Christmas 2013

Kanuga and Thanksgiving 2013

Late November had us on consecutive trips to North Carolina for a church retreat and to Arkansas for Thanksgiving at the cabin in Arkansas. Here are some highlights of both.

New Years Eve

Recent John Video

Philosophy 101

The video orientation is just for you, Patrick.

After Dinner Mag

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Airplane Love

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MLK Community Service

Just getting around to posting this... Carter and Thomas participated in a service project with Thomas' work on MLK day. Check out this short video where they appear several times!

Valentine's Dance Party

Carter and I had a private Valentine's dance party. I took the video below of Carter doing his thing. You really want to watch the whole thing. You are welcome.



After arriving home from Boise (more on Thomas and Carter's ski trip another day) after midnight the night before, Thomas had a 6:40am flight to NYC on Valentines' day. It was just a day trip, so he made it home in time for our traditional (11 years running, as best we can figure) Valentine's dinner, but he missed the dancing.

Double artichokes this year. Double the healthy in our once-a-year otherwise-fried feast.

Holiday Performances

Experience the boys' holiday performances in under 40 seconds. Carter's is a performance of his after school music program at our town's annual marshmallow roast and Santa visit. He is on the far left in the back row. John is is front and center at his daycare performance.

John at 16 months

Here's a little video of John. It's sort of a day in the life. Except I didn't get any tantrums on camera. And those certainly happen.

Why John May Never Walk Alone

In honor of John's birthday, I put together a short, un-fancy montage of a few recent videos of him. (Yes, the videos I did for Carter were much better, back when I had more time on my hands. Sorry, kid.).

The last clip illustrates why John may never walk alone...

John at 6 Months

At six months, John is (within a very small margin of error) the exact same length and weight that Carter was at six months: 29.25 inches and 17.5 pounds.

Here are some recent video clips of John!

Chatterbox

John, at about 2.5 months.

Every Day Sing

Carter goes to a music program after school. It's a really neat concept: the kids get time for recreation and snacks, but they also get private and group music lessons and do other creative activities. The school's philosophy is essentially that music instruction should be comprehensive and holistic. 


Carter is getting private piano lessons, and he has group classes in things like Notation (music literacy), Animation, Rhythm, and a class they call Every Day Sing, where they, well, sing. Every day. Last week, they had an open house where they shared some of the songs they've been learning so far this year. 


Carter is in the first row, on the far right in jeans and a black shirt. I'd like to state, for the record, that he sings these songs at home all the time. Loudly, even. But... well, you'll see. (Click the bottom right of the video to expand to full screen).

Pumpkin Patch

Our pumpkin patch gets more fun every year!

Pre-K Graduation

Friday was Carter's graduation from Pre-K. They had a whole program including a procession, displays of knowledge such as counting to thirty in English and French, spelling the numbers o-n-e through t-e-n, and performance art (or recited poetry). Finally they had the diploma presentation.

As Elizabeth was out of town unfortunately, I was instructed to take lots of photos. Due to my proximity to Carter (very far away), his proximity to a very sunny back lit window (very close), and my apparently very shaky hand with the zoom on our little digital camera, I got very few good pictures. What I did do was take video of Carter's part of the presentation.

This video is as much for E as anyone else, note I think it is the first video I have ever edited. I did get editing assistance and advice from the aforementioned E, so now I know why Director's Cuts exist. "If you're going to have a hit, then you got to make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05..." (extra credit if you know this reference).

Enjoy.






UPDATE for mobile readers: The video appears to be restricted from mobile devices (I assume due to copyright issues with the music I used), but it works on desktops so I encourage you to watch it from one, I think it's worth it. Thanks, T.

New Year's Eve

We had 10 adults and 4 kids for a fun new year's eve at our house. As per usual, only the kids' fun got documented (but that's probably better on New Year's, right?).

Christmas 2009

Here is a short (~2 minute) video of Carter's Christmas morning, followed by a few snapshots of the day. We somehow managed to get virtually no photos of any of the adults present. But the kids are cuter anyway!

What Santa brought

Fun goo that Carter got in his stocking (took less than 8 hours for Thomas to lose it with the goo and throw it out!)

Carter's pile o' presents (not as bad as it looks... i even wrapped up socks and underwear because he like to open presents so much)

Carter's awesome play tent from Aunt Linda

In my new boots, his new jeans, his new t-shirt (covered with his new pajama top) and toting the beloved spiderman umbrella (took him less than 5 hours to break said umbrella, but T managed to put it back together)

Hangin' with Anna

Sammy is not as excited to be held by Carter as Carter is to hold Sammy...

Christmas Pajamas

My family always had a tradition of opening one present each on Christmas Eve. And that present was always new pajamas. Last year, I got Carter and Thomas matching pajamas, which Carter LOVED. He still makes Thomas wear his whenever Carter puts his on. My only issue with Christmas pajamas is that I don't want them to necessarily be Christmas-y. I want to be able to wear them year round. So, this year, I went a slightly different route and got all three of us coordinating, but decidedly non-Christmas-y, pajamas. We did a short video of the pajamas for you.