Houston: Caiqian's Family, SkyHigh, and Shibori

After we got back from the Caribbean Beach Club, Caiqian and I stayed a week at her parents' house. We still had a warm afterglow from those two weeks, which is why Caiqian decided to take our shells from this year and last year, oil them, de-oil them, and tacky them into two glass frames. The result turned out quite nice, and we hope to make it a tradition for the coming years!

Left: CBC shells from 2011. Right: CBC shells from 2010.

The first adorable feature of the Wu household that you notice when you enter is their dog, Capricorn, or Cappy for short. Here's cappy wearing Caiqian's dad's shirt.

Cute Cappy reminds me of CJ7

After we arrived the whole family celebrated a belated Christmas. I gave Caiqian's mom and dad a yoga mat and dark chocolate set respectively. Caiqian's parents in return gave me A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking, which was a fascinating read. I had the book done in no time.

Second Christmas at the Wu's

Me and my new Christmas gift, A Brief History of Time by Hawking

The Wu's don't play spades, but they do have a card game of their own, called Chase Away the Pig And Catch the Sheep, or CAPACS. It's very similar to Hearts, but with several differnt rules. First off, hearts are worth negative points, with
2-4H = 0 points each
5-10H= -10 points each

Jack of Hearts is worth -20 points
Queen of Hearts is worth -30 points
King of Hearts is worth-40 points
Ace of Hearts is worth-50 points
and then there are three special cards
Queen of Spades is worth -100 points
Jack of Diamonds is worth +100 points
Ten of Clubs will double the points in your hand at the end of the round, unless you have none of the other cards in which case it is worth +50 points.

The game plays until one person reaches -1000 points, and that person is the pig. The pig has to wear a piece of paper on their nose, and below you can see Caiqian and both became piggies the first two games.

CAPACS made us piggies!

Lastly, I'd like to point out a dinner idea that the western world must steal immediately. Caiqian's parents introduced me to the "Hot Pot" dinner, and it's one of the best ideas I've ever heard. Essentially you buy thinly spliced lamb, beef, pork, and various vegetables and seafood and dip it in a pot of boiling soup and ten pull it out and eat it. It's related to fondue, but there's no boiling oil. I learned while enjoying the Hot Pot that I like Wood Ear, possibly the only type of mushroom that I'll actually eat.

 
Hot Pot Happiness

SkyHigh

While we were in Houston, I discovered I could knock something off my bucket list, namely, going to SkyHigh! SkyHigh is essentially a large gymnasium with trampoline "courts" where the floors and walls are entirely covered in trampolines. Caiqian and I went with one of Caiqian's friends, Suzie.

We're at Sky High!

Bouncing around SkyHigh was fun. We paid 10$/hr per person, and we all purchased one hour. But let me say that an hour of bouncing around is more than enough. About every fifteen minutes I had to get off the courts to get a large swig of water, and by the end of an hour I was pooped.

Whee! Bouncing!

I'm really glad I went because I finally managed to do my first flip on a trampoline. It wasn't pretty, but I felt quite accomplished.

Another neat court in SkyHigh was the foam pit, where there are some trampolines that go  towards a pit full of cubed up soft pieces of foam. I really thought this was a great addition to the trampoline-only courts.

Foam Pit!

Something to point out is that the yellow bars between the blue squares are not bouncy, but are soft. So if you land on it you won't bounce, as you can see in the video below (I love the  buildup in the video).

On the foam pit there's also trampolines on the walls, so after a while I learned how to bounce off of those too.

  

Bryan at the foam pit

The only bad part about the foam pit is that it's really hard to get out, as you can see in my struggle below. I asked an employee if there was a secret to getting out, and he said no. At least I'm not the only one. 

Shibori Tie Dye

One of the last activities Caiqian and I did while we were in Houston was do some shibori tie die. Now I've done rainbow tie die in the past, but this Shibori tye die that Caiqian's friends found on a blog was different in that we started with black shirts and then only used bleach

Tie-Dying Black Shirts

After a day of washing and drying the bleached shirts, Caiqian, Sharon, Andy, and I showed off the mysterious designs that come from our selected bleaching.

End Result

Eating Out

It wouldn't be a Caiqian vacation without at least some eating out. One notable place we went to was CoCo's, which serves sweet and savory crepes.

CoCo's Crepes!

CoCo's is Caiqian's favorite crepe place (and she's lived in Paris). But the real surprising place this time around was Juice Box, which makes desserts that are essentially shaved ice, covered in condensed milk, which is itself covered in sliced fruits and finally topped off with a scoop of ice cream.

We'll have to come back later for some more  Juice Box

That's it for our Houston trip! Now it's time for me to be flung back into another semester at college, which unfortunately means no updates until at least Spring break. Adios!

Caribbean Beach Club 2011

After finishing my first semester of junior year, it was time for my annual trip to the Caribbean Beach Club (CBC) down in Fort Myers Beach,  Florida. I've been going to the CBC every winter since I was born, and once again I couldn't wait to see my extended family meet up, play games, and relax in the sun.

This year was different than previous years for two reasons. First, this was the first year my cousin Adam did not join us. Second, this year was the first time we got to see baby Maddox walking around.

The baby who needs no introduction

I think Maddox will fit right into the extended Cropper/Carbone family. I could tell the instant he got his hands on a deck of cards. This boy's already ready to play games!

Maddox shuffleboardin' and card playin' right off the bat

You could tell he really enjoyed walking around like he owned the place.

