Happy birthday to my Red

Yup, my "little" Red turned 4 this past weekend and as usual I don't know where the time has gone. But, because I knew a long time ago that I didn't want to leave it up to my swiss-cheese-brain to remember all the good times I take a LOT of pictures. This also allows me to do cool things like this:

So, happy birthday to my little firehead (as her Mem likes to call her). You bring such... energy into our lives and we love you so much for it.

I finally know what I want to be...

...when I grow up. Or, when I continue to refuse to grow up I guess is more appropriate. Tonight was the final class and "performance" for JAM and I at our Parent-Child Circus Camp. This is the same class that I posted about the other day where I got to take out a little aggression on JAM. We had an absolute blast each Wednesday for a few weeks, learning a lot about juggling, stilt walking, diablo, devil sticks, partner gymnastics, etc. If you've never had a chance to see Greg May in action we really do recommend it. Greg has risen to become something of a mythical creature in our house with JAM being enthralled with him for years and Red and Pudge soon following along. In fact, Greg's high-pitched, laugh-inducing "It's NOT FUNNY!" has been known to ring out loud and proud around our house.

Yes, JAM and I got our chance to perform (let's just call that a loosely defined term) tonight, for a huge audience (i.e. about 20 people made up of friends and families of the campers). We had so much fun that I had to post about it here and share the glory that graced the Greenbelt Gym this evening...

Here's JAM and I with "Circus Greg" as he's been dubbed around our house -

Some of the crew:

The whole class getting into the mix with some different group stacking:

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The lighting in that gym is horrendous. We don't usually look as... well... yellow I guess. Wifey did her best, while being tapped with child-wrangling duties as well, to get some pictures but the videos (below) are much more fun to watch.

Our first trick - juggling. I spent pretty much my whole time getting better at juggling. I started knowing how to do the basic three-ball weave but by the end I was able to do the tricks you'll see here -

This is JAM performing with some spinny thing but I can never remember its rightful name -

Here's JAM again with the diablo. He does a very cool trick but then it gets all tangled on him -

JAM with his best trick by far - spool walking. Dude got so good at this he could go all the way down the length of two mats -

I gotta say - I'm most proud of this -

Here's JAM and I getting a little creative... then a little crazy -

And finally, we ended it up with this huge merry-go-round trick -

As you can tell, I absolutely loved my Wednesdays. Huge thanks to Wifey for making it possible for JAM and I - I can't wait until next year.

Sweet revenge

It's been nine years in the making, but it felt sooooooo good!!!

This was JAM and I at Parent-Child Circus Camp during our next to last class tonight. Yes, tonight was Pie in the Face night for those that wanted to try it out. Me? No, I had no real interest in taking a plate of shaving cream in the kisser, but JAM was all for it and I was more than happy to oblige. See? I'm nothing if not a supportive and compassionate father. Whatever makes 'em happy right?

Yes, I dance around like a goofball, and I'm not sure why my lovely wife let me go out of the house with that outfit on this morning, but you can hopefully excuse my exuberance at getting to smush my kid in the face with a pie. It's a must-do for every parent at least once.

Didn't know hurricanes could come inside

The presents were all unwrapped by 9am. The Lego sets have been built. The animals and books and Little People sets and paint supplies and cool new homemade Lego table have been ooh'ed and aah'ed over. We were even able to squeeze in a little breakfast of their favorite cereals (which Daddy gave them all for presents :) ) and playtime has now begun. Of course we've got some pics and vids to share. Merry Christmas to all!

Wifey's family had a tradition growing up - you get to open one present on Christmas eve. We thought it would be nice for the kids to open the presents Mem and Pepe sent and I wanted to document the fun for them to see...

We had to get the kids to model those wonderful homemade scarves and hats. I'm putting up two different pics because of the inevitable 2/3 factor. You know - when you have 3 kids in a picture it is inevitable that at best only two of them will ever look good. I'll leave it to you to figure out who's who...

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- Putting up the stockings, getting ready for Santa's visit.
- The stockings all filled up sitting on top of the new Lego table I built.

- I put this at the top of the stairs in hopes of getting the kids to not go downstairs without us in the morning. It kind of backfired during the night though - Wifey and I heard Red crying and when she went out to find out what the problem was Red was at the top of the stairs crying. When Wifey asked why she was crying Red said she had to go to the bathroom. Her reason for not just going downstairs to go? Yeah, my dumb idea of putting the easel there. Poor kid. But how about my little three year old getting up on her own in the middle of the night to pee and then seeing that I put the easel there and knowing she shouldn't go downstairs? See? I see the bright side of things.

- This is what the kids thought of my idea in the morning. I don't think they were very happy at having to wait. :)

- JAM happy with his Clone Wars stuff.

- Pudge didn't like his cereal at all. Nope.

Some general opening pics -

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Forget the shirts, this is the coolest present I ever got Wifey. Check out her new sock monkey footie PJs.

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Pudge fell in love with his big gift - a Little People carnival set. Little guy even carried it around the room for a bit, and that box was not light.

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Some Lego adoration was had by all.

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Well documented path of destruction -

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By lunch time JAM had all three Lego sets already built

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Pudge playing with the Little People set -

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- Red looking good in her new hair ties.


That's it for now. I'm sure a ton more will be coming in the next few days but I'm exhausted and Wifey is busting her butt cleaning this place up so I'd better get off mine and help. AND, I've got dinner to cook. Why the hell I said I'd do that alone I have no idea. :)

A Winter Wonderland

With all the trials and tribulations that the snow has brought with it this weekend it's nice to see that we can still get the munchkins outside and have some fun. Well, fun with a whole lot of hard work on the part of their parents that is. There was a whole lot of shovelin' goin' on around here today, and not a whole lot to show for it. Without further ado... today in pictures...

The three amigos getting ready to face the blizzard head on-

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Fun times were had by all... wish I could have grabbed more of it before the camera card filled up. :)

As I was just about ready to go in JAM saw that his friend from next door was coming outside so they played for a few minutes, which was cool. He said goodbye pretty soon though as his hands were blue. He had gone through three pairs of gloves by the time he finally called it quits.

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Not a lot of pics taken during play time though because while the kids were having fun Wifey and I were working out butts off trying to shovel out at least the first 8 inches or so. We knew it was going to continue to snow but I don't think we expected it to wipe away our hard work so quickly. Here's a couple pics of the area right after we got done shoveling. Notice the nice layer of snow already covering everything?

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Now, check these before/after pics out. I've never seen so much snow come down so quickly here in DC. The before pics were taken right around 11am and the after were at about 3:30.

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These were taken around 1pm with the snow really coming down. Notice the larger piles of shoveled snow? Yeah, this is after the second shoveling. And notice the layer of snow on the ground again? It was just disheartening, that's what it was.

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By 3:30 the accumulation really showed. Remember our "cleaned off" car from a few hours before in the pic above? Notice the difference between our van (the one on the right of the two) vs. our neighbor's car? We'd cleaned about 8 inches off of it already but you'd never know it until you looked in comparison to the other.

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After nap the kids were itching to get back outside. While I stayed in to fight with Air Tran (their automated system hung up on me more than 2 dozen times and their web site refused to let me reschedule!) Wifey brought the amigos out to try a little sledding. And by little I mean LITTLE.

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Some other random pics of the day... and bear with me, I'm feeling artsy. You'll see...

- I call this one "Forgotten" - looks like a toy that belongs on the island of misfit toys.

- A pic of the ol' homestead. Quite different from this one taken in April huh?


- Our road, all peaceful in the snow.

- I call this one - "Freaking Nuts" :) What were these people thinking??? You know what? We saw people out walking all day! Most of them were coming down the road with shopping bags from K-Mart. Guess they didn't get the memo - you're supposed to stock up on TP and milk the day BEFORE the storm.

- Our little home, all decked out in snow.

Here's another before/after, taken today vs. in April. This is looking down our road from the middle of the intersection, normally a VERY busy 6-lane highway. It was surreal standing in the middle of this intersection on a Saturday afternoon, without a car in sight.
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More from the intersection - the quiet was just eery.

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- I call this one "Potential"

- and this one "Alone"

I love how these trees look when it snows. I think about getting a picture of them every year but I never do. Well - guess I can cross that off my list now.
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My poor lights got absolutely buried. I knew they would, but I didn't really think it would get so deep. Still, it looks pretty cool.
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There you have it, the day in pictures. It's now 12:30 and the snow has stopped. Let's hope the hard working snow plow drivers at National Airport can get their runways cleaned off by noon tomorrow huh?