Here’s another little animated memory surfaced by Google Photos, this time starring 3-month-old Finnster. 🙂
Categories
Category: Photos
Categories
Throwback Thursday: Dancing with Uncle Ted
Five-month-old Finn was one wiggly figure. 🙂
Following our trip to the aviation museum, I drove the dudes to Half Moon Bay’s famous pumpkin patches. It’s something we’d wanted to do for years, but traffic horror stories kept us from chancing it. This year, though, with Mom-O in Seattle for the weekend, I figured, hey, I’m going to be on the hook for keeping these guys safe & entertained, so why not do so while they’re physically restrained? 🙂
I had fun filling the boys with sugar, then letting them burn if off by dead-lifting giant pumpkins & wheeling them around. Back at the ranch we applied kitchen knives, crowbars, and shovels to the pumpkin-carving process—and somehow no one lost a digit!
Check out the gallery from our adventure, and see also the crazy high-speed “hyperlapse” video below.
Last weekend the dudes & I checked out the Hiller Aviation Museum’s Haunted Hangar event, featuring a witch dropping a pumpkin from a helicopter! We enjoyed a little scavenger hunt & some craft-making before the signature event. Check out the gallery plus this video of the drop:
[YouTube]
Categories
Happy Hen-o-ween!
Stay tuned for fun & ghoulish pics. 🙂
Categories
No Escape from the Caution Tape
You know that thing where you’re enjoying an ostensibly quiet Saturday afternoon on the couch, and then one kid comes inside insisting that you close your eyes, take his hand, and follow him outside to see what he’s done to his brother? Yeah, I know that thing. 🙂
Categories
Haircut Hooligans
Kids these days, with their crazy long hair…!
The dudes implored me not to take them for haircuts last weekend so that they could really do up their ‘dos for this past Friday’s Crazy Hair Day at school. Check out Mom-O’s fun styling job:
Categories
Costume Party!
This year, the boys came up with the idea of throwing a costume party prior to Halloween. They even came up with games and ideas for party activities all by themselves! We invited lots of family and school friends over to party. We had a station for making “mummy hands,” which were clear plastic gloves filled with popcorn and candy corn for fingernails. We played Pin the Spider to the Spider Web, where our small blindfolded contestants had to place their plastic spider the closest to the one in the middle of the web. We also played Halloween Bingo with candy corn and candy pumpkin bingo markers. The big finale was watching Hotel Transylvania while snacking on mummy hands, while all of us parents hung out and relaxed in the backyard.
Attendees included an Eskimo, some ninjas, a Pokemon, a zombie, some superheroes, the Flintstones, and even a family of pirates! A fine time was had by guests big and small, and it was a lovely, warm afternoon for a party. Here’s a little gallery of the day’s proceedings, complete with Admiral Henry and Private Finnegan.
Yesterday the boys were extremely excited to journey up to San Francisco at the invitation of my old Navy buddy, Commander Chris Peppel, to attend the commissioning of the brand-new USS America! They were so hyped the night before that they wanted to go straight to bed, with Henry announcing, “I’m going to get up, get dressed, and eat breakfast in the car!” We had a great time attending the ship & touring the new 45,000-ton ship (a small aircraft carrier—”small” being a strictly relative/only-in-America term!) and seeing Mr. Peppel. Here’s a gallery from the visit, plus a very short video below.
Categories
Today’s Tom Sawyers
Remember the bit where Tom Sawyer sweet-talked all the neighborhood kids into whitewashing his fence, making them believe the chore was really a special privilege? I’m pleased to have pulled that stunt on the guys, turning them into crazed car-washing zealots!
Among all the delights in our recent trip to Galena, a standout for all the kids (young & old alike) was when cousin Tony brought out his set of Legos & let us each build & arm our own minifigures! Even now, two months (!!) later, it’s a ball to see these little parts (backpacks, katana swords, ghost bodies, and more) float by in the basement & remind the guys of Tony’s generosity.
Check out a little gallery of the goings-on.
Categories
Beach Blanket Boogie
Henry greets you from Half Moon Bay via interpretive dance. 🙂
Categories
Tigers burning bright
I’m clearly remiss in posting it, but on behalf of our newly minted first-grader & kindergartener, Happy First Day of School! 🙂
Categories
Muchachos con Manzanas
Just as we’ve done in the last couple of years (see pics & vids from 2011 & 2012), on Sunday we headed over to Watsonville for some quality apple picking. Highlights this year included seeing a little girl carrying her own Leo blankie; Henry “Strong like Bull” Nack supplying the power for a girl in a little John Deere vehicle with spent batteries; running into some Google amigos; and Finn very reluctantly petting Roscoe the apple-eating tortoise. Here’s a little gallery from the day out.
Categories
Grandma Nack in the house
An exchange with Henry prior to my Mom’s arrival:
“Henry, Grandma’s coming tomorrow.”
“WHAT the—? YOUR mom? She’s the BEST!! (She really plays with me!)” 🙂
As predicted, the guys are having a ball with Grandma, walking all over the neighborhood, grabbing ice cream, helping with gardening, and more. I haven’t had much chance to document the trip so far, but here are a few samples—including shots of the boys delighting in the new Lego car carrier Grandma sent!
Categories
Flour Power
The boys & Grandma Nack share a love of our neighborhood bakery/flower shop, Flour Flower. In anticipation of her visit this week, we visited the shop on Sunday and made sure that the crepes are as delicious as ever. Henry was so jazzed about buying Mom-O some flowers that he kinda fell apart when she tried to politely decline. Thus we’re the proud new owners of a cluster of sunflowers.
Categories
Ol’ One-Tooth McGee
You know how a watched pot never boils? We were starting to feel that way with Finn’s front tooth: the darn thing has been shifting around and striking crazy poses for well over a month. We thought it would make its exit in Tahoe, then in Galena, then by the start of school… but it wasn’t until last night, when the car hit a bump & Finn’s knee flew into his mouth that it finally happened.
Anyway, the tooth is free at last—no bar fight required! Here you can see the Finnster trying to avoid showing me his smile during daycare drop-off. He only relented when I said I’d stick around & hug him in front of other kids unless he let me take a pic of the goods. 🙂
Categories
Sunset Swinger
Hey Dad-O, do you think I’ll still fit in this thing? 🙂
Braving Chestnut Mountain’s Alpine Slide was a favorite part of my childhood, so we were delighted to get the Micronaxx in on the action during our trip. They enjoyed the action (and playful smack-talk between me & Margot!) so much that they begged to go back the next day. That time—unlike what you see in the vids below—I was smart enough to put my cameras away and focus on smoking the competition—finally redeeming myself in the eyes of our sons. 🙂
During our Galena trip my mom had the great idea of taking the lads to E.B. Lyons interpretive center in Dubuque’s Mines of Spain wilderness area. They enjoyed checking out all manner of critters, both living (snapping turtles, snakes) and stuffed (badgers, owls, flying squirrels, and more). Here’s our little gallery.
