Alex's Holiday TV Appearance

Alex is in the 3rd-6th grade choir this year and they went to a local TV station and were recorded singing a song that aired after a newscast. They had been practicing with a piano, but found out when they got there that they had no piano in the studio.  They sang it a capella for the first time and did pretty well.  The TV station has made it available online at

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/video?id=6516614

if you want to check it out.  Look for him in the lower left of the screen at 37 seconds into the clip.

Catch Up On September's Blog Posts

In a post-NaNoWriMo writing frenzy I'm caught up on September's blog posts.  Pardon my tardiness.  Please catch up here. We did a lot in October.  You wouldn't know it from the dearth of posts.  I will fix that soon as well.

Fall 2008 Swim Meet

Today the boys participated in their first joint swim meet.  Aaron is not on the swim team yet, but had progressed in his private lessons to the point where he could swim the entire 25m pool with both a freestyle stroke and the back stroke.  There was another little girl there his age and so they swam the heats together.  Aaron came in second and earned his first 2 swim meet ribbons for finishing second in both heats.  Alex swam in 7 events and earned ribbons for each of them.  Since there are kids of different ages and skill levels on the swim team, everyone who swims in the heat gets a a ribbon.  The top three finishers get 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in "Division I", the next three get their respective ribbons in "Division II", and so forth.  Alex's best finish was 3rd place in Division I in the individual 100m medley where he had to do one length of the pool with each stroke (freestyle, backstroke, butterfly, and breast stroke) one after the other.  They got pizza afterwards which all the kids loved.  Way to go guys!

NaNoWriMo Fail

I'm writing this about 4 hours before the deadline is up, but I know what's coming.  I'm more than 18,300 words into a novel and I am loving the mental exercise.  I had hoped to reach 50,000 words by midnight tonight to meet the NaNoWriMo challenge, but I realized a couple of weeks ago that wasn't going to happen.  I found out a few things though. Trying to write 50,000 words in a month takes up all your free time.  I felt like I was neglecting time with my family, which I seem to get very little time with as it is anymore.  I missed watching TV, one of my guilty pleasures.  I got behind on several other projects that vied for my free time.  The biggest problem though, was that the pace was too much for my creative process.  Writing that fast got the words out of my head, but I wasn't always satisfied with what came out.  I found myself editing as I went.  I wanted my first draft to be well thought out, though by its very nature a first draft isn't supposed to be a final draft.  I realized that most of what I write, letters to other doctors, blog posts, etc., is already in final draft form.  That made the NaNoWriMo experience unsatisfying.  I am however, grateful that they got me started on what is shaping up to be a very bleak, but cathartic novel.  I don't want to give to much away about it yet, but I do want all of your opinions after I come up with a draft that I am satisfied with.  I decided to post an excerpt here.

He reflexively snapped his biosensor bracelet back on and waited for the gray surface to change to green. He didn't like the idea of the bracelet at first, but he'd come to accept it as a necessary part of life now. They all had. He didn't even register the faint prick of the sampling needles. They were so small, he had trouble finding them in the housing when had taken one apart. He probably wouldn't have if he hadn't inadvertently laid out the pieces on some black cloth that Ruby was using to make him a suit for her sister's wedding. Clothing from Mexico and China was so cheap nowadays that he thought it was quaint that she made so many of their clothes. Nevertheless, she was unhappy to find a bracelet disassembled on that cloth on her table. He was fascinated by how things worked and frequently wrecked them to find out. Reassembly is always much harder. The sensor chip in the bracelet was truly amazing. On a chip one centimeter square were thousands of DNA or RNA sequences of as many diseases, mostly infectious, a few cancerous. The bracelet sampled body fluid from the skin on the wrist at intervals set by the wearer. John's and the kids' bracelets sampled twice an hour. He had tried to get Ruby to do the same, but she hated the whole idea. She had compromised and agreed to sample once a day, in the middle of the night. He often found himself laying awake at 3AM, and more than once had not been able to help himself from watching as her bracelet tested her. There was no way he could even think about going to back to sleep until it glowed green.

August Blog Posts Completed

During some downtime at Alex's school while we were waiting on him to get back from his field trip, I was able to finish out August's blog posts.  Please see this post from earlier this month to get caught up on the Montana trip. To catch up on the entire month, including back to school festivities and some cool shot from the pool, please come check it out here.

