A Day in Selfies

So, yesterday, we hung out at ye olde Family Fun Center, Wahooz. Couldn't get any good action shots, so went with a collection of selfies to commemorate the day.

this one is sort of a meta-selfie. I should try to post the one that Samwise took here.

A Decade of Mercy

I'm about to head to bed and by the time I wake up, this little dude's odometer will have turned, and he'll be in double digits.

Sure, my youngest hitting the decade mark makes me feel older than any of my own birthdays could. But the important -- and mind-blowing -- thing is that this one has made it this far in pretty good health and spirits. Sure, there've been more hospitalizations for him than the rest of my little family combined (more than double, actually) -- but none have been truly worrisome, really they've mostly been expensive annoyances. (for the skinny on this, if you're new to the saga, click here)

We don't owe this to his own strength and perseverance (which he has in spades), to the care of his wonderful mother, his passable father, his supportive siblings (who are really his most devoted caretakers when it counts), the grandparents and extended family who are always ready to drop everything and help, his two excellent doctors, or anything else merely human.

It's the mercy and care of Our Lord, who by His providence has given him better health, greater strength, and better kidney function than anyone could've expected. But this covenant child, recipient of the promise of God is seeing His God's hand at work in his life. He, more than many his age, can see that (in the words of Thomas Watson) "We are kept alive by a wonderful-working Providence. Providence makes our clothes to warm us, and our food to nourish us. We are fed every day out of the alms-basket of God's providence. That we are in health, that we have an estate, is not by our diligence—but God's providence."

So tonight we celebrated the anniversary of his birth. We celebrated the time we've had with him, and the time we look forward to. But most of all, consciously or not, we celebrated the Triune God's care for him.

Gracious Lord, I thank you for our little Arnold, and beg Your continued care for his health as I plead for You to draw him to a saving knowledge of You.

And son? Happy birthday, and Lord willing, many happy returns.

A Beauty of a Bot

So, this last weekend, we took our oldest up to Moscow to participate in the Idaho FIRST Tech Challenge Championships with the team from his school. Mostly, this involved TLoML and I wandering around our old stomping grounds engaging in excessive acts of nostalgia, while he worked on the robot with his team making sure everything was ready for the competition.

The team participated in 6 matches -- 1 didn't count on their overall score. I got somewhat iffy video of four of the five that did count. Like with many things, I don't think the youtube video captures the excitement of it all, but it might come close.

Beauty Bot starts on the far right of the screen here


Beauty Bot starts on the far left of the screen


Beauty Bot begins this match directly in front of (and blocked from view) by the umpire on the bottom of the screen. Best angle I could get -- sorry.


Beauty Bot starts on the far right of the screen here

If one of us has time in the next few days, I might add some more information about the videos.

Anyway, the team and the robot performed a lot better than they did last year, and it was a blast to see them at work. In addition to just doing better, they won an award -- the Think Award, which is described as

Given to the team that best reflects the "journey" the team took as they experienced the engineering design process during the build season. The engineering section of the notebook is the key reference for judges to help identify the most deserving team. Journal entries of interest to judges for this award will include those describing the underlying science and mathematics of the robot design and game strategies, the designs, re-designs, successes, and those 'interesting moments' when things weren't going as planned.

They also came in second for the Inspire Award

Given to the team that truly embodied the 'challenge' of the FTC program. The team that receives this award is chosen by the judges as having best represented a 'role-model' FTC Team. This team is a top contender for all other judging categories and is a strong competitor on the field.

Better than just the nice words, coming in 2nd to that, got the team a spot in the FTC West Super-Regional Championship next month. So that's a month of scrambling to make some improvements to the robot and fundraising to get the team to California. Good thing they've got nothing like studying to distract them.

Here's a shot of our boy holding the Think Award and smiling -- something I have a hard time capturing on filman image, but he couldn't help himself when I shot it.

XMas Programs/Recitals/Etc.

(I apologize in advance for the spacing on this post, depending what your screen resolution, and window size, this could look pretty ugly)

I find myself at the end of a busy week of children's Christmas programs, wherein parents, grandparents and resentful siblings were able to see the culmination of hours, days, and weeks (and sometimes entire minutes) of preparation on the parts of many, only to watch those who we get to see and hear too much of at home.

We started the week with Samwise and a group of guitar classmates performing during a veritable (and interminable) cavalcade of acoustic performances from the secondary students at his school. Samwise was, for reasons beyond my ken, enrolled in the beginning guitar class and so was playing with people who've been playing for 3 months. They had a lot of fun doing a "funny" little song they wrote. Results varied beyond them. 14 hours after that, the audience members that hadn't fled were released, relatively unharmed.

The next night, Arnold and the Princess got to strut their stuff in the elementary classes program. As you can see from this picture of the Princess I took right before showtime, we had seats in the a good distance away from the stage, and more clearly, I need a better camera. It was a very ambitious program of singing, dancing and recorder playing. I won't say that very few of the kids had talents commensurate with the ambition of the music teacher, but, um... it was cute.






