Talent Show

Last week, we had our talent show. If you'll recall, I've been in talent show since kindergarten. That year, I did "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". Last year, I did the Lion Song. This year was the most deluxe talent show extravaganza yet. I did "Yellow Submarine" backed by my friends Katie, Grady, and Colby. Mom built us a big yellow submarine prop, and we all dressed as sailors. I did a great job singing the song beautifully. I even did the little call and refrain part in the last verse with a little English accent and a crazy laugh:

As we live a life of ease
Every one of us [Every on of us]
Has all he needs [Has all he needs]
Sky of blue [Sky of blue]
And sea of green [sea of green]
In our yellow [In our yellow]
Submarine [Submarine, ah-ha!]

We all live in a Yellow Submarine!

Sound is Vibration

In science, we learned how sound works. It turns out that sound is caused by vibrations in the air, sort of like ripples in water. Hard to believe since you can't really see the air. We made an instrument that vibrated and this caused it to make sounds. How the heck can sound be vibration?

Flower

We're learning about the parts of plants in school. To learn more about this, we made flowers. But not the usual kind, this flower is accurate. It has several stamens and a pistil too. As well as the all important (red) petals. Flowers are quite interesting.

Prizes!

A little postscript on the fun day at the club. After acquiring tickets, you can swap them for prizes. I swapped 20 tickets for this guy--a duck in sheep's clothing. He's so cute.

Donkeys versus Ponies

Today at the club was a special Easter holiday fun day. They had 3 bounce houses, pony rides, a petting zoo, and a "midway" where you can win tickets for prizes. They also had a buffet featuring corn dogs as well as various kinds of boring adult food. Here are the highlights:

1. Ponies versus donkeys: They had both pony and donkey rides. At first, I was confused and called the donkey a camel. Mom was shocked--a camel ride? Of course, when she saw what I identified as a camel, we both laughed because I got donkeys and camels confused. Anyway, a donkey is a much smoother ride than a pony. The pony bounces up and down when he walks. I had to hold onto the pommel with both hands. The donkey offers a smooth ride--like the TSX. I would occasionally raise both my hands and yell "Yee haw" during the ride.

2. Speed basketball is super fun. Here, you have 30 seconds to make as many baskets as you can. There are 2 side by side baskets, so you're competing against another player for high score. My best game got me 10 tickets. I made 11 baskets including 1 at the buzzer for a 3 point shot--final score = 23.

3. Bounce parachute. In addition to the usual types of bounce houses, there was a bounce parachute ride. Here, you go inside a bouncy tube and strap on your parachute. The house then inflates up really high lifting you up in the air so that you're almost as high as the roof of the club! Then it slowly deflates as you parachute back down to the ground.

4. Petting zoo: Lots of cool animals in the petting zoo including miniature goats and pigs, bunnies, and some very fluffy chickens.

This was super fun.

Paragraph

A good paragraph is like a burger. The topic and closing sentences are like the bun while the supporting sentences are the "meat" (on in my case the veggie since I don't like meat burgers). At school, we're supposed to use the "burger principle" to make a good paragraph. Here's the paragraph I wrote.

99.98% of things are solids, liquids, or gases. Ice is a solid. Water is a liquid. Vapor is a gas. Solids, liquids, and gases are everywhere.

(Sidenote: The 99.98% figure is a "statistic" that Daddy made up. Apparently some things are plasma, which are not solid, liquid or gas.)

Super Speller

This week, I was a super speller. I got 22 out of 22 right on my spelling test including such tricky words as "proofread", "cartoon", and "rhyme." My teacher wrot my score using a bright yellow marker and conferred on me the title "super speller". Yay!

Odyssey

On Saturday, we did our Odyssey of the Mind performance. The theme was to create a party celebrating something unusual. As part of the theme, we had to create unusual noisemakers as well. I came up with the idea that we celebrate the thumb since it's a very important finger. The judges thought this was very creative.

One difficulty in the lead-up to the event was that I kept getting into fights about which lines to say. (I didn't like some of the lines.) Fortunately, it all came together in the performance. I was my usual professional self (when not practicing) and things went really well.

Trophy

Last night was the blue and gold dinner at Cub Scouts. It was a night for recognizing lots of achievements including Pinewood Derby. The highlight for me was getting the 2nd place trophy. I loved getting it. When it was presented to me, I turned to look at all the other scouts, hoisted the trophy high in the air, and then pressed it to my lips giving it a kiss. I was so happy!

