Shish Tawook

I made this from a recipe that was published in the local paper, but originally came from The Arab Table, by May Bsisu (William Morrow). Becky loved it - not a surprise - but Alex loved it also. I've modified it only slightly with more convenient pre-prepared garlic and lemon juice.

Combine 5 tsp jarred minced garlic, 1/2 c. bottled lemon juice, 1/3 c. olive oil, 2 Tbsp plain yogurt, 1/2 tsp ground cardamom, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. white pepper in a large bowl and thoroughly mix with a fork or whisk. Cut 2-3 lbs of bone/skin-less chicken breasts into 1 inch chunks and place them in a gallon Ziploc bag. Pour the mixture in on top and seal tightly, forcing out the excess air. Put that bag in another bag and park it in the fridge for 2-8 hours.

Soak a bundle of wooden skewers or find your metal ones.

Meanwhile blend 10 tsp of the minced garlic, 1/2 tsp. of salt, and 2 tsp of the plain yogurt in a blender or small food processor. With it running, trickle 1/3 c. of the olive oil into the mix until incorporated, then do the same with 1 tsp. of the lemon juice until a paste is formed. Stick it in a plastic, lidded container in the fridge until you're ready to cook.

With a grill hot and ready, skewer the chicken and then grill it over medium high heat for about 6-8 minutes until cooked through. Before taking it off of the grill, brush it with the garlic paste and serve over rice. I made six cups of saffron rice using chicken stock and 1/4 tsp saffron - pictured above.

Fireworks at the Fort

Each year we go on a quest to look for the best place to see fireworks this time of year. There is a great display downtown, but the traffic and scope of the crowd has left us looking for other, smaller venues. This year's discovery was the display on Independence Day Eve at Fort Meigs in Perrysburg, just down the road from my office. We were so excited that we turn the camera over to Aaron for his first group photo credit.
This large monument is found in the middle of the restored Fort Meigs itself. This replica is of a fort used in the War of 1812 against the British and Native Americans.
The interior is filled with numerous long low hills, called traverses, that helped shield the Americans from incoming British shells. The kids loved running up and down these.

We laid out some blankets inside the fort and watched a great display set up on the bridge between Perrysburg and Maumee over the Maumee River. Becky and I have seen fireworks framed by the St. Louis Arch, but these were the most patriotic, if that's the right word, watching them from inside an American fort replica. The trafic leaving was worse than we'd thought it would be, but next year we'll be ready for it. (We'll still get stuck in it, but next time we'll be ready to get stuck in it.)

OK Vacation - Casa Viva

After the Air & Space Museum, we made our way for dinner nearby at Casa Viva. This used to be Casa Bonita when Becky and I were kids. It shut down for a year, remodeled and changed owner. Now, it looks exactly like we remembered it. We ate in a cave and lifted our little flag up when it was time for sopapillas and honey.


After dinner we watched a magic show and the kids got to participate in the act. They had a blast and we made some new memories at the old/new Casa Viva.

OK Vacation - Tulsa Air and Space Museum

I got online last night and started looking for things to do in the Bartlesville area that we had not done before. The Tulsa Air and Space Museum is located on the campus of the Tulsa Airport. We spent the afternoon here with Nana & Papa. The main building houses all of the aircraft - including an F-14 Tomcat like they used in the movie Top Gun. In order to get permission to have it on display here, the museum agreed that it could be pulled and ready for combat within 24 hours if needed. The kids loved clambering into all of the cockpits and fiddling with the dials and switches.
We couldn't resist this picture. I'll have to find mine from the Kennedy Space Center in Houston. Alex also got to try some hands-on space simulations. One was just flipping a series of switches to help "launch" a large model of the Space Shuttle. Both boys went into a space ride simulator, Aaron went twice.
Alex got to manipulate a robotic arm to pick up objects in the simulator's payload bay using the controls in front of him and the camera views shown on those little screens to the right. He did very well. Once upon a time he wanted to be an astronaut. Maybe activities like this will spur him toward it again, or at least a career in the sciences. I know, I'm partial, but its got to better than his current favorite - video game tester. Thanks to whoever told him that he could get paid for that.

This cockpit didn't have a plane around it, but they could sit side-by-side and flip the switches and move the sticks. To add a touch of realism, this cockpit was playing a live feed from the control tower nearby.

The next building held a planetarium that we watched a neat film about how a trip to space affects the human body and what would happen to it on different planets. At least thats what I think it was about. Lets just say the chairs were comfy, it was dark, and it had been a long week - right, Papa? The kids said it was a good show.

