Video Killed the Radio Star

Remember the mid '80s when those first commercially distributed home video cameras hit the shelves? Hot diggity those were cool...14 pounds of camera and battery precariously balanced on your right shoulder and a 3-pack of VHS tapes each the size of the family bible in the bag on your left shoulder. Those were the days. Cameras are sooooooo much more convenient in the new millennium. Thank you Jesus. Just a month or so ago Matt came home toting a cute little Flip.



It's the size of a smart phone...think Samsung Blackjack. It's all kinds of digital, point and shoot, flip-out-the-USB arm-and-plug-it-in goodness. And so, we have officially become home video nightmare parents once again. In Jaden's early life we shot gadzoodles of hours of extraordinarily exciting and fast paced video. There were movies of him laying on his tummy kicking his feet, and on his back kicking his feet, and best of all, in the SWING kicking his feet!! I'm pretty sure we once captured a priceless shot of him spitting up. And kicking his feet.

But we have evolved people! We now shoot gadzoodles of hours of the kids running up and down the field chasing the soccer ball! And kicking their feet! Get it? Nevermind. The point of all this is to share a couple of videos with you because my boys are super cute and I think you should see them. But don't worry. New camera technology also means new video editing software thus sparing you, the innocent viewer, many hours of utter boredom. Roll tape!

First we have 2 vids of cute boys tearing up the soccer field and scoring goals...







And then we have a short vid of Matt's little bro Justin and the boys on the trampoline. Justin jumps for a living. Literally. He performs in a Cirque du Soleil show and Jaden thinks this is seriously cool so he asked Uncle Justin to come hang out while he was in town. He obliged and spent some time today coaching the boys and showing them a few things. The boys were in heaven and would've kept Uncle Justin here indefinitely if they could've!




Now, our backyard trampoline significantly limited Justin in what he could show the boys, so, if you have a few minutes, click here on Justin's Cool Job and see what he does for real! It's a clip from La Nouba, the show he's in, and is amazing to watch. This specific clip shows at least a couple of the roles he's had...check it out. It's worth it!

Trekking the RHC

I love the Ranching Heritage Center. Yes. I really do. And not so much for it's cultural and educational potential, which is vast and no doubt amazing, but rather for it's wide open outdoorsiness and relative emptiness at 10 a.m. on any given Wednesday. Can you think of better conditions for letting little boys be little boys?? My big kid doesn't need this so much anymore *sniff sniff* but the little one is still very much in that stage. Every once in a while it's so nice to just let him run free and not have to get on to him for every last thing he touches/stomps/kicks/climbs on/licks. Okay. So you'll still find me offering some correction. He is, after all, a 4-year old male..."No you can't go over the gate and touch all the stuff in there. Get down. Now!" and "Don't climb on the hills. The man at the front desk said the snakes will bite your toes." And yes, the man at the front desk really did say that....something about bulls snakes mistaking little feet for ground squirrels and such. It's so nice that the RHC employees put my family's safety first. Or perhaps he was just on to me.















Yep. That's one cute kid. The other one's pretty cute too, but he becomes quite elusive when the camera comes out. I may drag him off to the RHC sometime soon to see if I can catch him unawares...

In other news this week, the boys spent the night with Grandma and Grandpa and so, Matt and I were able to take in a movie! We don't do that very often anymore as it is very nearly financially devastating to buy 2 tickets on a Friday night. Jeez! And don't even THINK about buying popcorn and Cokes. You have to sign over your firstborn child for that luxury. But I digress. My point in bringing this up at all is simply to say that Star Trek ROCKS and you should go see it. And then you should mortgage your house for more tickets, sign over kid #2 for more popcorn, and go see it again!!

Live long and prosper my friends. Live long and prosper.

Handy Angie, Smilin' Boys, and Santoneyo (in no particular order)

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there...especially my own amazing momma and momma-in-law. Love you both! I had a most lovely Mother's Day myself if you don't count the 22 minute Grant meltdown on the way to church this morning. I should've just let him wear his stupid boots with his cute little polo and plaid shorts but no. It was MY day and I wanted him to wear the cute little boat shoes. He was in such a tizzy by the time we reached church that it took 3 of us to get him into his Sunday school room. Just call me mom of the year. On a much happier note, however, part of my Mom's Day gift was a VERY rare framed photo of BOTH my boys. Smiling. I know! I can't believe it either.



