A Little Bit of Summer in November

Today was freezing, so it's nice to look back and remember warmer days.  We miss you 4th of July, swimming, and catching lightning bugs.  There's some video of Tammy competing in a radio sponsored eating contest (and the kids following in her footsteps), and eating pie on date night.  You'd never know she eats so much.

Caught in a Web of Fun

We've fallen behind in our blogging due to a combination of being busy and having computer problems with our video editing program.  But we're back in the saddle again, so you can expect more frequent posts as we play catch-up.  We're using an updated program with a few new features so you might notice some crazy things as we experiment.

This video was taken during the summer, as part of an insect/bug theme day.  Tammy created a spiderweb for the kids to play in and they got themselves into some "sticky" situations. :)

Van Ordens vs. Vader

Overheard the kids in the back of the van tonight talking to their cousins about our Disney trip.  It's fun to still hear their excitement.  They clearly haven't forgotten after one month, but they inevitably will.  This video hardly covers our entire experience, but hopefully it's enough to remind them that they've been, as they may never be able to go again.

Mommy, Look What I Can Do!

This is long overdue and just plain long, but these are the kind of videos our kids love to look back at as they grow.  Here's a tribute to all that Clarissa learned to do between 11 and 14 months. 
At 16 months now, she is light years beyond this.  It's amazing how quickly babies learn and change!

The Fall of Clarissa

There must be something about learning to walk that makes you unafraid of falling.  Clarissa, who now ambles about quite ably, is not only not afraid of falling but LOVES to fall.  We're going to have to be careful with this one.

The Sight of Blood

This is one continuous shot with no music added.  Just our little Henry, who is usually scared of just about everything, being brave enough to pull his own tooth.  (At the beginning of the video Miriam's voice can be heard in the background behind the door - she was acting too scared to watch him pull his tooth.)  The reactions of Henry and Tammy to the blood that came with it are what make the video worth watching.

Future Cardinals?

Baseball season is officially over.  Miriam was the best (only) girl in the whole machine pitch league, almost always making contact.   Henry was in t-ball but was able to successfully hit the ball when his coach pitched and never needed the tee.



Even after watching the video multiple times, Henry refuses to believe that the last clip is him, as he has no memory of the event.  "Henry, the kid is wearing your uniform number."  "Maybe Miriam stole my uniform!"  Of course, this is the same child that refuses to admit he fell asleep in the car and who won't believe his parents know more than him about the piano, homework, or anything else.  Those wacky conspiracy theorists out there on the internet must have all been something like Henry when they were little.

A Marvelous Mix of May

This video includes the following May events:

• Trip to Brookside Gardens and the Butterfly House
• Miriam's birthday
• Free carnival hosted by the YMCA and the City of Frederick
• Miriam's self-choreographed dance to "I Won't Say" (I'm in Love) from Hercules
• Henry's K class singing "Boom Chicka Boom" at a thank you volunteer bfast
• Eliza learning to hop on one foot 
• Tammy's birthday

Memo from the Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

Eliza has a great imagination and can play by herself for long stretches of time.  It's fun to listen in on the conversations she makes her toys and her imaginary people have. 

One day, I sneakily pulled out my camera hoping to capture some of her creativity.  She had been saying some really funny things before I got it out and of course I missed the best moments, but you'll still get a great glimpse of her personality.  She doesn't know she's being filmed.

In this video, it's not so much what she says that's funny, rather the fact that she can say the same thing so many times with such enthusiasm and varied intonation.  I can't help but laugh when I watch it.

Miscellaneous March Moments

Now that our summer has begun, it is weird to look back at videos where we are wearing long sleeves and winter coats.  For whatever reason it took us a while to put this one together. 

Here's to March and exciting moments, such as Henry learning to ride a bike and a fun Easter visit from G&G Bray and the Woffindens.