For those of you following along, I've got over 18,000 words completed on my novel.  While this is amazing, I know now that it won't be completed by the end of the month.  I've got major plot points outlined, and I plan to complete it, but it is great to have some of my free time back.  I'm thankful to NaNoWriMo for getting me started.  It will be interesting to see how far I take this.  If I like it, I may try to get it published.  Mainly because I think a little bit of rejection now and again will keep me humble.

Aaron Qualifies for the Swim Meet

I just found out that Aaron has qualified for the swim team's swim meet coming up in a couple of weeks.  He's been getting private lessons but has not been practicing with the swim team like Alex has.  He qualified by swimming the length of the pool (25m) doing the freestyle and then back the other way using the backstroke.  He'll compete against the othe beginning swimmers in those 2 events in 2 weeks. Congratulations Aaron!

Montana Blog Posts completed

Now that I found out I can crank out prose at an accelerated rate (I'm at Chapter 10 with 17,277 words under my belt), I decided to complete the last two Montana bog posts this morning. I decided not to write a post about the pain in the backside we experienced trying to get back from Montana on United and Alex's assertion that Chicago O'Hare Int'l Airport is "not that big" as we hauled ourselves through 4 different concourses to get on a plane bound for Detroit. If you've missed any and want to read about our adventures in order, here they are:

Montana Vacation - Day 1 - No Bags, No Rental Car, Beautiful Scenery

Montana Vacation - Day 2 - Yellowstone National Park

Montana Vacation - Day 3 - Moose Baby and Scenic Lift

Montana Vacation - Day 4 - Gallatin River and Soccer

Montana Vacation - Day 5 - Nature Hike and Craft Day

Montana Vacation - Day 6 - Heading to Big Sky Resort

Montana Vacation - Day 7 - Swimming, BBQ, and Wolves

Montana Vacation - Day 8 - Junior Yellowstone Rangers

Montana Vacation - Day 9 - Wilderness Survival & Jeopardy

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month and I've decided to tackle writing my first book this month.  The goal is to complete 50,000 words of a novel by the end of the month.  I'm behind on my pace, at just over 8,000 words, but I'm going to keep at it.  As such, I am going to drop further behind in my blogging.  I will catch up.  I plan to make my novel available to anyone who wants to read it. If I think it any good, I may try to get it published.  But for now, don't expect to see much here until December.  Until then, wish me luck.  If you want to check out the web site that started it all, go to nanowrimo.org.

Building Leaf Presses

Today's Home Depot craft was pretty easy to put together.  We assembled layers of wood and bolts to build a couple of leaf presses. 

The boys each had a little bit of hammering to do to nail the bolt supports to the presses.

Now we need to go find some fallen leaves to collect and press.

Halloween 2008

Becky helped with Aaron's class Halloween party and was able to get this shot of the kids in their costumes on the steps of the Wolfe Gallery.  Needless to say they enjoyed the party more than the posing.  Aaron is in the Mario costume on the far right with an enormous cheesy grin (mozzarella, of course).

I didn't dress up for work today, but when  we went out for trick or treating with the kids, Becky put on her fortune teller outfit she wore at the school party and I felt left out, so I pulled out my Jedi Costume from last year.  Makes for a great Christmas letter picture.

The boys were more polite than ever and scored lots of candy.  Many of the grownups we saw loved the boys' costumes.  Houses that also had puppies were a bonus for Aaron.

 

All in all a fun day (and night).  Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Racing

Becky thought of cool thing for the Bear Scouts to do today.  They each decorated a small pumpkin and then went out onto the big sledding hill behind the school and raced them by rolling them down the hill.  It sounds like a sure recipe for pumpkin gut explosions, but none of their pumpkins busted.  The scouts all loved it.  I expect this may become a yearly tradition.

Miakonda Halloween 2008

We brought the Mario Bros to Miakonda again for a Trick-or Treat experience run by the area Boy Scouts.  They went from cabin to cabin and played a game or survived a haunted house to get their candy.  They always end up with more loot from here than they get on Halloween in our neighborhood, which is part of the reason that they like to come.  The other reason is that it is a lot of fun.

During a snack break in the Council Lodge, Becky tried on Aaron's hat - prettty cute!

We ended the afternoon with a haunted hayride through the forest surrounding the camp.  Lots of scary guys jumping out at us, but we weren't afraid.  We had the Mario Brothers to thow fireballs at them if it got too hairy.

