18 months old & licking a batter full of cookie dough? That’s what we call getting a late start around here. 🙂 Finnster & Dad-O during Grandma Nack’s visit in 2009:
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Traffic Cone Reverie
Henry Nack, traffic cone enthusiast, gets himself into the zone for his upcoming Halloween stint as a giant cone. 🙂
It’s football season, and the guys have been cheering on the Fighting Irish right alongside Dad-O! Thanks especially to Grandma & Grandpa Nack for keeping them outfitted in blue, gold, and green. 🙂
Other Irish-y bits from history:
Oh, and let’s hear it from the (much younger) guys themselves: Go Irish!
On this day, seven years ago, Finn tried a little bit of pumpkin (specifically the stems) while hanging out with our brand-new neighbor Maddie. Check out the shots below, as well as in this old gallery from the day.
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Remembering Grandma Liggett
The boys are sad, as we all are, at the passing of their beloved Grandma Liggett this past week. They keep mentioning the good times they had with her, so I thought it would be nice to show a little gallery compiled from Finn’s arrival onward.
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Micro flash mob: It’s a Thriller!
On Friday Willow Glen’s cutest zombies stage a flash mob outside the yogurt hut. In addition to the video below, here’s a little set of photos I snagged before running back to work.
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Throwback Saturday: “Jota!!”
Two years ago today, kindergarten vocalist Finn demonstrated his new knowledge of the Spanish alphabet, sung in the style of Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell:
Ingredients: One cackling Hen…
…one free-wheeling looen…
…and one claw-wielding Doctor of Doom & Destruction 🙂 :
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Aerial Daredevilry
Being a brave dad (aka KOBI, King of Bad Ideas), I volunteered to take our dudes plus their buddy Colton to the Salinas Air Show while Margot stayed back with Colton’s mom Mara & younger siblings. We ended up having a ball, returning home with the same number of kids & fingers as we left with. It was particularly fun to see my old friend Hughes & his kids (a first air show for all three of them!) and to borrow his big camera lens. Here’s a little gallery of the proceedings.
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TĂo Bryan
This weekend brought an unexpected treat: My old Notre Dame friend Bryan Mason, whom I hadn’t seen in probably 20 years, paid us a visit as part of his West Coast sojourn down from Alaska (where he’d spent the summer working on a fishing boat). “I have to warn you,” he jokingly told Margot and me upon arriving, “I’m pretty great with kids.” And so he was, quickly immediately himself as “TĂo [Uncle] Bryan,” master builder of everything from Legos to sand castles.
We all had a ball taking him to a perfect beach day in Santa Cruz, and the boys were kind of blown away at all the help they got in building some epic volcanoes in the doomed “Financial City” (so named due to Henry plopping out a dozen little “banks” with a little sand mold). This morning Finn remarked, “I thought that with another adult around, it was going to be just ‘talkity-talkity-talkity,’ like usual at my birthday party or whatever—but it was super fun instead!” Henry enthusiastically concurred.
Here’s a little gallery of the sandy goings-on.
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Dancing Robot Remix!
Our brilliant friend Dave (of whom the boys are longtime superfans) has reworked the Dancing Robot routine of then 5-year-old Finn into this crazy little gem:
From the archives:
Morning convo:
“Henry, Grandma’s coming tomorrow.”
“WHAT the—? YOUR mom? She’s the BEST!! (She really plays with me!)” 🙂
The dudes were not disappointed when Grandma Nack rolled in two years ago today. Here’s a little gallery of that day’s proceedings.
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Behold, The Mountain!
We’ve long been big fans of the big men who toss around cars, refrigerators, battle axes, and more in strongman contests, so it was a treat to meet Hafþór JĂşlĂus Björnsson—the World’s Strongest Man & the actor who plays notorious head-squashing character “The Mountain” on Game of Thrones—at this weekend’s Highland Games in Pleasanton. We’d promised Henry a chance to see the big guy “toss a Henry-sized object over something the height of the garage,” attempting to set a world record in the process. We didn’t stick around quite long enough to see whether he succeeded, but we were just happy to meet him & get away with our heads un-squashed. 🙂
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“I can do it, I can do it!!”
Our man Henry has finally mastered two-wheeling on his own! We’ve been pretty inconsistent with practicing, and therefore it’s taken a lot longer to get him riding solo than it did with his brother. But last weekend we spent a TON of time with him, coaching him as he rode many (only slightly-assisted) laps around his school building. Then last night, John took the boys to Hummingbird park to cement Henry’s confidence.
Hen, as usual, was a tough customer. He went into the training with his typical “I can’t do this, this is too hard, I’ll never learn how to do it” attitude, and it took every shred of positivity and parental encouragement to get him to believe he could do it. As I ran around the school next to him, I kept chanting “You can do it! You can do it! You are doing it! Pedal pedal pedal!!” He asked me to keep it up, and finally, after what seemed like a million laps, I could hear Henry chanting along with me, believing he could do it.
Last night, at the park, Henry’s self-confidence finally kicked in, and as he rode around the park, he was saying to himself “I can do it…I can do it!” (which you’ll hear at the beginning of the video above)
And he DID! We could not be more proud of him, and it makes a mama’s heart glad to hear her little guy really truly believing in himself. Now, of course, he wants to bike everywhere all the time!!! So the fellas are going out for a ride after Dad-o gets home from work tonight, which I’m sure is the first of many, many family rides to come!
Update: Alternate techno remix! 🙂
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Athenry Knights
The lads keep cool modeling some great shirts that Grandma & Grandpa Nack got during their recent trip to Ireland. (Thanks, guys!)
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Family Fun Night
Back in May we enjoyed Family Fun Night with the dudes at school, and they greatly enjoyed the cotton candy machine (in front of which Henry had anxiously parked himself ages before anyone else lined up). This little video montage got stuck in my camera until now; enjoy!
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Diggable Tahoe
Our shovel-lovin’ lads Finn (armed with Root Chop) and Hen (armed with Seymour) teamed up with Dante, Vienna, and a whole squadron of random lakeside kids to turn the shore of Lake Tahoe into an elaborate system of canals, jumps, and other earthworks. Here’s a little taste from the shoreline:
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Juice Jams
The lads recently got zesty in their pal Marina’s back yard, furiously pulping a whole tree’s worth of oranges:
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Chalk-rockin’ Hen
Rolling up the driveway this week, I discovered a new bridge to cross. I’ll let the artist explain things from there:
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Flume of Doom!
On Sunday the guys & I lived it up at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. With the wholly unnecessary help of their goggles, they braved the daunting log flume with me. Check it out:
And here’s our splash down captured in ultra slow-mo: