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We Have A Winner!

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P1020064.JPGJust a small delay in getting this posted, but I wanted to do it some justice. This past Saturday was the annual Pinewood Derby race for Will’s Cub Scout pack, and Will wanted a more competitive car. So we went with a more traditional car shape and worked together to create something that we hoped would be competitive.

To be honest, it was more competitive than I ever figured.

Will won his race against his Bear den. Well, there are only 2 Cubs in his Bear den, so the competition wasn’t too stiff. (Although the other Cub took second overall last year.) That win got Will pumped.

P1020091.JPGBut it also meant he got to go against the winners in the other 3 dens. His first race was against the winner from the Webelos den, and it was a photo finish. (You can see this race, as well as every other race, in the video below.) The Scouts manning the finish line actually thought Will had won, but the electronic eye said otherwise. (And slowing down the video at home shows that as well.)

But Will won the consolation round race and got into a final run for the top 3. It was close, but he could only pull out a 3rd place finish. (The car he essentially tied earlier won the overall title.) So somehow, Will and his mechanically-ungifted* Dad had constructed a top 3 Pinewood Derby racing car.

Who knew?

*If you need further evidence of my ungiftedness, just consider that the night before the race, I split the wood in 2 separate places, trying to install the wheels, causing one of the pieces to completely break off. And another wheel was first installed to almost rub against the car — it was installed not too straight. Luckily, the kids were asleep and I was in the garage, so the words I chose to use during those 45 minutes were not heard. (And Crazy Glue helped put it back together without the damage being too noticeable.)

I don’t know how we’ll top it next year. There are definitely some lessons learned on putting it together, and we’ll see what style Will wants to go with next year. But it sure doesn’t beat the feeling of winning. Wait a minute — I mean I’m sure Will is really proud of winning. (Yeah, that’s what I meant. Ha ha!)

Will's First Flight

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Many in the family have heard the story, but I now have a little time (ahem!) to tell it in video and pictures. Will has actually never been on an airplane, and back in June, he got an impromptu introduction to flying. It wasn’t a standard commercial airplane. No — he was in the passenger seat in a two-seater flown out of the local Hanover County Airport.

The Cub Scout pack was down for a visit with someone who has an airplane at the airport, so they could see the inside of the plane, the hanger where it was stored, and a little about the airport. See the picture below for the pilot and airplane we visited (as we got published in the local town paper). But no flights were planned.

20100811 mech local p503.jpg

But before we got that tour, we discovered that the Young Eagles program was at the airport, offering free, short flights for kids older than 6 (sorry, Sean and Daniel — and they really wanted to go, too). After checking with Will if he wanted to do it, we signed the waivers and got him in line for a flight. And what a flight it was — wind direction made takeoffs to the north the right thing to do, so the flight plan was to head north toward Kings Dominion (about 10 miles away), then turn around and come land from the south. So Will, having been to Kings Dominion just 2 weeks earlier (and his first time there, too), was able to see the park from the air. Of course, he definitely liked seeing the Eiffel Tower.

This is the part where I get mad at myself. We had the camera with us, but I forgot to check battery strength. Oops! We got 1 picture on it before it completely died, so I went to my handy, much-lower-res cameraphone. Oh well, at least we have some pictures and videos. Which unfortunately means I get mad about something else — namely, I accidentally deleted (instead of saved) the video of Will’s plane landing. It was a very smooth landing (pilot was excellent) and I was next to the taxiway, so I was right there. But I messed up in clicking and buttons, and the video was gone. So, instead you just get the takeoff and the taxiing for final park.

So, Will got to be the co-pilot of the plane (he had to sit up front), and he got to see Kings Dominion from the air. That’s really cool. Here are some more pictures from the event at the airport. Sean and Daniel did get to sit in a parked airplane and check things out, so that definitely made them a little happier.


That's So Cool!

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Hey, I know it’s been a while. Work and life in general has been a bit crazy. I may be able to post a few things as I have time. This one was fairly easy to do, so I hope you enjoy it.

This past weekend, Will and I went to a family celebration up in Old Town Alexandria. Before returning home, we took a quick ride up the GW Parkway to get a closer look at the river, and I was able to get into Gravelly Point just north of Reagan National Airport around sunset. The cool thing was not the sunset itself (hidden by the buildings in Crystal City to the west), but with the planes landing right overhead.

Here are a couple of the planes that landed overtop of us. And no Wayne’s World scenes here.

Out Into The Snow

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Well, the snowfall ended about dinnertime last night, though the wind continued to blow. What was the final snowfall? Hard to say, as I didn’t measure last night. But when I went this morning to start shoveling things off, we had over 12 inches on the ground. That’s about the same as the snowstorm in December.