OK Vacation - Woolaroc

We drove back to Bartlesville last night and brought everyone (except Mark, who was working) to Woolaroc just outside of town. I had been here lots as a kid as it was the closest museum to us growing up. We'd never brought the kids and Alex had finished a Native American unit at school earlier this year. Woolaroc used to be the country lodge, ranch, and retreat for oil tycoon Frank Philips (of Conoco-Philips fame). It was named for the WOods, LAkes, and ROCks that surround this region. We ate a picnic lunch that we brought and then headed to the museum. The main museum has a mosaic with several Native Americans depicted in traditional ceremonial costumes, which we thought was a great place to pose. (I had gotten a short haircut the week before, and I thought that today would be a good day to spike it up.)

The problem with a museum is that the interior lights are not very bright and they don't allow flash photography. This means I got a lot of blurry, poorly lit pictures. Alex was smiling in the 1st 3 shots of him near the headdress, but by the time I held the camera still enough for the 4th to come into focus, he had had enough. The museum was still in great shape, and they had expanded it since I had toured it last. The kids loved the animals, the artifacts, and the huge paintings. Nana used to be a docent, so she had given tours of this museum and pointed out many of the highlights to the grandkids.

There were numerous stuffed animals, some of them gifts to Frank Philips, and some of them were from his big game hunting expeditions. The ranch portion of Woolaroc had numerous live buffalo, but Aaron posed by this stuffed one.


The Woolaroc Airplane, that is on display at the Woolaroc Museum, won the "Dole Derby," a glorious race from Oakland to Hawaii in 1927. More than a dozen airplanes entered the contest, but only two made it to Hawaii. Ten lives were lost during the race. Phillips Petroleum sponsored the Woolaroc in the race, and hired stuntman Arthur Goebel to pilot the plane.
A summary of the race is found at the San Francisco Museum website. As you can tell from the picture, it was well-lit:)

We took the kids to "Arrows Skyward" which used to be a multiple screen movie/slideshow that taught viewers an old Indian lesson about taking the hard but correct path. The message is intact, but the presentation wasn't. They were down to one screen, but still used the same slides, which meant that the narrator would refer to something that should have been visible on one of the other screens but wasn't. Moderately disappointing. We drove out, like we did when we came in, past all of the zebras, buffaloes, deer, mountain sheep, and ostriches that dot the ranch. I think the next time we're in town, we'll have to check it out again.

OK Vacation - The Evans Clan

The serious picture with the kids in matching "Evans Cousins" T-shirts that Nana worked very hard to get for everyone.

And the silly one. Note the outrageous use of rabbit ears by Nana & Papa. :)

OK Vacation - Cupcake Fun

Becky brought (with Nana's help) ingredients for a tasty craft. She baked chocolate cupcakes, then all the kids sat down to decorate them. She had different colored and flavored frostings, jellybeans, candies, sprinkles, chocolate chips, gummi Lifesavers and little marshmallows.
Of course, eating them was just as much fun as making them.

OK Vacation - Gazillions of Bubbles

Leave it to Nana to find an electronic bubble blower that could shoot out 4000 bubbles a minute. Needless to say, it was a big hit.

OK Vacation - Jump!Zone

Jump!Zone is an indoor playground full of those party inflatables you see at festivals. We spent several hours there with the kids today. Even Aaron didn't let any of the biggest ones slow him down. It was too fun to just sit on the sidelines, so we crawled up there with them and bounced and slid with them. We took a break for pizza and then played some more. It was a great way to burn off some energy without braving the triple digit heat index.

OK Vacation - Whitewater Bay

Today we set out on another cloudy day to try to have some fun in the water. I hadn't been to Whitewater (now Whitewater Bay) since I was a kid. They've added a few new features, but it is mostly how I remembered it. These fun things from my childhood are so much more fun now experiencing them with the kids. We all took a trip around on the lazy river to get wet and get our bearings for the place. The kids wanted some time in the kids' play area that had slides and fountains and structures to climb on.
Then we made our way to the innertube slides. I love this picture for the symmetry of their legs and the look on Alex's face upon splashdown.
Similarly, I love the look on Dad's face and I can hear the noise he's making in this picture when the cold water went up his back.


This is 4 of the 6 Evans boys as we came down the Big Kahuna - the kids loved it, as did Mark and I. After lunch, Melinda challenged Mark and I to go down the, I kid you not, Mega-Wedgie. This is a 64 foot slide nearly straight down. Ever since Melinda's battle with cancer, I resolved to make sure that I would try to be at least as tough as Melinda, so we did it. From the top of the tower, we noticed a storm coming in fast, so we raced down - easy to do on the Mega-Wedgie - and gathered our family into the minivans just as the lightning storm started rolling in. We had 5 good hours there, and that was about enough.

