Happy birthday, Leann

Here's Katie celebrating, I think, at Leann's 4th birthday party a few weeks ago. It was at the Little Gym right between Belmont and San Mateo. Katie had a fabulous time.

Great restaurant and food photos

Another Slashfood tidbit combining two things we love: restaurants and photography. Check out the Back of the House series of black and white photos by photojournalist Michael Harlan Turkell. Wow.

Japanese food art

The Japanese have always placed a premium on food presentation. Compare the number of times you've marvelled at the presentation of a plate of sushi or even the understated elegance of a simple bento box lunch.

Put a smile on your face with two Japanese websites featured on the Slashfood blog this morning. The kids insisted on see all the variants of both the sushi art and hot dog art (sponored by Nippon Ham) sites.

Fedora thinks the most amusing thing about the hot dog art site is that they show you -- origami style -- how you can make each of the featured creations.

Badgers invade Kenya

OK, given the enthusiastic fan base behind both the lions and tigers only in Kenya video and the dancing badgers, I suppose it was inevitable that they would come together.

Reminder: screen the Kenya video before showing it to your kids.

Kenya -- from the folks who brought you the badgers

My coworker DJ found a cute video produced by the folks who brought you Badger Badger Badger.  It features an adorable dancing tiger and lion in a mock promotional video for visiting Kenya. It’s got all the hallmarks of the badgers: amusing dancing animals and an addictive soundtrack.

Katie now asks, “how do you get to Kenya?” and “can we go sometime, daddy?”  

Warning: screen the video before showing it to your kids. There’s a scene or two that you may find objectionable. My kids can’t read yet, so it’s not a big deal for us. And I explained to them that the zebra was “sleeping”.  You’ll see what I mean when you get there.

Another way to keep up with blogs

The raging battle between Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft is making life great for us. Witness Google Earth vs. Microsoft Earth, Google Mail versus the new Yahoo Mail, and now My Google versus My Microsoft.

My Yahoo is the current king of personalized start pages due to the vast amounts of content you can aggregate onto your home page. But it's a pain to manage all that content: in other words, it's a bit tedious to find, add, and organize the layout of your page.

But both Microsoft and Google are using new Web technology called AJAX to make it much easier to change the look and feel of your home page (with drag and drop, pop up frames, sidebars, and other user interace tricks). Give them a whirl:

• My Google
• Microsoft Start (yes, it's a Microsoft thing, though you'd think they were trying to hide that fact!)
  

Both Google and Microsoft are also making it much easier to add RSS feeds (read: blog postings) to your personalized page. Here's a screen shot of the Start page with a couple of familiar blogs on it.



You can do the same thing with Google too, though I've run into a few technical problems where it claims that the feeds are temporarily unavailable. I don't think it's quite a convenient as blog postings showing up like email, but it has its own merits.

On the one hand, these sites are just easy ways of choosing and organizing the stuff we want to see. On the other hand, I actually think we are looking at the beginning of the end for traditional newspapers (and maybe printed magazines as well). The days of professional editors choosing our content for us are numbered, replaced by us choosing our own content sources.

Now that's funny!

We can pretty reliably coax Cameron into a grin , though it does take some effort. But it's worth it! He's coming up to 8 weeks. Wow, it's going fast!

Maybe this early grinning is to compensate for our more, um, sober child Colin. We don't remember him smiling until he was 1, though he must have smiled before that. We just don't remember it being a common occurrence.

Amazing digital photos

I stumbled across this fantastic digital photo of a cross in Iceland. I'm always astounded by what really good photographers can do with their cameras. Especially since we actually had a junior version (the Canon Digital Rebel) of the camera he used (the Canon 300D) for a while before deciding it was too bulky to be practical for us.