And now for a random shift in topic....I fixed the garbage disposer all by myself yesterday ! Thank you. Thank you. A week or so ago I stuffed a couple of lemon peels down it but they never would grind up and go away. I assumed one of them was just stuck and that it would eventually dislodge and my life could go back to normal. But alas, the bumpity bumpity clunk clunk clunk continued and I was forced, FORCED, to stick my hand down there and remedy the situation. Ick uck yeck. But it worked. I managed to remove the offending object...and it was not a lemon peel. It was something akin to this.



How boring would my life be without little boys?!

A couple weeks ago we all loaded up and headed to Santoneyo (that's Grant-speak for San Antonio) to visit my cousin Amy and her family. They were gracious enough to let our circus crash at their house and we had a great time! We spent Saturday at Sea World....holy cow. It would take about 2 weeks to walk from one side of that place to the other. But the boys had a fabulous time.

Here's Jaden and Hunter at the waterpark...I really think they would've played in there all day if we'd have let them.






We took in all the shows. Jaden and Hunter sat as front row as they could get trying to get splashed. Grant was happy to sit well OUT of the splash zone.





Here's all of us...Hunter, Buck, Amy, Matt, Angie, Grant and Jaden



On Sunday, at Jaden's request, we headed downtown to the Alamo. And that afternoon my other cousin Stacy and her boys drove up to hang out and swim for a while. Her boys are the same ages as mine by a matter of days! I don't know how Stacy, Amy, and I managed to acquire all these little boys but they are adorable and they all got along famously.





Here's Simon and Stacy...



and Joel...



and Mr. Throw a Fit Over a Pair of Boots...

Come One, Come All!

In case you can't quite make out that delightful scrawl, the sign says:

The clone and anikin vidio!

Plus it has tooting!

and it is not apopreit for ladeys

Obsession

I am turning over a new leaf. As of today, I will no longer neglect my sweet husband and boys over my dual obsessions of scrapbooking and reading. As of today, I am going to start neglecting them for my NEW obsession!! Photoshop! Woo!

I have been frustrated with my pictures in general for the last couple of years. In 2007 we acquired a smokin' hot new camera that upped the quality of my pics considerably, however, something was still missing. Photoshop! Duh! Most of the photos that I admire by other people have been tweaked to some degree or another. So why not mine? And so...a new obsession is born. This program is a whopper. I can forsee many late nights and sore backs from studying and playing with this baby. But my pictures are gonna look fantastic so it'll all be worth it!! Just look at the difference...

This first pic is of my cutie pie nephew, straight up and unedited.



Now here it is after applying the first action...



And here is an action on top of another action...



After messing around for a bit with these pics and a few others, I realized that my originals were all very blue. So, I warmed them up a little and WOW! What a change...this one is my favorite.










This is so great! Just think how excellent my scrapbook pages are gonna look now!!

Uh, about that whole scrapping thing...I never said I was giving it up all together. Just that I wasn't going to neglect my family for it any longer.

But that was probably a lie.

Woo!

Who is this Child?

This afternoon the boys were sitting at the table snacking on their after-school fare and so, not wanting to be left out, I started rummaging through the fridge. Since I'm in the middle of my bi-annual attempt to be healthy, I broke out the broccoli and ranch dressing and started crunching…yay me! The very next moment Jaden is standing next to me asking if he can have some too. Now, this was not actually the astounding part. The astounding part was the fact he'd left his half-eaten chocolate crème Oreo cookie behind to come eat the broccoli!

Wonders never cease.

