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#1 strikes 12

Just one year left until you are officially a teenager. Watching you grow up over the past year has been a pleasure. Highlights of the year:

Riding coasters with me at Hershey – a huge leap.

Dealing with braces like a pro. I’ve been very impressed with your dedication to following the instructions faithfully.

Making First Class before your one year anniversary in scouts.

Hanging out with buddies at the house, doing guy things.

Watching you enjoy WoW as much as I did.

Happy Birthday buddy, I hope you have a great day. I love you.

On Sunday we went to Son #2 music recital. He performed along with 50 other students of varying ability. At no point did he seem anxious as this would be the first time he would perform in front of a crowd. Without further ado here is his performance in front of 200+ people:

The lighting washed out his face so it is hard to see his expression between songs. I mentioned to him several times prior to going on stage that he needs to remember to smile between songs. He did just that with the smile remaining on his face for approximately 3/10ths of a second.

We were all so proud of him, just one year into beginning lessons he sounded really good.

11 Months In

Last April Son #2 began taking piano lessons. He has really enjoyed them and has made steady progress, he will now tell you proudly that he is in ‘Book Three out of Six’. He is working on selecting the pieces he will play for his first recital. Here he is from a month ago. Note the concentration when Son #4 starts yelling at him in the background:

Here is another clip of him playing a piece that has a lot of rests in it. This was the ‘test’ piece to move into book 3.

I’m so glad he’s found music and I hope this new found love will last a lifetime.

Turning 10

Son#2 @ 10

Double digits for you today my friend. Things I will remember of the past year:

Your career decision making process, reading the Careers for kids who love Math from cover to cover and settling on Mathematician.

Making huge strides in the classroom.

Listening to you practice and playing piano for what seems like hours each day.

Switching your music at night from classical to 70′s country rock (go figure).

Hope you have a great day today buddy. Congrats on hitting double digits.

The Christmas Report

This Christmas was like many others in our house – very much a video game year yet again. There were other gifts to be had for sure but the boys are gamers like me so I will focus on them. Some of the more notable additions to the gaming stable were:

Boom Blox:

Created as part of a joint venture between Electronic Arts and Steven Spielberg, Boom Blox is a fun intuitive game that is easy for people to learn to play. This game was far and away the favorite of the boys for at least the first 72 hours post Christmas. We could hear them laughing among themselves as they progressed through the game.

Game play is set within a virtual world that loosely follows the rules of Jenga. Towers of blocks are presented to the players with the goal sometimes being to knock them down quickly or to slowly remove pieces without letting others fall. The concept is very simple yet fun. The sequel is sure to join our game library.

New Super Mario Bros.:

The purchase of this one was pretty much required. The only truly new feature to this game is the ability for four players to play this side scrolling game at the same time. I played with the boys for 20 minutes or so and while it was fun I felt like I’d played this game so many times before that it wasn’t worth devoting the time to play this one too. I know the boys will feel differently and they did play it for a good bit over the weekend getting maybe 4 or 5 worlds deep last night alone.

Little King’s Story:

A combination RPG (role playing game) / RTS (real time strategy) created from the ground up for the Wii from heavy hitters in the gaming industry, Little King’s Story has received great reviews as a nice intro to this gaming genre for players that are new to the game. Son #1 played it for a very short time over the weekend and while the initial pacing was a bit slow I expect it to pick up and suck him in.

Scribblenauts:

Scribblenauts is an innovative DS puzzle solving game that allows the player to take their ideas and create solutions with the stylus. Can’t reach something in a tree? Scribble a ladder and use it to climb up and grab it. Son #2 did spend some time playing it but I didn’t get to see much of it happening myself.

Mario & Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story:

Son #2 loves the Mario & Luigi series and the Nintendo RPG series in particular. He tore into this one and seems to enjoy it quite a bit. I’m sure it will get played over and over by each of the boys and I will never get to try it.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village:

A puzzle game bought to stretch the thinking process of our boys, this game was highly rated in reviews with many people saying that the brain teasers are fun to figure out. I’m not sure this one made it out of the box yet.

Son #4 made out really well with many new additions to his Thomas the Tank Engine train collection. We had the family over on Friday night and everyone seemed to have a nice time.

All in all a nice Christmas for the boys, which makes me very happy.

Gingerbread Flip

As a family we’ve always done a nice job of getting good pictures of the kids and their activities as well as in everyday life. Where we have pretty much totally dropped the ball is in the video department. We’ve previously owned 2 camcorders and the amount of video we’ve captured is well, very little. We hope to change that all with the addition of a new Flip Video pocket camcorder:

Flip Vid Ultrad HD

Recording is as simple as pushing the big red button on the back of it – pause it the same way. When it comes time to get the video off the device you just plug it into any PC with a USB port and it will install the editing software for you. Email videos, post them to Facebook or Youtube, crop off snapshots of videos, it’s all possible and very easy to do.

Earlier today I grabbed some video of Son #3 at his Gingerbread Play at school:

The quality is great, HD video for under $160.00 just can’t be beat. It even works in normal lighting conditions:

If you find yourself in situations where you miss opportunities to record memories like we do then maybe this camcorder is the one for you.

