Olivia's Obstacle Course

So, I'm downstairs working on putting the living room back together after we brought desks, crayons, rolling chairs, floormats, "conference packets," , games, baby dolls, notebooks, pens, bowls of treats and dress up clothes downstairs to be able to watch General Conference and make sure we had all of the tools necessary to get as much out of it as possible.

From upstairs, Kaitlyn calls out, "Umm...Dad.  Can you up here for a minute?" in that tone of voice--the half-puzzled, half Houston-we-have-a-problem one.  I paused my vacuuming and sauntered upstairs to investigate what the problem, or potential problem, might be.

When I got there, Kaitlyn said, "Look what Olivia did--all by herself" and pointed to the most unique indoor obstacle course anyone in the family has ever assembled:

She had lined up the indoor slide at the top of the 2 stairs that step down into Alison and Kailyn's room to land on the indoor, mini trampoline.  From there, it stepped back up onto Kaitlyn's gymnastics pad which was folded in thirds. 

Next to that, she had dumped out one of the bins of toys from the play room and turned it upside down to serve as a giant step stool onto the kids play table which she had also brought in from the play room.

She then proceeded to show me how it worked (click to view):

Of course, once the older kids (who weren't too big to break the thing) saw how it was done, they wanted in on the action.

My first instinct was to bust them, but, then I thought, let's party!

Fortunately, they were able to cry hysterically when I asked them to take it down so that Ali and Kaitlyn could actually get in and out of their bedroom and go to bed.

Daddy Daughter Dance

So, our stake held a Daddy-Daughter dance yesterday for Activity Girls-aged girls and their Dads or Grandpas or Home Teachers, etc.  Since Kaitlyn met the necessary age requirements, and I met the necessary dad requirement, we were ready to rock!

As in every good dance, Kaitlyn told me what I needed to wear so that we appropriately matched, as much as possible.  The Activity Girls made cute little matching, teal-colored hair roses, so we found my most teal-like shirt, took a mandatory pre-dance photo, and then hopped in the car for our pre-dance Daddy-Daughter dinner at Panera with some of the others dads and daughters from the stake that we knew were going to be there.

At Panera, we split a "You Pick 2" that Kaitlyn had selected and that I finished while chatting about CCAR scenarios, the positives and negatives of using excess cash for stock buy backs in public companies, and the level of preparation for Sacrament Meeting speaking engagements.  And, that was just what the girls wanted to talk about!  (Well...maybe it was the dads having that conversation.  I'm not sure.)

Once we got there, we did our very best to dance to the "stomp left two times" song, some song about a "party in the USA" requiring "nodding your head like 'yeah'", and shaking some stuff off (I assume snow).

Then, they busted out the limbo stick.  Which I tried.  And, I'm sure the back ache that I'm feeling today is completed unrelated.  They didn't make us sign any waivers before attempting it, so I'm out of luck there.

Kaitlyn managed to start some very important trends while we were there: the conga line, the circle where people take turns dancing from one side to the other, and the DWTS spinning/twirling thingy from one side to the other (see photo below).

In all, we had a great time and it was inspiring to see the dads do anything (including dance like idiots--at least that's how it was in my case) to make sure their daughters were happy.

Dads.  Daughters.  Dancing.  Who knew?

A Saturday With The Little Girls

While Ali went to a Weddington Middle School baseball game, and Megan took Kaitlyn and Max shoe and shorts shopping, I got to go with the "littles" to the elementary school playground.

(I think the gimbal came through again on this footage.)

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!