# posted by longhorn in paradise @ 9:41 PM 4 comments
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
On the Road Again
For those of you who don't know and have not taken the time to do an appropriate amount of research on your favorite blogger on this world wide web, I am a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. This not only explains my ridiculously high intellect, but also explains why I have made 18 hour round trip drives with my wife and three kids twice in the past month. You see, as a graduate of UT (what we alums like to call it), I "bleed orange". That is, to say, I am a huge fan of the sports teams at UT which go by the moniker "The Longhorns". Longhorns being the most ferocious of the Bovine species what with their long horns and all.
Check out the length of them there horns!
Anywho, because of this orange blood affliction, I have been a season ticket holder for Longhorn football games since 1995. For the first 9 years as a season ticket holder, getting to the games was a piece of cake. Then, we moved to Cali in 2004. That distance made it much more difficult. Thankfully, the Longhorns, seeing what a great fan I was and respecting my reputation as a world-famous blogger, scheduled two games in Pasadena during my time on the west coast. Very thoughtful of them. They won both games, beating Michigan and then Southern Cal. Some of you may remember that second game because the winner, aka Texas, was named National Champion immediately following the game. I hate to say that was my idea, but I did mention to my buddy at the game "This is a great game! Whoever wins this should be named national champion!" Someone was obviously listening and acted quickly to make it happen. I couldn't have been happier.
So, what the hell was the point of this post? That I like the Longhorns? That doesn't seem right. Help me out here...oh yeah! Road trip. Thank god for the title of the post.
So, last weekend, we loaded up the Jetta and drove the 9 hours from Tulsa to my mom's house on beautiful Lake Travis in Austin.
Nice house, eh? You should see the views from the screened in porch! What a great pic that would have been! ;-)
We arrived on Thursday night/Friday morning around 1am. We ran into a couple construction zones and an overturned SUV which slowed our progress considerably. Fortunately, the kids slept through the whole thing...unfortunately, that meant they were wide awake when we arrived in Austin. I don't think Kat and I got to bed until close to 3am. It was rough I tell ya!
The next morning, we just chilled out by the pool and then got some rockin' sushi that night at our favorite Austin sushi place (and for you southern cal peeps, YES, there are multiple sushi joints in Austin). It was a lot of fun. Liska even had sushi!! She was quite the adventurous little girl!
So, Saturday is Game Day! The game started at 6pm, so we naturally got down to the tailgate about 5 hours early to start our drinking. This week, we had an RV and it was the bomb diggity. We were able to watch the early games and then watch the later games once we got back to our spot from the stadium. Here is what the tailgating spot looks like:
Notice the Keg to the right and the Grill to the left...everything else is just window dressing.
After Kat successfully got me home (I got very tired toward the end and Kat offered to drive), we crashed and then got up the next day and headed to the cool part of Austin. See, it is great to see my mom and hang out in Lakeway, but she is about 45 minutes out of the cool part of Austin. So, we had to venture down there. Lunch at Texadelphia and a cruise around the flagship Whole Food store (for those who don't know, it was started in Austin), we headed to a true Austin landmark...Amy's ice cream! Let's peek in and see how the kids enjoyed it:
There is a thumbs up from Liska
And a BIG smile from Hagen!
Amy's is cool...you can tell by the fact that the chick behind us has never met a razor. I felt like such an old nerd in my khaki shorts and tucked in polo shirt, but I am officially blaming that on the fact that I didn't pack for cool...that or the fact that I just turned 35 is having an effect on my coolness factor...can't believe that though.
That was basically the trip. In case you were wondering...Hagen and Liska were fantastic passengers. Nary a peep out of them. They slept and played. We normally didn't have to bust out the DVD player until the last hour or so of the trip. Such great kids. One side note...Hagen did start putting his snacks in his pants toward the end of the trip home. Not quite sure what that meant, but he is a freaky little kid.
Hope you enjoyed the play by play of our weekend...it has been a while since I have done such a long blog...i know you all missed it terribly!
