Ice Skating

 
This weekend I got to go ice skating--twice. On Friday night, the whole family went out to an ice rink in Civic Park that they put up for the holiday season. At first, I was pretty unsteady since it's been about two years since last I skated. I clung to the walls of the rink as I slowly made my way around. I got better as the night progressed and was happy enough to hold Mommy and Daddy's hand as they glided me around.

The next day, my friend Katie called me up to see if I'd like to go with her. Absolutely I wanted to. Ice skating is a little scary but also lots of fun.

Kite Flying

 
A couple of weeks ago it was a very windy day. Daddy was hiking in the foothills and came home excitedly reporting that it was the best wind in a long time. So we packed the car with family and kites and headed up into the foothills. At first, the idea was to climb to the top of one of the hills to take advantage of the wind, but there was so much wind that it was excellent kite flying weather even at the bottom of the hills. We each had a kite. Mine was a ladybug, Mom's was a fish, and Dad's was a combination of Elmo and Cookie Monster.

It was an amazing day. I reeled out almost all of the thread for my kite. It was higher than the nearby mountain. Mom had good luck too. Her fishy flew nicely though not as high as my ladybug. Daddy was not so lucky. The Elmo/Cookie Monster kite was too wimpy for the wind. It got blown to smithereens not long after it got aloft in the strong wind. Kite flying is super fun!

Here's a link to the kite flying photo album.

Kite Flying

And a slideshow

Sack Attack

Yesterday was the last day of football. It was rainy and out team only have 8 guys. This is just enough since 7 guys play at a time. I really prefer to play defense to offense, and I think I found my most preferred position on defense--pass rushing specialist. I'll line up on the ball or some yards back and then run as fast as I can at the QB. While I didn't manage any sacks yesterday, I screwed up a whole bunch of plays by the Titans, the best team in the league. I love to cause problems in the backfield.

Gingerbread Family

 

Greetings from the gingerbread family. Yesterday, I went to a gingerbread house making party at my friend Alan's house. I made a cool house with a nice family too.

Packers Update

 















I'm in flag football for the first time this year. It's a lot like real football. We have practices before every game, we call plays, and so on. My team even has a great nickname--The Packers. The only problem is that we never win. We haven't won a game all year! We almost made a big comeback last weekend. We were down two TDs at half, but managed to get into a tie before giving up the winning TD late. I was having a bad time around halftime, but was happier later. The picture above is where I got the ball. Gained about 3 yards.

More photos here.

Bells and Chimes

Yesterday I performed as part of the bell/chime choir in church. I was a chime person. I got interested in this idea when i saw my friend Katie practicing the chimes after choir practice. The chimes seeme pretty interesting, but I was a little scared I would screw up in playing. Eventually, I decided it looked like too much fun to miss out on, so I joined. We had a very good performance today.

Defeat

I hate to lose. I just hate it.

Last night, I went to my Cub Scout den meeting. We did a lot of fun things, but, at the end, there was a relay race contest. There were three teams and the job of each team was to sweep up a bunch of leaves and put them into bins. The parents were in charge of the sweeping while the kids were in charge of the bins. Sadly, my team finished last in this race. It made me very sad. In fact, I hid in the corner of the room to be sad by myself until I felt better. I really want to WIN all the games I play. I hate finishing last.

Disappearing comments

I know a number of you had a problem with disappearing comments. Daddy tried to fix this by modifying the comment code to requires fewer passwords. Hope this improves things.

Victory!

 

Obama is our new president! This was great news. We had a little celebration including a toast and a balloon toss. I'm sure he'll be better than Bush.I made a little blue chain with the words

Obama, Obama wins!

written on the links to celebrate.

Politics

It's almost election day. I hope Obama wins. I'm also rooting for the defeat of Prop 8 in California. To add spice to the evening, we did a politics pick-em contest. Here's my predicted electoral map:

Traffic

This Sunday was a big weekend for traffic--but just in the world of Hot Wheels. In the morning we did a traffic photoshoot. Note the hand-made jersey barriers dividing the road. I really liked these.



