Let it rain

While I don't normally like rain, it's pretty fun when you make your own rain. Daddy and I did a flower photo shoot yesterday at dusk. Since flowers kind of look nice in the rain, we decided to get out a watering can and make it rain on the flowers while filming the "rainstorm". This is the best kind of rain because you don't even get wet.



You can see the highlights from the photo shoot here.

The amusing thing is that the flowers in the shoot are all in vases from Valentine's Day. The dew is created by using a water squirt bottle. The rain, of course, is courtesy of my bee watering can. The puddle is from the aftermath of the rain. Photography can be pretty sneaky you know.

Games, games, games

Daddy and I played a whole bunch of games on Saturday: baseball, golf, mini golf (although I didn't play well), and croquet. I had the yellow ball to show that I was the Oakland A's while Daddy had the red ball (for the Boston Red Sox). The way we play is that I get three shots to Daddy's one shot. In the first match, I built up a decent lead, but Daddy managed to come back at the very end for the win. The second game was pretty much a rout---I tore through all the wickets and finished the course while Daddy was still only about halfway done.

The Marshmallow Project

To celebrate the 100th day of school, we had to do an important building project--we had to construct something out of precisely 100 toothpicks and marshmallows. This seemed like a huge amount of work, so I tried some smaller versions as well as sketched some plans earlier in the week. One of my small projects was a porcupine with a marshmallow body and toothpick spines. This seemed promising since you can add spines until the total number of things adds up to 100. I sketched a marshmallow and toothpick Aidan on my whiteboard. I even attempted to create eyes, nose, and mouth by writing on the marshmallows with Sharpie marker. While this was great in concept, getting an actual marshmallow Aidan to stand up proved difficult.

Finally, yesterday was the big day for creating the full scale model. Mommy and I worked together on a marshmallow house. This was working out nicely until the roof collapsed and destroyed the whole structure. Since it took the better part of an hour to make the house, we were both very unhappy.



Eventually, we went back to the porcupine idea and built that. However, we found that the porcupine looked more like a turtle at scale, so we changed it to a turtle. At last, the marshmallow project was complete. I used 60 marshmallows and 40 toothpicks in making the turtle.

Here's a documentary video.



Here's a link to some photos of the project in progress.

Cool Structure

I built a very cool structure with my magnetic building toys. I consists of a whole series of interlocking triangles. Inside a bunch of the little pyramids, I place Hershey's Kisses to complete the look. I like it.

Super Tuesday

As you know, there was a big bunch of elections on Tuesday. My stuffed animals also had elections as well. I picked animals to be each of the candidates. Barack Obama was a tiger, Hillary Clinton was a leopard, John McCain was a puppy dog, and so on. I used my whiteboard to post the election results. In the primary, Barack Obama manged to defeat Hillary while Mitt Romney managed to defeat the others. Then came time for the general election. The election board I made is shown above. On the left is Mitt. you can see that I tried to spell his name (Mit Rone) and drew a picture of him. On the right is Barack. I abbreviated his name as simply "B". Since Barack is black, I used black market to draw him (except for his hair, which is blue just like Romney's). Up above are the party labels--R for Republican and D for Democrat.

The final tally--Mitt got 5 votes while Barack triumphed with 8.

Wheat Painting

In church school yesterday, we did a fun art project, painting with wheat sheaves. Apparently, long ago these were the standard paintbrushes of the time. They're pretty hard to work with. In fact, one of my pictures has a bunch of wheat seeds embedded in it. It was a lot of fun painting with these odd brushes.

Rainy Season

We're in the midst of rainy season, and I was dying t0 get outside. Finally, there was a break in the rain, so Daddy and I flew paper airplanes out in the backyard. Paper airplanes sure don't survive well when landing on wet ground. Still, it was a lot of fun building and destroying them. I also splashed about in various puddles with my trusty dalmatian boots.

Super Bowl Sunday

It was a very exciting Super Bowl played today. I was rooting for the Patriots since the Giants eliminated my beloved Packers two weeks ago. Sadly. despite a great effort from the Pats, it wasn't to be. The Giants won in the closing seconds of the game. I've been very into football this weekend. Daddy and I did lots of blocking drills. I also posed for a photo session with my various helmets. We used Daddy's new black background to isolate the subject of the portrait from all background.



