26 January 2008 1:27 pm
Broken Heart at Four?
Dylan celebrated his fourth birthday last weekend. His birthday was on Friday. He had cupcakes at school. Actually, he ended up having cupcakes at school twice, although he only ate one. The first was with his class after lunch. The second was as initially planned at snack time. Then, we celebrated at home with his traditional Mmmmmmint Chip ice cream cake from "the ice cream store". If you haven't ever tried their ice cream, sign up for their birthday club and you can get a coupon for a free ice cream on your birthday. Saturday, we had a party with many of his friends. Another cake, more presents, and much chaos in our house. Sunday, we had a mini-party with some friends who got confused and had the date wrong. Fortunately, we discovered this when we saw them at church, rather than when they rang our doorbell. Dylan had a blast turning four.
Okay, so maybe it's me with the broken heart at four. Dylan's latest best girl friend is moving. Yesterday was her last day at Dylan's school. Gabrielle is moving to Minneapolis. The upside is that she won't get to drag him into trouble with her. The downside is that he is losing a great friend. She's the one who he has told us that he is "going to live with when I grow up."
I'm still holding out hope for Ellie, Dylan's first love. She was at Dylan's birthday party and wanted to sit next to him during both pizza and cake. We have many pictures of the two of them together over the years. Dylan also agreed to marry Aina "tomorrow" just this week at school. So, I don't think that he'll take too long to recover from the departure of Gabrielle.
Just for the record, I'm not ready for Dylan to start dating in earnest. Perhaps by the time he's twenty-four. Or thirty-four. Or maybe forty-four.
Speaking of numbers, Dylan had his four-year-old well check this week. And he got the shots that he'll need for kindergarten; that isn't until fall 2009. Dylan weighs 40 lbs and is 41 1/2" (3' 5 1/2") tall, which puts him at about the 75th percentile for both. The nurse actually calculated his BMI, which was okay. Dylan had his blood pressure taken again on this visit. Overall, a clean bill of health.
21 January 2008 9:45 pm
Andrea Swimming
Andrea still has a blast at her swim lessons at the YMCA. Oma was visiting this weekend and took some short video clips on her camera. Here's a short video compilation of about 30 seconds of the 30 minute class. Andrea is first jumping of the side of the pool, then jumping off the platform in the pool, and finally just swimming a bit.
This was my first attempt at using iMovie '08. Well, the first successful attempt. It was extremely frustrating getting started, as it did not seem nearly as intuitive as the old iMovie. It still seems a bit clunky. I was not able to do exactly what I wanted to, but it's close enough. On the upside, here are a few new features that look like they'll be nice to have, such as cropping and rotating video. Also, the integration with iPhoto makes accessing video much easier.
7 January 2008 9:47 pm
1 January 2008 9:58 pm
Summer Vacation Photos
Happy New Year!
And happy browsing through our photos from our summer vacation of 2007. Yes, that was last year, but there are 235 photos after deleting quite a few duplicates and sub-par ones. If you want to get started, here's the Summer Vacation 2007 Album. Yes, there are eight index pages. For those who don't want to browse them all, here are some quick links to photos from various activities:
- Mom's Birthday Celebration at Home
- Our Trip to the Zoo
- Mom's Birthday Dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse
- Playing at Grandma and Grandpa's House
- Visit to the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park
- Papa & GG with the Kids at Oma and Opa's
- Visit to Green Lakes State Park
- Miniature Golf at Shephard Links
- More Photos at Oma and Opa's, including at Caz Lake
- Visit to the MOST
- Back at Grandma and Grandpa's
- The Syracuse Chiefs Game
Looking back at the number of things that we did, it makes a lot more sense that we have so many pictures. I hope you enjoy browsing.
1 January 2008 8:56 pm
Sledding
Today, we went sledding on the big hill in downtown Naperville. We weren't there for too long, but it was fun. Geoff purchased a new green saucer sled for Dylan, which was very well received. The two of them took the first couple of trips down the hill together on that, while Andrea and I went down on our blue plastic sled.
It wasn't clear whether Andrea enjoyed herself or not. I sprayed her with some snow on the first time down. I was trying to remember how to steer the sled and also to slow it down. Unfortunately, the snow sprayed up right in our faces with my attempts. On the second time down the hill, I heard a few faint "mama"s, so decided that she and I would sit out the next trip. It was nice to be able to capture a couple of pictures of Geoff and Dylan's next descent. Andrea and I went back up the hill and she was clear that she didn't want to go down again. She was content just watching the people at the top and being held most of the time.
Dylan had three solo trips down the hill, for which Geoff followed close behind in the other sled. Not surprisingly, Dylan and Andrea both took good naps today.
So, I was thinking about the last time that I went sledding, and I am pretty sure it was spring break of freshman year of college. I went to the sledding hill in Liverpool, near Taft Road and Buckley Road, with at least Sarah, Ken, and Ajay. Actually, the only one that I am 100% sure was there was Ken, as that may have been the last time that I saw him... I do keep up occasionally on his whereabouts by perusing his blog or his wife's blog. With Ajay, I occasionally exchange email, from which I learned this news about his business, Saatwic Foods. Most of the time, I end up hearing about Sarah through our mothers; they don't have hyperlinks yet.