Mario Bros Drumming in the Cemetery

Aaron and Alex debuted this year's Halloween costumes at a cemetery bash set up by my medical assistant, BJ.  She sets up a spooky cemetery in her front yard every year to enhance her neighborhood and this year she had a fun party to kick off the season.  It was a cold night, but the boys were reasonably warm in their chosen costumes.  As you can see, they are still very much into the Super Mario Brothers - Luigi and Mario.  This year Aaron got to be Mario and Alex chose Luigi because he's taller.  They worked out this pose almost organically whenever we asked them to pose for a combo shot.  BJ made the little sign between them that reads "SUPER MARIO BROS IN PERSON".  We also got to enjoy snacks and cider and a small fire inside a cauldron on their driveway, which helped with the cold.

Her daughter came over and played the drums while she sang the witches' song from "Hocus Pocus".  The boys each took a turn at the drums.

To anyone passing by, it had to be a little surreal - The Mario Bros rocking out on drums in a cemetery.

Making Deals at CEC

We had a family night at the kids favorite "restaurant" - Chuck E. Cheese's.  Aaron and Becky are seen here enjoying a new ride that has you recline in the seat, then a video screen shows you blasting your jet pack through multiple environments in a first person point of view.  The seat vibrates and bounces with the action on the screen - actually quite fun.

He then helped me with the Deal or No Deal ticket game.  We got 40 tickets - very respectable.

Becky however made a bad deal and ended up with only 2.  It's OK honey, only 1 token will buy you another chance. [fist bump]

Pumpkin Decorating Frenzy

Tonight we all gathered at the school for an hour of furious pumpkin decorating.  The feedback from previous parties was that they had been too long.  I'm sure no one complained about that tonight.  They was no time to really carve several pumpkins, though becky did do a little of that. She hollowed hers out, then cut out several flourished football shapes.  She stuck cat's-eye marbles into the center of the cutouts to look like numerous eyes looking out from the pumpkin - very cool.

The rest of us painted and decorated our pumpkins with stickers.  This is Aaron's and it is a bit of a mish-mash.  The striking feature is all of the flowers scattered around the edges, but that is snow on top and blood in the bottom center.  Creepy on many levels.

Alex went for a tiger-stripe pattern all the way around. I believe that he did paint the non-black stripes orange.  Don't ask why.  We don't know. :)

I painted a scary vampire on one side of mine, but balanced it out with this cheerful stencil on the other side.  Happy Halloween!

Western Movement Sendoff

Today the entire Lower Intermediate (3rd & 4th graders) started their Western Movement unit.  This will teach them about the journey that settlers took as they traveled from Missouri to Oregon.  Each of them took on the role of a settler to experience the journey from their perspective - like writing journal entries about the trip from the point of view of their character.

Alex is a middle aged farmer with a wife and 2 kids.  Today they were encouraged to dress the part and they had a big pancake breakfast in the gym as a sendoff for their "journey".  The mayor of the town they started from (Lower School Head Mr. Baker) gave a speech to encourage them on their way.  Several of the moms, including Becky, came in to help with the breakfast and to wish them well on their journey.

They took the opportunity to get a group photo while they were all in costume.  Alex is front and center.  Happy Trails!

Scouting For Food

Pack 90 asked the other students and families at school to bring in food donations for local food pantries.  The response was great, exceeding their expectations.  People even kept donating more food after the deadline.  This may become a yearly tradition.

Building Firetrucks Near A Firetruck

Today's Home Depot Kids' Workshop was held outdoors as they had a fun fair set up in the parking lot to make people aware of fire safety.  The boys got to build firetrucks, right next to...

...large Toledo City firetrucks.  They had a trailer set up to simulate a 2 story home and taught the kids how to get out of a burning house, complete with fake smoke.

Grammy had come into town for Grandparent's Day at school yesterday with the boys at school.  She took the picture up top of the four of us crafting at Home Depot, and paused for a snuggle photo here.

Popcorn In The Basement

This is the view of one corner of our basement to give you a taste of what it looks like to store multiple cases of Scout popcorn for our pack.  The kids are already looking forward to getting their playspace back.

Family Miakonda Campout

Today the whole family came out to Camp Miakonda for an overnight campout.  Two other Bear scouts from Alex's den came with their families also.  They had multiple stations set up to showcase speed - real race cars on the parade ground to check out, bottle rockets made by hooking 2-liter bottles to air compressors, archery and of course...

