A Little Mischief
Sunday, 6 March 2005
The following short flick is what you get when you combine a snow day with some much needed mild temperatures. Grab the large version if you have the bandwidth. There is a smaller version for those on dial-up. To view a movie, just click a link. To save the movie to your computer, just right-click or control-click on a link and select "Save Link As..." in the menu that pops up. Of course, the latest version of QuickTime will make actually viewing the movies a lot easier.
19.9 MB, 320x240, 15 fps, MPEG-4 Video, MPEG-4 Audio (Stereo, 44100 Hz), 00:01:12
1.6 MB, 240x180, 12 fps, H.263, QDesign Music 2 (Stereo, 22050 Hz), 00:01:12
Wednesday, 10 November 2004
We haven't posted here in a while so we decided it was time for some updates... with pictures. Click on one of pictures to bring up the full size photo. Enjoy...
First up is Nicholas' first day of kindergarden. He goes to Pittsfield Elementary which is conveniently only a couple of blocks straight down from our house. It's a short 6 min. walk when it's nice enough outside. We originally enrolled him in the afternoon class, but the afternoon class was dropped the Friday before the first day of class and they only offered all day. We thought briefly about taking him to another school that is also fairly close but decided not to because we had been talking up Pittsfield as HIS school all summer and he was very excited to go there. We were concerned that all day would be too much for him but he loves it, and it's been really good for him. It's so odd that our little boy is gone most of the day at school. We can't be that old?
Not to be outdone, Here is Ashlee's first day of three year old preschool. She goes to FUMCN (pronounced fum-kin). It stands for First United Methodist Church Nursery. It's another co-op type preschool right in downtown Ann Arbor. Nick's preschool had to move locations to the other side of town so we found a new school for Ashlee that's closer. It's also less expensive so that's a plus. She doesn't have the anxiety that Nick had when he was three, we just drop her off and away she goes. We could literally just drive up, open the door, and she would be off by herself to school she enjoys it so much.
The second day of Ashlee's preschool was actually preschool day at the Saline Fair. For a small admission fee, kids from area preschools could come in the morning, see the animals and exhibits, then ride all the rides they wanted to from 11 to 1. So we took Nick out of school and we all went for a morning of fun. The only difficulty we had was that Nick wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel first thing (we got there around 9:30 am), and of course the rides didn't open until 11. Here's a picture of Becky and Ashlee from my and Nick's seat almost near the top. The kids really loved all the rides.
Here's Ashlee after a rough bout of coloring. It must of really taken a lot out of her. Coloring is probably her second favorite sport (behind playing with her heard of horses) followed by Play-Dough and playing in Nick's room while he's at school.
And now we come to Ashlee's birthday. She turned 3 during October and we were hoping for a change out of her terrible two attitude to a more calm 3 year old in a twinkling of an eye. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that the instant change occurred. Although she may be less over the top, she still can be very loud and angry at times. She has also developed a very effective pout where she sticks her quivering lower lip out and kind of wimpers. It's causes an instant change in adults from being mad at the little girl to feeling sorry for the poor sad little girl. Of course, her cake had a horse on it. We wouldn't be surprised if she has horse type cakes for the rest of her life.
Finally we come to the Halloween costumes. Woody and Jesse graced our presence almost the whole final week of October. Costumes were provided by Bex Creations as always and they were highly authentic and hand made. Woody and Jesse also rode on their own horses which were provided from Sam's Club. When it was determined that the trusty steeds were actually hindering the intake and accumulation of sugar substances, they were quickly ditched with Mom and Dad. Halloween was very exciting for all of us this year as this was the first year Nick was really in to the whole Halloween thing. Ashlee was apprehensive around anyone that was dressed up and would cling to Mom or Dad. And we also had a few visits from the Mysterious Pumpkin Man. Just don't say that name around Ashlee or she'll go running away in terror...
Sunday, 27 June 2004
I was talking to Pops yesterday on the phone for his birthday (Happy Birthday Grandpa!) and I was trying to explain to him all the different things we've (mostly Becky) done on the house since we moved in almost 5 years ago. We realized that some of the stuff hasn't been shared with everyone. So we figured we'd just put a couple of pics up showing some of the changes so everyone doesn't have to imagine how things turned out. Not everything is included, notably all the trees we had removed from our property, the installation of new windows, and the new front door and screen door Becky and Dennis put in. Also, we didn't include the pictures we already posted of the work we did in Nick's room.