At any rate, if you haven't seen the network of special interest blogs assembled Weblogs Inc., they are worth checking out. I was browsing their digital photography blog when I stumbled across that picture. Other Weblogs Inc. blogs I subscribe to:

• Autoblog -- all about cars
  
• Download Squad -- software and Web technology
  
• Engadget -- gadgets for nerds (sensing a theme yet?)
• HD Beat -- coverage on the HDTV marketplace to supplement Ivan's blog
• Digital Photography
• Google and Yahoo -- because most of the innovative technology for consumers is coming from these guys rather than Microsoft
• Slashfood -- all about food, of course!
• PVRWire -- all about Tivo and other personal video recorders

They've also got blogs on design, video games, digital music, digital video, magazine design, health topics, business topics (including mortgages), and many more.

Cameron, we think, is learning to grin. Unfortunately, you can't quite see it in this picture, but he is just about to bust out into a grin. Of course, it might just be an optical illusion or a reaction to gas. But we like to think he's grinning at us.

Ready to go to church

Katie's always liked dressing up, but Colin hasn't -- at least until recently. Here he is in an outfit of his own design for going to church.

A lovely housewarming

Dairian, a high school classmate of mine, threw a housewarming for what I can only describe as the Ultimate Bachelor Pad. It's a beautifully decorated place in South San Francisco with custom furniture, unique artwork, and a plasma TV. If we win the lottery, we're going to need the name of his interior decorator. :-)

Housewarming food

Dairian had fantastic finger foods for his housewarming. The kids, naturally, were big fans. Katie pulled the prosciutto off the cantaloupe and had alternating bites of "fruit" and "lunch meat".

The Chin clan

Our photographer last weekened at Picture People did a great job getting everyone posed and looking at the camera. Even Cameron looks like he's looking right at the camera and almost grinning. Happy anniversary, mom and dad!

Amusingly, Colin insisted on wearing a tie, so I had to put one on to match (though you can't see that in this picture.)

The zoo

Katie and her new preschool classmates lounge around on what looks like a giant bronze hippo. We think Katie's clutching a cheese stick, one of her fave-rave foods du jour.

Thanks to Auntie Grace and the other preschool moms for sheperding Katie around!

Cameron and Good Luck Bear

Cameron's filling out nicely, and he's starting to recover from his first bout with baby acne. I think he's looking more and more like Colin, though some have said he looks a great deal like my dad as well. We'll be guessing a lot as he goes through his major-change-every-week phase.

The boys

Clowning around at home...

Like kids in a candy store

OK, you can use this picture as your stock photo illustrating the "kids in a candy store" point. Here are Colin and Katie in an actual candy store at Stonestown while we waited for our pictures to be printed.

Waiting for our portraits to be taken

Fedora's parents celebrated their ruby anniversary recently. Yup: that's 40 years! Congratulations to mom and dad on this fantastic milestone that few couples get to these days.

We celebrated with them at a dinner banquet on Saturday at Ming's Diner in the sunset. Staye tuned for the review. We enjoyed a vegetarian Chinese-style banquet with all manner of artfully done fake meats and seafoods -- amazing what you can do with soy!). Today, we also took an extended family portrait at the Picture People in the city.

Here's Colin as we wait for the photographer. Grandma brought hot dog buns (one of those strange but delicious Chinese-takes-on-an-American-food-item), which turned out to be a stroke of genius -- the snack was just the thing to keep our kids cooperative for the photo shoot.

Surprisingly, my dad wants a turn too...

Ah gong (my dad) gets into the bottle feeding act too.

Me too! Me too!

Katie wanted in on the bottle feeding fun. Though I'm not sure Cameron got much through her efforts. Cameron wants the bottle at just the right angle, and it'll be a few more months before Katie masters the technique. But she gets an A for effort!

My mom cracks the bottle feeding case

I've tried bottle feeding Cameron a few times, but to no avail. Leave it to my mom to figure it out. Here's the first successful bottle feeding. You'll see how everyone wanted to get in on the action in the next few pictures.

