Old friends

Christmas is the time to see old friends. We were blessed to have Rob and Jen come over to catch up. Aidan learned a new game called "Crash" which goes:

• Touch a piece of paper Colin has taped to the ceiling (since he can reach the ceiling when he's on the top bunk).
• Fall down.
• Say "crash".

Aidan found this hilarious and repeated at least a dozen times and would have gone longer had we let him.

On a related note, Aidan's vocabulary is growing leaps and bounds. Compared to when I visited him a few weeks ago in Philly, he's definitely saying more words. Watching kids learn language is such the blessing.

Katie the pom pom girl...

...err, make that the cheerleader.

Two conversations that show how the kids are growing fast

Conversation 1 (with Colin)

Colin: I had pizza with Jeremy last night.

Me: What kind?

Colin: Combination. I did not like the olives.

Me: When daddy was a little boy, he did not like olives either. But he likes olives now. (Here is where I expect Colin to say something about how we likes pepperonia or Hawaiian pizza or to reiterate that he does not like olives.)

Colin: That is because grown up taste buds are different from kids taste buds. You also do not like sugary snacks.

Conversation 2 (with Katie)

Me: Katie, did you like the Disney Princess backpack you got for Christmas?

Katie: Yes! It's what I've always wanted so I can go to kindergarten.

Mom: Katie also got pom poms.

Me: Wow, Katie, you can be a pom-pom girl!

Katie: No, daddy, you mean I can be a cheerleader.

Me (chagrined): Oh. Right. You can be a cheerleader.

Lego Star Wars II

Colin and I have been enjoying a very creative computer game called Lego Stars II by LucasArts. I would love to be artistic enough to work there (or at Pixar), but since I am woefully deficient in that department, I'll have to settle for playing the great games they produce.

The game traces the same story line as the original three films (aka "the good ones") and allow you to play as Lego versions of all the movie characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and so on. The characters solve puzzles, blast bad guys, and amass studs (Lego currency, naturally).

One of the features I like about the game is that it requires collaboration: there are things that the characters need to do together (i.e., simultaneously or relying on unique abilities in their partner) to advance.

Like Sesame Street, it also features enough tongue-in-cheek humor that both adults and kids can enjoy the game together. For example, Darth Vader waves and grins at the escaping Millennium Falcon as it flees the Death Star, and one of the ways Chewbacca can attack the enemy is by literally dismembering their Lego arms (that sounds more violent than it is on screen).

At any rate, Colin loves the game, the other two children love watching. It's so good I bought another game pad controller so we could each have one because trying to control things from the keyboard was getting in the way. Highly recommended!

Mmmmm....pizookie...

As you can see, you have to eat fast since the hot cookie-cake-crust thing on the bottom melts the ice cream quickly...

Dinner at BJ's

For Christmas dinner, we celebrated with the traditional Chicago-style deep dish pizza at BJ's. OK, so it's not so traditional, but it was a big hit with the kids. Here are the boys hamming it up in the lobby while we're waiting for our pizza. If you go to BJ's, try the pizookie. Yummy! (You can read my Yelp review here.)

Hugs!

Hugs for everyone -- except Cameron, who is now too squirmy to pose for pictures like this.

Christmas Eve

Another great afternoon at the grandparents...

The two Katies

The two Katies perform a carefully controlled experiment on centrifugal force at the BFAM holiday party. Or is the centripatel force? It's too been a little too long since AP physics...

Big hugs for the two collaborators

Experiments safely concluded, the two collabotaors finish up with big hugs...

Stormtroopers ina box

Here are the two Imperial stormtroopers Colin and Ryan and their sidekick Carmeon in a, um, box. Or maybe a pretend freight elevator? On second thought, maybe that's Cameron the elite emporer guard dressed in scarlet.

Katie gives a big thumbs up...

...for the BFAM Christmas Party dinner, which included teriyaki beef and a bucket of fried chicken. Mmmmm...just right for our little self-declared "meat machine."

Yum...berries!

We know 'tis not the season for summer berries, and we're normally fans of locally grown produce. But we couldn't resist getting blackberries and blueberries from New Zealand for Cameron, the world's biggest fan of berries.

We suspect that he thinks grapes are actually overgrown, purple blueberries. :-)

Don't laugh, at least my ears are warm

It's gotten a mite chilly out here, but that doesn't stop the kids from wanting to play outside. So the operating principle is "better to be a fashion disaster" than stuck inside!

Tech note addendum to the post below

For those of you embedding Flash animations on your blog (like the one below), I discovered that you can resize the Flash by editing the object width and height parameters when you copy the HTML code into your blog entry. The original animation was way too big because its width was 600 pixels. By editing the width value to 425, it just fits. If you want the object centered more accurately, I think 400 pixels is just about right. Adobe takes care of dynamically resizing the animation to fit. Cool.

(Apologies if this was already quite obvious to you.)

Very interesting dynamic map

I'm a big fan of Edward Tufte's books on communicating visually. This interactive map, which I found via Digg, uses some of Tufte's visual communication techniques and adds a time dimension to illustrate the growth (and retreat) of a few of the world's most popular religions. Fascinating!

Katie and NFL Football

Here's a conversation Katie and I had as we worked on Christmas cards together (she added address label s and stamps to the envelopes). We had the Sunday night game between San Diego and Kansas City on:

Katie: Oh, San Diego? We went to San Diego for Colin's birthday!

Me: Yes, Katie. San Diego's football team is playing tonight.

Katie: Which color is San Diego?

Me: The team wearing the blue uniforms with the lighting bolts on their helmets.

Katie: Oh, then they are the most powerful football team.

Me: Because of the lighting bolts on their helmet.

Katie (emphatically): Yes, because they have the most power.

Blogger Beta

BTW, we just upgraded to the new Blogger Beta. They made a few small changes to the template (like a smaller font) and made it easier to add things to your blog template (the content on the right side). While Google still doesn't give you as much control over the look and feel of the overall page, they have given you the ability to add lists of links without editing HTML, a long overdue enhancement. Farewell, hand-edited HTML!

Note: converting to the new template system will blow away your old HTML edits, so you'll have to recreate your links.

More Christmas lights

Funky light effect which I didn't really mean but decided to share anyway. :-) 

Oooh: pretty lights

Psychedelic shot -- can you guess of what? 

Christmas lights in the neighborhood

For our mid-week special adventure, I took Colin and Katie on a tour of the Christmas light displays in the neighborhood. They loved all of the displays from the simple to the elaborate, but I think this was their favorite: the light-up reindeer which moved its head from side-to-side.

"Make the reindeer talk", Katie demanded. 

All done with the tree

The kids relax after the hard work of festooning the tree with their ornaments. 

Time for the Christmas tree

The kids had a great time putting up the Christmas tree this year. They decorated with ornaments (which Katie called "or-tu-ments") they've made (and collected) over the years.

Colin put up the star at the top after we read about the stars that guided the wise men to the infant Jesus. (Katie wanted to but couldn't quite reach, even after she got a big boost from daddy who was himself standing on a stool -- maybe next year.)