Tonight, Bennett came over and Berit's friend, Bridey, and we all played games. First we played Attack Uno, which Bennett gave to Rowan for her birthday, and then we the kids played the State Geography game while Bennett, Pam, and I played Quiddler. We celebrated New York New Year with noise makers and bubbly.

Yesterday, we all went sledding - it was a blast until I let Rowan go down on the really fast inflatable thing and she ended up going backwards over a big jump, flipping over a kid, and really hurting herself - not injuring, but basically spoiling the rest of the sledding for her as she just layed there in pain. I felt pretty bad about that.

It's been almost two months since I've posted anything here. I'm going to try to do better than that, and I'll start with this video of Griffin singing "Grandma Got Runover By a Reindeer." (We had a blast with Mimi and Papa George here!)

We went to the CU - Missouri game last weekend - CU got pummeled, but we still had fun cheering for the Buffs in a packed stadium! I explained football to the kids. The best part came later though when Rowan wanted to throw the football with me.

After a Halloween party at a friend's house, Berit went trick-or-treating with friends in an adjoining neighborhood, while Pam and I walked around with Rowan and Griffin who were Speed-TrickorTreating.

Sure they said "trick or treat" and "thank you" at each house, but when the transaction was completed, they bolted as fast as they could to the next house, barrelling over any small ghosts, goblins, or spidermans that got in their way.

What can I say? Time is candy.

In Griffin's class, they're keeping track on the calendar how long until Halloween, so Griffin is giving me the daily update. First thing he says to me this morning is, "Six days until Halloween, Daddy!"

Rowan got the part of Tigger in her RMTK production of Winnie the Pooh. I took her out to pizza to celebrate. She's also been really into reading THE MAGIC TREEHOUSE books lately. Tonight she finished Book 4 (Pirates) in one sitting - I think this was a first.

Berit showed me the dance she is learning in her dance class tonight - it's fairly extensive and it blows my mind that she can remember (much less actually do) this sequence of steps.

Pam took Griffin out of school today to Chautauqua with his buddies, Sully and Alex. Evidently they were running through the woods, and Griffin messed his face up in some branches. I should get a chance to take a picture. He and I had THE BEST hike this past weekend up in Vail - 3 hours on that Tigawon Trail we went on with Mom and Dad. It was a blast - we ran down the trail together, played on the rocks in the middle of what I assume is Gore Creek, and observed all sorts of cool nature.

"Our family is special, you know why? Because Doctor Papa is a doctor, and that's special. And Magic Papa does magic, and that's cool." - Rowan

This morning at the bus stop while a couple of other siblings screamed and fought with each other, Berit and Rowan sat on the sidewalk, each of them absorbed in their books (Berit in Nancy Drew, Rowan in The Magic Treehouse). Griffin sat quietly between them just talking to me. I was so proud (it was my turn - sometimes I'm the parent of the fighting children).

Berit's friend Kiki just called and they are in Webkinz, their online world... with their online pets. You laugh... but online pets don't poo the carpet or scratch up the furniture.

Berit just finished reading a copy of Mary Poppins Opens the Door that belonged to Pam and before that belonged to Pam's Mom! Inside the front cover is inscribed, "Merry Christmas to Martha from Mimi, 1943."

Now she's reading a copy "Nancy Drew: The Quest of the Missing Map," that was Pam's when she was a little girl.

We all had such a blast with Mimi and Papa George here!!!

ANIMOTO VIDEO : SUMMER 2007

Griffin sings "Seven Days of the Week"

So I bring home some stuff that I’ve designed from work – brochures, etc – so I can show the kids what Daddy’s doing all day long, and one of the things is a wallet-card, sort of an informational card that we give to our customers – looks like a credit card.

Well, Griffin thinks this is kind of cool and asks if he can keep it, which makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

The next day, I come home and Griffin and the neighbor boys, Ford and Sully, are really interested in something in the yard. In fact, Griffin comes running over to me and says, “Daddy – you have to come see the frog skull!”

