Post #5.

Here.  I posted something else!  Does this count as a post?  Does it actually have to have meaningful content or an actual update about the family?  Does it have to completely (and accurately) reflect some sort of family history or event that we want documented forever and always?  What is the minimum acceptable hurdle for a post to count?  Could it be word count (because I'm starting to ramble pretty good here and this could really turn into something).

Seriously, here are some things you can (probably) look forward to this year on the blog:

• Since we went to Disney in January, I'm sure I have at least 3 or 5 good posts about those days (including photos).  So, look for that sometime this year. 
• Ali was on the middle school basketball team and wrapped up her season in 2016 (although it started in 2015).  So, that's something right there.
• Kaitlyn and Maxwell are doing gymnastics, and Kate is doing Activity Girls while Max does Cub Scouts.  So, I think there might be some good stuff there too.
• Ava is learning to play the violin, so could there be some sort of Lindsey Sterling (not to be confused with Scott Sterling) music video lip-sync thingy in the works?  Could be.
• Olivia is the cutest little speaker (and singer) at her age.  I think there could be some good material there too.

So, go ahead and comment and let me know your thoughts.  Videos, good?  Still with photos better?  Long, rambling posts just taking up space trying to get credit for a post to try to close the gap to the number of blog posts planned by this point in the year, good?

Ali's Music Video

Admittedly, I'm not off to the perfect start to the blogging, as I had originally intended.  Still, something is better than nothing--unless that "something" is being awakened at 5:00AM this morning by Olivia who couldn't find her white blanket (pronounced "blain-tee") which was actually just under her other blanket--in which case "nothing" is definitely better than "something."  But, I digress.

After discovering (with Kaitlyn) that I could make the kids test subjects in practice music videos of all kinds, and discovering that they actually liked it too (I can't tell you how many people Kaitlyn has wanted to show her video to), I thought it would be worthwhile to give Alison a chance to shine, after observing her reaction to Kaitlyn's video production.

Our kids are becoming wonderful multi-instrumentalists, this gave Ali a good chance to show off some of her skills (although as I type this I realize that we didn't get any good ukulele shots here).

Any who, here's Ali doing her best Taylor Swift impression.  She rocks!

(For all of about 7 minutes of shooting and 30 minutes of editing, that wasn't too shabby, I don't think.)

What's that tremendous improvement in camera stability in this video vs. Kate's, you ask?  That's the latest toy I'm rather excited about--my Lanparte HHG-01 gimbal.  My new secret weapon in video-making.

(4 down.  48 to go.)

Kaitlyn's Fight Song

Yesterday, we had the goal of spending some quality time with each of the kids doing something that they wanted.  Olivia and I put together some puzzles (pronounced "puzz-o").  Ava and I did something, probably.  Max and I had some epic light saber battles and played Killer Bunnies.  We went and watched Alison play some assist-heavy John Stockton-like church ball. 

And, then Kaitlyn and I played a game where we say a song and see how many notes in a row of the melody we can play on piano by ear.  She's pretty good.  She wins more than I expect her to.

Yesterday, that game morphed a little into "figure out the chords to the song" and we chose "Fight Song" to figure out.  After a few minutes we had the main chord progression down and were having some fun jamming on it.  Then, I had to step away to for a moment address something with one of the other children.  When I came back, I found that Kaitlyn had started recording herself playing and singing it on my phone.

I asked her if she wanted to try to make a real music video for a few minutes.  This is what we came up with:

(Take that 3rd blog post of 52!)

Happy Birthday to Kaitlyn!

Kaitlyn had a birthday, shout hurray.  We wanted to sing to her today.  She's one year older and wiser too.  Happy Birthday.  To.  You.  (To get the melody to the above stuck in your head, click here.)

Since we celebrate her birthday in December, we checked the weather to make sure we were planning appropriate activities for North Carolina:

Well, so much for the snowball fights, snowmen, snow chase and snow sculpting!  We opted for just opening some windows so we didn't have to turn on the air conditioning (which we did end up doing a couple of times in December anyway!).

Take 1:  December 22nd.

Kaitlyn invited a bunch of friends over for some (mostly) unstructured play.  It wasn't long before Megan observed that the party seemed like it was just going "OK".  In order to up the energy level, she suddenly brought out the huge surprise gift--a gymnastics mat--so that the girls could practice contorting themselves into every shape known to humankind.  But, unfortunately, that didn't seem to work.  Kaitlyn wasn't as excited as we had hoped.  Then, she threw up.

Party postponed!

Take 2:  December 26th.

With Christmas (and the flu) under her belt, Kaitlyn was ready to give it another shot.  She invited her same group of friends over and this time the energy was much better!

