PTA Winter Dash

One last thing for January - a PTA Winter Dash, which is basically a photo scavenger hunt around town. We had to take pictures with our hawk at our favorite playground, local landmark, and school marquee, with our favorite food, and showing our school spirit. Too bad the sky, our shirts, grass, car interior, and fence are all pretty much the same grey color! Here's what we submitted:

However, we did have some fun in our search for a photo-worthy landmark. Did you know that Katy was named as a shortened version of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas rail line?

We also learned about the agricultural history of the area, and that they really like tractors.

All in all...

Football and Garage Insulation (grunt, grunt, grunt!)

All right. January has been kind of gray, but time seemed to move a little faster than the last year, at least! We finally got flag football to work out for Owen. We know someone with a big camera on the sidelines, so enjoy these sporty pics. :)

Apparently, there were so many teams and kids that played in the fall (there was a wait list and 10 10-player teams), that no one wanted to play in the winter league (they scrounged up 4 teams of 7 players). Anyway, we are on a team that obviously hasn't played together before, most of us met a few weeks ago, and we're off to a rough 0-3 start. He's on the Seahawks again, so he could actually even wear his old shirt from Fall 2019. It's been good to be back in a routine of practices and games at least.

Owen has gained a reputation for knowing the plays, and he's a reliable center snapper. There is no blocking or running allowed in this league, so it's a pass-happy, interception-prone game, and even the center is an eligible receiver! Owen's made a few catches, the one below was a long run until they got his flag just before the end zone.

He's still a pretty good flag grabber, too. He got this one, and has slapped a few passes out of the opposing receiver's hand. It might be an ugly season, but it's been good for him to get to be a kid in organized sports again.

On the home front, the mister needed a new project so we've been learning about insulating our free-standing garage. That's been consuming a lot of his free time on evenings and weekends. To give you an idea of before, it was pretty bare bones: just studs, weather-barrier, and the siding. This left little-to-no awkward places to hang things and the weather-barrier was damaged in several places. Not to mention that the garage is a hot box in summer. I had rubberized gardening gloves that basically melted together, because it got so hot in there!

Insulating the garage is a multi-step process, as you can imagine. The first step is to replace the weather-barrier, then add some spacers to allow any moisture to dry out, followed by a sheet of foam insulation (my specialty!) sealed with special tape, and finally the top layer of wood for the wall surface. Each of these has to be measured in multiple places as the stud spacing varies a lot, carefully cut, accurately placed, and securely attached. As a family (though mostly just J), we've been able to get six bays done in one weekend day.

And finally, lest our garage look like a '70s-era, fully wood-paneled man cave, we decided to take it step(s) further and paint the walls. This is also a multi-step process consisting of oil-based priming, dry wall mudding, and eventually painting (all J labor). A month in, and we're about 1/3 of the way done... When all finished, this should give us a 20-degree differential to the outside temperature, make the space more functional and clean, and of course, provide many more opportunities to upgrade other parts of the garage in the future. 😏

Westchase Murals

MLK Day stretched out before us, and I decided that it was a perfect time to explore some of the Houston Mural Map that Hadley had been wanting to see. We left the boys behind and checked out a cluster of murals in the Westchase area. It was a bit of a scavenger hunt, since the map gave an address, but the murals were sometimes on the back of buildings, on nearby sidewalks, or on concrete lining bayous in the vicinity. Hadley really liked the butterflies.

We found quite a few along the Westchase District's walking trail system. H took this picture of me among the runners. She told me my head was "close enough" to the body I was trying to match.

A little detour off the walking trail led us to this lion, elongated on the sidewalk to give it a 3D look when photographed. Pretty neat! And there was a random zip line next to him.

Near the lion was this art of a jaguar in the jungle. If you look closely, you can see several hidden faces in the greenery. This was H's other favorite of the day.

This one was on the back of a strip mall. It asks, "how can the sky be the limit if there are footprints on the moon?" I cropped out the dumpster (and thus, the astronaut boots) on the other side of earth. That's H in the footprint to give you some sense of scale.

A short drive south of the tollway led us to a small park, which connected to the trail system again. We liked the mosaics we saw along the way.

This mural, called "Heroes of Harvey," was the hardest one to find. The street address was at the crossing of a bayou where there was a walking path. We walked all around on both sides of the street and the bayou path, but didn't see it. As our last effort, we decided to walk further north, under the Westpark tollway!, and go around the bayou bend. There it was! 

Of course, H had to cross the bayou and get up close to see the details. All in all, it was a fun excursion, checked H's box for art appreciation, and no one stepped in the bayous. We're working up to go find the ones downtown someday...