Jonathan and Julia's Blog » Jonathan

Star-fruit

Jonathan — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:00:44 +0000

Today, my mom and I rushed to Crest to get some last-minute groceries. While we were there, we stumbled upon some star-fruits, pomegranates, and coconuts. These three fruits were exotic to me because I’ve never tasted any of them. I then asked mom if we could get one, and she said yes, so I brought a star-fruit with us. At the checkout, the lady there was all-like “Star-fruit?” and mom was all-like “Yeah, HE wanted to try one” and just made it sound like I was the weird one! Well, I’m not! I’m actually really normal. If Julia says anything against that, pretend you didn’t hear it. Anyways, we then drove home and unloaded our groceries. I was really anxious to try my new fruit, so I got on the internet and looked up, “How to prepare starfruit.” Instantly, all of the links that included the word “Starfruit” in them. I clicked on one that looked promising, and it was! I got all sorts of useful information about where they are grown, what they’re good for, and how to serve them. First, you cut off the edges. Then, you chop off the “head.” Last, you slice the fruit as thick/thin as you want to. It tasted like a green apple, but mine was mostly green, so it wasn’t quite ripe. The texture was like a cucumber, but it smelled like a kiwi. Weird, huh? THE END.

RockBand

Jonathan — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:09:15 +0000

I just read Julia’s old post about her playing on RockBand and felt that I should correct some of her faults. 1. I can play the guitar on the Hard level, not Easy. 2. I can play drums on the Expert level, unlike Julia who does Hard. So HA! Take that Julia! Okay. I’ve made my point. That will be all.

A Trip to the Mall

Jonathan — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:54:52 +0000

This morning, Julia went to school. I didn’t because I have a break this week. Instead, I slept in until 10:30. Anyways, before Julia left, she informed mom that she would be going to a special Lego exhibit at the mall. I guess my mom wanted to go too, because when I woke up and prepared for the day ahead, mom told me about her plans for the day. The plans consisted of a list of jobs and then ended in going to the mall to see the exhibit. Half an hour later, we left to visit the mall. When we arrived, we searched for the exhibit, expecting to see it in a kiosk or something. When we found it, we were surprised to find it in an actual “vending” space. We had to pay to get in, but it was for a good cause. Inside was a HUGE replica of various sights and landmarks from around downtown. Below are several pictures of the creations that I found intriguing. (Including the winners of the Great OKC Build) If you live in Oklahoma, I encourage you to go see it. It’s at Quail Springs Mall. Okay, that’s all.

Muskogee Museum

Jonathan — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:24:18 +0000

Near the end of June, my family went to the Muskogee WWII Museum, home of the USS Batfish. The drive there was rather long, but well worth it. I don’t know if everyone else enjoyed the trip as much as I did, except Jeff, because he was the one who mentioned the idea. When we arrived, the first thing we did was enter the small indoor section of the museum. Inside there was a large collection of equipment used by the men in the US Navy and other stuff from Germany and Britain. In another room was a small corner decorated with Airborne accessories.

Outside, were artillery batteries that were in fairly good condition. Jeff and I had a fun time finding out how to sit and operate the guns; Where did the shells go? Who did what? Did the barrel go from side to side and up and down? Anyway, as we toured the grounds, we found several torpedoes, and two HUGE missile/rockets.

Lastly, we all made our way over to the USS Batfish. (It’s a submarine, just in-case you didn’t know) We entered from the rear, and immediately went IN the Batfish. The stairs led down into the rear torpedo chamber. Next came a control room, two rooms with pressure tanks, a “barracks”, a room with more controls dealing with pressure, (upness and downness) a kitchen, rooms for the officials onboard, and the forward torpedo chamber. I might have skipped a room or two, but, you’ve got to go check it out! I even went behind one of the pressure tanks! (It was kind of cramped back there) When we exited the sub, (Jeff and I) everyone else was sitting around outside. The day went by so fast inside the sub because 1) We were inside the sub being entertained 2) The sub blocked out all sound and sunlight 3) We had nothing else planned.

-I recommend this trip because it’s fun and educational, and you get to explore inside of a submarine. (Pardon the musty smell.)

Lego Contest

Jonathan — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:22:16 +0000

Last Saturday, Jeff and I woke up at (I) 9:00, and drove to downtown Oklahoma, where a Lego building contest would take place. It was called The Great OKC Build, and was at the Skirvin Hotel. The Build was from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. When we arrived, we had a hard time finding parking because all of the “Lego Fanatics” (including us) in Oklahoma had already taken the closest parking spots. When we finally did park, it was 9:53, so we hurried into the Skirvin and made our way up the narrow stairs to the second floor.