Wild Ride Days 7-8

The final hours of our epic adventure had arrived. Kyndra and her little one were both sick and feverish by this point so Jaden and I made the trek to Colonial Williamsburg alone. It was a perfect day for exploring Virginia! The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and children were frolicking in the lane. Actually, Jaden was the only frolicking child. Apparently children are supposed to attend school on Wednesdays in February and are not supposed to be gallivanting across the countryside with their mothers. In my defense though, we were in Williamsburg and Jaden's class had been studying Colonial America prior to our gallivanting. Anyway, Williamsburg is a fascinating place full of people in period dress doing period things like making shoes and wigs and such. The main street is even littered with piles of horse manure. How authentic. It turns out, however, that Williamsburg is not a particularly hands-on kind of place. It's more of a look-and-listen kind of place. Did you know that 6-year old boys are not look-and-listen kinds of creatures? Of all the very cool look-and-listen things to see, Jaden's favorite was the open grassy field (where he could play Star Wars) that sat between two historically significant buildings. Oh well. Live and learn. He did perk up a bit after I bought him a wooden pistol from the gift shop. He spent the rest of the outing hopping over horse poop and shooting everyone that walked by.

Oh yeah! I am SO getting me one of these!

The plan after Williamsburg was to drive the 5 miles down the road to Jamestown. I sat in the car for a good 15 minutes considering the sanity of this choice. In the end, I figured we couldn't get this close and NOT go and at least set foot in the birthplace of our country, so off we went. This was a well-rewarded choice and I am to this day kicking myself for not researching this stuff better. Had I done so, I would've known that Jamestown was much more suited to the 6-year old version of 'cool' and we would've spent the majority of our time there instead. The first part of your Jamestown experience is to explore the museum that tells the story of Virginia from pre-history through the time of settlement. That is one excellent museum. There are life size replicas of everything, they pipe 'ambience' through the speakers and there are lots of artifacts from the site. Jaden was able to see an actual hornbook used by schoolchildren of the period (something he learned about in his Colonial America study) and absolutely went into orbit…in a good way. He was so excited to have made this discovery that you'd have thought I told him he could eat ice cream for dinner for the rest of his life! So far so good, and we hadn't even made it outside to the cool stuff yet…

After the museum, you head outside to find more people in period dress doing period things, but THIS time, they all encourage you to pick things up and explore and touch and feel and ask questions and WOW! I almost lost the kid at this point…a spirited little boy is a difficult being to keep up with. At the Powhatan village, all the dwellings were open to explore and full of tools and pottery and more animal pelts than I was comfortable being close to. Jaden touched everything, laid on the beds (ick), ground some corn…I thought he might stop to do a rain dance but he saw the masts of the ships in the harbor first and zing! Off he went again. Only one of the ships was open to tour on that day (Wednesday in February when all the children are supposed to be in school learning, remember?), but J was in heaven…more tools and beds (ick again), cannons and guns, but not quite as many pelts so I felt a little more at ease. And guess what you can see from the top deck of the ship? Yes, the fort, up the hill, in the distance. Zing! The child was off the ship and half way up the path before I could shimmy out of the galley and find the gangplank (colonial age ships were not built to accommodate Amazonian women such as myself). Now, what would a little boy find in a fort that would be of interest? Beds! Of course. Thankfully he was easily distracted from the sleeping arrangements by the sound of gunfire. At the far end of the fort, some little guy in costume was demonstrating the firing of a matchlock musket that was easily twice as long as Jaden himself. Now on to the guardhouse…the glorious building where all the armor, muskets, ammunition, and medieval sticks with pointy ends are held. Yes, I know that 'sticks with pointy ends' is not the proper name but who has time for specifics with so much weaponry to behold?? Then! The woman manning the guardhouse (and yes that's funny…Affirmative Action I suppose) says to us, "Has he tried on the armor yet?" Cue the angelic harmonies and heavenly shaft of light illuminating the plate armor across the courtyard. Zing!!

We were thoroughly exhausted by the time we got back to Kyndras.  J konked out without any trouble and Kyndra and I finally sat down to watch Mamma Mia. We were thrilled to get to finally watch it with each other since the husbands had not been too keen on having to endure it with us.  You can daaaaaaance, you can ji-ive, having the time of your li-i-ife....oooooooo

The next day was loooooong again as we flew home…this time by way of Orlando and Austin. But it was uneventful and well worth it. I can't wait to go back!