(Apparently, Daddy used this for his roses shots as well.)

Anyway, many of these turned out great. You can check the shots out here.

Talent Show

I'm trying out for the Alamo School talent show next week. I hope I get in. For my tryout, I'll be singing the song "Take me out to the ballgame." I've also worked out a bunch of fun hand gestures to go along with the song. Naturally, I'll be all dressed up in A's gear to complete the look. Wish me luck.

Mythbusters

We invented a new game earlier this week--Moon sand Mythbusters. In this game, you use moon sand to create "bench test" characters to test various myths. Just like the crash test dummy on mythbusters, I named my moon sand guy, buster. We've tested a lot of myths using Buster. For instance, if I hold Buster up to my knee level and drop him, he falls without incident. If I hold him up to my chest and drop him, his head falls off from the fall. So the myth that you can fall from a 20 story building and survive is totally busted in the bench test. You can, however, survive a fall from a 5 story building.

Watercolor

Today, we got out the watercolor paints. I forgot how much fun this is since we hadn't done it in a long while. I made a lot of cool stuff. An American flag, some houses, a picture of our fireplace, and a volcano. I always make sure to sign my name when making a picture so everyone knows who the artist is.

Golf Ball Civil War

Lately, one of my favorite games is golf ball civil war. In this game, Daddy reads selections from Shelby Foote's Civil War series and we act out the battle using golf balls to represent troop formations. The yellow golf balls are the union while the white golf balls are the confederacy. One great thing about golf balls is that they roll nicely, so it's easy to simulate charges and retreats. We also have golf balls representing the main generals leading each side.

We recently replayed the Battle of Murfreesboro (or Stones River if you're with the Union). The leading general on the Union "team" was William Rosecrans or "Old Rosey" as he was known to the troops. We found a pink golf ball for him. I also have incorporated a couple of horses from my Thomas set to represent the cavalry on each side.

We've done a bunch of these battles including Gettysburg (1st day), Chancellorsville (2nd day), Haines Bluff, Murfreesboro, and a cavalry raid by General John (Hunt) Morgan.

Aidan and the Alligator

One of the best things about downtown Walnut Creek are the variety of animal sculptures that I can perch on. As you know, my favorite is the cougar. This past weekend, I spotted a very nice alligator to sit on. This was especially appropriate since the letter of the week in school was "A". The "A" poem was Allie the Alligator.



Check out the complete slide show here.

An "A" for Effort

One of the trickiest letters to write is lower-case "A". I can never remember which side of the circle the line goes. This is really troubling since this letter is in my name, Aidan. To get around this problem, I've taken to using a capital A in all circumstances, so when I sign my name it's "AidAn" or, sometimes "AidAN". While this sort of spelling convention seems to work well for dot-com firms (like eBay), it doesn't wash in Miss Nelson's class.

As a result, Mommy put into place a cunning plan. Every time I successfully make a lower-case "A", I get a penny. Yesterday, I made 4 "A's" and, as I proudly shwed Daddy that evening, this netted me four whole cents. While I used to view making this letter as quite a chore, it's a whole different ballgame when I get paid to do it. This morning, I talked about my day with Daddy. I told him

Today I'm going to make a thousand lower-case A's. How much will I mkae for that?

I learned two things from this conversation: First, one thousand A's is worth $10 and second, if I actually did this, my hand would be sore for a week. Maybe I'll stick with smaller amounts for now.

Christmas Morning

It was a wonderful holiday. I got lots of great presents. Since we had Christmas in California this year, I thought I'd try to give you something of the flavor of the gift-opening festivities.

Opening presents:


A crab puppet:


You can see the slideshow here.

New Orleans

Daddy just came back from New Orleans where he was at a conference. He intended to take some pictures, but few of them came out well. Click here for the highlights (such as they are).

Snow!

I was very lucky when I went to wilkes-Barre this holiday season. It snowed! In fact, there was one terrific morning where there was a whole bunch of freshly fallen snow. We made two snowbears. (I don't like snowmen since they're human--only snow animals).



We also had snowball fights.







Here are some orderable photo highlights:

Snowy scenes
Snowball fights

Triceratops

We went to build-a-bear workshop today. While there are many bears to choose from, I opted for a triceratops. If you'll recall, the first stuffy that was allowed to sleep with me was my little triceratops (known affectionately as "Tri"). I decided that she needed a friend.



