Fourth of July 2008

Did you have a good holiday weekend? We spent it on Gull Lake with Steve's family. This is the new house we stayed at. Well, it's an old house, but new for them, and they are doing an extensive renovation. It was amazing:

This is what happens when you forget to feed the kids lunch. Someone brought a bag of Tostitos and a jar of salsa down to the dock. It was like a flock of seagulls! Everyone grabbing chips and trying to dip them into the jar.

After chips and salsa, nothing is better than some tubing:




Tubing on Gull Lake

Summerfest

It's Summerfest time. Thursday night, the kids and I rode the bus down to the lakefront to see the Big Bang - the awesome fireworks show on the first night of Summerfest. We didn't actually go into Summerfest. We just sat on the grass north of the grounds, right by the new Discovery World Museum. It's nice that the kids are old enough that no one was begging for glow sticks from the vendor right in front of us.

Carolyn didn't want her picture taken, as usual. We had to wait on our blanket for about an hour for the fireworks to start. We played Monopoly on Jake's phone to kill the time.

We went and actually attended Summerfest on Monday. It was Children's Day. Which meant free admission from 12 - 3. Lots of food and drink items were discounted too (except for beer!). A good friend of ours was playing with his band at 1 pm, so it worked out perfect.

The Admirals (a local AHL hockey team) had a thing at 4 pm at the Sports area. Jake and his friend Nate got picked to participate in a relay race. I think Roscoe (the big orange dog) liked Nate's hair.

They won the first round and advanced to the second round. Nate had to get his skates sharpened between rounds (notice his wipeouts!).

Relay Race Round One

They won the second round too. They came away with an Admirals t-shirt and a bobble head doll.



Relay Race Round Two

Have a great Fourth!!

Minnesota

When we were in Minnesota over Memorial Day weekend, we stayed near the Mall of America. Very near. We could walk to the mall from our hotel. We spent all day Saturday looking at houses. We spent most of the day Sunday at the mall. The kids got to ride the rides.

At one point, I was on the third floor of the mall and called Jake on his cell phone. He answered but said "I'm on the log ride, I can't talk now" and hung up. I ran over to the railing and got this picture as they went by me.


The bumper cars were SO EXCITING. As you can tell from these pictures.


The video makes them see slightly more exciting:


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Johnny Cash

According to Country Music Television, this is the best country music video of all time. I know my dad likes Johnny Cash, so I'm putting this on here for him. Enjoy Dad!

More laughing babies

The quadruplets crack me up. It's like going into a store and starting up a bunch of noisy toys all at once.

Awareness Test

For moms

Great video for moms, check it out!

Hockey Highlights

Did I mention yet that all we do this time of year is go to various ice rinks on a daily basis? I captured some video highlights with my digital camera. I guess I should try it with my camcorder at some point. It is just much easier to bring the digital camera and much easier to get the videos onto the PC. They look really good on the PC too, unfortunately they are in AVI format, which is huge!! We're talking about 45 MB for a 24 second video. So I upload the videos to Webshots which converts them and makes them small so you can watch them. Unfortunately, they lose a lot of clarity in the process. I may experiment with other conversion options at some point - in my free time - HA!

Anyway, here are some clips of Carolyn. She is in a white jersey with a white helmet - number 19.



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In this clip, Carolyn sets up a goal with her shot from the point:


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This video is a good example of what Coach Steve calls having your 'head on a swivel'. Watch how Carolyn is looking around her as she helps the goalie guard the goal.


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I call this one 'Watch out for that red line'. I hate when those lines jump up and trip you!!


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Carolyn got moved up to center in the third period and is working hard to get a goal in this clip.


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Here are some clips of Jake. Jake is also in white, number 91. In this clip he is working hard and manages to dodge a check.


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Um, nothing special to say about this one:


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Here's Jake knocking the puck out of the air with a high stick, and then setting up a team mate for - almost a goal - as the period ends.


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OK, that's it for now. Enjoy the home movies! Just be glad I didn't post all 33 clips!

Labor Day Weekend

I hope you all had a pleasant Labor Day Weekend, without too much laboring!

On Saturday we went to the Bristol Renaissance Fair. The Fair "recreates a day in the life of Elizabethan England". I didn't get any pictures of the kids, but I did take the one below of some knights-in-training. I thought it was kind of funny that the little "knights" were wearing crocs!

On Monday, Carolyn and I took a trip to the Milwaukee County Zoo. We rode the zoomobile for the first time in a long time, since I had some free tickets.

Carolyn also fed the goats.
We said goodbye to the koalas that were visiting from the San Diego Zoo, they go home next week.
We also enjoyed the mooing of these heifers. I think they heard their zookeeper around the corner.

Mooing Heifers

We also visited the special exhibit. They had tanks of sharks and sting rays that you could pet. The sting rays kept doing laps around and around their tank. It was like watching Sting Ray Nascar.

Pet the Sting Rays

Hat Trick

So, are you tired of old home movies yet? This is from the final game at hockey camp at Michigan Tech when Jake was eight. He ended up with four goals that game. This clip is of the first three - the hat trick - in the first period. Steve was manning the video camera, so don't blame me for the poor camera work on that third goal!



Hat Trick

She Shoots! She Scores!

Here's another really old video. I guess nothing too exciting is happening around here lately! This is Carolyn's first hockey goal ever. I was taping the entire game with my video camera and then almost missed the goal in my excitement!! I'm thinking she must be six years old, because she started hockey when she was in kindergarten and got her first goal at the end of the season.



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From the Way Back Machine

Here is a video clip I've had on my computer for a long time. It's from ten years ago, so Jake is 3 and Carolyn is almost 5 months. Jake looks so cute!! Maybe I can convince him to get his hair cut like that again!!



Sunshine

I love how he sings "You make me happy, when guy's away".

The Wave

At the final game at hockey camp, whenever Carolyn's team would score a goal, her coach would have them all cheer "hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!", and then they would do the wave, it was so cute. I took a video with my camera: