Brake... BRAKE!!!!

This picture isn't from today, it's from yesterday. The kids ate lunch outside before we went off on our big all day bicycle adventure.

Today however started with Ginger deciding we should try breakfast at (Old) McDonald's before church. During the course of the morning it became pretty apparent that Catherine has some type of minor virus (coughing, runny nose) so she wasn't going to be able to go to church (and she probably won't be attending school tomorrow either). So after we finished breakfast we dropped Ginger and Catherine off back home and Quinn and I headed to church by ourselves. After church we came back home and Quinn immediately wanted to ride his bike. But I convinced him we needed to eat lunch first.

So after a quick lunch we were all outside and did one more task before moving on to the bikes. We transplanted all the plants the kids were growing into the new bigger pots. I'm pretty sure when all is said and done I'll have killed probably half of the plants I was responsible for transplanting. Once we finished with the plants, the kids got to ride their bikes. It went better than I was expecting to be honest. They had some trouble initially with getting up the slope of the driveway, but eventually they were able to do that by themselves. And there were also some issues with going down the slope on the driveway and stopping at the bottom (luckily we were able to catch them when they were out of control). Eventually they mostly learned the art of braking though.




After a bit of practice on the driveway we let them take a shot at driving around the cul de sac. I actually managed to break Quinn's bike already. He didn't want to ride over a section of the street and I foolishly tried to show him how. Who knew those weight limits for the bikes were real. Luckily it was only the pedal that broke, and I was able to bend it mostly back into position, although it's got a nice crack in it now (I'll have to see about getting a replacement part for that I suppose). Bike riding took up the majority of the afternoon, until it was nap time, and then after nap they went out and rode some more. So the initial thought is they like the bikes.

New Bikes

We went and bought Quinn and Catherine bikes today. Man, there's something I don't want to do again anytime soon. After lunch we started on this little adventure. We went to a Washington Bike Center, Toys 'R' Us, Dick's Sporting Goods, Sports Authority, Sears, McDonalds (okay, so it was getting late and this was for ice cream), Target, and finally back to Toys 'R' Us. This was like the marathon bike shopping expedition. The Washington Bike Center clearly had the best bikes and the lifetime maintenance, but the only way to really get your money worth there was to own the bike for more than 2 or 3 years, and the only way that could happen was if we got a 20 inch bike (which is just a tad too big for Quinn to ride comfortably). After finding nothing for boys at any of the other stores except Toys 'R' Us, we finally went back there and bought an 18 inch bike. He'll probably outgrow it pretty quick, but here's my take, it was under 1/3 the price of a bike from the Washington Bike Center. So if he uses it for at least a year then I think we'll have gotten our money's worth from it (and if it falls apart prior to that, then we're not out that much either). I'm not sure what the best part of the day was, the part where Quinn wasn't able to stop as he was riding a bike around the open spaces in the Toys 'R' Us and running into stuff, or me having to run after Quinn as he's biking across half the store and losing track of Catherine (scared Ginger half to death). Although we did come up with a potential anger management technique for Quinn. A punching bag which he played with at Dick's Sporting Goods (I have to add the "Sporting Goods" on there because I'm just not comfortable typing the abbreviated name).

After all that we didn't get home till after 8. The kids were in bed and asleep by 9 (they crashed pretty quick since they had missed their naps). So it's been a long day. Ginger and I finished the day off by ordering Chinese for dinner and watching a movie, then we assembled Quinn's bike (Catherine's came assembled already). I didn't get to take pictures today (I suspect there will be lots tomorrow as the kids use their new bikes). But I do have this video taken from a park visit last week (under 2 minutes).


Swinging in the Park

How Much Is A Penny Worth?

Notice the penny. It's a little beat up. How much would you pay for that penny? What if I told you that penny cost more than $100? Would you believe me? Would you buy it from me (please say yes)? What's that? You want to know why this penny would be worth that much? Well, that's how much we had to pay the plumber who came out to our house and dislodged that penny from our garbage disposal (which may I just say, $100 for less than 10 minutes of actual work? I am so in the wrong business). Truth to tell, we didn't know something was lodged in the disposal when we called the guy to come out (I suspected it, and had tried to poke around in it, but wasn't able to locate a problem). Turns out there's a little knob at the bottom of the disposal you can tweak to try and dislodge stuff from the blades (information that would have been useful earlier, but still good to know). So how did this happen? We didn't have a clue. So when the guy pulled the penny out, we turned to the usual suspect and asked Quinn if he had put any money into the sink. He assured us he hadn't and it was pretty obvious he was telling the truth. Then we started thinking it was Catherine. And as we were starting to question Catherine, Quinn chimed in and said "Maybe it's the penny I put into my cereal yesterday." Beautiful. Just beautiful.