On the second floor, we were led to the Grand Ballroom, and found our table with our team name: “JJ Blox” (Taken from our previous RockBand name), and a picture a building. As the contest began we were given our objective: We were to build a replica of the picture of the building we were given. When our group was told to gather our pieces, we rushed up to the tables that were loaded with Legos of all shapes, sizes, and colors. As soon as we had gathered all we thought we would need, we began to build. At 11:30, Jeff and I went over to the Crystal Room and ate lunch. I picked a box that read, “Roast Beef”, and Jeff chose one with some other meat on it. The food inside the boxes were fairly good. At 12:00, we headed back to the Grand Ballroom (I love writing that) and got back to work. With full stomachs, we made good progress. We finished on time, and took a couple pictures. (Below) Enjoy!

My Almost Christmas…

Jonathan — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:06:16 +0000

Two days ago was Christmas, a very famous holiday all around the world. The day before Christmas, Julia and I decided to make Mom and Jeff breakfast. As I set my alarm clock for 6:30 A.M., I pondered what the day ahead would hold: Disasters, Surprises, maybe even some Mishaps (I try my best to think positively). Early the next day, I was awakened by the annoying little clock directly near my ear. After waking-up Julia, we headed downstairs to make the special Christmas breakfast. Here is a list of our supplies- 1. Bread 2.Powdered Sugar 3.An orange 4.Sausage. Hurriedly gathering these materials, I realized that I couldn’t find the sausage. While Julia was randomly toasting bread, I was trying to cut an orange into ”Good” slices. They turned out to be oddly-shaped wannabe circles. We somehow turned our poorly put together ingredients into a breakfast. Approximately two hours later, the adults woke-up. During those two hours of waiting, Julia, went back to “sleep”. She simply walked upstairs, laid down, and came back downstairs. It only took her five minutes. When the adults finally did wake up, they lazily yawned, stretched, and grumbled things that had absolutely nothing to do with toast. Sitting around the table watching them mumble and eat our poorly produced breakfast, I silently wondered if they had forgotten about Christmas. Ten minutes and a Disney parade later, our sleepy parents finally realized it was Christmas. When we got to the actual present opening, they were more awake and started using actual sentences and words! It was so exciting being able to communicate with the other people in my family (not really). It was nice to have an intelligent conversation though.

I got a good variety of Japanese candy that I can’t pronounce and a Nerf Vulcan ( Jeff got a Vulcan too.) Almost half an hour later, I was pumping whistling bullets across the hallway. Jeff’s gun had some minor faults with it and forestalled his presence in the hallway. Unfortunately, the box said ” Batteries not Included” so, the next day, Jeff ran out and bought some batteries for the guns so that we could rapidly fire at each other at a whopping three bullets per second! When he got home, we installed the batteries and began raking each other with bullets. An hour after the war began, his gun died. It made a horrible grinding sound that stopped his rate of fire. Mine followed suit soon after. So, in retrospect, my Christmas wasn’t perfect, but hey, there’s no such thing as a “perfect day”. I would also not recommend the Vulcan as a gift…

Disturbance in the backyard

Jonathan — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:16:05 +0000

We saw it injured behind the lawn chair on the patio
We sprayed it with Raid (five times)
It died 15 minutes later (so much for “Kills on contact?!?”)
Tough fella
Found out later it eats cicadas and lives underground
Mom took pictures

Fishing on a hot summer day

Jonathan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:11:10 +0000

Early this morning (10 o’clock) I woke up with Lacy on my lap. I went upstairs and got ready for the day and waited for my mom, my little sister and her friend to eat breakfast. When everything was done, we (mom, sister and friend) set out to go fishing and play tennis. The girls were going to play tennis and mom and I would fish. The tennis court was only a few steps away from the stream. While we were hooking up our bait, the girls decided they were bored and went home with Lacy. While we were hooking up the bait, I noticed a dead four inch long snake. As we were walking to the stream, we also noticed a dead fox laying in the middle of the field. We felt bad for it so we gave it a respectful moment of silence and hoped its brothers and sisters were ok. We finally got to the fishing. There were tons of fish (see picture below). As soon as I cast my line, and the hook hit the water, it went under and pulled very hard. I didn’t expect it to be that fast. I pulled the fish out of the water (see below). My mom and I had never unhooked a fish before so we freaked thinking the life of this fish, lay in our inexperienced hands but after a little bit of coaching from me (to my mom), she was able to push the hook to the back of the fish’s throat and free it. Then, as my mom was holding the fish, I filled our bucket with water. Mom wanted to go get her camera from the house but before she could leave, I decided to catch one more in the same exact way. Mom got kind of annoyed that she had to backtrack to free my second fish before she could take off. While she was gone, I guzzled her Gatorade and used the bottle to collect more water for our fish. When mom got back, I was ready to catch more fish and so I did. Shortly thereafter, two boys arrived on the scene wanting to join us. They were pulling fish out of the water as fast as I was and poor mom was desperately trying to save our little victims from dying on the hook. One of the fish swallowed the hook and got it stuck on its tongue. Unfortunately we had to remove a part of its mouth in order to free the little guy but thankfully, he made it with a lifelong memory. After that everything went pretty smoothly and since our bucket was getting kinda full, we decided to call it a morning (it was hot as blazes, see photo) so we gazed into our fish bucket a final time and then released them back into “the wild”. 13 fish baby! Yeah!