Badminton

Badminton, originally uploaded by Beckywithasmile.

This weekend we put up the badminton net and played in the yard. I really like badminton. One of the things we try to do is see how long we can keep a rally going. The record for this session was 10 shots.

Night Out

This weekend, Mom and I went to the Chabot Science Center. What made the trip unusual is that we stayed overnight in the museum. Needless to say, with a zillion cub scouts trying to sleep on the floor, not much sleeping took place. Still it was fun. Got to try on an astronaut helmet. (Didn't like the smell though--smelled like dog.) The highlight of the day was supposed to be looking through the giant telescopes at the place (it's a state of the art observatory). Unfortunately, clouds meant that we couldn't look out. The guide instead substituted the world's most boring discussion of the three telescopes. It was so boring that even Mom left before it was over.

Frisbee Golf

Today we didn't something totally cool--we made up our own frisbee golf course in he park across the street. We brought a big frisbee and a bucket to be the tee box and the hole. We also brought 2 normal frisbees. I had a great time, so much so tat we ended up playing 22 holes of frisbee golf. I like that I get to make up my own holes and then play them. I tend to like holes that are REALLY long. One hole was about 300 yards from start to finish.

Great game.

Walnut Creek

 

for the first time ever, we went boating in THE Walnut Creek. There's not much left of the creek in its natural state (mostly it's diverted in underground culverts), but we found a launching point. Since it is rainy season, there was still plenty of water. There was a pretty good current too. Three of our boats made it from the creek into the Contra Costa Canal. This drains into Suisun Bay. Suisun Bay, of course drains into the Pacific. Kind of neat to think of our paper boats making their way all the way to the ocean.

Wendy's... sort of

One of the things that drives Mom nuts is when Dad suggests that lack of success will lead to working at Wendy's. First of all, Wendy's isn't all bad. I like their shakes--Frosties--for instance. A second argument that Mom makes is that food prep is an honorable profession. Well, I got to see the latter first-hand. We went to McCovey's restaurant for a field trip. I enjoyed hearing about the various baseball players honored there, but I have zero interest in the food...or the food prep.

Microwave Safety

For class this week, I presented a short public service announcement on microwave safety. Naturally, I wanted to capture my audience's attention, so I focused on all the bad things that can happen if you do not use a microwave properly. In my initial script, I started out with death as the worst possible consequence. Mommy thought this was a bit over the top, so the version above sets up death with other scenarios. I also try to illustrate each of the bad outcomes using my acting skills. For instance, if you burn yourself in a microwave, I jump up and down and yell

Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot!

A line I borrowed from Super Mario Galaxy. Mario says this when he falls into lava.

Check it out. It's important safety advice.

Victory

Today was the Pinewood Derby. This year, Mom pulled out all the science. She got a device to check things like the camber and width of the wheelbase. She got another device make sure the wheels were exactly circular. We hit the weight limit out to 4/100ths of an ounce. I helped too.

Well, all of that hard work paid off. My car came in second in the WHOLE PACK. I was first among the wolves, and I'm off to the Blackhawk 500---the big regional Pinewood race where Cub Scouts from as afar away as Sacramento come to compete. I can't wait.

Hooray for the Yoshi-mobile. And hooray for Mom!

Warriors

On Friday night, we went to see the Warriors take on the Bucks. It was Cub Scout day. Great game--the Warriors led through 3 quarters only to lose in the end. It was also an historic game. The Warriors only suited 8 players. One of them got injured and 3 fouled out, leaving only 4 players. By rule, each team must have 5 players on the court so Steph Curry played even though he had fouled out. Apparently, this is the first time in the history of the NBA that this has happened.

After the game, we shot free throws on the real court. I almost got it in as this video shows.

Church Choir

On Christmas Eve, we had a big singing service where the choir featured prominently. I did 3 songs as well as performing on bells. The bells are my favorite part. When there's a part of the song that calls for both my bells to be rung at the same time, I ring them and spread my arms out triumphantly. The audience got a chuckle out of my larger-than-life gesticulations. I sang well too. One problem is that, whenever I first get on stage, I have the endless urge to yawn. I ended up yawning both before and during some of the songs. I don't know why I yawn, I just do.

Above is a post-concert photo of myself and my friend Katie. This was a special moment for Katie's Mom. Normally, Katie does not like to wear "girl clothes", but somehow Mom got her to wear a fancy red dress for the concert. She's one of my best friends.