The boys still had some fun stomping through the deeper snow this morning, though it was a bit intimidating at times for Sean and Daniel. It was deep enough to definitely drop some snow down into my boots when I had to wander out into it. The boys and Kellie helped with some of the snow shoveling, though help may be a bit strong of a word for what the twins did. A video in the picture album below shows you how they helped there.


(I’m trying out a new photo album style. This one allows YouTube videos to be played within the slide show. Let me know what you think.)

The sun continues to shine today, even if the temperature is barely above freezing. The driveway, cars, and sidewalk are nicely cleared and melted, but the neighborhood roads still await a plowing. School for tomorrow has already been canceled. This is actually the first canceled school day of the year, as the last snowfall arrived after winter break started. I’m guessing Kellie and I won’t get canceled work days, however.

It's Almost Christmas

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Yup, the kids are really feeling it, too. Even Sean and Daniel are antsy about when Santa is going to get here. They really are itching to know that Santa will be here, even if they really don’t know what to expect. All three of them cannot wait for Christmas to be here.

That’s not to say that they don’t get the religious significance of tomorrow, either. We’ve been reading lots of Christmas story related books, and they know that we are celebrating Jesus’s birthday. (Will’s understanding is a bit deeper, as it should be with an older kid.)

But in honor of their antsyness, I give you this little Sesame Street ditty. Kinda cute, if you can stand Elmo and Cheryl Crow. (And yes, Sesame Street has lots of official short videos on YouTube now. Plenty to distract kids with, if they want to sit in your lap and share some computer time with you.)

The Kids Had Lots Of Fun In The Snow

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I finally got the video and pictures straight from last weekend. After a heavy snowfall on Friday night, we awoke to more snow throughout the morning. But it stopped right before lunchtime, with only scattered snow that afternoon. Sunday morning was brisk, but clear in the sky. And by the afternoon, we started to get some melt on the parts of the road/driveway/sidewalk that had been cleared off.

The pictures cover the full range of the snow. All 3 kids got out on Saturday before lunchtime, but Sean and Daniel napped later in the afternoon when Will and Kellie went out to finish the snowman. Will spent Sunday with Gwama, so our time outside later that afternoon was spent with Sean and Daniel.


As you can see from the pictures above and video below, Sean and Daniel largely confined themselves to the sidewalk. They just didn’t like walking in the deep and uneven snow underfoot. But this afternoon, we got them home before sunset and spent some time outside, and they finally started wandering around in the snow on their own. Sean, in particular, was making fresh snow tracks. And we finally got a toboggan track going that all 3 kids went down a few times. We’ll see if the snow can last until Friday, for a white Christmas.

First Snowfall! Major Snowfall?

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We shall see how significant this winds up. I have lived in Richmond for 10 years, and this is being predicted as possibly the most snow that I will have seen in my time here — 8 to 12 inches. However, I just found this winter storm warning bulletin, as I was writing this entry, and it looks like they’re predicting at least 12 inches.

Dec182009WeatherWarning.jpg

Should be an interesting time. In the meantime, just to give you a sense of how fast it is falling, here’s some video shot an hour after the snow started, and then three hours after it started. The snow was already as thick as it typically gets after just 3 hours. (When it snows here, we usually don’t get much to allow sledding or building snowmen, though we did back in March.) And we’ve probably got another 24+ hours of snowfall ahead of us.

11:45pm update: Heading to bed now. The winter weather advisory now reads 16 to 22 inches for the region. And I only checked 90 minutes ago for the image above. I currently have 7 inches of snow on the front stoop, and it’s been snowing slightly less than 7 hours so far. Yes, this one will be a doozy.

It's Alive!

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Yup, it certainly was the power supply. I got a new supply with an increase in the power rating (not sure how I’ll spec this in the future), swapped it out in less than a half-hour, and voila — a working computer. Power supply swaps are easy, as long as the computer maker gives enough room to get to some of the connectors.

In my case, it was made a little tough by how HP placed the main 20-pin connector on the motherboard behind the drive bay. My big hands didn’t fit in there so well, so I had to pull the panel off the other side of the box, too, to get at it from behind.

But it works now, so I shouldn’t complain. Now, if the computer would just have the energy of my twins as they chant the mantra I want this computer to keep repeating…

The bouncing came from when they were watching a 70s music retrospective on PBS in our bedroom and decided they liked the phrase and could jump to the music.

Let me apologize for the quality of the video. This was taken with my cellphone, so frame rates were a bit slow and the mic wasn’t positioned well. Also, Sean was sitting in my lap. But I got an impromptu concert from the boys this evening that I didn’t think you’d want to miss.

Enjoy.

Inventing New Sports

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We present — footbowl…

Kellie broke out the plastic bowling set this morning for Sean and Daniel. And they were excited about it. And proceeded to show us that we haven’t been doing it right all these years.

I don’t think we’ll take them to a real set of lanes any time soon, as kicking those balls would probably hurt just a tiny bit.

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