What The?!?

No school today due to it being Martin Luther King Day (although Catherine still had ballet). As I headed off to work this morning I decided to leave Quinn with the point and shoot Nikon just to see what he would do with it. So tonight as I was pulling stuff off the camera, I see this movie he made. Have I mentioned my kids can be odd at times?

Pictures By Quinn

Ginger had nursery duty at church this morning. I'm really hoping this doesn't turn into a repeat performance of the last two times where she ends up sick within a couple of days. The last time just about used up all my sick leave. We ran some errands today. We went to Home Depot looking for a faucet for the kitchen (that's because our current one leaks constantly and evidently Ginger hates it). Quinn and I also went and got anti-freeze for Ginger's car (the coolant sensor had come on in her car) and a replacement low beam headlight for my car (my inspection is due this month). Ginger has had a migraine for most of the day, so hopefully she'll get over that soon.

I let Quinn use the camera again today and told him we would post some pictures he took. He really wants to post a movie of some kind in addition to some pictures. It's alternated between one of his run around with the camera movies and one of the ones of him from when he was at "Pump It Up". Last I heard he wanted to do one of the Pump It Up videos we took with the "I Get Knocked Down" song from the Ice Skating video.

Rainy Saturday

Sort of a low key day today. Didn't do a whole lot initially and just hung out at the house. A large part of this was because I personally didn't get up until almost 11. I should clarify that, I didn't get up for good until then. I was up earlier in the morning with Quinn who was having problems because he had a stomach ache. After I eventually got him to go back to sleep, I went back to bed also. Not sure what the deal with that was, but from what Ginger said later he was almost all better by 10 or so.




Check out Catherine in the picture. She's wearing jeans. This was actually quite a struggle to get her to wear these. I didn't even bother trying. See, I had tried to get Catherine to wear jeans a long time ago, and Ginger and her Mom convinced Catherine at the time that she didn't want to wear the jeans and wanted to wear more girly clothes. So today when Ginger tried to get Catherine to wear a pair of jeans it turned into 45 minutes of Catherine running around the house with no pants and yelling that she doesn't like jeans and wasn't going to wear them. I'm still not sure exactly what Ginger did to get her to wear them, but she still insists she doesn't like them. Which is a shame, because she looks pretty good in them.



Once we got a bit motivated, we were going to go for a walk since the weather was so nice. It started raining right before we went though and at the last minute Quinn decided he didn't want to go and I would have to stay at home with him while Catherine and Ginger went out for a walk. I'm fairly certain that the reason Quinn wanted to stay at home was he thought that since it was Saturday and it was raining that he was going to be able to play on his Gamecube, which he asked he could play almost as soon as Ginger and Catherine were out of sight. Smart kid. I told him no, and later learned he had already asked Ginger to play that morning and she had said no. So he's got the whole "If one parent says no, ask the other one" scam down pat it would seem.





The picture of Catherine looking a bit perturbed above is because when she came back from her walk, she wanted to get the mail, but found out that I had already gotten it. That's her giving me "the look".

We later ended up going out to Lowe's and a hobby store to get some wood for Quinn and his new cutting tools. After that we went to a new Red Robin. I didn't like this one as much as the one we normally go to. It was more cramped and there were significantly less TVs in the place.

And finally, I told Quinn I would put up a picture or two of his stuff today. Unfortunately a lot of the pictures he took were whitewashed and out of focus because he tends to try to take macro pictures with a camera that doesn't really have a macro capability. This is one of the ones that actually turned out in focus though.

New Coats

The kids got new winter coats not too long ago. Before this week I wasn't sure they were going to get to use them. But with the cold weather this week they broke them out. For whatever reason, both of them really enjoy zipping the coats all the way up so that their mouths are covered and then walking around and mumbling so you can't understand a word they say. My kids can be a bit odd at times. Both kids really want it to snow and have a significant amount fall and stick. I've tried telling them it might not happen, but they're currently convinced it will. I'm wondering if they know something I don't.

And tonight I got some pictures of Catherine in her new hat. I don't know why, but I really like the way the hat looks.




I finished watching 24 Season 5 tonight. Still not sure if I'll actually watch season 6 when it debuts this weekend, but a lot of people have been telling me that seeing the show in HD is really nice (versus the DVDs which I'm just watching using S-Video out). Ginger and I also watched last night's "My Name Is Earl" tonight, and I must say the various "My name is ..." sketches were pure genius.

An finally, a picture taken with my new little point and shoot camera from my office at work. There's obviously some issues with the light sensitivity since from the look of the picture there are tree branches have been completely overtaken by the light of the setting sun (or maybe the sun just burned through the trees, yea, that's the ticket).

Gingerbread House Construction

When I got home tonight the kids were decorating the Gingerbread house. Yea, that's something we probably should have done before Christmas, but hey, we're rebels like that.