Giving is Part of Christmas Too

While I really like GETTING stuff for Christmas, it's fun to give things as well. In my class, we worked on a big project for a gift to our parents. I made the card shown in the image above as well as a yellow and green pot, which I threw myself, for Mom and Dad. I was so excited about my gifts that the very first gift I wanted Dad to open was one from me. Giving gifts is also fun.

Yay Christmas!

Jumping for joy at my favorite gift--socks!


I had a great Christmas this year. I got almost all the gifts I asked for and have been really enjoying them since opening them.

Top of the list are Wii games. I especially like Super Mario Bros. One really cool thing about this game is that it has team mode where 2 or more players work as a team to get through levels. Teamwork is quite helpful since this game is very tough, much tougher than Super Mario Galaxy. Right now, Daddy and I are stuck at the first Bowser level. (For those who don't know, the plot in all of these games is the same: Bowser, the evil dude, kidnaps Mario's friend Princess Peach. Mario must then defeat Bowser and his endless hordes. To be more precise, Mario must defeat Bowser many times since defeat on a lower level simply causes Bowser to retreat to a higher level without relinquishing the Princess.)

I also got a cool electronics circuitry kit. Last night, Mommy and I built a light and fan combo using first serial and then parallel circuitry. Electricity is interesting.

Happy Festivus!

December 23 is the traditional day for Festivus--the holiday for the rest of us. You might recall Festivus from Seinfeld, but it turns out it's much older. It was invented in 1966. Tonight, for the first time ever, we celebrated Festivus.

We started with the bringing in of the bare aluminum pole--prized for its combination of lightness and strength. Here I am bringing in the pole.

From Aidan's Weblog

Next, we had the traditional airing of the grievances. Here, we point out all the ways other family members have failed us throughout the year. It's really fun. Since Festivus is on the 23rd of December, I decided we had to make a list of 23 grievances. Here's the beginning

From Aidan's Weblog

While initially, it was hard to come up with grievances, eventually, the whole family got into the spirit of the occasion and the grievances came flowing forth.

From Aidan's Weblog

From Aidan's Weblog

Following the airing of the grievances, we had the traditional Feats of Strength. As you might know, the holiday continues until the head of household is pinned in a wrestling match. Initially, I was overmatched by Daddy...

From Aidan's Weblog

But I soon spied a weakness and pinned him!

From Aidan's Weblog

Festivus is a truly great holiday--amazing more people don't celebrate it.

Graham Crackers

From Aidan's Weblog

In addition to my artistic skills in gingerbread, I also work in another important medium--graham crackers. Here is a graham cracker house I built in school all by myself. The key to this structure is a "skeleton" made of a milk carton, which provides stability for the grahams. As you can see, my education is not confined to marshmallows. Frosting and M&Ms are also important components.

The duck is supposed to add to the visual interest of the shot since everyone likes to look at rubber ducks.

Gingerbread

 

One of the best Christmas traditions is making gingerbread houses. I made one out of graham crackers in school, but it doesn't compare to the real deal. So Mommy and I made a house on Friday afternoon. It's beautiful. I think it's our most deluxe one ever. It even includes Sun Chips as part of the decorations.




The image above is a politically correct version of Hansel and Gretel, which we read in a zillion versions (including the original German) in school this week. Here "Hansel" (the African-American) and "Gretel" (the Asian) meet up with the (Caucasian) witch at the gingerbread house. Shockingly, despite her black pointy hat and black moon and stars dress, they don't recognize her as such.

Science!

 

We finished up the last week of school before vacation with a little sceince. This week's episode--the mystery of molecules. We made a whole bunch of molecules out of marshmallows and toothpicks. This was totally cool. When Daddy came home, he offered a couple of mysterious comments about the project. First, he asked me about "covalent bonds" (which I have no clue what he's talking about). Then something a bit more delicious--he observed that the hydrogen atoms never link to each other and never link to more than one other atom. I hadn't noticed this, but it's interesting.

Snow!

Well, for the first time in my life, it snowed in Walnut Creek. I woke up this morning and couldn't believe it. The yard was white with snow. We went out before school and made snowmen, had snowball fights, and generally were amazed. I went over to the Bennetts (our next door neighbors) to tell them incase they hadn't noticed. It turns out, they had. They built a snowman in their backyard too. Hooray for snow!

I hate spelling

Friday is spelling test day at school. I really don't like spelling. I'm okay at it, but it's a lot of work and very frustrating. Last night while studying, I got quite upset. Mommy got upset with me as well since I didn't want to keep on going. Here's my biggest beef with spelling--why did all these other stupid countries take over England at various times and leave their crazy spellings behind.

