Fossil Hunting in Aurora, N.C.

This past weekend we went down to Ed and Nancy’s place in New Bern, NC. We were picking the kids up from a week’s stay at the grandparents. They had a blast. While we were down there we took a nice little side trip to the Aurora Fossil Museum. This is a small storefront museum in a town that is close to a Phosphate mine. In a nutshell, a million or so years ago, most of North Carolina was covered with sea water. At this time in history, Sharks were the dominate species in the water. So naturally a lot of them dying for whatever reason left them to be covered by layers of ocean bottom. The only things that remains from a shark are it’s teeth. Flash forward to today. A phosphate mine in NC needs to dig through a lot of waste material to get to their phosphates. That waste material is loaded with fossils, mostly sharks teeth.
Across the street from the museum is an empty lot where they dump truck loads of the waste material for the fossil hunters to paw through. We’ve gone a bunch of times. To the left is our haul for this past visit. The picture on the right is our best find ever. This was last Thanksgiving(06) where we found a 3-4 inch Great White tooth and some others.

Here’s a link to the Aurura Museum web site. And a link to some more pictures from our Fossil Hunting. Enjoy.

Native American Camping Weekend

Hope, Quinn and I went camping a couple of weekends ago. Quinn’s cub scout pack was having a campout at the County Cub Scout reservation. There are 4 campsites at this camp. Pirates where you sleep in a Large Wooden Pirate boat. Cowboys Staying in Fort Akela, Knights staying at the Castle complex and we stayed in the Native American Teepees. Our campsite consisted of a Long House which had the mess hall/kitchen and the bathrooms. There were 10 teepees. All had beds, some with two and some with three bunk-beds. Each wood bed had a mattress also. We had a teepee with two beds that we slid together and shared the sleeping bags. First thing into camp we made Tomahawks and Head Bands. We also colored on sand paper to make iron on warrior shirts. After lunch we went for a hike. We did not see much. After the hike, we went down to visit the Pirates and set up a Capture the Flag Game. It was very fun with prisoners, ambushes and all out Banzai charges. We won after a couple of hours. Then came Dinner prep. At least for the adults. This camp had a great Kitchen. Refrigerator, stove, lunch line severing. It was awesome. We made Foil Wrap meals with Chicken for the boys and Sausage with pepper and onions for the adults. I had one of the cub meals and it was pretty tasty. At about this time we were on full alert for an attack from the Cowboys staying at Fort Akela. All of our Braves and Maidens were dressed in their Indian gear and had their water pistols and water balloons ready to go. But no attack. After a little while we made a truce with the Pirates and attacked the Castle. Did I say attacked? I meant stormed and drenched the castle. The battle went on for an hour. I wonder if all that re-filling of the water pistols caused the camp well to fail that night leaving us with no water.
No running water on a camp out is usually no problem. However, we did not bring water in with us from the cars, a half mile away. And some of the families only came because there were flush facilities. Well it seems that all of the pirates left during the night and we lost three families from our Tribe. We survived the camp-out. The kids and I are closer for it and I can’t wait until our next camp-out. Maybe Kenobels in the fall?
We’ll see.

Hope's Rookie Softball Season Ends

We finished up our first year of softball. Hope had a great season playing on the River Dogs. So did the team. The girls on the team with only a couple exceptions were good hitters. Those that started the season having trouble at the plate were hitting like champs toward the end of the season. Two memories from he season stand out. The first is when we played the Norristown team. These girls looked to be about 10-11 year olds while we had 6-7-8 year olds. I was in the outfield when we were on Defense in the top of the first and all I heard was our team’s comments about how big the other team was and how we did not have a chance. Well we kept them to three runs and when we were up we scored 5 runs, every girl got a hit and onto base. In the field for the second inning the girls were all smiles and no worries anymore. It was such a night and day change in attitude that made it stand-out. (And to finish the thought, not that we keep score in our games, but we scored 4 more runs then they did in that game)
The second outstanding memory from our year was the Hair Time-out. Until I had coached Softball this year, I had not heard of this. Well, when you have 3-6 girls in the field, gloves off, adjusting their hair at the same time, you gotta call Time-out or risk one of them getting hit by the ball. It was a ‘There’s no Crying in Baseball’ type of moment. We had a great season. With the help of Coach M, Coach Matt, and Coach Quinn we were able to at least teach each girl something to help them improve their game.
I’ll be back if Hope is next year.

Lesley's Little Side Trip

Lesley had a great surprise this past Sunday. She went to Disneyland Paris. To back-track a little. She was sent to England for business. While there she connected with her friend Rosaba and her family. Rosaba and Family were going to Paris and Lesley went along. On the way they decided to take an extra day and go to Disneyland Paris. Here is a link to some pictures for now. I'll try to get some kind of trip report out of her to post. Here is a link to some pictures.
http://s128.photobucket.com/albums/p196/Maz2468/Disney%20Paris/

Piano Recital 2007

The kids had their Piano recital just recently. They both did very well. I have posted some videos of them at Photobucket. There are links below. Quinn has been taking lessons for about 4 years and Hope for about two. They both have showed enough talent on their own to make lessons the next logical step. We started Quinn at the municipal center with a very nice lady that would come in once a week and give lessons. We them switched him to his present teacher. She is a very good teacher and the one thing that Quinn loves the best is that she lets him play what ever music he brings to her as long as she feels he can do it. Wheather he heard it on TV or in a movie or even from a game, if we could find the sheet music, she would teach him.
I am not sure if Hope wanted to play on her own or played because she saw Quinn, but now she is enjoying herself. She likes to play and is improving week by week. She opened the recital with the Star Spangled Banner. Quinn played Ode to Joy. Enjoy the music and they do take requests. Use your back button to return.
Quinn