And I didn't mention this before, but Ginger messed around with the new Digital TiVo a bunch and figured out how to get the TiVo to view all the over the air channels (she did this the day after we called TiVo and their tier one support was less than helpful). For now there's no reason to pay Cox extra. Woo! It's nice that Cox actually puts the over the air channels on the cable line in digital form, but it's kind of annoying that they don't publicize the fact that they do. And by publicize I mean the TiVo channel list for Cox in our area doesn't have any information about where the digital channels are in the lineup, we had to do channel scans and then Ginger had to go through all the digital channels it found to locate the ones we were interested in and have TiVo 'learn' about the channel. The only bad thing now (and this is a pretty significant bad side) is that TiVo doesn't "know" about the programming on the digital channels. We have 4-1 (NBC), 5-1 (FOX), 7-1 (ABC), 9-1 (CBS) and 50-1 (CW) (as well as the WETA channels and some public broadcast stuff), but while the TiVo can now see those channels (finally), it doesn't know about what's on those channels. So from a programming perspective, I can't use the Season Pass feature if I want to record a show in HD. Like if I wanted to record Smallville in HD, I have to set it up to manually record from 8 to 9 on Thursday on channel 50-1. If I didn't care about it being HD, TiVo would record it on the regular cable channel in standard definition since it knows about that channel. But recording it in HD means that the TiVo "What's Playing" section doesn't have the names of the show, but instead the time and date it was recorded. Feels sort of like it was back when I had all these VCR tapes everywhere that I never labeled. It's not as bad as the VCR tapes though because while the shows aren't named, at least they have the date and time. You look at the list and you have to think "Okay, that was Thursday at 8 on what appears to be channel 50, that must be Smallville". The good news is that watching the shows in HD is totally worth the inconvenience. Ginger has already told me I've become an HD snob, which I don't think I am, but I'll be darned if there are some shows that just are really enhanced by viewing them in HD (for stuff like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, I don't think it matters). All that was a really long winded way of saying I really enjoyed watching Smallville in HD tonight, it's good stuff.

Metal Blades On Frozen Water: The Movie

The above is a video of Quinn yesterday at the ice rink (although I do make a couple guest appearances). It's pretty long at three plus minutes, so I'm not going to be offended if people don't make it all the way through. The first minute and a half is probably the slowest, but I couldn't find anything I really felt needed to be cut. Think of this as the director's cut without having shown a theatrical version. All I can say is after watching the one fall he had, it's a really good thing he had this helmet on.

Update: A new version is showing. Ginger thought the other one was too defeatist, so I found a small clip of him skating without falling down and added it at the end.

Ice Ice Skating

Today was ice skating day at Quinn's school. For the next month or so the kids in the extended day classes at Quinn's school will be going ice skating in the afternoons one day a week. Since this was the first day and it was Quinn's first time ever ice skating, I went also (I convinced Ginger that her and Catherine should come along also). To say he was bit unstable at first would be an understatement. They had lessons for the kids and the various skill levels. Quinn was relegated to the extreme beginner area obviously. He stayed up initially a lot longer than I thought he would (maybe three minutes), but then he fell. And once he fell, he kept falling. Then it was like that old lady in the commercial "I've fallen and I can't get up." This stage lasted for a long time, to the point where eventually Quinn was just crawling across the ice.






I went ahead and got skates myself at this point thinking I could at least help him some so he didn't get too discouraged. By the time I got the skates and got them laced, He was actually standing for a minute or so between falls. And let me say, I've only been ice skating maybe three or four times in my life, but I didn't do too bad (I did way better than Ginger thought I would since she was convinced I was going to fall on my butt). It's not that different from rollerblading, which I'm not great at, but can do good enough.


At this point the teacher of his group promoted him to the slightly better than extreme beginner class since he was "moving faster than the other kids." Translation, all the kids in the group he was in were smaller than him and when he would lose control he would bump into them, so promoting him fixed that problem. It actually worked out well, since the next level group was practicing going back and forth across the rink, which he was actually able to do by then (he was still waving his arms like mad to get his balance, but he was able to stand up a lot longer).


After the lessons were over it was time for free skate for all the kids. Quinn would occasionally go out on the ice a little ways and then head back to the sidelines. Later he started using one of the cones as a crutch, he did pretty good with it, but I'm worried now he's always going to want a cone to go out on the ice.

It snowed here tonight. Not a lot. Just enough to dust the ground a bit and possibly enough that tomorrow morning the roads will be icy. But it's weird how two days ago it was low 70s and people are running around in shorts and today it's snowing. What's up with that? Anyway, I tried taking some pictures, nothing too good turned out since it was so dark I could barely see what I was focusing on at any given time.

The Pooping Moose

Every time I watch this I crack up. Especially when she does the deep voice impersonation at the beginning. I just love it. It's a pretty short video, under a minute. I really need to thank KennyG again for giving me that jellybean dispenser last year. The kids, and Catherine in particular, just love it. And yes, I know it's not really a moose and it is actually suppose to be a reindeer (but by calling it a moose we get to keep it out all year now since it's not tied to Christmas).