Christmas Preparations

One of our family traditions is to head out to a local tree farm to hand pick and cut down our tree. Wata Farm is the proto-typical Christmas Tree Farm. Parking is provided in a grass field that fills up quickly. They do have several people helping to guide people to parking spots. Getting in and out of the farm itself can be difficult because the driveway is one lane wide. People wanting to leave will sometimes get stuck waiting for a long line of people coming in to clear the way out and vice versa. The driveway really could use a widening.

Once you get into your spot it is only a short distance to the carts they provide to haul your tree in from the field. Without fail several of my boys tussle over who will help me pull the cart up the hill to the trees. Christmas music can be heard within earshot of the checkout area which is a nice touch. The trees are planted in orderly rows with different types labeled at the end of the row. We walked all the way to the top of the hill this year to try a new type of tree that is supposed to give better support to heavier ornaments.

It didn’t take us more than 10 minutes to locate a tree that met our specifications. Here’s the gang posing with our tree pre-cut:

With the Tree

Our family tradition, which has only been interupted a few times in the past 10 years or so is to drop off the tree at home then head to Friendly’s for lunch or dinner followed up by ice cream. We don’t eat out much so this is a big treat for the boys. This year due to a scheduled nap for son #4 as soon as we got home from the farm we cut the bottom two inches off the tree and place it in the stand filled with water. This was much easier to accomplish without son #4 helping out.

Once everyone is in bed I string the lights on the tree by myself. The next day, again during son #4′s nap the older boys help decorate the tree:

Tree finished

Son #4 has been pretty good so far with the tree, only ripping off a stray ornament here and there. Here he shows his grip for grabbing ornaments.

Son#4

Now all we need to do is wait for the big guy to arrive.

Happy Birthday

To my wife. Our life together just seems to get more and more rushed everyday. I hope your hectic day was as stress free as possible. Can’t wait to see you tonight.

You are my bestest.

Present Day Hindsight

I consider myself a lucky man when it comes to my children. I’ve been blessed with four wonderful individuals that are fifty percent me. Like any other parent I’ve run the gamut of emotions with them. From pride when I see my oldest stretch in a new area and score his first goal to empathy when Son #2 struggles with an issue that he just can’t see the value in learning. Each of them have taught me a lot about myself. I hope they are teaching each other at the same time. I worry that like myself, they are in a hurry to grow up.

On Sunday I lay flat on the floor, my head at the same level as my two year old son. We were slowly building a large track for his trains to run along. His running commentary was a constant – I need to get some video of him chatting and playing as it is simply amazing. Laying on the floor allowed me to see details of the trains I might not have noticed otherwise. Seeing things through the eyes of a two year old brings the older boys into sharper focus. Was it just nine years ago that I did this with my oldest? The boy that is now learning about the pitfalls of being a teenager and all of the social angst that goes along with it? I shake my head as I write this, it is so hard to believe that in such a short time we went from ‘Daddy lift me higher!’ to talking about peer pressure and puberty.

With the three older boys so close in age (38 months apart) it sure felt like we were in that ‘stage’ forever. We dealt with diapers from 1998 to approx 2004, six years of it was enough to make me think it would never end. Temper tantrums, cribs, gates and all of the other stuff that goes with having little ones felt like FOREVER while it was happening. I couldn’t wait for each stage to be over. Now it seems like so long ago that the older boys were in that stage of life.

With son #4 I find myself trying so hard to absorb the time – to freeze it and etch it into my memory. When he asks me to lift him to the ceiling ‘one more time’ over and over again I feel a lingering anxiety – when will this time feel ‘so long ago’?

Our children are quickly in and under the influence of others. School, friends, mass media – it all begins to crowd out the voice of Mama and Dada. Don’t be in such a rush to let them in. Soak up the time and the memories – they go by too quickly.

Fourth Quarter Photography

With December right around the corner it was only natural that we spend a frantic two hours this past weekend trying to get the Christmas 2009 pictures completed. This was the first time I got to use several new pieces of equipment that I picked up in the past year.

First up, I used an 812 filter for the first time:

812 filter

This filter provides some red tones to the image and is very useful when taking flash portraits. I needed this filter because this was my first true attempt at using off camera flash for my portraits. There are many ways to get the flash off the camera and away from the lens. I used an inexpensive wireless option from Cactus Flash Triggers:

My subjects aren’t easy. Our boys tend to not want to sit in one location for very long and the smiles quickly become very strained. Here is the best of what I gathered:

Son #1:

Being 11 he is pretty easy to pose and will sit there patiently. He’s also getting braces in just a few weeks so this is the last non-shiny smile he will have for the next two years.

Son #2:

This guy sits down, smiles and holds a pose like a statue. I shot maybe 8 pictures of him and the only thing that changes was the position I shot from. It’d be interesting to look at each of his pictures and see how much his face has changed from year to year.
Son #3:

Son #3 is having a tough time right now getting a non-cheesy smile on his face. Look at how long his hair has gotten compared to his picture from his birthday just a few months ago! I’m not sure how much longer he is going to get to keep those locks unless he can figure out how to take care of it better and keep it off his dinner plate.

Son #4 is a nightmare to keep in one place right now. This was the very first shot I took of him, the others were a mess. Cute kid that just won’t sit still!

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