OK Vacation - Splash Pad

Besides my alma mater, Norman, OK has a neat park with a host of water sprays, jets, cannons, and dumping buckets. Perfect for a hot day, though today was a little cloudy (of course). I love this picture because all 5 cousins are in it. Marcus and Marli are getting dumped on in the foreground. Alex is striding forward in the blue shirt and sunglasses in the center. Beyond him and a little to the left, Aaron (in a red shirt) is shielding his face from the spray. Marcus is harder to see, but his dad highlights his position. Look for the tall guy in a camo shirt and a, ahem, short haircut in the upper right of the picture - that's Mark - and to his right is Marcus in blue swim trunks.
Here he is in a close up with Melinda near a gentle spray.

And here's Aaron near a spray that came out so thin that it made a water "bubble" that he liked to hide in and call out to passerbys that he needed rescuing from.

OK Vacation - Midnight Soccer

Mark and Melinda participate in an adult soccer league with friends from church and tonight they had a makeup game scheduled for midnight - not a common occurrence. I went with them and had a great time. It is indoor co-ed soccer which brought a couple of interesting rules to the game. First you can kick balls off of the walls, executing a kid of bounce pass. The walls only go so high, so there is an out of bounds if they do.

Second, goals scored by women count for 2 points. Tonight their team dominated through the efforts of Melinda who scored 4 goals and another teammate who scored 3 for a total of 14 points to the other team's 4.

OK Vacation - Slip-n-Slide

Nana brought a Slip-n-Slide that the kids were able to work over until a thunderstorm moved in. The kids got the hang of it after a few tries, but they all struggled with the concept of flinging themselves onto their bellies, generally preferring their knees.

OK Vacation - Horse Camp

This morning we went to the Horse Camp that the older cousins have been attending all week. They had a scavenger hunt that the kids participated in. The area was a bit muddy, but we were able to explore the stables and silos a bit to see the different animals. One stall had baby ducks and chickens.

This one had a 2 goats (Domino and Hershey), a caged bunny, and a pot-bellied pig (Muddy) that Aaron liked to visit. He tentatively petted them but mostly liked to watch them hop around the stall.

Marli got to go first and showcase some of the riding skills she picked up this week. She did a great job and looked so big on that horse.

Marcus then rode a pony his size that he could handle relatively well. He showed us here how to get your horse to step over objects in the way - a precursor to jumping them (someday). The cousins got awards for the work they did this week and we said goodbye to to all the horses for now.

Whompin' On The Preschoolers' Baseball Team

Alex had his first baseball game this year, sort of. Both teams took the field, but during the 1st inning a parent from the other team came up to us and asked us how old the kids on our team were. She was surprised when we said they were mostly 6 & 7 year olds, because they were playing against a team of 3 & 4 year olds. It was dangerous for the younger kids, because we were hitting well, but they couldn't really field the ball and so a few of them were hit by our grounders. No serious injuries thankfully. They say they will have it straightened out by the next game.

Wonka Factory in Blocks

Alex's class read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as their last unit in school this year. He watched the original Gene Wilder movie there also (after a frantic call from his teacher because he told her he wasn't allowed to watch it - we reassured her that the G-rated version was fine, but that we had not allowed him to see the PG-rated Johnny Depp version). He checked out an audiobook version of both this book and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator from the library and has listened to those. We also recently rented the video game for the GameCube and he's been playing that. All of this led to an inspired afternoon building session with wooden blocks of a section of the Chocolate Factory. This section is chiefly responsible for moving blocks of chocolate (the small rectangle blocks) to waiting trucks for delivery.

Firefighter Tigger

As Aaron was getting ready for bed tonight in his Tigger PJs, he undressed his toy dog Ruffles and proceeded to put on the firefighter costume that he was wearing. As you can see, the jacket fit while the pants really didn’t. As you can also see, he was VERY pleased with himself.

Feelin' Special on Father's Day

Today I awoke to breakfast in bed made by Becky and the kids – ham and cheese omelet and toast – garnished by my favorite sections of the paper and a photo framed of me and the boys at the Mudhens Stadium from my birthday weekend. We went to Alex’s final soccer game. They won 4-2 after their best display of teamwork all season, and Alex got a trophy for playing. We had an end-of-season picnic on the grounds of the soccer field. Then I wanted to go out and just play at a park with the kids. We went to Swan Creek Preserve Metropark where they had a “Window on the World” – a building with a large window facing a small pond and bird feeders. We had a special chance tonight to see a special visitor – a groundhog!
We picnicked and played on the playground. We took a cool break when an ice cream truck trolled the parking lot.

Alex tried his bike again, fell hard, and got back on. I told him later that night that watching him getting back on that bike was my favorite moment of Father’s Day.