I walk on over to check it out, and it’s not a frog skull at all. It’s actually the rotting, maggot-infested carcass of a dead frog. Also, Sully is standing there holding the card that Griffin was so interested in the day before. Evidently, Griffin traded it to Sully for the frog skull.

First Day of School!

Up in Vail this past weekend, we're in shops because I'm searching for a hat to keep the sun off of my dome. This one shop has a bin of ski hats for cheap and Griffin's trying them on. He grabs one, pulls it onto his head, and says, "I like this one, Daddy."

"Let's see," I tell him, and with his knit hat pulled over his surfer hair, he turns to me, strikes a rapper pose, and says simply, "Yo."

Needless to say, we bought him the hat.

Berit and Rowan have spent this week in a short theater camp. They both have big roles and songs to sing, and the performance is tomorrow. Should be a lot of fun.

Berit, by the way, is almost finished with Harry Potter 5. And when I say "almost finished" I mean she has fewer than 300 pages to go. Well, it is a 900 page book.

Rowan is really into me reading Harry Potter 1 to her right now. I'm into it too.

Was throwing the baseball with Griffin tonight, and you know he's actually catching it when he tries! He's definitely not as scared of it as he was, and he's certainly not as scared of it as Rowan still is, especially since I accidentally hit her with it once.

Harry Potter for President campaign and the "Potter Weasley 08" Stickers that go with it!

Griffin was mad at me last night because I made him come in and get ready for bed without seeing his "thing" first, so first thing this morning he showed it to me... he worked very hard on it evidently.

Rowan was on a Brownie campout this weekend up at a Brownie family's log house in the foothills. They went on nature hikes and horseback riding. I joined her up there in time for dinner Saturday night. We sang campfire songs, ate S'mores, and Rowan and I slept under the stars in sleeping bags on the deck (nobody could camp in the woods as originally planned because of the bear siting there).

Berit had a softball game last night and two double headers in the middle of 95 degree heat today. She has done so great - really improved this season! She's a great first baseman (basegirl)!

Griffin: "We were trying to get a spider out of the milkbox but couldn't get it. So to slow it down, we cut off its legs."

Pam and I of course responded in horror to this (I had to stifle a laugh), to which Griffin justified that they didn't cut off all of its legs... just two of them.

Oh yeah - Rowan scored a goal today at her final soccer game this season. We already owe her beignets from last week. :)

Rowan: "If you lose all your blood, you'll be flat... flat like paper."

Rowan also told me what is the first "A duck walks into a bar" joke that I've heard from my own kids. It goes like this...

A duck walks into a bar and asks for grapes.
"This is a bar. We don't have grapes," says the owner.
The duck goes back to the bar the next day and asks for grapes, and gets the same response. This goes on until eventually the owner tells the duck that if he comes in and asks for grapes one more time he'll nail the duck's hands and feet to the floor (I skirted mentioning the duck's significant lack of hands or feet).
So the duck walks into the bar and asks if they have nails.
"No," says the owner.
"Then do you have grapes?" asks the duck. :)

Tonight at her softball game, Berit was a star! She did a fantastic job pitching - struck a couple girls out, and she got two or three outs as the first baseman (basegirl) too. I took her out to dinner at Wahoo's afterwards and got her a new mitt (which she needed anyway) and some cleats (she needed those too).

At the game, Griffin and I played a little catch on the sidelines. He's just starting to warm up to the idea of catch. I haven't convinced Rowan yet, though she'll probably give in once she sees both her brother and sister playing. She used to be pretty strong with a football when she was about four or five years old.

Griffin has seen the "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop" commercial (I wasn't even aware that was still around) and has decided to find out. Today.

Rowan is actually really enjoying piano now. I was just upstairs listening to her play (and playing with her), and she was taking one of her favorite songs and transposing the notes from the left hand to the right hand and vice versa. Genius.

We took a family adventure hike (after Boulder's Shortest Saint Patrick's Day Parade) up on Dakota Ridge. Pam had taken Rowan and Griffin up there in the previous days, and so they continued a dragon adventure game they had already started.

