A Conversation

Andrew: "Where does Santa Live?"

Daddy: "The North Pole."

Andrew: "Does he make little boys?"

Daddy: "No, he makes toys for little boys. But do you remember? Mommy has a baby brother in her tummy."

Andrew: "OH YEAH!"

Daddy: "What should we name your little brother?"

Andrew: "I already named him. His name is Whitey House."

Daddy: "Do you like that name? What about William or Ethan?"

Andrew: "No, I don't like those names, but I do like Happy Yoshi."

Camera Fun

After complaining enough to KC about our camera we started looking at different models and prices. We gravitated towards the SLR-like digital camera group. They aren't true SLRs since you can't fully remove the lens and they are smaller than an SLR but bigger than a typical point and shoot. The reason I like this class is that they tend to have powerful zooms, larger LCD screens, SLR features like hot shoes and the option of getting lens add-ons.

We settled on the Canon S5 IS after reading reviews checking picture and video samples and finding one on sale at Walmart for 50-100 dollars less than anywhere else. It has a flash hot shoe, you can add a wide angle or a telephoto lens to it and a 12x zoom. It has all the point and shoot features plus advanced camera features and a cool super macro feature.

The one thing we love is that the video quality is comparable to camcorder quality. I can even zoom while recording! The great thing for me is that the video is recorded on a memory card so I can just drag and drop the video onto my computer. EASY!

This was supposed to be a Christmas present for me from KC but since it was on sale and it was the last one we had to get it soon. I couldn't see any reason to let it sit in a box while we had family over for Thanksgiving, so we broke it in yesterday.

KC had the idea, after playing with the features of the camera for a while, to make a movie with the boys using their toys. He thought it would be fun to reenact a scene from The Incredibles. I imagined he and the boys would sort of record a play by following the sound and moving the toys around. Boy was I wrong. He went all movie guy on me and started composing shots and scenes to go exactly with the sound of the clip. The boys got bored after a while, but still watched what we were doing. After they went to bed we loaded the video onto the computer and edited it with Windows Moviemaker. So here's the family spoof on the opening scene of The Incredibles.

The IncrediToys


(if the video doesn't work let me know in the comments, it was working fine for me at first but won't play now.)

Happy Halloween and Why I Now Hate November

So this Halloween Isaac must have really been into the spirit. No fake mummy bandages for him. He wanted it to be authentic so he bumped his head on the coffee table so he'd bleed and need a bandage until it stopped.
Actually it wasn't that bad, I didn't put the bandage on until later after it had already stopped bleeding once. A mummy would have been too "scawee" for him any way.

Both boys were really excited to finally get to wear their costumes and go trick or treating. Andrew had to be Tigger this year. I'm not sure why, but I think he thought if he had the costume he'd be able to bounce on the tail like Tigger does. He was a bit dissapointed that he couldn't really do it, but he still loved being Tigger. Don't call him Tigger though, he will say, "No, I'm Andrew." We asked Isaac a few months ago what he wanted to be and we got, Duckie. Big surprise there, although he hasn't been playing with the duckies as much lately. He refused to try on the costume until the time came, but he always said the the costume was, "Aww, cute." We just loved the tail of the duckling costume, it waddled when he walked. Too funny. I think he'll hate us in 10 years for this. Most of my pictures came out blurry, but here are a couple okay ones. ( I hate my camera now, anyone want to dontate one that is newer than 4 1/2 years old?) This is the first house they visited, see the tail?This is on our porch. The pumpkin on the left was painted by Isaac and the one on the right by Andrew. The other side of Andrew's pumpkin had an "ahhhh, scawee" face.

So October was great. Weather was nice and we had fun. November hasn't been fun yet. I don't like November anymore, well at least the beginning of it. Why? Daylight Savings ends. It used to be so cool, fall back. Yes! Another hour to sleep in! Until I had kids who have amazingly accurate internal clocks, who demand cereal first thing. I bet most moms agree. Get rid of it all together. Why mess with our delicate sleep schedules? I used to not like Spring forward, now with kids I can use that time to have a week where they sleep an hour later, YES! But I'd happily give that up to keep it simple. Maybe I can convince KC to move one more time to Arizona? Hey there's one reason to vote for McCain, he's from a smart state.

Here's one last picture, Isaac really likes the suckers.