George Historical Ranch

Today we went to visit the George Ranch Historical Park. Unfortunately, we were unable to see it all but we did have a great time. You can click on the link above to find out more about the ranch.

We had a great time. Below are some of the pictures we took. Lori took some good ones and so I got a little bit crazy with the postings so forgive me that I have minimized my comments on each picture. It is late and I am getting tired but I wanted to get these posted.

We could not go to the cowboy ranch without our cowboy hats. We had to buy one there for Ryan as well as the George Ranch bandannas. I love the shorts and sandals/tennis shoe look with the cowboy hats and bandannas.

Here we have the cowboys waiting for the roping demonstration to begin.

Ryan at the roping demonstration.

Jared with his serious cowboy look. You cannot let the cows get the best of you!

The boys were fascinated with the roping.

Brett holding a Texas Long Horn.

Brett in the tree house.

Brett, Ryan and Jared in the tree house.

Another picture of Brett, Jared and Ryan in the tree house.

Jared, Brett and Ryan on the tree that holds the tree house.

Brett, Jared and Ryan sitting with the Georges.

Jared somewhere at the ranch.

Brett and Jared riding the tram (a wagon pulled by a tractor).

Ryan at the ranch.

Share croppers out in front of their house.

Brett with the sharecropper pig.

Brett out by the Texas Longhorns

Ryan Brett and Jared out by the field with the big Texas Longhorn cows. You can barely see them in the background.

Ryan looking at the Texas Longhorns.

Playing on the Trampoline

We had to spend a Saturday and get our yard into shape for the summer so we spent the morning doing yard work. This was our yard in Texas (the rented yard). We have to go back to Illinois and get that yard in shape for summer too. We worked on cutting all the dead leaves from the banana tree, which was a nasty job. Once we finished with the yard, we took the afternoon off and the kids jumped on the trampoline with the sprinkler on. They had a ball.

This is Jared showing how it is done.

Ryan, Brett and Jared cooling off after a hard day's work in the yard.

Jared & Ryan

Jared had a sick day at home and in the afternoon when he started feeling better Lori thought she should have sent him to school. Jared and Ryan were goofing around and instead of letting it get to her; she got her camera out and took some pictures. This is one of those pictures.

While we were in San Antonio and the weather was cold we went to the Bass Pro Shop. That is a great store, similar to Cabelas. They have a shooting range among other things. While there we found some crossbows that I have been looking for since last October when we were at a Halloween Party. They had a game set-up with the crossbows and we all loved them. So, we bought 4 of them. When we got home and opened the packages the first thing out of Lori’s mouth was “We do not shoot at people.” I responded that we surly do shoot at people, which is why we bought 4 of them, and I intended to shoot at the kids! The have their own so they can shoot back. We play war around the house and it is great fun! This is a picture of Jared showing how they work. The swimming goggles look great.

Easter

The kids had Good Friday off from school and it was a holiday for me so I did not have to work, so we took advantage of the time off and headed for San Antonio. Our plan was to go to Sea World and Friday and Saturday, but a cold front came in on Saturday and it was too cold and rainy to go to Sea World that day. It even snowed in Dallas that weekend. We certainly were not prepared for that cold of weather. We could have really used some of the Goracle’s global warming Easter Weekend.

We met with some of our friends from Illinois who live in San Antonio and we went to Sea World with them. Everyone will have to wait for any of the pictures of Sea World because we used the compact digital camera and we have lost the cord to it so we cannot download them yet. Our friends invited us to stay over at their house Saturday night and it was a good thing they did or we would have had to go home on Saturday because the hotel messed-up our reservations so we did not have a room that night. We had a great time in spite of the weather. Below are pictures from Easter morning at the Anderson’s house.

Brett, Jared and Ryan inspecting their Easter Baskets to see what the Easter Bunny brought them.

Ryan showing an egg he found during the Easter Egg Hunt.

Sarah doing a thorough job searching for any eggs that might be in a high spot.

Sarah, Ryan, Brett and Jared in their Easter Clothes.

The kids dressed and ready for Church.

We got home from San Antonio Sunday evening. Since we did not have time to color Easter Eggs earlier, we did it Sunday evening. Better late than never.

Global Warming Crowd is Nuts!

Now that Sheryl Crow has weighed in on global warming it must be true. Although, I think her proposed solution is really crappy. A book titled “Shut-up and Sing” comes to mind about now.

ConocoPhillips has recently caved to the global warming politically correct crowd and has jumped on the global warming bandwagon. In this news release they have apparently decided it is the politically correct thing to do. I was disappointed to see another oil company jump into this but it looks like they are going to try and capitalize on joining the green crowd. Shortly there after ConocopPhillips announced that they would be joining with Tyson to start producing diesel from pig and other animal fat. In trying to please a part of the left wing wackos and derive fuel from a renewable source that would otherwise go to waste, they have ticked off the PETA crowd. It just goes to show that no matter what you do, you are going to make some group on the left mad. You just cannot win with this crowd, which reminds me of a quote by C.S. Lewis.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

I am pretty sure we will all be tyrannized by the left until we all do exactly what they want us to do. We need to stop using toilet paper, stop driving our cars, become vegetarians (organically grown only within a 50 mile radius of our house so no gasoline is used in transportation) and basically go back to living in the dark ages. It all seems pretty stupid to me. The burning question I have is: Will the freeways smell like bacon once the pig-fat diesel goes into production? I sure hope so; I love bacon!

The Goracle

I found a few more articles on global warming and the Goracle that I think everyone should read. The first on is by Ann Coulter. She is great to tell it like it is. The other is an article by Deroy Murdock that shows what kind of people these global warming enthusiasts really are. They do not want to debate the issue; they resort to name calling and profanity to intimate anyone that disagrees with them. I would like to quote from another article by Roy W. Spencer, a principal research scientist at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center of the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala. He says the following which I think is insightful.

“Only in a country as technologically advanced, yet as scientifically and economically illiterate, as the United States do we find such mindless hypocrisy masquerading as “environmental awareness” and “eco-justice.” Devoting column inches to an environmental version of Dante’s Hell containing, among others, George W. Bush might help sell more copies of Vanity Fair, but it is not much more than thinly disguised tabloid propaganda.”

The entire article is worth reading and you can go here to read it.

I think that one of the principal problems is most people do not have any idea where the things they use daily come from. Who are really the big polluters, those rotten “Big Oil” companies that make the gasoline and diesel or those that use the energy to drive their cars? Is it the nasty power companies spewing all that carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or all the normal people running their heaters and air conditioners, computers, lights and electronics? I think that the general public needs to have a better understanding of where their standard of living comes from so they will not be so stupid and buy into all of this global warming garbage.