...the obstacle course.  Aaron was so tickled to be able to come along.  He really loved the "big kids" obstacle course, tackling it 4 times while we were here, and doing quite well. 

Another neat thing we did was learn how to make fire with twine, steel wool and a 9v battery.  We made a nest by unraveling the twine, then loosened up a ball of steel wool into the center of it.  Then when you touch the battery terminals to the steel wool, it heats up hot enough to ignite the twine nest.

That night it dipped down below 40 degrees.  We toughed it out in our small instatents, two to a tent, layered up in warm clothes.  While we're proud of ourselves for making it through the cold night, we're not looking forward to doing that again any time soon.

Race For The Cure 2008

Today we participated in the 2008 Northwest Ohio Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in downtown Toledo.  This year was surprisingly harder than last year, even though the pain of losing Melinda was so raw back then.  MAybe that was what was different.  I was so energized back then, but afterwards, the depression of living without her really set in.  I stopped exercising regularly until late this Spring, too late to have any hope of entering the Metroparks 5K which usually sets the tone for my final 2-3 months of training.  I did put in some raod miles this year which helped, but I was not as ready as I was last year.  This year for the first time, Becky, Alex, and Aaron decided to walk the entire 5K course instead of the shorter 1 mile course they had done with Aaron in a stroller in the past.  The morning was cool, but sunny.  This was a great day for Becky to wear the pink ribbon sun hat her mom had made her.  You can also see one of the pink ribbon pins they made that I blogged about earlier.

I ran the race almost the entire way.  Near the end my feet were getting painfully numb and I had to stop running for 5 minutes and just walk it.  I picked up the pace when I could feel my feet again, and was running when I crossed the finish line at 45:02.75, much slower than last year's pace. This year the race course looped on itself in such a way that I could go quickly from the finish line to the halfway mark and catch up with my Becky and the kids who were walking the entire course. I was able to finish their leg with them (and carry Aaron on my shoulders for part of it) which was a real treat.

Even the police horse got into the spirit with some pink bunny ears.  There were over 18,000 official participants this year.  While I know I could've done better, I was so proud of my family for going the extra mile (or two) this year.

Sitting in Sam's Lap

There is a bench on the school campus with a statue of Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) relaxing on it. After Scouts today, the boys took the opportunity to pose on it, with Aaron sitting on Sam's lap.

Junior NASA Astronauts 9/23

Grammy Hardage found these cool junior astronaut outfits with real NASA logos for the boys.  They come with helmets whose visors open and close and have astronaut sound effects. They got space boots that fit their feet.  I love how Alex has his serious astronaut face on, while Aaron is as pleased as punch.

They each got NASA backpacks that the outfits fit into when they're not playing with them.  They also got NASA caps that you're seeing the back of there.  Thank you Grammy!

Show-n-sell Bass Pro 9/20

This year we were much more on the ball with fundraising popcorn sales for Alex's Cub Scout pack.  Becky preordered a LOT of popcorn yesterday, most of which is now either in or soon will be down in our basement.  This allows us to fill people's orders within a few days, rather than a few weeks.  It also allowed us to participate in Show-n-Sells.  This is where we hangout at the exit of a store asking everyone that comes out if they'd like to buy some Scout popcorn.  Becky got one of the first spots lined up at the new Bass Pro Shops in nearby Rossford.

For four hours we stood in the sun (OK, we brought a beach umbrella) and tried to cajole people who had already spent money inside the store to buy a little more.

A big highlight was the Corn Hat.  The boys took turns wearing the corn hat which actually got us noticed.  I think a few people even offered to buy the hat (not for sale).

We even got free sample popcorn from the area Scout Council that we made ahead of time and portioned into paper cups for the boys to pass out in front of the store.  This also got us some business.  We did better than we expected we would, but we also took a lot of popcorn home.  We got a lot of participation from the kids and parents.  The store was running a scavenger hunt that day, so we took the boys in shifts to try their hand at winning Bass Pro swag.

Tiger Den

This is Pack 90's Tiger Cub den in their best tiger pose. Laurie is the mom of one of the Tiger Cub scouts and agreed to be the Tiger Cub Den Leader. This makes our Pack 90 member count up to 12 from the 6 we had last year.

Baby Hat

Becky crocheted this cute baby hat for a friend who is having her first daughter. Very cute.