Badger-mania continues

Katie has become an even bigger fan of Badger Badger Badger. She's now hip to all three versions we've been able to find:

• The version she calls "the original"
• The football (soccer) version
  
• And our family's fave-rave, the bananaphone version

If you stick your arms out parallel to the ground and do a few knee bends, you'll get Katie to crack up, do the dance with you, or usually both. She's also struggling to sing along with the bananaphone song, but it's pretty speedy and has a few long words ("interactive-odular" being my personal favorite).

Colin's a fan too, but more of the closet kind. He won't usually rush to the computer and demand to see them, but we have overhead him singing the bananaphone song to himself.

I didn't know bananaphone was a Raffi song until I found the Wikipedia entry yesterday. But now that I know, it makes perfect sense. (Since we were introduced to the speedy version first, the Raffi original seems oh-so-slow.)

Lest you think the only badger fans are preschool-age children, I've actually used the badgers to kick off brainstomring meetings at work. It helps people get into the right frame of mind.

And lest you think we've gone off the deep end, I invite you to click here to confirm that we are, by comparison, only the mildest of fans. Badgerbadgerbadger...mushroom, mushroom...snake, it's a snake!

Blogging for Disaster Relief Day

Blogger Andy Carvin has declared today International Blogging For Disaster Relief Day, in which he asks bloggers around the world to take a break from their usual blog content to post something constructive about disaster relief.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the tens of thousands devastated by the hurricane. We pray that God would even use even this tragedy to encourage, ennoble, and strengthen his people.

We don't watch much news on television these days, so what we do know about Katrina we get on the radio (mostly NPR) and on the Web. Even without video footage, the stories of the desparate refugees waiting for help have touched us deeply.

Having said that, I'm tired of hearing about the government's bungled response to the crisis. This is not meant to be a partisan or even a political comment (I'm a registered independent). It just seems like 99% of the coverage is about how the president or this cabinet head or this department messed up. How about some stories about unsung heroes and people who sacrificed their own comfort and safety to help others? How about more stories about how churches, private groups, and non-govermental organizations are helping? It's easier for a reporter to find some politican willing to take a potshot at a rival politican or political party than it is to find an uplifting story unfolding on the ground. But that doesn't make it right.

Of course I don't want the media to whitewash over the profound suffering that is happening. But why does the lead-in to that story need to be about the government?

OK, off my soapbox.

Of course, it is up to all of us -- failed government response or not -- to help our brothers and sisters in need. Here are a few links:

• http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
• http://neworleans.craigslist.org/about/help/katrina_cl.html
• http://hurricaid.com/

Also, here's an email my pastor sent to the church family this morning. It contains some links to organizations he recommends donating to:

Dear Church Family:

Many of you have been moved with the horrific tragedy of the hurricane. Many of you have been wondering how you can contribute to organizations that are bringing direct aid to those affected. We will be taking a love offering on Sunday that will go to the victims of the hurricane. In this email, I have enclosed a notice from Les Lofquist, Exec. Director of the IFCA. The IFCA will be raising money to help an IFCA conference center in Louisiana that is housing over 200 evacuees from New Orleans. There will be more coming and the need for food, water and supplies to sustain them is vital. I am recommending we can help this ministry which also has pastors there encouraging the victims at this time.

I have also listed other Christian organizations following Les' notice recommended by Back to the Bible (thanks Karen). KFAX also has a recommendation following that. Of course, Red Cross and other reputable agencies can use donations too.

Pray for the victims. We know of people who have lost everything. This Sunday we will address the aspect of suffering.

In Him,
Steve

FROM: LES LOFQUIST, IFCA International EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
RE: IFCA HURRICANE RELIEF FUND

In these past days we have all witnessed the devastation left behind as Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast states. The images from the news reports have been heart-breaking.

Numbers of our pastors have inquired with us here in the IFCA International Home Office and asked how they can help. I have discussed the situation with Jerry Smith, President of the Board of IFCA International. Jerry's first pastorate was in Reeves, Louisiana and he retains many friendships with the pastors and churches in the areas hit hardest by Katrina. Jerry's advice has been most helpful to those of us on the IFCA Benevolence Committee.

