The lads’ fun, heartfelt correspondence with our Elf on the Shelf, Scout (see previous), continued all through December. The little gent really enjoyed his new house:
In fact, on Christmas morning he announced his plans to sleep there all through the year—which he’s commenced doing, though it appears he darts out periodically to nibble down a big marshmallow the boys left outside the door. 🙂
With “El Chivo” (The Goat, aka Dad-O) always on the prowl for tasty leftovers, the boys & their animal team get serious about defending one of their remaining croissants. I can’t say that I blame them. 🙂
Lately the boys—Henry in particular—have been especially hungry for our attention & have resorted to all kinds of button-pushing to get it. (Henry takes this literally, poking us & his brother until we react.) Smartly, Mom-O has opted to respond by giving them what they want—and then a whole lot more! Here she, Finn, and I bury Hen in all the attention a kid can take. 😀
Or if you prefer a version made even wackier by Google Photos, well, we can do that, too. 🙂
“Rudolph is real!!” declared Henry on Christmas morning upon discovering that the carrots & Cheerios they’d left out for Santa’s team had been nibbled & strewn around the back yard. Though unlike in past years we didn’t find hoofprints out back (I blame the rain :-)), the guys were pretty excited about their findings. Check it out:
“Aaaaaaaaaauuuugghh!!” — Heny Nack, bike-riding expert 🙂
What better way to burn off gingerbread & cabin fever than getting the lads out to nearby Vasona Park for some biking. Henry—never a man for half measures—has vaulted from his timid, tentative recent past to become a full-on fiend, bombing down a hill again & again. The first time he did it, his screams were genuine (and terrifying to his parents & passersby!), but on subsequent trips he used them to warn pedestrians in peril. Check it out:
We’re excited that G-Man has started to read, and doubly excited that he’s reading in Spanish as well! Check out “Enrique Jaime” in action. 🙂
Having developed a taste for Lego-based filmmaking at camp this summer, the boys have been enjoying setting up my little GoPro camera & filming all kinds of adventures (what Finn calls “clips”) beneath the Christmas tree. Here’s a random little set of moments that Google Photos stitched together for me:
Though we’re bummed about the outcome, we got to see one heck of an ND-Stanford game yesterday. In the video below you can see Finn & Henry rocking out to the sounds of the ND alumni band at the pep rally preceding the game. Also, here’s a little gallery of the boys giving a thumbs-down to the Stanford band, kicking a tree (the Stanford mascot), and fashioning a couple of sticks & fingers into an “ND” (see if you can spot it). Goooooo Irish!
Not content these days just to draw (which they’ve been doing a ton!), the gents have lately tried their hand at papercraft, constructing little buildings & vehicles. Here you can see their latest cityscape, home to numerous Lego minifigs:
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 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.
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 🙂 :
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:
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! 🙂
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!
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:
The lads recently got zesty in their pal Marina’s back yard, furiously pulping a whole tree’s worth of oranges:
Rolling up the driveway this week, I discovered a new bridge to cross. I’ll let the artist explain things from there:
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: