Merry Christmas

We had a great Christmas celebration here. It started off a little rough because Lily had been feeling sick for a few days. She had an earache on Tuesday, so Amanda took her to the Urgent Care. They diagnosed her with a double ear infection and sent her home with a prescription for some amoxicillin. As always, once she started taking the medicine she felt fine. That was good because it would have been a very tough Christmas day otherwise.

 I also wasn't feeling great Monday evening, so we ended up not going to our church's Christmas celebration. We hated to miss it, but we also know that it was going to be a lot of work to attend it. I think by Monday evening the only person with the energy to do it was Noah.

We went to the McKenzies' for the family Christmas celebration on Tuesday. We had a lovely meal with ham, mac and cheese, and various other trimmings. A wonderful time was had by all.

Of course, to the kids all of this is just a warm-up for Christmas morning. My videography was not quite as extensive this year, but I did capture the highlights. Lily had a hard time coming up with gift ideas, so we got her a refurbished iPod Touch. Now she has her own device with a camera and won't have to clog up ours with her "artsy" photos and videos.

Noah got a lot of stuff through my involvement with Amazon Vine. He still doesn't know that his big gift is a series of golf lessons with me. He was happy just to get this basketball hoop. He also got a batting tee and a big net that you can use for hitting balls. He also got a few new games for the Wii. It's pretty nice that the Wii is an old system and the games can be had fairly cheaply now.

We ended the day with some standing rib roast, which came out really good. We kept the meal simple with roast, roasted asparagus, and mashed red potatoes and gravy. Nobody seemed to mind the simplicity. 

Everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Although I tried to do this at dinner, I think that we need to do a quick refresher of why we give gifts. After all, the incarnation of Christ was the ultimate gift to everyone who believes. So as we enjoy our new stuff, we need to remember that:

James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

I hope that you and yours had as nice a Christmas as we did. Now that I'm off for over a week I look forward to catching up on some stuff and just relaxing a little bit. That and hitting golf balls.

Birthday Trip

We took a trip to Ohio to celebrate my 40th and Dad's 70th birthdays. We left on Wednesday after school and drove to Charleston, WV. We stayed at what has become our favorite hotel in Charleston and had a good night's sleep followed by a lovely breakfast buffet. The whole family enjoyed the pool for about an hour and then we hit the road to Ohio. It's not every day you get to swim in a warm pool while you can see it snowing outside. That did make for a cold run back to our room since the hallways were a bit chilly by comparison.

We had lunch in Marietta and got some coffee drinks for the road. It was in the low teens, so we decided to forego the riverwalk until another time. We got to Wadsworth and had a fun evening with Grandpa and Bubbe along with a great meal.

Friday was kind of a slow morning and then in the afternoon I went shooting with Dad while Amanda took the kids to see Frozen. After that my stepbrothers took me out to dinner, which was really fun. Of course, since this was a 40th birthday celebration and not a 21st we were still in bed at very reasonable hours.

Saturday was the really big day. While Uncle Mark went to the gym to run on the treadmill Aunt Jen took us to the local farmer's market and to the West Point Market. We got some goodies and then went home to get ready for Grandpa's birthday party. The video below was taken before lunch on Saturday.

What started this was Uncle Mark convincing Noah that he had to shovel all of his driveway, the neighbors, and the street (but only to the stop sign). Of course, Noah bought it. He and Lily enjoyed doing the driveway and even made a few bucks. Later that day when Lily saw Uncle Mark snowblowing the neighbor's driveway she exclaimed, "He has a snowblower?!?" She doesn't understand about keeping up when there is just a little snow.

We had a great party that everyone really enjoyed, especially Grandpa. It was fun to have him as the guest of honor and we even got to celebrate on his actual day.

Saturday night was fun because the twin cousins spent the night. They all slept in the same room and I think that everyone got to sleep fairly well. Lily had some trouble sleeping and she woke up one of her cousins to see the clock turn to midnight. The good news is that Lily was able to nap in the car on the way home.

Sunday morning started out a little rough because Noah threw up a couple of times. He didn't have breakfast, but his stomach seemed to settle down because he was fine at lunch and dinner. He also was fine today.

Now it's back to reality, at least for a week.

Newfound Freedom

After a year or so of trying Noah finally rode his bike without training wheels. I understand that Lily was instrumental in helping him overcome his fear and just do it. He still needs a little help getting started, but overall he is doing great.

We are going to celebrate with some yogurt at Sweet Frog tonight.

International Night

Tonight was the second annual international night at Northwoods Elementary. We would not have gone, but Lily was in a play about the Trojan War. This was something she did in her AG (gifted) class and they decided to bring it out for international night. Forgive the choppiness, but I didn't realize that she was in back-to-back scenes.

Lily seems pretty natural playing Aphrodite, doesn't she? All the kids did a great job, particularly the young man who played Paris. 

After the play we were treated to some dancing. Lily's friend Adele from the bus stop did Irish dancing. It takes some courage to get up on that stage by yourself, but she did it and she did a great job. We got everyone clapping along with the music too. After that Noah and I ducked out to try playing some New Zealand dodge ball in the gym. It's always fun to talk to Coach Cuffe.

We hit the various tables where folks set up boards talking about their countries and we got to sample some food. I'd say personally the highlight was the homemade baklava. It was neat to learn a few things about the various countries. I also suggested to the Dominican Republic folks that under their country's exports they should add "shortstops."

I suspect that they will do this again next year. I really wanted to take the kids to chess night at the local game store instead, but I'm still glad that we went to this. 

Exhiliration

Since we were going to be in NE Ohio for Thanksgiving, I thought it would be fun to do something seasonal that I remember fondly from my teenage years. The Cleveland Metroparks toboggan chutes are open for the season on the day after Thanksgiving. Amanda and I had done this a long time ago with my mom and Ernie and with the McKenzies long before any of us had kids. Amanda is always up for a thrill, so we made the trip out there on the way to visiting my stepbrother and his family in Fairview Park.

The day started out warm, which was contrary to the forecast. I got worried that they wouldn't be running because it was too warm even for the refrigerated chutes, but as the cold front came through the day stopped being Raleigh and started being NE Ohio in late November. 

I talked up the experience and everyone was excited. Lily got nervous when she saw that the pass on her zipper read, "Ride at your own risk." They were pretty scared at the top, but we talked them into going. We all went down together on the first run. It ended with Noah bawling and Lily on the verge of tears. That was Noah's only run for the day. 

I talked Lily into going again with me and she did, albeit reluctantly. She was a little less scared, but still pretty frightened. We went in for some hot chocolate to regroup. Since Amanda is the one who enjoys this the most I wanted to find a way for her to go down, so I talked Lily into going with her. The condition was that I would film her. Here is the result:

She was thrilled at the end of this. Then she decided that she wanted to go yet again! In fact, in retrospect her favorite thing about the visit was going tobogganing. We batted .500 on getting the kids into it.

Recital

Lily had her ballet recital on Saturday. This year it was "Carnival of Animals," which I had never heard of before. I'm not sure how this fit in with the theme, but she was a piano. At any rate, you can see her work below. We think that she is getting better each year. She still bangs into things at home all the time, but when she is dancing she is becoming pretty graceful.

Koalaty Kid

Lily's school has a koala for a mascot and they have a bi-annual assembly to give out "koalaty kid" awards. Lily won the citizenship award in kindergarten and the math award in first grade. Yesterday she got one for reading. I took the afternoon off and really enjoyed seeing her sing in the "choir" and receive her major award (she's more or less in the middle of this video).

We also got her report card. She got a 3* in every subject except writing. For those of you who don't know the way they grade now, I'm not sure if Stephen Hawking could get a 4 in science. It seems like 3* is pretty much the ceiling for most kids, so we're very happy about this. She managed to get a 4 in PE for "Content." We have no idea what that means and I think I may email the PE teacher just to ask. It's hard to imagine Lily getting a 4 in PE.


Anyhow, we're very proud of this. Her teacher loves having her in her class. I think we're going to celebrate with a lunch at the Japanese steak house. It's a fun time with the kids and Lily loves it. Hopefully Noah won't be quite as scared this time.

Brave Boy

It took a lot of coaxing, but we finally got Noah to go down the water slide at Uncle Art and Aunt Carol's house. He got a new DS game for his trouble. We don't have video of the first time, but this gives you a good sense of what it was all about.

Ballet Practice

Every year Lily's ballet studio has kind of a mini-recital. Parents were invited to watch some of the class and see what they've been working on all year. I took a lot of short videos. Here is the result of knitting them all together.

Christmas 2011

Here is a compilation of the kids opening their gifts. Enjoy!

Little Duffer

We had some beautiful weather today, so this is one thing we did with it.

Nimble Noah

I took today off because I have some extra PTO that must be taken by the end of the year lest I lose it. I have already planned on taking off the last two days of the year as a buffer in case of sickness, so this was just a day to take off more or less at random. It was nice to have a three-day weekend.

Today was also something of a day off for Amanda as I took over the duties of time before school while she stayed in bed and read. Lily is more helpful that she was a year ago, particularly in terms of knowing what needs to be done. I even put her hair in a pony tail, with her help. I'm sure it didn't look as good as if Amanda would have done it, but I think it was passable.

We are having a Chamber of Commerce day here with the weather, so to take advantage of it I packed a picnic for Noah and we headed over to North Cary Park right after preschool. After eating lunch he played on the playground for a while. After that we headed over to the soccer field for some time with his giant styrofoam airplane and the stomp rockets. We managed to stay for a little over an hour.

I took some video of Noah playing on the equipment. I never would have done this when I was 4, but he moved with confidence. Despite my narration, Amanda tells me that he plays on these frequently. She doesn't know why he was so tentative before. At any rate, you can see that the kid has some balance and sense of motion.

Zipline!

It's customary for a traveling businessman to bring back gifts for his family or at least leave gifts for his family. Since I knew that I likely wouldn't find anything suitable for Amanda while in Anaheim, I took advantage of an Amazon Local deal for a zipline tour. This is something Amanda has wanted to do for a while anyway, so this worked out well for us. We set up babysitting with Uncle Bill and Aunt Tiff and then headed out to High Point.

I didn't take many photos since the video on their website really does a great job of showing you the experience. I did take one of Amanda getting suited up.

Although the various guides had some scheduling problems, the operation as a whole felt very safe and professional. I would be shocked if anyone had an accident there. Here you can see Amanda's first flight. The hollering and other random noises are from the people below. This facility has a corn maze and a bunch of other family things to do.

Here I am coming in for a landing. Note that I am so cool I do it 90 degrees differently than everyone else:

Finally, here is Amanda coming in for a landing at another platform:

Our final take is that we had fun, but we are not eager to do it again. Neither one of us found it to be that thrilling. Amanda is fairly fearless about such things and I trust physics. The reason I came in so slow in my video is that I tried to hold myself up by grabbing the trolley. You really can just hang and be fine. All it requires is picking up your feet and letting gravity do its thing.

Birthday!

Here is the video of us coming into Lily's bedroom with scones and tea:

Here is Lily with a couple of her gifts:

Recital

Here are two videos from Lily's recital. This year the recital was "Wizard of Oz." In the first video she is a poppy. In the second she is part of the Emerald City. Look for her on the right as a poppy. Look for the dark green dress in the back at Emerald City.

Graduation

Here are two videos from my graduation. The first is me walking to get my diploma. The second is a short testimony I gave about my experience at Shepherds.

Disco Lily

I was going through the photos from Christmastime and came upon this gem. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: If you're lent to hysterical laughter you may want to use the bathroom before viewing

Riding Bikes

Here's a little video I shot of the kids on their bikes. Please pardon the wind noise.

Noah has come a long way since the first day he got on his bike. Now he's practically like Lance Armstrong going through the Alps.

Noah the Star

Here is a video of Noah in yesterday's Christmas performance at preschool.  He didn't sing much, but was quite emphatic with the motions.  I think you can even hear him yell "NO!"

Recital

Well, we finally had the big day.  First, here is Lily's ballet recital:


Ballet Recital 2010 from Jason Chamberlain on Vimeo.

And here is the tap recital:


Tap Recital 2010 from Jason Chamberlain on Vimeo.