If you are interested, here's the Missing Projects. Enjoy.
Monday, 24 May 2004
Through 2 weeks of on and off severe thunderstorms, winds clocked at 95 mph in Ann Arbor, 2 tornadoes, and a 300 year flood, we've got some more pictures for everyone today. Even though Nick turned 5 last Friday and everyone most likely wants to see pictures of his celebration, we're saving those pictures for later. We celebrated his birthday as normal on the 21st, but we're not having his party with his friends until this Saturday. So we'll hold off on the birthday pictures until next week. In the mean time though, we've put together a photo collection titled Animals, Animals! Ashlee loves all kinds of animals and has no fear when it comes to wanting to pet them. Nick loves his cat and his fish, but he's more reserved towards other animals in general. We recently went to a nearby farm for one of Nick's preschool field trips. And back on the 15th, we drove down to Columbus, Ohio (two and a half hours) to visit with Grandma Anne, Auntie Nat, Uncle Mike, Auntie Becca, and tiny cousin Anna. Anne and Natalie were out from Utah visiting Mike and Becca who live in Kentucky. Columbus was almost exactly half way for all of us. So we all got together at the Columbus Zoo (which we thought was a pretty good zoo) and despite it raining more on than off for most of the day, had a very fun time.
So follow the link to visit Animals, Animals!.
Tuesday, 11 May 2004
For our Mother's Day card for Becky this year, we put together an audio card. There were 3 tracks, one with Jere interviewing Nick & Ash about Mommy, one with Nick interviewing Pops about Mommy, and a song that Nick wrote and recorded himself using GarageBand (without any help mind you). The song was so cool, we decided to share it with everyone.
Click the following link to download Nicholas' Song (MP3, 1.3MB)
Thursday, 29 April 2004
We've posted our Easter pictures. These would have been out sooner but I've spent the past week creating a good XHTML/CSS template that we can reuse everytime we put some pictures up. I think it turned out pretty well. However, because Internet Explorer still has some bugs in it as far as displaying properly formatted code, I would highly suggest you use a modern browser like Firefox, Safari, or Mozilla (see notes page for more info). The pictures will still show up fine in IE, they just won't be properly placed on the page.
Click the following link to see the Easter 2004 pictures.
Sunday, 4 April 2004
A couple of weekends ago Becky set out to paint a sign at the head of Nick's bed as kind of a headboard. It turned out extremely well and Nick loves it. So I put together a couple of pictures documenting the project. Enjoy!
Monday, 29 March 2004
All right. Here's my first trial at composing a tune with GarageBand. What is GarageBand you ask? Well, head over to the GarageBand home page and read up on it. Basically, it's an inexpensive audio production application. So, I just fired up the program, didn't read any directions or anything, and this is what I came up with. Two formats, AAC (better audio, works with iTunes or the latest version of QuickTime) or MP3 (works with most anything) are available. If you're working with OS X, Windows 2000, or Windows XP (and you're running iTunes), download the AAC link. Older systems download the MP3. You may need to control-click or right-click the link and select "Save file..." or "Download link..." if you have trouble downloading the file you want. Feedback, etc. is welcome. Also, if someone wants to write some lyrics, have at it.
Acoustic Smooth.m4a (AAC, 2.2MB)
Acoustic Smooth.mp3 (MP3, 2.2MB)
Sunday, 10 August 2003
Last week Jere took Wednesday through Friday off since it will probably be the last chance he has to take any days off until Thanksgiving or Christmas. So we spent the majority of the time working on Nick's bedroom. It's the one room that we haven't done really any work on since we moved in. So, we've put together a few pictures of our recent project.
Summer 2003
Here's a short slide show of Nick's recent graduation from the 3's preschool class and his birthday fun at Chucky Cheese's.
Next are two movies that were included with the Peanut Butter Sandwich DVD sent to the Grandmas for Mother's Day. One stars Nicholas showing off some Primary prowess by performing Popcorn Popping. The other stars Ashlee playing in an odd place.