And hey, did I mention, there were recorders? Yup, 90 4^th and 5^th graders played "Frosty the Snowman" on recorders. Several of which had the same key. (if you use your imagination, you can see a pink recorder in her hands there...see above paragraph).






I thought they did a really good job integrating all the grades into the program, and shuffled it up enough that even the shortest of attention spans weren't pushed too far past the breaking point. Someday, I would like someone to explain exactly how this position
represents a partridge in a pear tree, though.






Today, Arnold's music academy put on a recital--we had a flautist, a guitar player, a clarinet wrangler and several pianists perform a song each for us. I was quite impressed with the range of ages and abilities shown, and despite the nerves, they all did a great job. I was, naturally, very impressed with Arnold's playing, this was better than any time I've heard him practice. Thankfully, it was a small crowd, so I was able to shoot a video.

Happy Birthday, Samwise! (or...Man, I Need to Tweak my Camera Settings)

In Commemoration of Samwise's 12th Birthday, I took a stab at a Popcorn Cake.

I think he liked the looks of it:

TLoML described the cake as a popcorn ball mixed with trail mix. Frodo said it was like a movie theater's concession's stand after an earthquake. Both I think were compliments. :) Pretty tasty, actually, and fairly easy. "Sticky", "gooey" and "a giant mess" begin to describe the process of making it.

After that, we gave him his new Nook (yes, my boys are e-book readers now...*sigh*). This is mostly him being excited, and a little bit of him being a giant ham.

yeah, yeah, yeah, the pictures are lousy. I know, I know.

Nothin's More Excitin' Than

New Glasses Day!

(especially if it gives Dad a chance to try to get better with his new camera)

This Past Weekend

So, this weekend I:

laughed a lot, but not as much as I hoped I would at

laughed more than I expected to and totally DID NOT cry at but there was a lot of pollen and dust in the room while I watched

celebrated her 9th birthday

got this for TLoML

tried this yummy yummy beer (Kona & Maui Brewing Companies make the best argument for relocating to the Aloha State)

spent far too much time with this guy (have just started the 5th week of P90X Doubles)

finished this good stuff

started this remember this being good in 10th Grade

watched the latest episodes of and NPH got it done on all fronts this week (tho' Segal absolutely killed, as per usual)

tried out this very, very tasty cake recipe mine didn't look quite that good. BTW, if you make it, double the KoolAid like I did (accidentally yesterday, on purpose from now on)

all in all, a good weekend. How was yours?

Life in Idaho

Frankly, I just don't get the appeal of the little stick figures/Jesus-fish/whatever on the back of car windows showing your family make-up. But when I walked past this Pathfinder the other day, I had to snap this picture. What epitomizes Idaho life more than this? Guns and family.

For no particular reason...

A few days ago, TLomL went through the hand-me-downs in waiting to get some reinforcements for Arnold's wardrobe. One shirt found it's way to The Princess' collection instead. Now normally, I prefer (and I think she does, too) her in the girlier things, and am not that crazy about the tomboy look for her. But I can't help but think this really works for her.

Grampa went to a Wildfire and All I Got was this Lousy Tshirt?

Since before he retired, my dad's been cooking up ways to make some money in retirement (my thought...why retire?). One of the ways has been as a driver for those fighting wildfires that crop up in Idaho every summer--from various sites to other sites from the fire to the airport (and vice versa), etc. He's been called to duty twice in the last couple of years--he's had at least one down year in between those, which put us in the odd position of hoping the fires don't get too bad, but sorta hoping they do.

What I find interesting enough to focus on today is, like just about every aspect of our culture, fire fighting has been commercialized. There is apparently a decent amount of swag to be picked up at the fires. A couple years ago, my dad brought back tshirts and caps for the grandkids (and himself) with the logos of the companies (is that what you call groups of firefighters?) he was near/driving, or of a waterbomber group, etc. But this year, he brought back tshirts for that very fire. In this case, the Hurd wildfire. Yeah, it had it's own logo (as you can see on Arnold's front and the Princess' back below). My mind boggles that while people are being evacuated, people are being brought in from all corners, federal funds are being allocated (granted, that can take milliseconds), and this thing is being contained; someone has the time to design and print these suckers. The stuff he brought back a couple years ago could be generated in the off season (and, I should note, was of higher quality). But in the midst of all this to create these just strikes me as odd. Not nefarious, don't get me wrong, just odd.

First Day of School 2010-11 (part deux)

So, my first day as a "Learning Coach" for the younger Offspring at a virtual academy has come and gone. And I'm on the verge of starting the countdown to my last one. Seriously, seriously had a lousy time. I'm pretty sure tomorrow--and several more tomorrows to come--will be better (and not just because they really couldn't get worse), which helps some.

No matter how much I prepped, the day was still full of--

"I'm supposed to have you do what now?"
"I'm supposed to print X? Where is X?"
"Why did I print 2 copies of that?" (fairly certain the parent company is owned by an ink cartridge manufacturer)
"Seriously...I spent 15 minutes preparing all these things to get you going on an activity that...teaches you to do something you've been doing for 4 years???"
...and so on

Now I've gone through a lot of that when I homeschooled in the past, but then it was my fault for not preparing correctly, reading the instructions, etc. and I could either shrug it off or laugh at myself. But now...as I'm not the responsible party, it's all their fault and if those dunderheads would just get things straight, everything would be fine and dandy.