The afternoon revisited the traffic idea. Daddy and I watched the extended chase scene from the second part of The Matrix. While I generally don't like movies, this scene was quite exciting. We then set up the jersey barriers and a bunch of cars a trucks to recreate that scene as well as making up our own scene. This was very really fun. I can't wait to do it again!

[Aside: A little inside baseball about the connection between the chase scene and Mythbusters courtesy of the source of all knowledge--Wikipedia:

"The freeway chase scene was filmed at the decommissioned Naval Air Station Alameda in Alameda, California. Producers constructed a 1.5-mile freeway on the old runways just for the movie (Which was later used by the Mythbusters in testing several myths). Portions of the chase were also filmed in Oakland, California, and the tunnel shown briefly is the Webster Tube connecting Oakland and Alameda. Some post-production editing was done in old aircraft hangars on the base as well.

The city of Akron was willing to give full access to Route 59, the stretch of freeway known as the "Innerbelt", for filming of the freeway chase when it was under consideration. However, producers decided against this as "the time to reset all the cars in their start position would take too long".MythBusters would later reuse the Alameda location in order to explore the effects of a head-on collision between two semi trucks."]

Happy Halloween

 

Happy Halloween everyone. This year, I was a tiger. Mommy did the cool makeup. I got to hold the sing for the class in the Halloween parade at my school. I also got a whole bunch of Kit Kat bars in my Halloween basket. Afterwards, we went to a paty at my friend Katie's house. Hooray for Halloween!

Trefethen Photo Shoot

On Saturday, we went to Trefethen winery. Mommy and Daddy said I was perfectly behaved while I was there. I spent the bulk of my time taking pictures of the weird Halloween stuff as well as the usual wine stuff.



I discovered that I loved the reflections made by my flash off the glassware. Above is a nice reflection shot.

Check out the latest Aidan photos here:

http://flickr.com/photos/aodhanmorgan/

Ninja

by sabbiesab

Inspired by the Mythbusters ninja special, Daddy and I have been playing ninja warriors in the living room lately. Because a ninja's hands are so lethal, we each carry a couple of big soft pillows to protect against any accidental deadly blows. We then battle around the living room jumping and making ninja poses in between brutal strikes.

There's also a sumo variant of this game. In the sumo version, some pillows mark the outer edges of the "circle" in the living room. Each of us grabs a giant pillow and tries to push the other person out of the circle using the pillow.

Gotta love Asian martial arts.

Mom's Birthday

 

While Mom's birthday was a while ago, I just got this picture off my camera. Mom was away back east for her birthday, but Dad and I made her this nice chocolate cake. Happy Birthday Mommy!

Church Concert

 

I gave my first church choir concert today. We sang the "kick-off" song for the service. Because there were so many of us--kid choir, church choir, a 5 piece church band, and so on, they had to move the location to the Wesley Center, which has a stage. As usual, Daddy was on hand to act as paparazzi. Naturally, I mugged for the camera.

CNN Graph

 

I was fascinated by the graphs they had of people's reactions ot the debates on CNN. In fact, I was so fascinated that I started making my own reaction graph. Just like CNN, I divide the sample into men and women and monitor their reactions. Daddy is the man in the sample and Mommy the woman. As you can see from the graph, Mommy is more volatile in her reactions--just like the women on CNN.

tiger

 

Yesterday, we went out an hit golf balls in the back yard. I pulled out my trusty 3 wood, which I used to good effect last time we were out on the course. Initially, we were trying to hit Daddy's chipping target, but this soon gave way to something much more fun--hammering away at the ball. I hit some of my longest shots ever (with wiffle balls). I managed to whack a couple of them out of the yard, and put one on the ROOF of my play structure. When I would really hit a ball hard, it would make a cool zooming noise as it came off the club and zinged through the air. Daddy, who does not like to hit his 3 wood, said that I can now hit mine further than he can hit his!

Fore!

Proposition 8: No!

We've been battling some annoying yard sign guys the last few days. They put up signs on the corner of our property (without our permission) indicating that folks should vote yes on Proposition 8. Every time they put up a sign, Daddy goes and takes it down (he voted no on Prop 8 by mail). So far, we've hauled down 2 signs. Who knows how many of these things they're going to put up.

