and every time he'd eat lunch he'd quiz me on what states shared borders.  You know, like "what shares a border with Tennessee?" and I'd have to tell them all to him.  I got pretty good from all his quizzing.  Then after he learned countries, he always wanted to play the game "Guess what shares a border."  In the car, during meal time... any time, really.  So it would go something like this:  Miles would say, "I'm thinking of a country that shares a border with Turkey."  And then you have to guess it and take a turn.  Fun times, right?

And then he went to Kindergarten and I never saw him anymore.

BUT, school is out and I got my buddy back!!  He's already a million times happier not having to go to "boring Kinder" (that's what he calls it) for 7 hours and 15 minutes each day.  It's going to be a good summer-- I can feel it!

 Anyway, here's a little video from over a year ago, showcasing Miles' unbelievable geography skillz.  Basically, Miles is doing a part of the app where it gives you a country (one continent at a time), and you place it where it goes.  You have three strikes until you are out.  We sat down together with this app the other day and took turns doing each continent (no Antartica).  Miles placed every single country in every continent.  Me?  I was able to do North America, South America, maybe Australia/Oceania and I got three straight strikes in Africa.  So Miles is WAY smarter than me.  Anyway, check it out:

Smarty Pants from DAM FAM on Vimeo.

Talk

This is from way back in March.  But it was so cute and Miles is the best.  He wrote most of this talk-- some of the sentences are straight from his mouth and all the others are his responses to my questions to help him.

See for yourself:

Talk from DAM FAM on Vimeo.

Way to go, Miles.

One Way to Know

If I were to ever experience amnesia, and wake up forgetting where I live, here are a couple reminders that will definitely help me to know, that's right, I live in Houston.

One way to know you live in Houston: 

 when your 5 year old sets up his cars in "traffic."

And check out his bottom left box of this "Order of the Day" paper from school:

That's me and him on the way to school, driving in our car, with someone else's bumper right in front of us.  It's not me tailgating, it's just good 'ol Houston.  I'll have to ask him what all the other boxes are... this is kind of old and I can't remember all of them.  I think the first one is him brushing teeth, the second is definitely him hanging out with an alien, third one is him hugging my leg, fifth one is him on the computer at school-- wearing head phones, in case you were wondering, and the last one.... boy.... he got hit in the mouth and is bleeding and used brown body paint.

And that's me, in the front, all smiles as I risk my and Miles' life each day on Houston roads with the worst drivers I've ever shared the road with.  Cheers!

The Last of Hawaii

I'm super antsy to get this Hawaii stuff done and out of the way.  I've really been itching lately to jot down more everyday life things, like how Miles picks his nose incessantly, or things that made me laugh, or pictures from our phones.

Anyway.

Our last day in Hawaii we had to check out by 10am, but had a red eye flight.  We drove around the island and stopped off at waterfalls and went back to the volcano park since our pass was still good and we never made it everywhere we wanted to go. 

Dave, doing his best to look like a fanny packing tourist.

Thumbs up for flushable toilets.

Me, post NON flushable toilets.  Yum.

Waterfalls:

Back at the volcanoes park we made it down to the ocean:

Awesome lava arch.

Pretty amazing earth we've got here!

We made it home safe and sound to the Olympics and Miles watching as much hockey as possible.

It was the best time ever.

Volcanoes National Park

We saved the Volcano Park for the end of our trip.  By the time we got there, we had already done things that we really enjoyed and were awesome so the Volcano Park was definitely cool, but not at the top of our awesome list.  We really weren't around tourists our whole trip (which we super liked), so the more touristy things were like I said-- definitely cool, but not at the top of our awesome list.  Don't get me wrong, it was totally great and super cool, but we enjoyed other things we did more.

You would have had to have been there to see Dave pull out his very best modeling moves:

Very nice.

Lots of spirals all around:

Green, green, green.

Lots of tourists.

Lava tubes:

Super cool!

Nature:

Driving around the volcano park.

A big lava filled crater.

Another one with steam.

Dave's excellent parking.

Road tripping, all the way.

It was all drizzly and foggy when we were there.

Lava tubes and lava, lava and more lava:

Super cool!

Also, as a side note, while I was out of the car taking some pictures of lava, Dave was driving the rental car back and forth on a strip of shoulder to see how fast he could get it to go before he ran out of space.  I think he got it up to 37 miles per hour or so.  So he'd reverse all the way back, go for it.  Reverse, go for it.  Probably at least 5 times.  Ah, vacation!

Dave, getting edumacated.

This, ladies and gents, was the start of a relatively horrific armpit experience for Mr. Dave:

It actually started on our trek back from Makalawena-- some sort of rubbing in just the wrong spot-- and it just got worse and worse and worse until he had blisters!  There was about a week where he had to put some antibiotic cream on it, NO deodorant and I had to taxi is fanny to and from work so he could wash his pits in the middle of the day.  It was pretty funny, but pretty miserable for Dave.  Lucky for us, the pits from hell came at the end of the trip.  Better they never came at all, buuuuuut, you win some and you lose some.  Right?

That's the lava going all the way out to the ocean.  We were planning on going all the way down, but ran out of daylight and time.

We stuck around to see the glow of the lava, but no lava actually flowing.  Certain parts of the park were closed and this was as close as we could get:

Coolio.

And here's some pics from Dave's phone because there aren't enough already on here:

We had fun goofing around like kids.  I think I could use a date right about now!