Zero to Eight in 3 Minutes 23 Seconds

Miriam turned 8 this month and is getting baptized on Saturday.  For this special occasion, we've been reflecting on what an honor and a responsibility it is to raise such a wonderful little girl.  In this video, we've taken one picture from every month of her life and shown them for two seconds each.  Some months it was hard to choose, and for other months, it was hard to find any pictures since it was three computers ago.  But every time we watch it we just hold hands, smile, and wonder at how fast she is growing up.

Clarissa's One!

Q: What do you get when you cross a happy one-year-old with a box of Cheerios?
A: A CheeriOne cake!

 'Miss Clariss' contentedly ate the Cheerios off her cake and left the good stuff for the rest of us!  She also learned that a fistful of ice cream shoved in your mouth all at once can be painful.

Roy G. Biv

From November through February, Miriam and Henry stayed after school once a week to meet with their "Destination Imagination" team.  (nine kindergarten through second graders).  They practiced teamwork and problem solving skills and worked together to prepare a play about Roy G. Biv's birthday party.

In addition to creating the play, they learned to solve 'instant challenges' together.  For example, "Using nothing but this stack of paper, build the tallest tower you can in 5 minutes."  Although they had an adult volunteer working with them, the script was completely written by them.  They presented their play at a competition at the beginning of March (their age group was non-competitive) and they solved an 'instant challenge' in front of a panel of judges.  It was a good experience for them.

This video does not include the full version of the play, just a few clips of their parts.  No pressure for anyone to watch - this one is just for their memories.

Marble Madness

While in NC over President's Day weekend, Grandma treated us to a fun morning at the Marbles children's museum.  All this exercise, on top of not enough sleep, tuckered everyone out fast.  The sign of a perfect outing!

Rule of Three

For Eliza's Goldilocks / Curlylocks party we played 3 games:

The "Go out of the room and see if you can tell which of the 20 objects we've moved" Game
(kind of like how the 3 Bears noticed differences when they got home)

Musical Chairs
(Because Goldilocks liked to sit in different chairs, and this game is a good way to break one)

The "Talk in a funny voice and see if the person can guess who said 'Happy Birthday'" Game
(Because Eliza can talk in a funny bear voice when she tells Goldilocks)

Then we did presents, candles, cake, etc.

Storytime with Curlylocks

Eliza's two favorite stories are "The Three Little Pigs" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears."  While she enjoys looking at the pictures, no books are necessary for the many re-tellings that often fill our day.  We tell the story in the car, in the bathroom, in the store, etc.  In fact, due to her heavy interest, we decided to theme her 3rd birthday around Goldilocks.

Through all of this, she has become very skilled at telling these stories all by herself.  So, pull up a chair, make yourself comfortable, and enjoy a little storytime with Curlylocks.

Nothing's Safe

Put up the baby gate.  Shut the door behind you when you go downstairs.  Don't leave anything that shouldn't be consumed by a 9 month old within a foot of ground level.  Watch out, world, Clarissa is on the move.



The head shake is a new trick she's learned and enjoys performing.  Why do kids always learn "no" first?  Her laugh is developing into a sheep bleat.  Makes us laugh!  We love our little lamb.  

Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken

Our mini-vacation took us from Frederick, MD to Ocean City, MD with a special stop on Assateague Island, home to wild horses.  We crossed a lot of cool bridges on our drive.

The 1947 newberry honor book, Misty of Chincoteague, is based on these wild horses and the kids and I recently read it aloud together (thanks, Aunt Louise!).  It was so fun to get to see them in person. 
The book's actually about the horses that live on the VA side of Assateague - there's a fence dividing the two herds.  The MD side (in green) prides itself on being hands-off with the horses, but the VA side (in red) does a big round up once a year and swims all the horses and their foals across the bay.  They auction off the foals to help with population control (and continue tradition) and then swim them back across to their sanctuary.  We hear it's a huge event and people come from all over to see it.

These horses are wild in the same sense that the elk at Yellowstone are wild. They don't have owners, but they obviously are used to having people around, as one searched our kid-less stroller for food and then tried to get into our van.