Maddox in his birthday suit

Maddox even enjoyed swimming, with the help of his seniors.

Wheee!

Caiqian and I even fed Maddox his very first rib, and he wasn't disappointed. Look at the smile on that face!

Maddox's first rib!

Celebrations

For week 52, there were a ridiculous amount of celebrations that went down. All in the same week, we celebrated Jon's 27th Birthday, Uncle Eric's 60th Birthday, Rick and Kat's First Anniversary, Christmas, and New Year's! I had more cake in that one week than I've had in the rest of the year.

Jon turns 27

Uncle Eric hits 60

Rick and Kat celebrate their first anniversary

Sky Lanterns

For Rick and Kat's first anniversary, we celebrated by releasing sky lanterns. Sky lanterns are like small paper hot air balloons where you light a candle at the bottom which heats up the air inside the lantern which allows the lanterns to fly away. Caiqian bought ten lanterns, so we had a lantern for every two people. It was amazing to see how far they went before they extinguished. Aunt Valerie said seeing the lanterns fly was like watching your soul float into the heavens.

Getting the lantern to actually fly has three stages. First you open the lantern, then you ignite the candle, and the finally you let the lantern go when it feels like it will fly.

The Three Stages of a Sky Lantern

It was really wondrous watching so many family members release the lanterns. It was also fun to see family members hold onto the lanterns, waiting to see when to release it.

Thomas and Lulu light their lantern

Unfortunately, out of the ten lanterns, two didn't achieve positive buoyancy! For the lanterns that were insufficiently hot, they just dropped into the water below. It added an element of risk to the whole event.

The Fourth  Stage of a Sky Lantern (death)

Christmas

Christmas this year was quite like Christmas every year in Fort Myers: warm weather followed by a delicious potluck dinner. 

Christmas Dinner in the Rec Room

Opening presents with my family was pretty awesome. Caiqian was really happy to get a pearl necklace that she had wanted for a while. My dad sent me some subtle hints when he bought me an Iron Gym Workout Kit and a music player to go with it (I've gained 30 pounds over the last year). And Nicholas and I celebrated when we got Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword from my mom and dad.

Nicholas and I opening Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

For my mom, Caiqian and I got her a board game she didn't already have in her large collection of board games: Pandemic. Jonathan introduced the game to us last year. We played the game a few times this year. The roles for the players in the game are randomly assigned, but somehow my dad got the Dispatcher role six out of six times, making him the ultimate dispatcher.

We got a new board game (Pandemic) for my parents

Games

In addition to Pandemic, there were other welcome game additions this year. Aunt Rosie brought Guesstures, which is like a really fast-paced charades game. After playing a couple games, we decided that it was the best charades game that we'd ever played.

Croppers & Carbones face off in Guesstures

A game that we got to introduce was Acquire. Acquire is a game of growing companies and investing in stocks. Normally people win with around $30,000, but Grandma Monsie blew everyone away by winning the game with over $47,000. Crazy!

The Croppers introducing Acquire to Jon and Tej

Of course it wouldn't be Caribbean Beach Club without playing some spades.

Holly dealing out a Spades game

It wasn't long before we had simultaneous Spades games going.

Simultaneous Spades Games 

There was one time that I had to break away from my table because on the other table one team bid double nil and the other team bid 13. It almost looked like both teams were going to make it until Rick (one of the nil players) won the very last trick with a queen of hearts over the other team's jack of hearts. I've never seen a game like that before in my life.

Shelling

In a tradition almost as old as Spades itself, we also had an great time shelling.

Shelling!

I love shelling. But what made this year exceptionally great was that Thomas showed up, and he gave Caiqian and I the push to wake up really early and gather some killer shells. Plus, we had the pleasure to see Thomas work his magic gathering olive shells.

Thomas staring down an olive

In addition to the shells, we also found some remarkable starfish. Mom found a starfish small enough to fit on her wedding ring.

The Smallest Starfish

While Caiqian went the other way and found a huge nine-legged star fish the size of a car wheel!

The Largest Starfish

Other Activities

Besides the day to day stuff, what did we see in Fort Myers? Well one new addition to the CBC was the Aqua Zumba water exercise program. Every week there was a day when the instructor would blare her boombox next to the pool and proceeded to dance fairly quickly on land, causing the Aqua Zumbers to try to impossibly follow her lead in the water. It was fairly funny to watch, but I think for it to be successful the instructor will have to slow it down in the future.

A new addition this year: Aqua Zumba

As usual, we also saw our favorite egret, Hotdog, perusing the premises in search of food. How long can this bird possibly live? The longest recorded lifespan for an egret is 23 years, and I feel like Hotdog has been at it for at least 20. Only time will tell.

Hotdog

We also went to the "tourist trap," the Fort Meyers Beach Fishing Pier.

Croppers at the Fort Myers Beach Fishing Pier

While the Pier was interesting, I was more interested in what shops it had nearby, namely Kilwin's Chocolate Fudge & Ice Cream Shoppe.

Maddox enjoying Kilwin's on the plaza

One final thing that was really nice about the CBC is the beautiful beach sunsets. In fact, most days everyone in the entire complex went outside just to see the sun dip below the horizon and disappear into the ocean.

Aunt Shelly and us posing in front of a sunset

 Cousins Picture fromWeek 51

Final Sunset Shot

Anyways, it was certainly another successful year at the CBC. I can't wait to see what next year will be like when Maddox starts talking!