When I got home, Ginger and the kids were around back and in the process of repopulating the sand box with sand. Both kids played with that for a good bit. While they were playing, that gave me some time to wander around the backyard and take some photos. Nothing spectacular today, but you can't knock them all out of the park.






We fired up the grill tonight and had hot dogs. While the dogs were cooking I went down and started clearing some weeds / bushes from part of the backyard. Ginger knows exactly what buttons of mine to push, since she just offhandedly mentioned we needed to clear that out. I said I could get to it eventually and she said not to worry about it, we could just pay someone to do it. Now I'm out there pulling up bushes and weeds like a madman. Found a turtle in the weeds while I pulling stuff up. Called the kids over so they could see him. Neither seemed overly interested in it after getting a look at him. The fact he was completely immobile might have had something to do with the diminished fun factor.

Lastly, after this post of Scott's and the ensuing comments, I couldn't resist adding a link to this Civil War Promo.

Take Your Kid(s) To Work

Today was take your kid to work day. I don't think I could have dealt with them both there all day, so they came by for lunch. It was a fun visit. Quinn got a little loud at times, but the hall I'm on is mostly vacant at the moment so it wasn't a big deal. The kids got to see Clara and they hung out for a good while with "King" (that was as much effort as they were willing to put into trying to pronounce 'Ken').

When I came home the kids and I played outside some. Nothing major to report. I manage to take what I thought were some nice pictures, but I may be biased. Quinn did have a bit of a meltdown outside due to Catherine riding his tricycle. The concept of sharing is still something he's having trouble really understanding. Of course, he never seems to want to play with some of his stuff until the moment Catherine decides she wants to play with it. Anyway, once we got past his meltdown (and his lost tricycle privileges for two days due to the meltdown) he was better and was happy just playing soccer. I read online that this has been the worst year on record for allergies for the while now. Despite that Quinn seems to be doing okay most days, but he has been on his meds and using the nebulizer on a regular basis.









So exactly how does one take a picture of a bubble. I got a couple of nice shots of some bubbles, but they all have the problem of the reflection. You can see everything in the reflection, including me taking the picture. Maybe I should try the bigger zoom lens, but zooming in on a small moving object and getting it focused correctly seems like it would be tough (it was tough just getting it to focus on the bubbles with the smaller lens).


I saw online tonight that at the upfronts they announced a Battlestar Galactica spin off. Caprica or something like that which I assume will deal with the first uprising of the Cyclons. I'll reserve judgment on whether this is a good idea till I at least see how the execution is done.

Papa Bear Redux

They say your movie career is over when you start working with children or animals. But what if you're playing the part of an animal who is working with children? It was almost impossible to tell what I was saying most of the time, so I subtitled the parts I could make out. This was the fastest Google Video approval I've seen yet (under 24 hours). It clocks in at just over 2 minutes for those that care to know about that before clicking.


Papa Bear Attends the Book Fair

Papa Bear Says...

So the school the kids go to had their bookfair fundraiser today to raise some money for the school. Ginger volunteered for the morning shift manning the book sale. The big event was in the evening though. They had decided to hold have the book sale run into the night so that people could stop by after work and they even had entertainment. The Berenstain Bear's Papa Bear there. Only there was a catch, they didn't have enough people volunteer to be Papa Bear, so Ginger called me this morning and asked if I could come by and give it shot for a while.

So let's get some stuff out of the way initially. We all know what papa bear looks like (at least those of us with kids probably do). So the costume isn't exactly accurate (not even close really). And the hat is broken, and the hat covers up the face (although kids can see the face fine since they're looking up from below). But it was "sold" to the kids as being Papa Bear, and they all seemed to buy it. Anyway, I came out twice for 10 to 15 minutes each time. The suit is really hot (which is why I needed the break in between). And to top it off, your field of vision is almost nill. You can see a little bit right in front of you, but that's it. So moving around is pretty tough (which is why one of the volunteers from the book fair walks around with you). Even so, I still managed to whack one little girl in the head with my nose as I turned around too fast.



The first time out the kids insisted on taking me for a walk. Luckily we own probably about half of the Berenstain Bears books, so on our walk when the kids would talk to me about brother and sister going to grandma's for a week, or brother getting in trouble at school or the bears not watching TV for a week, I knew what they were talking about and could respond appropriately (and just to prove I know what I'm talking about, for the no TV week book, Papa Bears continuously tries to sneak in some television time, I knew I liked Papa Bear).