This week's episode: A million different ways to spell the long e sound. I had to spell between, piece, belief, believe, reason, mean, least, and so on. It makes no sense to spell the same sound so many ways!

ghost

 

Yesterday, Daddy and I had a little fun making a ghost picture. Here's how it's done. I first pose backlit in front of a window. Then, I move from the area and Daddy shoots the same picture with me absent. You have to use a tripod for this to work. Then we import both photos into Photoshop and lay the Aidan on on top. We then twiddle with the translucency on the top image until the appropriate ghostlike effect is attained.

Boo! Did I scare you?

Homework Marathon

 

Sadly, my weeklong vacation from school is over. My teacher kicked off the week with what seemed to be a "homework marathon". In addition to the usual homework, she forgot to give the spelling pretest so instead of having to correct only the spelling words I got wrong, I had to do all 22 of this week's words. Daddy, thinking that this wasn't exactly fair, administered the pretest to me at home, so I only had to do 13 of the words (I got 9 right). But even the pretest took a long time. Better was the math, which I rock at. 25 for 25 on tonight's math quiz.

Tonight's homework lasted about 1.5 hours! The photo above is taken during my 20 minutes of reading.

Daddy technical notes: The lighting on this shot is done using a remote strobe placed to Aidan's left and front and set manually at 1/2 strength. The camera is over his right shoulder thus creating the sidelighting effect.

Aidan technical notes: It's not really helpful in reading when Daddy is setting up complicated camera arrangements and shooting with flash while I'm trying to read.

Aidan in the Rain

Another dance extravaganza with props.

Cinema

Daddy and I made a new movie this weekend--my first sequel. It's railroad crossing of doom II. This time we used stop action techniques for added realism. We also did a series of vignettes rather than a single story--sort of like episodes of Cops.

Enjoy!

Geotrax

 

Nothing new to report. This is just a better shot of Geotrax. Here we see the diesel making its early morning run for various machine tools at the plant.

Monopoly

 

This weekend I graduated up from Monopoly Junior to full-blown monopoly. I love this game--the money, the properties, the little pieces, and especially the deal making. I won the first game I played thanks to a monopoly on Boardwalk and Park Place which bankrupted everyone else. The second game was a time limit one. I thought I had won, but Mommy had great luck at the end and pulled out the victory. The third game was supposed to be a time limit one too, but we played it out. Unfortunately, I lost to Daddy and his nasty hotels on New York Avenue.

I get to put my math skills to the test in this game--figuring out the right change, reading the rates on the property cards, and so on. In fact, I've become so good that I was the banker in the most recent game. Monopoly is really fun.

Putting up the Christmas Tree

 

Yesterday, we put up our Christmas tree as well as the outside lights. At first, I was a bit skeptical about how fun this would be, but once we got into the lights and ornaments, I had a great time. In fact, I worked on ornaments longer than ever before--about 2 hours. I also was the most careful person in the family. Here's the ornament destruction count: Mommy 2, Daddy 1, Aidan 0.

My least favorite ornament is one of an evil clown that Mommy's grandfather gave her. I wanted him off the tree, but Mommy put him on anyway. Fortunately, I don't know where he is.

The tree looks totally beautiful. It's the nicest tree ever I think.

Click here for a more extensive set of putting up the tree pictures.

Rediscovering Geotrax

 

As Mommy was cleaning out my very full and messy closet, I rediscovered my many Geotrax train things. Mommy and I set up a big arrangement in the living room and have been having a lot of fun with it since. Yesterday, the Geotrax were invaded by "giant stuffies." The trains were a bit frightened but the stuffies meant no harm. In the afternoon, the Bennetts came over and Patrick and Elizabeth played with the trains. They seemed to love them. A key highlight was when a Roman soldier took a ride on one of the trains. Unfortunately, there are a number of low clearance areas on the track and the Roman suffered smoe nasty blows to the head. We all thought that was very funny! (7 year olds love black humor.)

Hooray for geotrax!

Happy Turkey Day

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Above is a photo of a turkey I made at home. I made it all by myself from constuction paper, cardboard, and Sharpie pens. I especially like how I decorated the legs. This year I'm thankful for my friend Christopher. He came over of a playdate last night and then invited me to his house for my very first sleepover. It was very cool plus it makes my longest playdate yet--more than 24 hours! Mom and Dad are coming over to Chris's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Hooray!

Turn the Beat Around

One of my favorite things to do at night is "dance party." Check out this dance I made up to "Turn the Beat Around." Shot with Daddy's new iPod Nano. Amazing that a device about as big as a pack of gum (and thinner too) can do this.

The Many Faces of Aidan

From Aidan's Weblog

Not really anything to report. Just a quick collage of my many faces over the last few months. You can find the many faces of Aidan and other recent shots of me at my Shutterfly site.

Math is Fun!

From Aidan's Weblog

While most of my homework is pretty boring, I really like math facts. I'm very quick at adding together even very large numbers. Last night, I stayed up late doing "bonus homework" with Dad. My real homework involved adding together "doubles" like 2+2 or 4+4.

For the bonus, Daddy decided to have me keep doubling the doubles. So I added 2+2, 4+4, 8+8, 16+16, 32+32, etc. We finally quit after I added together 2048+2048 (= 4096 by the way). Dad said that this sequence of numbers had a special name, 2^n, or the geometric sequence. It apparently gets big fast. Here is a crazy fact that Daddy told me: n^2/2^n = 0 as n gets arbitrarily large. How can two tings that both become infinite end up being zero?

Above is the picture of my whiteboard with many calculations.

I really like doing calculations. I know a bunch of tricks to add and subtract numbers. Some of my tricks are incomprehensible to Mom and Dad, but somehow still manage to produce the right answers. Daddy says that I do math intuitively, whatever that means.

Wine Country

On Saturday, we went to wine country, but with a very cool twist--my friend Chris and his Mom came along with us. It was very fun. We went to Trefethen and saw Shannon. She's super nice and gave me a hug. She also had a basket full of toys for us to play with and even take home. We also wandered around the vines and a lovely fall day. Finally, we went to Mumm where I gathered up a huge number of cool acorns. While we were in the car, we sang goofy songs which made us laugh and laugh but eventually annoyed our parents.

Here is a list of the top 5 annoying things we did:

1. Pretended to be sirens while Daddy was driving.
2. Repeatedly referred to the "man zone" regardless of topic of conversation.
3. Sang songs about babies falling to their death.
4. Whined
5. Said "wiener dog, wiener dog" over and over.

Actually the annoying things made the trip even more fun!

Only in California

Guess what I did on Sunday? I ran a lemonade stand on the corner of the street. It was a nice sunny day but not especially hot. Both Mommy and Daddy were skeptical about how much business I'd do selling lemonade. But business was brisk thanks to my terrific product and my enthusiastic selling technique. Here's what I would do: Any time a car or person went by, I held up my big orange sign advertising "Fresh Squeezed Lemonade 25 cents" and began my patter (modeled after Billy Mays):

Aidan Morgan here with fresh lemonade, only 25 cents. Get your fresh lemonade here. It's only 25 cents!

When bicyclists would come by, I tried a different tack:

You get awfully thirsty riding that bike. What you need is some fresh lemonade. Only 25 cents!

I ended up selling two pitchers of lemonade and made about 20 bucks (tips really help when selling for only 25 cents each.) I really love selling stuff. Maybe that's what I'll be when I grow up--a salesman.

Silver Medal

 

I went down to Iron Horse School last night to see my art on display. When I first arrived, I was super excited since I saw that I had a big gold sticker labeled "award of merit" next to my piece. I thought this meant that I would be moving on to the state championships. Unfortunately, there is another sticker on some of the pieces, "Award of Excellence", it turns out that these were the ones that were moving on. The award of merit is like a silver trophy--good, but not good enough. This got me very depressed. I really wanted to move on. I thought my piece was the best one there. I don't want to win the silver medal, I want to win the GOLD medal.

The upshot is that I'm going to shoot more photos this coming year, so I'll have a good selection to try to win gold next year.

In related news, we've been talking a lot about seeing the cloud versus seeing the silver lining in things. Daddy thinks Mommy is too often a "cloud person." Both Mommy and Daddy said that my disappointment about the silver medal is an example of cloud thinking. I'm supposed to be proud to have gotten the silver and determined to get the gold next time. The problem is that I'm not really proud of the silver.

Bowser Defeated...Finally!

Well, at long last it happened. I made it to the center of the universe for a final showdown with Bowser in Super Mario Galaxy. It took some doing, but I defeated him and won the entire game. Princess Peach is rescued, and the universe is once more safe. I'm very proud of myself for having pushed through to ultimate victory!