New work - name the plane....

Any guesses? I had never heard of it till Kim gifted to me.....

Email me or post a comment with the answer and you'll win something meaningless, probably just bragging rights.

OK. Maybe I will play soccer

Jake reconsiders - after he hears that his friends Keola and Alika are hitting the pitch.

Buh-bye baby seat !

 Jake is totally excited that he's gotten out of the baby seat and into a booster. Over the last few months the only way to keep him happy was to tell him that baby seats had 5 way restraints like race cars....

Jake - "I click in like a RACE CAR? OK !"

We went to Kmart and he picked out a Diego booster seat. While we don't catch much of the adventures of Diego (he's not on PBS - don't tell my kids) Jacob still has a soft spot for him since they share a name Jacob/Diego = Enlgish/Spanish in case you didn't know. Every once in a while Jake even tells us to call him Diego (which was my plan before he was born anyway...at last ! My plan is coming to fruition! BUWAHAHAHAHA!)

Now Lily tries to sit in the Diego seat. Finally Jake has something she wants, but he's cool about and actually let's her. What a guy.

Blues on the Bay

Went to the other side of the island to an air show with the most rabid plane-friends we have, the Brooks'. The kids (Jim and I) had fun and the little boys and girls had a blast as well.

Happy Anniversary Jim and Laurie!

Double thanks to moms/wives to indulging our obsession.

Stay on target......stay on target

In previous generations parents would stress about when to introduce their children to the important things in life: the birds and the bees, mortality, what really happened to dad and why he lives in that big house outside of town with the bars and all those other scary looking men.

Now, generally speaking we can leave a lot of these to the Internet (thanks YouTube!) but there comes a time in any parents life when they need to help their children make an important passage:

When to watch Star Wars for the first time?
And perhaps more importantly, which of the six movies to begin with?
How young is too young?
Can a 6 and 4 year old be expected to handle arms getting hacked off, planets full of people murdered....the whole Luke and Leia thing (shudder).....

These weighty questions were brought into sharp focus in the last couple of weeks because Jacob saw the presents that I had chosen for Jack's birthday party - a Star Wars sticker book and a Darth Vader Halloween candy bucket (super-hyper cool).



(In case you don't remember, Jack is a major SW fan as recounted here from last years party. Plus he's strong enough to pull the ears of a gondark. Jake and I worked on a special SW wrapping paper, which actually wound up in the Lemmonds collection.....but I digress.

The questions started flying fast and furious:

Who is that? Darth Vader.
Is he a good guy? No.
What is that? That's an X-Wing.
What is that? Wookie.
" " " ? C-3PO
" " " ? R2-D2
ad nauseum.....

Well, over the weekend I realized that my anxiety over when to let my children watch a movie that, while arguably the most influential bit of cinema for my generation, was still a movie for kids and that obsessing over it was classic Gen-X nerd foolishness.

I said enough already.

Popcorn. Lights out. Comfy blanket. Stereo loud.....

Episode IV of course.

I couldn't subject them (or myself) to I - III.

They were entranced....

enchanted...

until...

Five minutes left in the movie...Death Star attack...X-Wings ! T.I.E. Fighters ! Darth Vader ! Luke ! What ever happened to Han?

and...

the DVD craps out...

frozen...going nowhere....#&@*#%@ !

"What happens ? ! ? Is Luke OK? What about the Princess?"

I say, well, it's a cliffhanger, you'll find out tomorrow when we get a new disk at Costco.

Putting them to bed that night (we had let them stay up late watching it) I asked both kids, "so what did you think...?"

Lily: Is the princess pretty? Does she like Luke more? Does he love her? Does she like Han?

Jake: I liked the fighting.

Mission Accomplished.

Well mostly. We did get a new DVD the next day and they did learn that Han saves the day, Luke is OK, the Death Star blows up, and that Darth Vader gets away.

Course then Vader has to make that call....poor guy.

I told the kids that everything you need to learn, you can learn from Star Wars. Kim said "He's just kidding"....

Nope.

Lily Evans - Hula Dancer

Since we have a big screen tv, I film in widescreen. But YouTube and iMovie aren't really set up for that. So Lily gets a little tall and skinny, but it's still pretty cute nevertheless.