We have established the IFCA Hurricane Relief Fund and are requesting that our churches give generously to help our brothers and sisters in Louisiana. We encourage you to take up a love offering as soon as possible and send your gifts to IFCA International (P.O. Box 810, Grandville, MI 49468). We in turn will send the offerings to IFCA member organization Bible Conferences and Missions of Reeves, LA. This organization is involved in church planting and leadership training all throughout Louisiana and the Gulf region of Texas. They also operate a Camp and Conference Center (Camp Pearl) where they currently house quite a number of displaced families from Katrina. Their Director is Don Barrett and he reports that the camp is providing housing for over 200 evacuees from New Orleans and they expect that number to continue to rise in the next couple of days.

The IFCA Benevolence Committee will ultimately oversee all the money received for the Hurricane Relief Fund. Our brothers with Bible Conferences and Missions will provide the local oversight for the way the funds are used. They are currently investigating all the IFCA churches in their region in order to assess the needs and how to best meet those needs.

This tragic event is still unfolding. We do not know everything at this time. But we do know that our brothers and sisters in the Gulf States need our help, and we know that an IFCA member organization is doing everything possible to provide immediate relief. We also know they will begin to make plans for longer-range efforts, with IFCA President of the Board Jerry Smith providing helpful counsel and the IFCA Benevolence Committee providing necessary oversight. But first they need immediate help.

Please pray for our brothers and sisters in the Gulf States and give generously as soon as possible!

In Christ,

Les Lofquist
IFCA International Executive Director

Back to the Bible ministry that received funds after Tsunami, is not equipped to help directly in this disaster but recommends the following Christian organizations:

Christian Aid Ministries -- www.christianaid.org
Food for the Hungry -- www.fh.org
International Aid -- www.internationalaid.org
Operation Blessing -- www.ob.org
Salvation Army -- www.salvationarmy.org
Samaritan’s Purse -- www.samaritanspurse.org
Water Missions International -- www.watermissions.org
KFAX radio is also encouraging funds through Feed the Children -- www.feedthechildren.org

Trial run

Here's the family getting ready to set out for Colin's trial hour at kindergarten earlier this week. When Fedora goes, she either has to Baby Bjorn the little one and walk with the other two (which takes longer), or she pushes the other two in the double stroller (which is quite a workout on those hills). Luckily, she's only had to go once this week.

I'm going to try and go as often as my work schedule permits -- it's perfect exercise in the morning. :-)

The stare down

Here are they boys giving each other the ol' stare down.

We actually feel quite blessed that both Colin and Katie had adjusted so well to Cameron joining the family. They seem to genuinely love their little baby brother. Sometimes when Cameron starts crying, I'll ask them to go visit him. Then one or both of them will trot over and try to calm Cameron down: "don't cry, baby...I'm here to play with you." Sometimes, Cameron will even oblige them and stop crying long enough to give them, yup, you guessed it, a stare down. :-)

First day of school

This morning was Colin’s first full day of kindergarten. (There was a trial hour yesterday, so that didn't really count.) We walked to school together this morning. He seemed quite anxious to get there, so between his jogging and my brisk pace, we got there in just about 10 minutes.

I was a little nervous that Colin would have separation anxiety (flashing back to a few difficult episodes with Sunday school). But I was needlessly worried, as he barely remembered to give me a hug and a kiss before dashing through the door when it opened—without so much as a backwards glance. He must have been one of the first kids into the classroom (perhaps he inherited Fedora’s genes for punctuality?).

Sniff. My little boy is growing up.

It was fun walking to school with a few neighbors. There was even a crossing guard at the intersection. Despite the overcast skies, the mood was festive as moms, dad, grandparents, nannies, and the students marched towards the beginning of a new school year.

As is typical (he was this way with preschool too), the boy couldn’t tell me what happened at school. But when my dad asked if he enjoyed school, he said yes. Looks like all he faithfully absorbed all those books we read to him about how fun school is!