My Family Loves It

Ben and the tricky candles!

Heather — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:17:07 +0000

We discovered that trick candles are too much for a new 5 year old after 10pm! Poor Ben, we had just woken him up after he fell asleep coming home from Chuck E Cheese last night, but he couldn’t miss his cake and presents! I probably should have skipped the trick candles and used the sparkler ones BUT …. I went with both. The sparkler ones started to melt and bend over because of the trick ones but they looked neat and were actually “trick” ones too. Ben had been blowing candles out for quite a few minutes before I got the camera and started this video. He was so worn out that he only had a few bites of cake! I’m just so glad they didn’t bring him to tears (he was close at one point before I started filming). The presents cheered him up though! Tomorrow is Ben and Jamie’s roller rink party and I think they both can handle trick candles in the middle of the day….right?

Here are some pre-video pictures:

Ben is FIVE today! Here is the birthday boy on each of his birthdays:...
How To Rotate a Video We’ve been using our point and shoot camera more and...
JAMIE IS THREE! Our little girl turned 3 today! Its tradition to start...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

My Am Darth Vader!

John — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:00:49 +0000

We missed our chance to get a video of Darth Pooh, but here is Jamie doing her Darth Vader impression.

How To Rotate a Video We’ve been using our point and shoot camera more and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Ben is FIVE today!

Heather — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:01:42 +0000

Here is the birthday boy on each of his birthdays:

Baby Ben all 9lbs 10oz of cuteness!

Ben looking like a cupie doll with his first birthday cake!

Grandma got him a big wheel for his 2nd birthday, its pretty worn out now.

Ooh we started a Chuck E Cheese tradition on his 3rd birthday, we’ll be there tonight!

On the 4th birthday we started the cinnamon roll breakfast tradition!

I think 5 candles are the max a cinnamon roll can safely hold! Now we are off to Applebees for a birthday lunch!

JAMIE IS THREE! Our little girl turned 3 today! Its tradition to start...
Ben & Jillian yesterday I love that I got a baby girl version...
Ethan is SIX years old today!!! Boy do babies grow up too fast! 6 years...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Nature Valley Nut Clusters!

Heather — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:35:16 +0000

I like mixing up the snacks my kids eat and I love when I find something new that they like. Nature Valley Nut Clusters and one of the healthier options for kids snacks and they are great adult snacks too. Any nut lover would have to enjoy these crunchy and sweet nut and granola filled clusters! My Blog Spark sent us each of the 4 varieties to try and when the box arrived the kids and I had a fun “taste test”! They all got excited when I told them we could open all 4 bags at once and that they needed to taste them all and tell me their favorite. Jamie and I liked them all and couldn’t decide. Ethan’s favorite was the Roasted Peanut Clusters but he also liked the Roasted Almond and Nut Lovers. Ben liked the Roasted Cashew Nut Clusters the best but he gobbled up the Roasted Peanut and Nut Lovers as well. Ethan didn’t like the Cashew one and Ben didn’t like the Almond because those are nuts they each generally don’t like. It worked out really well that the boys like different ones because there was no fighting over the bags. We had so much fun doing our taste testing and the cluster were such a hit with the kids that the 4 bags were gone in two days!

Besides being really yummy here is why I like this snack:

unlike regular granola, that often has lots of little crumbs, these clusters are easy to pop in your mouth and kids don’t make a mess eating them
they are great for mixing with dried fruits, cereal, seeds and nuts to add variety when you make your own trail mix (I like to make mixes all the time for school snacks)
adults who are trying to watch what they eat can easily portion how many clusters they eat

Snacks are stressing me! The Parent Bloggers Network and Brothers-All-Natural are teaming up to...
Olive Smart Sacks reusable bags and Coupon Code! We have been using reusable grocery bags from Wegmans (our...
Yoplait Yogurt doesn’t last long around here! Win a Kids Yogurt and a Yoplait cooler bag! My kids are really drawn to “kids” yogurt, they...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Jillian

John — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:30:39 +0000

Now that I’ve rediscovered one of our camera lenses, I thought I’d try for some cute pictures of Jillian. I really love this Canon lens. All these pictures were taken using full auto and the built in flash. The only pain is that there is no zoom, it is a fixed lens. So if you want a wider shot you need to backup, and backup. The lens has a pretty narrow field of view. All these were taken from about 4-6 feet away.

Ben & Jillian yesterday I love that I got a baby girl version...
Lots of Cute Jillian pictures! I am very fortunate to have some WONDERFUL friends...
Jillian is Here Jillian was born today at 1pm.� Her official measurements were...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Roller Hockey

John — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:42:05 +0000

The boys had their last roller hockey game of the season last night. I am always amazed by how much kids improve during the course of the season. Ben is skating better and Ethan has decided he loves playing defense and has been making several good plays each game.

We brought our digital SLR and I played around with taking pictures in the terrible lighting at the rink. In the end I found that playing with the manual settings while using our old telephoto lens was no match to using our newer fixed lens. It boils down to having a big, fast lens inorder to capture as much light and detail with a fast shutter speed.

I also took some pictures of the girls. Here’s the full gallery. The lens I liked best was the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens which was used to take the clearest of the action shots and the close ups of the girls. One of these days I’ll have the break down and buy a better telephoto.

Hockey boys! John has been taking the boys to most of...
Wordless Wednesday: 7am Hockey Practice ...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How To Rotate a Video

John — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:16:03 +0000

We’ve been using our point and shoot camera more and more to record video. The short clips are good quality and much easier to manage and share than camcorder recordings. Occassionally, Heather will record a video clip vertically giving us a lovely sideways video. I finally decided to do some homework and found a very easy program for rotating video called Streamclip.

Streamclip is available for both Mac and Windows. To rotate your video, simply open it in Streamclip and then export the file in your desired format. In the options window select a 90 degree rotation in the direction you need AND set the zoom to 75%. This will prevent your video from getting the top and bottom clipped off. The program runs quickly and the end result will be like the video of Ben I posted yesterday.

Here’s a website with a simple tutorial for using Streamclip to rotate a video.

Never Too Tired for Ice Cream Here’s a great video of Ben eating his ice cream…despite...
Chicken Video I’m playing around with the Youtube upload feature of iMovie...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A Little Bit Funny

John — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:45:15 +0000

Last night during our campfire, Jamie said to her uncle:

“You’re funny Alex. Not all the way funny. A little bit funny.”

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Never Too Tired for Ice Cream

John — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:11:53 +0000

Here’s a great video of Ben eating his ice cream…despite being asleep after a long day at the air show.

I’m always impressed with how well kids can keep eating AND getting the spoon in their mouth when they fall asleep like this. Heather accidentally took the video vertically, but I found an easy and free program to rotate it. I’ll post about it tomorrow.

How To Rotate a Video We’ve been using our point and shoot camera more and...
I had it easy when I was just tired! Things have not been going very smoothly since my “tired”...
The Ice Cube Alarm Clock One of my biggest concerns about Ethan starting Kindergarten was...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

We Will Rock You 2

John — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:01:47 +0000

Another video of Jamie singing We Will Rock You.

This all started when I showed the boys a clip from A Knights Tale. They loved the song so I put it on our iPod. They’ve been singing it ever since. Next I’ll have to get a clip of Ethan singing his operatic version.

We Will Rock You What can be cuter than a 2 year old wearing...
Crazy Dave’s Kid Show Marathon The boys love listening to Crazy Dave when they go...
How To Rotate a Video We’ve been using our point and shoot camera more and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.