Before I came out the second time, my 'handler' suggested that we try and get the kids to play a game. She was suggesting a bunch of games that actually involved physical activity. So I suggested Papa Bear says (a variation on Simon says). There were probably only a few kids old enough to really understand that you had to listen and *not* do something I said unless I said "Papa Bear says". Most of the other kids were out the first time I didn't start with "Papa Bear says". In fact, the very first time I got them all out. Then the older kids caught on. After that I started running out of thing for them to do (there's only so many times you can have them raise their arms or hop or turn around) they switched games on me to "Duck Duck Goose". The kids insisted I be the first person 'it'. So I sort of cheated and picked Catherine as the "Goose" knowing that while she knows what to do, she doesn't actually try and catch the person running and just runs after them. In the end, I think all the kids there had some fun, so I'm glad I was able to help.

Future Washington General

Maybe the Washington Generals have an opening

Cheaply Manufactured Toys Suck II

So I went by Wal-Mart and stood in line and exchanged Quinn's defective Styrofoam airplane today after work. Quinn really liked playing with it. Of course, he wouldn't let Catherine play with it. Later though when he wanted to ride his scooter Catherine saw her chance and came over to play with it, and broke it within 5 seconds. The section she broke was the flap at the end, which is of course the thinnest piece. I really want to believe she didn't do it on purpose and was just trying to pick it up wrong, but she did break it multiple times (but that could be because it fell when it broke the first time and maybe she just tried to pick it up again). Quinn got really upset, and then I got upset with Catherine for breaking it and because it had upset Quinn so much. Eventually she apologized to Quinn. You can see he's still mad while she's apologizing, because he has the hands on the hip thing going (they've both picked that up from someone in our household, but I'm not naming names).

Cheaply Manufactured Toys Suck

Started with the usual. Got up with the kids. Made some breakfast, got ready and went to church. After church we deviated a bit. We stopped by Wal-Mart looking for some flower pots for the kids plants they're growing. I would say it's about time to transplant them out of the plastic cups where they currently reside. The trip took longer than we would have liked, because we let the kids pick out a toy. And Catherine took a while to pick something. Quinn almost immediately picked a big Styrofoam airplane, while Catherine eventually got some floam stuff (it's kind of like slime with little balls in it for modeling). Sadly once we got home, Quinn's airplane had two right side wings, so he wasn't able to actually play with it. Thank you quality assurance.



The plan was later in the day Quinn and I would return to the store and exchange his toy. But that never happened. Quinn decided he would rather play soccer and basketball outside than go to the store. Not too long after that I took the kids to the park for a bit. And after being there for maybe 10 minutes, we got to come home (because Catherine needed do number two, it's amazing how that never seems to occur until right after we leave the house). Then we were back out to the park again (different one this time) for some rides on swings.

But Superman Can Fly

This was an interesting one. Quinn was sitting around chatting with me and the conversation took this really weird twist. I don't know whether it all stemmed from stuff he's learning at school, or a Mickey Mouse comic book that has Mickey in a rocket ship, but recently he's been really interested in gravity:

    Quinn: Gravity keeps things on 
           the ground.
       Me: That's right.
    Quinn: Is there gravity in space?
       Me: Some, but smaller objects 
           aren't really affected by 
           it as much in space, so 
           they seem to float.
    Quinn: *ponders for a couple of 
           seconds*
    Quinn: But Superman can fly.  How 
           can he fly with gravity.
       Me: *considers replying about 
           how current mythos have 
           Superman deriving his  
           powers from being under a 
           yellow sun, but realizes 
           that really doesn't explain 
           how he can actually fly, so 
           decides against that course 
           of action*
       Me: I don't know.  But remember, 
           Superman is just pretend. 
    Quinn: I think it's his cape.  His 
           cape has gravity in it.  
           That's how he can fly.

Rainy Saturday

It rained for most of the day today. There was a brief window this afternoon between one and five (or thereabouts) where it stopped for a while. The front of our house doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight (by not a lot, I really mean none), so the bushes there with flowers are taking a bit longer than they should to really start to bloom. But I got a couple of what I thought were nice and somewhat interesting pictures while it wasn't raining. Since it's late, and I don't plan on having a ton of text, I'm going to forgo my normal small pics interlaced with the text and just put up the big honking pictures.











After that the kids decided they wanted to go for a walk. Which really meant they wanted to ride their bikes. I think we're going to have go out and get Quinn a real bike soon if for no other reason than he has almost outgrown his tricycle, and Catherine has definitely outgrown hers. Catherine actually likes riding Quinn's tricycle more than her own, since hers is so small she has to peddle like mad in order to keep up with us. As it was, Quinn was always off in the distance ahead of us and Catherine was lingering behind me. So if we get Quinn his own bike, then Catherine can take over Quinn's current tricycle. This won't solve the 'Quinn goes faster and Catherine falls behind problem', but at least it'll make the ride more enjoyable for Catherine.

The kids already had an idea of where the 'walk' was going to go. And we ended up at one of the neighborhood parks. The kids had their trained monkey (me) push them on the swings for a bit, then they played on some of the equipment. Right before we left, they did the swings again, but this time Quinn was pushing Catherine. Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of it. Turns out none of the pictures I took of the kids were all that good. The reason being was I had switched the camera over to "Close Up" mode for the flower pictures, and had forgotten to switch it back. D'oh!

We rounded out the day by the whole family going to Red Robin for dinner (we stopped by KFC on the way to get some popcorn chicken for Quinn to have there). One of the TVs completely across the restaurant (but still visible from our table) had the Cartoon Network playing. It was playing the old school "Tom & Jerry" cartoons. You know, the ones that are mega violent. The kids were fascinated with them and just laughed and laughed at the antics. Hope the brief viewing didn't install any violent behaviors in them. Although Catherine was asking at one point why the mouse was trying to cut the cat with scissors, since as she said "You're only suppose to use scissors on paper". I was really glad she understood that since I didn't want her going after the cats with scissors now.

Farfegnugen? I Suspect Farfromfixedem

I forgot to mention some stuff yesterday. I wanted to send out my thanks to Volkswagon. Some backstory first: a $12 part (coolant temperature sensor) went bad with no warning and then caused $2700 in damage to my car from coolant leaking into the electrical devices. Flash forward to current time. Part of what was repaired was the Electronic Control Module and the Electronic Harness. Now I don't know what those two parts do, but I'm willing to bet one of them controls the cruise control since IT DIDN'T WORK during my 7 hours in the car as I drove to PA and back this week. That was pretty annoying.

Back From PA

My two day journey to the bowels of PA is over. Actually, it's really not that bad up there. The skies are clear, the air is good, there's actually undeveloped land. It's like a window back into what I remember as small town life from when I was growing up. I think the population of the area is about the same also.



The only problem I have with the area is lack of places to eat. If you drive over to the main part of the town, there's all the normal fast food places and a couple of restaurants. But it's nothing like living here where there's a place to eat every block. If you're out where our company's PA office is, the choices for food are pretty limited. I ate here at the recommendation of some of the guys in the office up there. It's a nice place. Got that Mom and Pop feel to it. They don't have indoor seating, you just pickup your order and there are some picnic benches (although I ended up having to take mine back to the office so I wouldn't be late for a meeting). Food tastes good too, but man is it greasy. I got a steak and cheese and it was just dripping. The bread acted like a sponge soaking up a lot of it, but even then when you would bite down grease would just ooze out and drip.

Jeff and I had dinner at one of the Chinese buffet places (Jeff is the Program Manager for the project I'm helping on). And this is just the coolest thing. Later that night, Jeff comes over with his laptop and starts asking for advice on C++ code for a class he's taking. I can't tell you how nice it is to have a Program Manager that at least understands some of the coding aspects and the challenges some things present. And finally, I figured I would get a sunset from somewhere else (tonight's update has been brought to you in widescreen).



I managed to get home tonight just after seven. So I got to have dinner with the family and play a bit with the kids before they went to bed. I got the impression they were glad to have me back, but had I not come back tonight, I think they would have been okay with that also.

Easter Egg Hunt Video

Many thanks to Scott for pointing out that the video in the previous post was broken. I think it's fixed now. Unfortunately I was posting it from a machine that doesn't have flash installed, so I couldn't go back and check to make sure it worked. And apparently Blogspot's Compose editor rearranges your html for you (because it *obviously* knows better than you). I'm posting this one from the same machine, but I think I checked to make sure it didn't rearrange the html this time. We'll see if it works.

Anyway, here's the video of the Easter Egg hunt. The whole thing lasted maybe three minutes (and trimmed some of it out of the video). It was just crazy. Kids were everywhere. It was actually tough keeping track of where Quinn was since he was off on his own. I think at the beginning you can see Quinn running off ahead of the pack (one of the advantages of being almost 5 in a hunt for 0 to 4 year olds). Catherine was helped along by Ginger because of her leg.


Easter Egg Hunt

Catherine Rides A Pony

As I mentioned in a previous post, at the Easter Extravaganza they had pony rides. Here's the short video of Catherine riding a pony. I was absolutely amazed that they don't strap the kids in or secure them in any way shape or form. Catherine took this pony ride not too long after she hurt her knee.



Catherine Rides A Pony

Richmond Adventures: The Retrospective

The kids had off again today, but I couldn't take today off since I had some meetings with people to go over the GUIs we're developing for the program up in PA. Catherine still had her ballet class though. And for the past couple of days now Quinn has been using the nebulizer since we're afraid the sheer amount of pollen (or pollum as Quinn calls it) in the air is starting to adversely affect him. It's that or he's starting to get a cold, but since this is the same timeframe that one year ago he ended up going to the hospital for breathing, it's probably the pollen.

The kids will be returning to their normal school schedule tomorrow. We'll see how that goes after having a week and a half off. Finally, I have some pictures Ginger took while they were on their trip to Richmond.

Quinn likes trips to Richmond because that means he gets to play with Grammy and Pop Pop's train set. And you can see the new NASCAR that he got while he was there.

The kids helped walk the dog while they were there.

This was Quinn talking to me on the computer using GTalk.

And finally this is of Catherine reading a book. But check out how long her hair was (she got it cut while she was in Richmond).

Blowing Off Work

The kids had today off, so I decided to bail on going in to work and stay home and hang out with them. We stole a page from Barry's handbook and went down to the Museum of Natural History. Although to be honest, I think the kids enjoyed the ride on the Metro more than they enjoyed the Museum itself. I honestly considered just using Barry's Elephant picture here since my shot got killed by the flash.



The trip really did highlight the differences between Quinn and Catherine. Quinn was zipping around as fast as he could, going from one exhibit to another. Catherine on the other hand would sit and absorb information about each exhibit and ask Ginger all kinds of questions. Luckily Nana was with us to keep an eye on Quinn, and I was often positioned between both groups trying to keep an eye on both. We started off at the dinosaurs, because that's where Quinn wanted to start. Then we hit the Ice Age stuff (I was actually pleasantly surprised when we got there and it wasn't sponsored by "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown"). Since we didn't get to the museum until noon, by the time we finished getting through the Ice Age exhibit both the kids were pretty hungry. So we hit the cafe downstairs (Ginger had actually packed some food for Catherine, but it was raining out so we weren't able to picnic outside). The cafe was a madhouse. It was just crazy. After wandering around for a bit I was finally able to snag us a table. I felt kind of bad since I know other people were waiting longer than we were and some of them never got a table, but the feeling quickly passed. And there was a huge 'line' for the food. It's all cafeteria style, but people wait in this really long line to get the food. I got lucky because of where we entered the cafe I went into the food area from the registers, and was able to get a tray, snag some food, and get back to the table in under 10 minutes. I got the chicken tenders / fries for Quinn, but he didn't eat any of the chicken and just ate the fries. I also got the Crab Chowder soup for myself (which I wasn't expecting to be any good, but it was surprisingly mediocre to not bad) and Ginger had a slice of pizza. After a long lunch and everyone making a trip to the restroom, we were ready to hit the exhibits again.

We headed upstairs to bug exhibit (we got there by going through the "Yes Global Warming is Real and We're Soooo Screwed Exhibit"). The kids were only mildly interested in most of the bug exhibits. There was one thing that captured their attention though. The ant exhibit. That's right, here we are the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, with information on all kinds of Dinosaur bones, Ice Age stuff, Geology, Animals and Reptiles. And what's the one exhibit both the kids can't take their eyes off? The ants. Because there's something you can't see everyday. By this time it was pretty late and the kids were showing signs of being really tired. So after seeing a few of the bug exhibits, one of which was actually sponsored by Orkin (I kid you not), we were ready to head home.



As we were heading back to the Metro, I let Quinn use my camera to take the picture above of the Washington Monument. I decided to get a shot of the Monument also.

And as I leave, let me just thank whoever came up with the idea for the Metro parking garages not taking cash. Apparently now the Metro parking only take these new smart cards. Parking costs $3.75 for the day. But get this, you can't buy a card for $3.75, nope, the lowest amount you can get put onto a card is $10. That's gotta be a nice revenue generator. Kudos to the guy who thought that one up.