Mega hurtz!!!!

Jonathan — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:27:10 +0000

A few weeks back, I got bored so I took my Lego people and smashed, bashed, crashed and thrashed them until I got a completely chaotic scene. I stepped back to survey the damage and then realized that it gave me great pleasure and a feeling of complete power. I felt someone had to be responsible for this besides me so I put a bank robber in the scene (see hand-cuffed individual at bottom right in “Making the Arrest” photo) . It made me happy. When my mom saw it, she said, “my, what a mess” but she took a picture of it anyway as she passed by since she had her camera in her hand and because of that coincidence, this very rare footage was captured for this website. I had more fun making it than I did cleaning it up. In the end, all the injured individuals were taken to the hospital, order was restored to the bank, and the bad guy was put in jail. I was finally at peace…but not for long!

So once again the city lived happily ever after (except the robber doing time).

My Freakin’ Awesome Fourth

Jonathan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:35:03 +0000

On the morning of 7/4/08, {A.K.A July 4th} Mom, Julia, and I attended our neighborhood Fourth of July parade. There was a rather large Hummer that smelled like motor oil and was stalking me in the parade. It was freaking HOT outside and I was in the front row in the middle of the blazing sun! There were three flag raising ceremonies along the way and I stood in the blazing sun for two of them. I ditched the third one cuz it was too hot but they gave us cool balloons. Julia lost hers. She was po’d. In the afternoon we packed up all of our explosive equipment and loaded a large cooler full of drinks and ice. I got to sit in the back of our AIR CONDITIONED minivan. We were on the road for about an hour on our way to “Mayberry”, USA where my grandparents live. We sat around and played with little Black Cat poppers and then launched bees as well as little ground bloomers. We went inside and ate after that. We had turkey jerky. I like turkey jerky! There were turkey burgers too (my grandparents are great fans of “Turkey”)! After a long time, we went outside and started the big poppers. We dragged two large plywood boards into the field behind the house. It was exactly out of city limits. I stood in one half of city limits and one half of out-of-city-limits at the same time. It was awesome! When it got darker, we started shooting the real stuff. We created a launch ramp for the whistle-chasers and set up cans for our smaller explosives. It was fun. We made a bazooka out of a long tubular piece of cardboard attached to a smaller paper towel roll. The bottom was plugged with a plastic cap in which we drilled a hole. We trimmed the fins off a rocket and stuffed in our bazooka. We put the fuse in the drilled hole and then I stood in the field, kneeled and pointed the bazooka up in the air at a 75 degree angle. Jeff lit the fuse and ran away (I felt so betrayed). The tube began to vibrate violently and at the same time I could hear the fuse getting shorter and shorter and shorter. Then all at once, I heard a blast and the rocket came flying out (I almost pee’d my pants). Then, I threw down the bazooka and ran back to the launching station. Next we taped 10 roman candles around a paper towel roll (see picture below; we made two of them). I carried it out into the field and posed it like a gun (see picture below). I then held it as far away as I could. Jeff lit all the fuses and ran away (again). Then once again, the weapon began to vibrate. Flashing objects shot out of the front of each tube. Each tube held seven shots. 10 x 7 = 70. That’s alot of shots! (Since we made two of those weapons, I shot both). And that adds up to 140 shots! Julia in the meantime was as far back as she could get while I was launching these “Modified” weapons of little destruction. Then we lit some Tanks, Hen Laying Eggs(Julia’s Personal Favorite), Smoke Grenades, etc. We also shot a parachute launcher. I caught the parachute. Turns out the paratrooper is a cylindrical weight. What a BUMMER. I was hoping it would actually resemble a person. Then we shot off some rockets (the right way). And finally we launched 12 warheads out of a “Deluxe” Mortar Tube. It was cool! We bought it for $12. Then for the FINALE we lit a box that contained six rows of tubes that were fanned out. It was Sweet! At the end we all went inside for some ice cream.

“Whew” that was a long passage I just wrote.

Oh, in the end, yeah we lived happily ever after.