Voting is kind of interesting. Since Daddy votes by mail, I helped him fill out his ballot. Mostly, we agree on what to vote for. He picked Obama, which I thought was good. He also voted for himself for a Walnut Creek City Council seat. I don't think he'll win though.

Pigskin Pick 'Em

Over the last bunch of weeks, the whole family has been competing in Pigskin Pick 'Em. On Thursday, there is a guy who writes a "crystal ball" column who predicts the NFL games. All of us make picks too to see if we can beat the "expert." I like to do a bit of research for my picks. I ask who is home and who is away. I also ask about the records of each of the teams. The research is paying off. I won by a mile last week and I'm in a position (with a Denver win) to win again this week. The crystal ball guy seems not to be all that good. He's in last place this week.

No Joy in Mudville

As you know, I adopted the Red Sox as my favorite team in the playoffs. They have a lot of cool players including former Oakland Athletic Mark Kotsay. They also have Jonathan Papelbon, who I like to pretend to be when I'm pitching. I was really hoping that they would get to the World Series. Things looked good when the Sox led 1-0 early yesterday. But the Rays pitched too well and the Sox missed too many bases loaded situations. The 8th inning was especially disappointing. Daddy and I were jumping up and down and cheering for the Sox to get the key hit they needed with 2 outs. But that hit never came.

Go Fightin' Phils!

Remembrance: Tadpole

Last week "Tadpole," who turned into a frog after about a year, died. It made me very sad. He didn't have a very long life. I wondered why he died. Too many crickets? Too few crickets? The wrong kind of crickets? Too hot? Too cold? It's impossible to know.

But I sure will miss him.

Comeback!

Last night may have been the most exciting baseball game I've ever seen. The Sox, who I am now rooting for with the elimination of the A's, themselves faced elimination. Down 7-0 in the 7th, things looked bleak. Amazingly, they came all the way back and won it in the 9th to pull out an improbably 8-7 victory. There was lots of cheering and high-fiving and jumping around. What a game!

Debate Analysis

As you know, I've been watching the debates with my Daddy. Tonight, we decided to make a graph of McCain buzzwords. I listened carefully for the following: maverick, my friends, earmark, and reform. In fact, I was so interested that I timed bathroom breaks for when Obama was speaking so as not to miss any.

Here are the results:

maverick: 0
my friends: 11
earmark: 6
reform: 0

Conclusions: 1. Clearly, we are all McCain's friends. 2. Debates are more interesting than you might think.

Guesstimation Jar 2

Guesstimation Jar 1

Lemonade

 

Yesterday, Daddy and I set up a little business selling lemonade to passers by. We juiced some lemons from our tree, used the secret lemonade recipe, and set up a stand. Our marketing strategy was to maximize cuteness. I would wave happily at all passing cars, bikes, and pedestrians and wait for customers to roll in. It was a very successful strategy. I made nine whole dollars! I even got one repeat customer--a German woman in a Mercedes. She was my first customer and then came by a bit later for seconds. I had a lot of fun. After we finished I told Daddy that we should definitely do it again.

Football-A Tool for Learning

Sunday afternoon. It's football season and there were lots of good games on. It's interesting how many different things are going on during the game. Since we got Madden for the Wii, I'm starting to make sense of more of what is going on. I spotted wide receivers running curls routes. I spotted a halfback blast. I spotted a defense in cover 2.

To get a better sense of what was happening on the field and to slow things down, we got out the vibrating football players and set up various formations and plays. I can now tell you the difference between the strong and weak side of the line. I can tell when the quarterback is in shotgun versus lined up under center. I know what a blitz is.

There's a fair bit of reading in Madden. When I first started out, I found a couple of plays that worked and just stuck with them. Lately, though, I've been expanding my playbook and learning all sorts of new words--blast, pitch, toss, counter, streaks, slants, and so on. While reading is not all that interesting in general, I can see how it is useful for beating Daddy at Madden. One last thing I learned--the Raiders are a truly horrible team. I beat them with my Steelers by a score of 55-0 on Saturday.

Tree Guys

 

Probably a lot of you have read about the tree guys living near the stadioum at Berkeley. They finally got kicked out last week. here are there final moments before being houled off to jail. Basically, the cops build a scaffold platform below them and chased them all the way up to the top of the tree. You can see the four guys hanging on at the very top of the tree. (The structure at the apex is the "crow's next" that the protesters built in the tree.)