Kaitlyn (and Megan) had thoroughly prepared for the second attempt by going all over town to find the necessary accouterments for the goodie bags: nail polish, lip gloss, Bath and Body Works hand sanitizer, and, of course, candy.

When all of the girls arrived they made the most of their time together by watching the seasonally- and age-appropriate "Santa Clause" movie together and hanging out doing girly things and asking dad-type people to stay away.

Fortunately, I was able to attend the present opening and birthday cookie candle-blowing out portion of the activities.  Kaitlyn was incredibly sweet with each gift received and made sure she personally thanked each and every giver with a "Thanks!" and a side-hug.

She then had the lung capacity and saliva-control to blow out the candles and share the cake with everyone.

Since we were leaving for Indiana after her birthday, her requested birthday meal had to wait until we returned (and which, she noted, helped extend her birthday celebration to about 2 weeks from the first party attempt to the final birthday dinner).

The homemade macaroni and cheese, garlic mashed potatoes, corn and asparagus were a fantastic choice!

Happy Birthday Kaitlyn!  I can't believe you're only a year away from being in Young Women's!

We're Back...in Indiana...for a week...after Christmas

I didn't realize that my last post was in April of 2014!  So, I took a year-and-a-half off from blogging...that's what everyone does, what's the big deal?

The real reason I'm back is that for Christmas, I gave Megan a promise that I'd do 52 blog posts in 2016.  And, I know I have my doubters as to whether or not I will actually be able to deliver, so I thought I'd get the first one done before the first week is even out!  Booyah!

We spent Christmas at home and then, for some reason, thought it would be awesome to leave the 72 degree weather we were experiencing in Charlotte and drive 11 hours to cold, frigid Indiana.

Since we were with Megan's family, as soon as we got there (or the next day at least), we honored tradition and immediately went to a movie (Hotel Transylvania 2), but made sure we visited the $1 store beforehand to agonize (and cry) over the decision of which large box of candy to take.  ("We" mostly meaning "children 8 and under.")

Of course, most of the candy was probably gone by the time we actually reached the movie theater, so we made sure to get a huge bucket of popcorn to get us through--until the movie started.

Once the movie was over, Megan informed the children that they couldn't have anything else to eat for the day.  Then, we went to Chic-Fil-A where I gave in to letting Olivia trade in her book for ice cream so that the other children could complain about the injustice of not getting any.

Another great thing about being in Indiana was getting to see "baby Sawyer" for the first time.  Olivia thought it was fun to hold the baby and felt so big and grown up.

We also hung out with Grandma, and Peyton, and let Grandma read books about horses to us ("us" meaning "girls under 5").

Olivia also discovered a puzzle in the game closet and enlisted my help as well as the help of Ava and Grandpa.  I was pretty good at that 100 piecer!  Now, Olivia didn't quite have the same sense of accomplishment that I did and within about 10 seconds of completion had ruined the whole thing saying "Let's do it again!"

The last bloggable moment was decorating sugar cookies.  Now, this wasn't just your regular old, run-of-the-mill sugar decorating party.  Megan had pre-researched some designs on Pinterest and we gathered the kids together in the van before going into Jessica's house to put our hands in for a team cheer: "Mediocrity is mediocre!"  (Yes, we are incredible nerds, but we are proud of it, thank you very much.)

Ava did some cookies.

I poorly decorated some Christmas tree-shaped cookies and then did my best to distract any potential observers by decorating the plates too and turning it into an epic visual story of Christmas being saved by Superman.

Megan and Michael did their best to see if they could spend 3 hours decorating 2 cookies combined.  Actually, Megan did 6.

Grant and Ali created some Werewolf cookies (in honor of the many, many games of Ultimate Werewolf that we played) by spending 2 hours individually placing brown sprinkles on the frosting so they all lined up correctly like wolf hair. 

Then, we were so tired that the girls fell asleep on my lap (or face)--just like at home.

Other notable occurrences:

• Ava made chocolate silk pie with Grandpa
• Megan and I went out for a steak dinner with her parents and siblings and I mostly paid attention to them instead of watching the College Playoff bowl games
• Jessica's carrot cake and chocolate chip cookies

Happy New Year and I hope you look forward to a year's worth of blogs from yours truly!

Remember December (And A Few Other Months Too)

Since I previously disclosed that I reserved the right to post about any event in any chronological order at any interval, I have today decided to document various and sundry key non-Christmas Winter events from 2013 (since Christmas really deserves its own post sometime within the next 14 months).

According to the date/time stamps of the photos Picasa is showing me, three life events were significant enough that we documented them with pictures:

• Charlotte Snow
• Ava Levitation / Dance Recital
• Kaitlyn Stampin' / Birthday Party

I know that everyone says that weather in their area is crazy, but these past several months in Charlotte have got to be in the running for most indecisive weather.  In December we had 2 days where the low temperature was over 60 degrees!  Then, in January we had 3 days where it got down to single digits.  In mid-February, we had a snow storm that closed down school and shut down roads for several days (not to mention ruin Valentine's Day).  Also, for good measure Mother Nature went ahead and threw in a 4.1 magnitude earthquake--just to be sure.

