Mary's photo of a spider web in our back yard

Friday Night Fun with the Ferris Family

The four of us goofed around last night with the Photo Booth application on our new iMac. The results, which were pretty silly, are below:

Video from Lake Conroe

Let me preface this by saying I absolutely love the Mac iMovie software. Cutting this video and adding music was a breeze. Enjoy!

Here's the photo again

And earlier this evening Mary lost her second tooth! Always seems to
happen on vacation.

Mary and John at the pool

We're spending the weekend at a resort on Lake Conroe. It's lovely here -- nice weather and not too crowded. We may go on a boat ride before dinner.

Sent from my iPhone (so please excuse any typos).

Video of our Trip to CA

Better late than never, right? Here's quick video recap of last month's trip to California.

Tennis lessons follow up

Mary has many wonderful qualities. She is warm, kind, thoughtful, smart, silly, loving and sweet. But athletically gifted she is not. So I was a bit worried when she started tennis lessons last night.

Before she recieved any instructions from the coach she was told to drop a ball, let it bounce and hit it over the net. This was not an easy task for Mary, although she kept at it.

Rather than hover over her I decided to take John to the adjacent playground. He and I returned to the courts about 25 minutes later. By this time Mary had clearly gotten some direcion from the coach. She was standing with feet apart, two hands on her racquet and eyes on the ball. She wasn't able to hit the ball every time. But her form was generally correct and she looked like a little tennis player.

I realized that whatever Mary may lack in physical coordination she can make up for it with her good listening skills and willingness to learn. She said she liked tennis and can't wait for next week.

Meanwhile, while waiting for Mary's lesson to conclude John decided to return a stray tennis ball to the courts. The fence in front of him was about 15 feet tall but he was determined to lob the ball over it.

He tried overhand, underhand, running starts, standing close to the fence and standing back. He probably threw the ball 25 times.

But he finally got it over and turned to me flashing the biggest, most satisfied smile I'd ever seen on his little face.

Mary ready for her first tennis lesson

John pointing to the map in his room

Sully & Mary making (and eating) snowcones