Yes, A. I realize the double standard at work here and B. Shut up.

And don't get me started on the mandatory orientation session that interrupted my day, threatened to derail everything, and went on for 2.5 hours covering things that anyone who was conscious and semi-aware during registration/recruitment would know (which didn't stop several Learning Coaches from asking and reasking questions about them, and being so, so, so grateful for the answers). If you get my Facebook feed, you heard me whine about it already. And if you don't get that feed--well, now's a time to be thankful you didn't have to put up with that.

Still, the Princess and Arnold were über-excited about starting, and most of their enthusiasm didn't diminish throughout the day. Actually, they were very positive about the whole thing and are rarin' to go tomorrow. As long as that holds up, I can fake it on my end. Probably.

Naturally, the only time Arnold wasn't smiling/happy/excited today was when I broke out the camera (odd, as he's usually the world's biggest piece of cured meat cut from the thigh of a hog). Still, holding to tradition: here's the first day of school pic:

First Day of School 2010-11 (part 1)

So less than a week before classes started, I got a call from the same Charter that Frodo'd enrolled in saying that there was an opening for Samwise--thankfully, I didn't make a fool of myself and actually got him into the school.

Today was the first day there for both of them. And no, they don't have to wear that fast food worker looking outfit every day, they just happened to both pick the same thing. (and unlike me and my sister at that age, didn't feel immediately compelled to change into something else once they saw the other). So far, we've been very impressed with the teachers and staff; and while the school's educational philosophy might not align with ours perfectly, but it's good enough for government work (and thousands a year cheaper than the only school nearby that comes closer).

Anyway, the boys had a good first day, and ran into a good number of fellow "refugees" from their old school (their word, not mine) and are looking forward to what's coming up.

Of course, not everyone was hard at work this morning:

Easy Rider

Dutiful parents that we are, when Frodo and Samwise hit the age of 5, we bought them bicycles (Huffy Rock-Its, as I recall). In both cases, their excitement and interest soon waned--in a matter of hours, really.

The presence of training wheels, their parents, and as much safety gear as a NFL quarterback could not dissuade either of them from their conviction that they'd fall over and/or off the instant they started moving; causing several serious, permanent, life-changing injuries. That conviction soon gained some inertia and it became impossible to get them on the bikes.

Tho' to be honest, we probably could've tried harder. But given the neighborhoods we lived in around that time, it was hard to blame us. Even not considering that, it wasn't like our kids would ever ride their bikes as much as we did as kids. This was seen by my father as some sort of great character flaw--mostly ours (but partially the boys'). He'd occasionally make some sort of effort to teach them to ride--whether they wanted to or not.

Which is all just a rambling, should be edited preamble to this:

Last week, out of the blue, Samwise approached me, wondering if I'd dig Frodo's newer bike out of the garage, so he could try to ride it (At some point, Frodo'd picked up a "bigger kid" bike, which, thanks to its larger size, collected dust faster than his first). I assured him that was a good idea (it was), but that'd be something I needed to think about (I almost promptly forgot it) and see if I could get him a helmet (forgot about that, too), and we'd pick up the idea over the weekend (we didn't).

Thankfully, over the weekend, he brought it up to his mom while I was out running errands. TLomL grabbed the bull by its horns and got the bike out and ready. Within fifteen minutes he was riding the thing--not well, but he wasn't going knees over teakettle. Yesterday he spent hours, hours riding up and down the block in 97° heat(110° with the wind chill), burning off more calories than I took in last week.

He had a blast, as you can see--and plans on doing it again today, and to watch him, you'd have no idea that he hadn't been doing this for years. For a moment, it looked like he'd inspired his older brother to give it a shot, but he backed off. He still might come around, but I'm not holding my breath. His younger siblings are very gung-ho about it now and are demanding we do the same for them this weekend, tho. I imagine we'll encounter a few skinned knees and elbows when we try with them, but they'll survive.

May 30

Every family has little holidays that mean something to them which are just regular days to the rest of the world. May 30 has become that for this household (it's the end of this terrible period), and we've experimented with various ways of celebrating. This year, we went simple: a picnic in the park (it helps that this was the nicest day in a long while). Snapped a couple of pics that I might as well share.

awww...

Am not sure why this pose was so essential for me to shoot, but they thought it was golden.

remember what I said the other day about Frodo being too cool for his dad's stuff?

And we got in one decent WonderMutt shot

Safe from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyhas a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
- Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams
(1952 - 2001)

What's Towel Day? Wired has a handy article from last year, and another from this year?. Of course, Towelday.org has the best round-up.

^* You'll note Frodo's missing from these photos, he took them having reached the age where he can't really lower himself to get into his dad's goofiness. His own brand of goofiness, on the other hand...