Henry sums it up well at the end of this video.  We had an awesome vacation! (minus the Eliza part mentioned in the previous post)

How We Took Pictures Of Our Child's (Near) Death

With a long MLK weekend, we went to Ocean City MD to see the wild horses and stay in a fun hotel.  We were swimming in the pool, and we had divided kid duty, Alvin with Miriam and Henry and Tammy with Eliza and Clarissa.  After a while Tammy got Clarissa out of the pool to take pictures of A, M, & H.  We left Eliza happily playing in the quite expansive shallow end.  Eliza is almost three and old enough to stay where she can touch, right?  After all, there's never a problem when we're actually watching her. 

So Tammy is taking pictures and video of the others trying to get the perfect moment when the water splashes down from above (tricky, because there's no pattern to when it happens), when a nice little girl about 7 years old comes carrying Eliza back to us.  We politely say thanks, but we're sure Eliza was never really in danger.  The nice girl was just being over protective, or Eliza just got scared when it was no big deal.

Then we go back to our hotel room and look through the pictures.  First, we see a video where Eliza (momentarily highlighted in hearts) leaves the shallower end following a ball she was playing with...



Then we see this picture!

Eliza's in the back, but you can only see the top of her head (to the right of Alvin's shoulder).  Here it is zoomed in:

Can you believe we let this happen?  Makes us absolutely sick inside!

And this is of the girl carrying Eliza back.  (Yes, when Eliza's curls get wet, she has long, very mullet-like hair.)

These pictures are so scary.  It's hard to describe the full range of emotions we have experienced, but guilt and immense gratitude are at the top of the list.  We are so so grateful that little girl was at the right place at the right time to save our little girl.  We wish we could go back and thank her a thousand times over. 

In sharing this experience, Alvin's co-worker shared a similar experience where he was videotaping one child when his second had his flotation device flip him over such that he was stuck upside-down, but he was fortunate enough to see it in time.  We have a dear friend at church (who wasn't taking pictures) but lost a 2 year old in a pool full of people and with lifeguards on duty.  We feel so blessed and know that she was truly being watched over by a more Heavenly parent than us.  We have hugged our kids a little more this week and tried to appreciate all the precious moments we have with them each day. 

We add our warning to the common sense knowledge we're sure you already have - ALWAYS keep an eye on your little ones at the pool.

We can't imagine if we had lost Eliza.  She's such a gem.  Here's a glimpse at some of the cute things she's doing, saying, and singing these days.  (you can read the words better if you make the video full screen, but the video quality goes down some.)

We love you Eliza!

Wrapping Up Christmas

We're almost ready to say goodbye to 2012.  These clips are from our house in MD, the Indianapolis Children's Museum, Christmas in IL, and a bit in NC.  It's not exactly representative of how we spent our time, but you work with what you have.  We only wish we could give you the Alvin and the Chipmunks surprise in 3D.

Falling is Funny

In November, Tammy took Miriam and Henry ice skating with coupons they had earned.  This was Henry's first time skating and we were surprised by how well he was able to laugh off his falls and get up to try again.  By the end of the outing he proudly made it around the rink twice without falling or using the wall.  Miriam did a great job too, but we chose to highlight the falls in this video given the greater entertainment value. 

Awards and Giggles

We're trying to clean up our video collection from 2012, and we've thrown together some odds and ends from Sept. to Nov.  It's a bit disjointed and a little random, but who doesn't like to hear a baby giggle, right? Warning: experimental video editing technique in the last 6 seconds. 

Remember when we exercised?

When it gets too cold to send our kids out to get some exercise, we make videos of when they used to use their muscles (fall 2012).  Maybe visualization will help them burn off a few calories. 

The Vocabulary Van Ordens

We made this video (with one minor change) as a Christmas gift for our nephew who will be turning two soon and is learning to talk.  My brother told us we have a future on PBS! :)

We don't really expect you to watch this, but we wanted to put it on our blog for our kids to watch.  Being the stars of the show, they, of course, love watching it over and over. 

If you have a young child, there's a chance this might keep them occupied for a few minutes while you get something done, but no guarantees.