Monday morning in general are usually pretty bad around here. Over the weekend the kids will get used to not going to school, so it's always a bit of an adjustment for them and a struggle for Ginger and myself to get them ready to go back to school on Monday morning. This morning was particularly painful as the kids were pretty tired and Quinn had problems just waking up.

Fun photo from the past weekend. I debated on switching this to black and white, but I'm not convinced I know the best conversion method since stuff that I convert to black and white never seems to have the stark contrasts I would expect.

Christmas Decorations Come Down

Ginger wasn't feeling too good this morning when she got up (probably due to getting up with Catherine numerous times throughout the night for what appeared to be no valid reason on Catherine's part). Because of that we ended up missing church. Later in the day she was feeling somewhat better so it was time to officially put away all the Christmas stuff. We didn't actually complete the task entirely. We did take down the lights from out front and deflated the snowman.






Since it rained yesterday the snowman was still wet. I didn't realize that fact until I had disconnected all the supports, so I had to let him run for a bit to dry off before putting him away. Without the ground supports he ends up listing pretty bad. That tilting coupled with the red nose makes it looks like he's had one too many.


After that we removed ornaments from the live tree upstairs. We didn't get the lights yet, but we'll do that tomorrow. We just need to get the tree out to the curb before Wednesday. Wednesday is the tree pick up day for our neighborhood, so that's a deadline we really can't afford to miss.


And here's a picture of Quinn playing with the tractor trailer Mac from the Cars movie (Quinn continues to incorrectly call him "Max" until we correct him then he's like "Oh yeah, Mac"). Quinn recently got Mac at Toys 'R' Us the other day when we swapped a duplicated Christmas present. Both kids love him playing with him (at least for now, could be the whole 'new toy syndrome').


Finally, this could have been a really good shot, but the aperture wasn't open enough, so only parts of the picture are truly in focus. I've really got to start working on that with the new lens since at the max zoom there's a really narrow depth of field it seems.

Clemyjontri

Karen and Amanda invited us to go to Clemyjontri, that's the park that Barry was raving about a while back. Barry and Karen both forgot to mention how crowded the place can get. This is the scene on the street outside of the park, about a quarter mile of cars parked along the sides of the road (the parking lot for the park it itself was already overfilled with people parking on the grass in places). And that wasn't even taking into account the overflow parking area across the street. So like I said, the park was really crowded.




Since we had already made the long journey there, we went ahead and joined the masses and explored the park. The kids really liked it and I must admit it is a very very nice park. Easily one of the nicer kid playground parks I've seen. And the weather was incredible with the temperature being in the high 60s and low 70s. Hard to believe this is winter.












After the park we headed to a marathon lunch session at Bertuccis. I mean we were there for what felt like forever. It didn't help that I'm not a fan of the food there either, I suspect that just made the whole ordeal seem even longer. Although more than likely the real reason I didn't enjoy it was because I was so tired. I was up till three thirty last night watching TV and DVDs (just finished disc 5 of 24 Season 5, one more disc to go) and then Catherine came in and work me up this morning at just after 7, so I really missed out on some sleep.

Air Supply

When I got home tonight to kids came rushing out to the car to greet me. Then they told me we were going out for dinner (news to me). And where do you think we went? Nope, not Red Robin this time, it was Ledo's Pizza (Ledo's Pizza has square pizzas, because they don't cut corners).

Quinn got one of those after dinner peppermint mints. We've only recently started letting him have hard candy, and he's suppose to keep his hand on it while he eats it. On the way home the conversation in the car went something like this:

Ginger: I better not see that candy in your mouth without you holding onto it.

Quinn: Okay.

Ginger: And do you remember why you're suppose to hold onto it?

Quinn: Because I might swallow it.

*brief pause*

Quinn: What would happen if I swallowed it?

Ginger: It could get caught in your throat and cut off your air supply.

Catherine: What's 'air supply'?

JamesF: A band from the 80s.

Catherine: What's the 80s?

JamesF: A time that feels like a long time ago.

Christmas Wayback Machine

A Christmas from long a time ago, in a city far far away...




Curt really seems to have liked his Lubrimagic gift. And for more current stuff, it was cold yesterday morning.

Jo And Mary Stop By

My cousin Jo Beth and my Aunt Mary were in town today. The reason they were in town was Jo Beth had an interview down in DC with Mercer and stopped by after she was done to see everyone.




Rather than ask Ginger to cook, and since this was all sort of sprung on her at the last minute, I made the command decision we would go out to eat (yes, we went to Red Robin, Catherine's allergies severely limit the places we can go). While I was at dinner I took my new portable camera and had Quinn take some pictures. Some turned out pretty good.


I also used the new camera and took a self portrait. Please try and ignore the crow's feet around my eyes and my ever growing double chin (not that I'm self conscious about these things).


After Quinn saw me take that picture though, he decided to take his own self portrait with his camera.