Much love to all!
jak
# posted by longhorn in paradise @ 1:28 PM 5 comments
Bonus Points
For the first person that can correctly answer the questions below, you will get a mention in the world-famous Longhorn in Paradise blog....
Why does the following picture remind me of the end of Japan's involvement in World War II?
# posted by longhorn in paradise @ 1:21 PM 6 comments
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
What's the Point?
Hello all! I am sitting here in Tulsa, OK enjoying my first week "on the bench". My project fizzled out and died last week, so I will be hanging out at home and bothering Kat and disciplining the kids with a bit too much vigor for an indeterminate amount of time. :-) Unfortunately, the pool is closed for the season (yikes!) and I cannot just lay out in the sun catching rays and reading trashy novels. Which, as we all know, is my preferred mode of relaxation. Instead, I did a bunch of yardwork this weekend (with a TON of help from Kat and Liska) and spent all day yesterday firing our cable company and bringing out the DishNetwork folks to put up the satellite. Looking forward to getting back to some sense of normalcy...Cable sucked. Problem is, the guy showed up to install and then left for a family emergency...Cable is getting stopped today and there is no guarantee Dish will be back finish their work....it could be a disaster waiting to happen, but I am holding out hope that we will avoid such a calamity. PLease send your prayers, white light and well-wishes. A night without any sort of non-network tv is not a good thing for the Knight clan. :-)
Things continue to go well for the Knight family. Liska and Hagen are thriving in pre-school. Hagen is impressing all with his smarts and his ability to take it to the hoop and dunk on his non-walking classmates. Liska is little Ms. Personality and her teachers told us she is very involved in class and welcoming to all who enter the classroom. They didn't come right out and say it, but I get the sense that the teachers think that Hagen and Liska are the most intelligent, funniest and best looking kids in the entire school. Or maybe I read too much into the "hello" they gave us at open house last week. Either way, they are having fun.
So, what's the point? That is a game that Kat and I have been playing (unwittingly) over the past few months as Hagen has begun to constantly ask "what's that?" while pointing indiscriminately into the distance. It makes it very difficult for us to ascertain what object he is referring to. For instance, there are two items on his shelf...a frog (gift from the Mongers) and a football. He says "whats that?" and points in the general direction and I just have to guess what the hell he is referring to. It happens all over the house and when we are out and about. I am just telling you this as fair warning...if Hagen comes over to your house and asks "can Jimmy come out and throw frogs around?", you don't think he is some animal abusing psychopath. Also, if he asks you to warm up his hotdog in the refrigerator or turn on the lights because he wants to feel the wind...well, you get the idea.
On another note, I am trying yet another diet. This is one that actually worked for me when I was living in Glendale. It is called the Abs Diet. I lost about 25 lbs with it last time. I am up to about 240, so a good 25-30 lb weight loss would not be a bad thing. And, it is easier to eat well now that I am at home. Which reminds me, going out for queso tonight. :-)
OK...here is what you all have been waiting for...some more pics of the fam. Enjoy!
A little microcosm of the Liska/Hagen dynamic...Liska encourages Hagen to do something dangerous...he cries about it but does it anyway...he screams cheese whenever he sees a camera...Liska takes advantage of his being distracted and slides into him...he expresses himself by throwing something. Amazing I was able to catch all this in a short video. :-) Enjoy!
Kat and Liska posing in front of the AXO house on the University of Texas campus during our first football game trip. (this weekend will be our second)
Liska on her first day of dance class...she is taking tap and ballet. Apparently, she is a real prodigy. For anyone that has ever seen me bust a move, that is not very surprising. :-)
Hope you enjoyed the latest installment of Longhorn in Paradise...and I hope everyone is having a great fall!
Much love to all!! jak
# posted by longhorn in paradise @ 2:05 PM 3 comments
Check out the length of them there horns!
Nice house, eh? You should see the views from the screened in porch! What a great pic that would have been! ;-)
Notice the Keg to the right and the Grill to the left...everything else is just window dressing.
There is a thumbs up from Liska
And a BIG smile from Hagen!