There were ogres and dragons, and the kids all had magic swords (long sticks) that Griffin had found which gave them magic powers.

Berit had the power of moving large objects (boulders) with her mind.
Bridey had the power of speaking to dragons, specifically Eragon, who guided them.
Rowan had the power of seeing into the future.
Griffin had the power of speaking really really loudly.

At various intervals the kids would all thrust their sticks together in the air and exclaim, "All for good, and one for all!!"

Towards the end of the hike, after the game was actually over and they'd even gotten rid of their sticks, Rowan's legs hurt and she was sitting down crying and confessing to me that she actually didn't like her power - seeing into the future - that it was Berit's idea that she have that power, and that she wasn't actually even very good at it. It was distressing for her.

Today, Berit and Griffin and I went on a "bus adventure." It was a beautiful day, so we walked to a bus stop not far from our house and grabbed a bus from Lafayette into Boulder where we walked over to the YMCA and went swimming for about an hour. Then food at Whole Foods, after which Pam and Rowan rendez-voused with us to spend the rest of the adventure at the playground.

Griffin is very advanced.

Berit's pinhole camera photos:

Thursday night is the science fair at Berit and Rowan's school. Both of the girls did great with their projects, learned a lot and had fun.

Rowan picked a project about natural dyes. She took cabbage, red onion skins, and cherries and boiled and mashed them until the dye seaped into the water in the pot, and she dyed some cotton strips to see which of them made the best dyes.

Berit made a pinhole camera out of an oatmeal can and took some pictures. That, in itself, was pretty cool. But then we went to the darkroom rental place to develop them, and we ended up getting a 2 hour lesson in how to develop black and white paper in the dark room. It was fascinating, and Berit ended up doing all of her own work there. I swear to you I could drop her off at the darkroom tomorrow with some more photographic paper to develop and she could do it all on her own. Ask her how.

On the way home last night, Rowan and Berit are in the back of the van whispering about something so I suspiciously ask them to tell me what it's all about. Rowan says, "Oh, we're just talking about which boys like Berit," at which I really perk my ears up, meanwhile Berit's denying it all along.

Turns out they're whispering because Rowan snagged an extra brownie from the party we were at which they are attempting to share without my knowledge. Rowan is actually just throwing me off the scent.

Tonight, Rowan had some kind of reaction to something perhaps. She started hyper-ventilating, teeth chattering, and saying she couldn't breathe. There were no other symptoms - no fever or closed throat. After several minutes, she calmed down and seemed to be fine. We don't know if it was the expired Benadryl from 1999 that Pam gave her that cured her or not.

This afternoon, I asked Berit to read one of those Magic Treehouse books to Griffin though Merit was still here and she got mad and burst into tears. Naturally, I over-reacted in kind, as I am wont to do, and told her that I do a lot of things for her that I don't necessarily want to do at the time, and then I grabbed the pinhole camera that I've been building with her for her science fair project and the photographic paper I bought for her today and thrust it at her telling her that she could do her own damn project.

God, I want to be the Buddha so badly , but when it comes to parenting I am so freaking far away from that it's depressing to me.

Of course, I had to make amends, not only to Berit but also to my amazingly empathic daughter Rowan, who was in tears over me being so mean.

This morning there were lots of girls in the house as Berit and Rowan both had friends sleep over, so Griffin and I escaped to breakfast in Boulder at the Village Coffee Shop, followed by used bookstore (I very recently turned him on to the Magic Treehouse books and he can't get enough) and swimming at the YMCA. Twas a great adventure.

Rowan thinks my job is cool :) She said that she wants to be a web designer when she grows up. I told her that we could make her a web page.

Berit's been practicing her Cockney accent for The Wind in the Willows which she is performing with the Peanut Butter Players Lunch Theatre. She's a stoat, among other things.

Last night as I was lying down to sleep with Griffin he asked me, "When people die Daddy, are they still able to think?"

I told him that I wasn't sure but that some people believed so. He was lost in thought for a while, and I fell asleep.