Our Little Sparklers

This content comes from our time in Michigan and Illinois.  On the 4th we had a joint birthday celebration for Henry and the USA.  But Henry refused to celebrate his country in the traditional way of lighting things on fire.  When Eliza took a turn with a sparkler, we could see that he was almost convinced it was safe (not wanting to be outdone by his little sister),....


... but when the sparkler finished burning, Eliza grabbed the hot part and burned her fingers.  All of Henry's fears were confirmed, and he'll never believe us again when we tell him not to be afraid (including jumping into the deep end with dad waiting, going upstairs alone when it's dark, participating in talent shows and eating chicken).

Honey, I Shrunk the Grandparents

This is the third movie we've made at a Bray family reunion, so it has now officially become something of a tradition.  The kids really get into the acting and, of course, love seeing themselves on TV.  In fact, Miriam and her cousins spent a long time making their own movies, which we may or may not post here later.  Some of the humor is inside family jokes and the kids featured are always cuter when you know who they are, but there are some of you out there that will appreciate it. 

Support Tammy's Brother

 

 

Hi Friends,

 

My oldest brother, Greg, owns a small business called Blue Tangerine Solutions.  He is applying for a Mission: Small Business grant which will give them funding to help them grow and be able to develop some new products.  But in order for his application to even be considered he has accumulate at least 250 votes before June 30. (as of this morning he was still 100 votes short)

 

You have to have a Facebook account to vote and you can only vote once.

If you have a minute, please follow the steps below and help him out.

Thanks!

 

Please help Blue Tangerine Solutions receive 250 votes on the Mission: Small Business℠ page to get closer to qualifying for a $250,000 grant.

Go to www.missionsmallbusiness.com.

After clicking “Login and Support” on the home page (bottom right side), search for Blue Tangerine Solutions and vote! 

A Time to Attack Your Children

It's summer time at the Van Orden house, so that means once-a-week theme days. Snow day was a big hit. Make sure you make it to the end.
We also ate tortilla's cut like snowflakes, hot chocolate, and snowman pancakes.  Of course, all of this was topped off with a snowball like scoop of ice cream, but then, that hardly requires a special occasion.

Pixie Dust and Happy Thoughts

Our local airport was giving free flights to encourage the dream of flying (and thus flying lessons $$!). Both Miriam and Henry talked very excitedly about the experience upon first landing, but Henry later admitted to being bored because he wasn't tall enough to see out the window unless the plane turned. Tammy was given a chance to steer the plane without the pilot helping at all. - After the flying we went to the Frederick Arts festival where there was a pretty good band playing. All of the clips come from a song that says "Jump, Jump" repeatedly, thus our creative dance moves.

Everybody Wants to Love Video Clips

A little clip here and another clip there. Throw in a couple still shots and suddenly your video is a couple minutes long. Enjoy this mix of events from May.

Best of the Best of the Brays

For Christmas, Tammy's parents transferred their old home videos from VHS cassettes to DVD, hours of timeless moments of the Bray family between '89 and '00. For Mother's Day, Alvin condensed multiple DVDs worth of material down to 8 minutes. Note: Eight minutes is still a LONG time, so you may want to wait to watch this until Tammy's birthday (Memorial Day). It was enlightening for Tammy to see that not all of the silly kid genes (that she sees in our kids and often gets annoyed by) come from Alvin. If you choose not to watch it, I can summarize 90% of the occasions when the video camera was brought out of the Bray family closet: 1. Christmas and the family vacation right after Christmas (thus winter coats on the beach) 2. Concerts and recitals 3. Family pictures at reunions (These clips look like they belong in a frame at Hogwarts).