Peru Vacation 2007

Tomorrow we will embark on our trip for Peru. I went ahead and started a travel blog to track our progress.

pilar_graduation-80 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Last weekend we celebrated Pilar's graduation. We attended the ceremony at UNT where I had a hard time finding a good position to take pictures from.
Adolfo came from Peru, Nusta from LA, and Nancy and Tatiana came from Florida. Of course all the cousins were there as well as many friends.
Later we went to Gabriel and Erlinda's home for food and celebration.

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Dads and Kids in Fort Worth

April 1st, 2007
While the moms of our group took a shopping trip to the antique market in Canton,TX, the dads decided to take the kids to an outing in the Fort Worth Stock Yards.
We had originally planned to take a train ride to Dallas. However, it turned out that there is no Sunday service for that train. We hoped to get a ride on the steam train in Fort Worth, but gain had no luck because the train was being used for a Thomas The Tank Engine event in Grapevine.
So we stopped at a local Burger joint for lunch where we met a family from Sweden. Afterwards we spent some time in the very cool maze across the street. We then took a good look at the longhorns and watched the cattle drive.
Later we decided to go to a park along the trinity river.

Our first camping trip.

On Saturday, May 5th, 2007, we went for a short, over-night trip, to the Southward ranch near Nemo, TX.
Martha didn't get to go, since she had to work at Cook's. I had bought a tent, sleeping bags and other camping supplies and was ready for our excursion.
Alexander and Isabella were very exited. I still had a soccer game to coach at 2:00 pm and Alexander had a drum lesson, so we didn't get to the ranch until 5:30.
Three other families were to meet us there: The Tepners, Gonzales', and the Masons.
There was a bit of a concern with the weather because earlier that day, a tornado hit Greensburg, Kansas and did quite a bit of damage. However, although the sky was overcast, we had no rain, and the temperature was at around 80F.
After our arrival and initial hellos, the kids took off into the wilderness and I began setting up the tent with the help of Eric.
Carlos started preparing dinner by marinating some chicken drum sticks and assembling lots of meat/shrimp/veggie skewers. He asked me to light the grill, which consisted of an old rusty 55 Gallon drum with a grill rack inside. Another thing that was inside the grill was a hornet's nest along with three hornets. Well, I gave them a few squirts of bug spray which only affected one hornet fatally. One hornet took off, and the third went about its business building the nest. After a few more hits of bug spray it finally got annoyed and started moving away from the nest. That's when Eric managed to squish it with a stick.
Now we were ready to grill.
After about an hour we got our first taste of the chicken. Later we also got to munch on the skewers. The kids, of course liked neither, they waited for the Bratwurst that Martha had packed so wisely.
After dinner, Karl had prepared a camp fire for roasting marshmallows. We loaded the kids up in the back of his '78 Chevy pickup, and drove the short distance to the fire. Martin was in charge of the marshmallows and handed them to the eager kids who, despite the tremendous heat, roasted their marshmallows with delight.
When we returned from the camp fire, the adults sat around the porch sharing camping stories. These ranged from Karl's live skunk catches to Carlos' near drowning incident in Mexico. The kids were busy exploring. To our nuisance they kept going in out of the tents with their flash lights, which undoubltedly attracted a few bugs. We had a hard time convincing the kids to keep the tents shut.
At around 10:30 pm, we decided to start hitting the sleeping bags, as we realized that the kids would be up at the crack of dawn.
As it happend, few of the adults got a good nights rest. I know that the !@#$# cricket next to our tent kept me up all night. As it turned out I wasnt' the only one with a restless night. Mariana kept constantly hearing strange noises and Laura got quite bothered by the heat and humidity.
This kids, however, slept wonderfully, and were full of energy the next day.
For breakfast we all grazed the kitchen and just grabbed whatever foods were available: cereal, bread, yoghurt, etc. To Laura's horror, I started a full load of coffee in the available coffee machine. As it turned out, the machine dispensed water more rapidly that the filter could handle, and she had to keep a close eye on it to prevent it from overflowing. The coffee turned out quite stout and helped me to wake up.
After breakfast, the Mason's emerged from their "camp". As they originally hadn't intended to stay overnight, they didn't bring a tent and so they slept in one of the bedrooms. Needless to say, they were quite chipper in the morning.
The kids really wanted to go see the waterfall nearby, and so Carlos, Eric, and I tagged along in order to keep and eye on them. After that, we had some of the left overs for lunch and then headed back to Keller at around 1:00 pm.


As we arrived in our neighborhood, Alexander noticed that the swimming pool had finally opened and wanted to go there. Isabella wanted to as well. My hope of course was that Martha would take them so that I could rest. However, ten minutes before she was ready to take them, she bumped her toe really bad and was unable to walk. So I took the kids to the pool for about 45 min until I had enough.
Martha stayed at home and prepared some pizza.
Poor her. The next day, the bumped the same toe again and this time her foot swelled up quite a bit. Ouch!
All in all we all had a great time. We look forward to another camping trip in the fall.