I'm really happy with my new bigger triceratops. I carried her around with me all day and went to sleep hugging both her and my original Tri. I had Daddy take some pictures.

Putting on Ornaments

Today, we put some of the ornaments on the Christmas tree. Since I'm very strong, I helped Daddy cary some of the boxes out of the garage and into the house. Then, I put up some ornaments. It was very exciting to pick out the ones I like. The balls are really shiny, and I like these a lot.



I also picked out a number of others as favorites, including the Christmas shrimp and a very pretty trumpet.



I don't really like the nutcracker ornament, but Daddy and Mommy do, so it's on the tree.



We left the high parts of the tree for Mommy to do since she's taller than we are.

Daddy note: These "improbable" Christmas photos were taken using a tripod and a really long exposure time (30 seconds) with no ambient light. The long exposure creates the twinkles in the lights---it's not a Photoshop trick. In fact, there images are straight from the camera. Click on the image to view, download, or order prints of the big size.

O Christmas Tree

Well, we finally got a Christmas tree today. Its been super busy with my birthday party and other things, so the Christmas tree got pushed back. Because of the lateness of the season and the rains, we ended up getting an artificial tree this year. Mommy was ambivalent about this, but I like the "machinery" of the tree. It looks quite nice. Both Daddy and Mommy commented that artificial trees look a lot less artificial than they did when they were kids.



This evening we put the tree up, tomorrow we add the ornaments. I worked on the bottom branches.



Hooray for Christmas.

Christmas Cards

After Mommy finished with the gift wrap processing, she's turned to the next big Christmas job, writing the Christmas cards. While in past years, she signed the cards for me, with my new writing skills, I'm signing my own name to all the cards. There are lots of them, but I'm pretty quick at signing. I hope you like the cards.

Slow Motion Autumn

You know, people say that California doesn't have seasons like the east coast. This isn't really true. It's just that the seasons kind of occur in slow motion, so you don't notice them as much. For instance, right now it's what you would normally think of as fall on the east coast. The leaves are turning and falling off the trees. There's a crispness to the air. The trees and bushs are covered in nuts and berries. Here's a short photstream to give the flavor.

Birthday Celebration

Yesterday, I had an early birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. I invited all my classmates from kindergarten as well as some old friends as well. I had 12 people at my party, and everyone had a great time.



The theme of the party was my favorite sport--baseball. We even had a really cool Oakland A's cake, and I dressed as an A's player. Best of all, I got some very cool presents including a pair of nerf micro-dart guns that Daddy really likes. What a good day.

Early Birthday

After we went on the light-up train at Sunol, we stoppped off at Chevys, my favorite restaurant. Mommy had a birthday coupon from there, so we celebrated my birthday early.



I got the big sombrero, ice cream, and everything. Daddy only had his camera-phone, so we only have silly pictures

Sad Departure

Yesterday was a very sad day. I learned that the Oakland A's traded my favorite player, Danny Haren. I cried and cried. I said to Daddy that I love Danny Haren and wish he weren't traded. The only good news is that he was traded to the Diamond Backs, who play the Giants pretty often, so I'll still get to see him pitch from time to time. I'm getting a Diamond Backs hat to root for him.

I"m also extremely angry at the A's for making this move. I'm going to punish them by rooting against them for two whole games. The winter is a very sad time. Last year, I remember the day that Frank Thomas left the A's. This year, I'll remember the day Danny Haren was traded. These will both be very sad days for me.

Star of the Week - Update

Each day, I have a different star of the week responsibility. On Tuesday, my job was to bring in a story to read. I try to pick stories that are especially likely to amuse. For example, at a recent evening reading event, I brought in the book I Stink, which is about a garbage truck. For my star of the week offering, I brought in Bats at the Beach. While I really like this book, it didn't have sufficiently many gross parts to make the audience roll on the floor lauging uncontrollably. The best parts were when the book talked about the foods the bats liked to eat during their trips to the beach. These include "salted skeeters" and "roasted big-mallows."