Fortunately, the kids were able to enjoy the snow.  Olivia went outside with us to investigate what the white stuff on the ground was, and learned that even with every effort to get bundled up, snow is very cold and concluded that there is no reason any human being should want to go out and play in it.

The rest of us kids, I mean the kids, enjoyed creating a maze in the snow and playing tag and chase in the maze or "Pac Man" as we called it.

(Also, for future reference, if the roads are iced over making driving impossible and you call your local Harris Teeter on Valentine's Day to see if they are open so that you can at least walk to the store to get flowers for your wife, and the recorded message says that they are open, so you walk a mile--probably uphill both ways--to get said flowers, remember it is a lie.  In actuality it will not be open and you will have nothing to show for it, but wet shoes and cold ears.)

The next noteworthy event was Ava's dance instruction, which culminated in a dance recital at the local dancitory (or dancnaseum, or whatever it's called) where they showed off their mad dance skills including such renowned classics as "A Tootie Taw Taw" and some other seasonal dance maneuvers.  Ava, being the gifted child she is, took advantage of the event to show off her super hero skills by levitating for the audience (as shown in the photographic proof below):

She loves it, and has continued taking lessons and has learned some classic ballet moves such as the plee-yay, the arab-esque, first position and third position.

The last event was Kaitlyn's birthday.  While we considered pankration as the main event since we didn't get to it at Max's birthday party, Kaitlyn didn't really think that was appropriate for a girl's party.  Instead, she opted for a party in which she and all of her friends would use her mother's Stampin' Up supplies to create crafty cards and banners of all kinds.

She invited 5 of her best friends over and focused on crafting for the afternoon and eating donut birthday cake.

Kaitlyn and the other girls did their best to get ink in their hair (so that it would match their shirts), but some were more successful at inking their papers and hands than their hair.

Of course, without the expert guidance and demonstration abilities of Megan (not to mention her pre-cutting the supplies and putting them in individual baggies to make the execution of the project as easy as possible), I'm sure the girls would have made S-L-I-M-E banners instead of the "SMILE" ones that they produced.

So, in conclusion, we had some noteworthy events this Winter: snow, dance and birthdays.

Max-lympics of the Birthdapiad in Legos

With the Olympics taking place this week, it reminded me about an event we had with Max and some friends a few months ago.

You know, Max is getting old.  Too old.  To celebrate the completion of yet another year of life, we held a festivity of ancient origin, dating back, in our family, at least a decade--give or take 10 years.  Yes, I'm talking about the renowned...birthday party with games.  And, given Max's penchant for all things Lego-related, we concluded that a Lego-themed party was not only appropriate, but also our moral parental obligation. 

After carefully reviewing the rules and regulations of each of the 400 events in the 33 Olympic sports in detail, we selected the 3 most strenuous, challenging, and age-appropriate for our visitors:

• Lego-relay
• Lego-car construction and racing
• Pankration

We start in the backyard by placing 2 large buckets or bowls on opposite ends of the yard.  The first was filled with Duplo blocks.  The second was empty.  We did the most Olympic thing we could to determine teams and counted off "one" and "two" until every kid had a team.  

Next, each team came up a with a name.  I can't remember the names they came up with, but it was something like the "Donut Heads" and "The Communists".  Probably.

After all that hard work, we started the event.  I begin by posing as that famous statue pointing the way west (as shown in the photo below).

Then, we said "Ready?  Set?  Go!" and the boys ran back and forth, filling the bucket on the other side of the yard with the Duplo blocks, one by one.  One of the teams won.  Probably.

We tried to play this game for as long as we could, until the sun went down and we were as sweaty as possible.

At that point, it was time for the second event: dumping a huge bag of Lego car parts out on the kitchen table and telling each of the boys to use their creativity to create a Lego car of their own (which they could keep) to be used in racing.

Our little Olympians thought that was awesome.  And surprisingly, there were zero fights (not even being sarcastic) and everyone wanted to show us their finished product!

(I took advantage of this time to sit under an overhead light to determine how much of my scalp you could see with light directly shining on my part.)

After constructing our Lego cars, we set up a ramp in the TV room and raced the cars down to the bottom--first in an orderly fashion to see which car was the fastest, and then in a disorderly, chaotic and random fashion to see how many wipeouts and epic wrecks we could create.

At the conclusion of the previous two events, we decided that we were all winners.

Next up was pankration, but just as we were about to begin, it was time for the kids to go home.  Well, there's always next year...