Unfortunately, while the tree guys are gone, a whole lot of crazy guys have decided to live on the median strip in the street in front of the stadium. This is also the street in front of Daddy's work. The City of Berkeley thinks that living in the median strip constitutes freedom of speech, so they aren't kicking these guys off just yet. Here's a median strip guy with a feather trying to offer insights to a TV guy during the standoff.

 

Solo

I did it. Today I managed my first solo bike ride. After a few times I started to get very confident and did a number of tricks including hockey stops with the bike close to Mommy. Bike riding is really fun! Check out some of my exciting videos:

Video 1: A close shave for Mommy


Video 2: A perfect run

Trebuchet

 

Last weekend, we continued the tradition of Romans v Barbarians by building a trebuchet out of tinkertoys. Actually, the design was inspired by a Mythbusters episode where they turned a bucket-lift into a kind of similar siege weapn by resting it on some enromous shipping containers and flinging Buster out. We got the trbuchet to flig stuff reasonably far though it wasn't very stable.

Big step. two wheels!

A Bike Ride
Originally uploaded by Enzo D.

After spending a lot of time looking at Mommy's back during our visit to Cambridge, it's time to start riding a bike on my own. I really liked riding around while we were there, and Daddy has the idea that we're going to ride to school once I get the hang of it. So...two days ago Daddy took off the training wheels for my bike. I was not at all sure this was such a good idea, but Daddy insisted. We went out in the back yard to ride around--on grass initially so that I wouldn't get hurt in any falls. I also put on my "armor"--knee pads, elbow pads, helmet, long pants, and so on. And off we went. The first day, I managed a few brief little runs without Daddy holding the seat. today was even better, I made it all the way across the yard on my own. That was a big step. I think I'm getting the hang of this.

Fore!

Last weekend, Daddy and I played golf together at my longest course ever--Buchanan Fields. When I was in England, I got a lot better at golf. My longest drive was 70 yards! Daddy figured that with my newfound power, we could play some bigger courses with actual par 4 holes. I did really well. In fact, on the 6th hole, I managed to get down in 5 strokes. Even without my handicap, this tied what Daddy shot on the hole.

I've now been practicing putting at home to improve my skills. While not as good as baseball, golf is a pretty good game.

Tooth Fairy

 

My loose tooth fell out shortly before we left from England. I didn't want to put it under my pillow for fear I would get useless English money. Boy am I glad I did. Instead, I waited. The other day, I put the tooth under my pillow and woke up to find ten whole dollars--what a great return on my investment.

York

 

Last weekend, the whole family went with Nainnie to York. It was kind of interesting riding all sort of different trains. We rode the "Cross Country" line and then the "National Express" train from Peterborough to York. The second train was very crowded. When we arrived at York, we went to the National Railway Museum. This was the best train museum ever. It was filled with beautiful trains and interesting interactive things to do.



I also went up on the York Wheel--an enclosed Ferris wheel. We got to go around 4 times. The picture above is me gazing out of the Wheel. I really loved the Wheel but it wasn't as good as the London Eye, which is the most amazing ferris wheel type thing I've ever been on.

York sure is an interesting city.

Loose Tooth

I've got my first loose tooth. It's one in the front on the bottom. I'm trying not to lose it while I'm still in England since the Tooth Fairy will give me English money. I'd rather have American money. Hope I can last that long.

Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs!

Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs!
Originally uploaded by Aidan.Morgan

Thanks Nainnie for some of the best videos ever.

Kraft! Mmmm.

 

One of the things I miss most about being in England is the great taste of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Fortunately, Nainnie "imported" a couple of boxes when she came to visit us. I just had the last box today. Mmmmm, delicious!

Regatta

 

Yesterday before it started raining, Daddy and I went out and had a paper boat regatta along the canals of the Cam. This was one of the most fun things I've done ever. Our boats sailed all over the place. Sometimes they would get caught on the banks of the river or in som overhanging foliage, and we'd have to wait to see if the wind would rescue them.

Along with Robot X in the afternoon, I pronounced today the bast day I've ever had in England. Yet amazingly, I hardly left the house!