Teddy Bear Cholla

On Wednesday, my job was to bring in some pictures of a place I went and explain them. While Mommy suggested I bring in shots of DC, I opted for desert pictures from Arizona. I brought in pictures of saguaro and barrel cactus, as well as cholla and prickly pear. I explained each of the pictures. My friend Logan was very impressed. He said the pictures were very cool. My teacher, Miss Nelson, was also impressed. She said she learned a lot about cactus from me. In particular, she did not know that you can tell the age of a saguaro from how many arms it has

Sunol Christmas Train

This evening, Mommy set up a surprise for me. She wouldn't tell me what it was or aything about it. Reluctantly, she told me it was "Sunol", which meant nothing to me. It turned out to be a lit-up Christmas train.



Inside and out, the train was decorated with lots of lights. It had 13 cars (we counted them)---a very long train. They had all different kinds of cars: restaurant cars, sleepers, pullman cars, and so on. They were all decorated in different ways, so it was pretty neat.



The only problem was that the train took forever to get going. I was bored during that time. Still, it was a fun evening all around.

Here's a set of shots from the evening. As usual, you can download, post, remix, or order prints from these.

Daddy note: I've abandoned all the other photo services for Flickr. It's much easier to share, do nice slide shows, and embed images in the blog. In addition, for those who like to download (you know who you are), it's much better in terms of image quality and it's free---just click the "download image" link for each picture. Finally, prints are cheaper: 4x6s are 15 cents each while 8x10, my favorite format, is only $2 each. For 8x10, that's abour 50% cheaper than Shutterfly and Snapfish. I may occasionally post images elsewhere, but mostly it will be to Flickr.

Star of the Week

I have extra responsibilities this week since I'm the star of the week. I was all excited this morning. I popped out of bed, put on clothes quickly, and zipped off to eat breakfast. I did not want to be late. This promises to be the most fun week of Kindergarten ever!

Busy, busy weekend

It was a very busy weekend. On Saturday, we got up early and went to a trophy ceremony for a golf group that Daddy belongs to. It turns out that Daddy won the trophy---the "Coffee Cup" (in honor of the early morning times they play). It was great. I even kissed the trophy I was so happy.

Next, we went off to soccer where, annoyingly, we wore our white shirts again. You see, we have reversible white and green shirts for soccer. I much prefer the green, but our team, the Tigers, never seems to get to be green. In fact, last week I was so upset that we were white again that I protested enough that I changed teams.



After that, Daddy and I went on a hike in the Mount Diablo foothills. Here's a batch of photos from around there.

Sunday was almost as busy. I spent the afternoon working with Mommy on my star of the week poster. See, this week, I'm the STAR OF THE WEEK in Kindergarten. Pretty cool.

We also went out for sushi and saw the Amazing Race (my favorite show) tonight.

Bunker Shots

Yesterday, Daddy and I played golf in the backyard, and I discovered that I had a remarkable talent--I can effortlessly hit bunker shots. Now you may wonder how I learned this since we don't have bunkers (sand traps) in our yard. Well, we put in a bunch of new powdery dirt in our garden area. It is about the same consistency as bunker sand. I decided that it would be fun to hit some balls out of this spot. Using my baseball grip on the golf club, I easily blasted my way out of the bunker. Daddy set the ball to have some tougher lies including something called a "plug lie" where the ball is half buried in the sand. Again, no problem for me. I hit textbook blast shots out from the bunker. (For those who don't know, a blast shot is one where you hit a little bit behind the ball and use the force of the sand in part to propel the ball out of the bunker.)

What is amazing is that no one ever taught me how to hit this shot. Daddy has always been more concerned with my hitting normal shots than tough bunker shots. It just seems like something that comes naturally to me.

Photostream

You will notice a new feature to the blog---a photostream. This is a looping slideshow of pictures posted to Flickr. Many of these appear as links in blog entries. If see a picture you like in the photostream, just click on it and you'll bounce to Flickr where you can download it or order a print.

Arizona - One Last Time

This is the last of the batch of highlight photos from Arizona.

Arizona Desert Museum

Photo Safari

Yesterday, Daddy went on a photo safari---a very long hike in the Diablo Foothills in search of pictures. Here are some of his best shots (view as a slideshow for best effect):

Plants

Animals

The large bird in two of the shots is a hawk. The creature that looks like a dog is a coyote. Daddy wants me to tell you that these photos were all taken with his 70-300mm lens, which is amazing. Only with the super powers of zoom can you get pictures this close of a coyote.

Finally, here are some scenes.

All of these are downloadable or you can make prints.