Gage Hendrix

It's a late night for Gage, but how could we interrupt a jamming session?

Gage always loves it when Grandpa Hepner plays guitar.  Tonight Johannas was playing too and Grandpa got out a mandolin for Gage, so Gage was in heaven.

We'll have to get him in guitar lessons since he loves it so much.

P.S. More posts to come.  We hope to do some catching up over the next week.

Subscribe for email updates to our blog

You may now subscribe to receive emails when we update our blog.  Be sure to subscribe before we go private when our feed will no longer be available for a feed reader and you will have to log in to access our blog.  There will be a long grace period before we actually make the switch from public to private (at least a month or so), but the email updates will work as soon as you sign up.

To subscribe to email updates, you may either:

• Go to our Google Groups page and request to be added to the group (We'll then have to approve the request).
  
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You will need to have a Google account (free) in order to subscribe to email updates.  If you use our Google Groups page, then you can create a Google account.  If you email us through our Contact Us page, then you'll get an invite from us that will allow you to create a Google Account.

Going Camping

We're going camping for about a week and a half in the not too distant future and, well, we are probably crazy.  Gage will likely do fine, but Ben is another story.  He's had several evenings of being very awake and wanting to be held in the middle of the night until he is completely asleep which seems to take 1-1.5 hours or so.  He also prefers to have his holder standing and moving around.  We don't think that is going to be very easy to accommodate in a tent, but we're going to make the attempt.

Any suggestions?

Lock it down or leave it open? - The Results

The results of the poll are in.  We had 11 voters.

• 8 said they would still actually visit the site to read our posts
• 2 said they would like us to email posts out
• 1 said they wouldn't read our blog for a reason other than not having the RSS feed available or not wanting to log in, but they didn't leave a comment to explain why (We suspect this was just some random person who happened to run across our blog, so we aren't too concerned)

 So, it looks like we'll be locking down the blog but emailing posts to interested parties.  It may take us a while to actually get that worked out just because it isn't very high on our priority list right at the moment, but it is coming.  We'll make sure to collect contact info to invite people with before we lock down the blog.

Lock it down or leave it open?

We've been considering making our blog private because we really don't want to share everything with the world.  Sometimes we think about posting something and decide that we don't want to have so much info about us online for anyone to see.

So, we're taking a poll.  Those of you who read our blog through a feed reader will need to actually visit the site to vote as the poll is in our right sidebar.  Polling is open until midnight 8/14.

The biggest problems with going private that we can think of are:

1. People who use rss feed readers won't be able to subscribe to our rss feed any more (I wish there was such a thing as a secure rss feed).  So, those folks will probably be less in touch with what is going on with us unless we set up email subscriptions.
2. Our blog will be less accessible.  I wish we could make some pages public so that we could have a landing page for our blog with a way to email us (in case someone wants to subscribe for example).

Currently, it seems like a decision of whether the purpose of our blog is: A. To easily share a public-safe portion of what's going on with our family and friends, or B. To create a journal/history of all the details of our family.  We want it to be both, but we're not sure that is possible.

Free Model Plane Airshow in Morgan Hill 7/10-11‏

I thought I'd share this in case anyone is interested in seeing the free model plane airshow in Morgan Hill this weekend.  I know I've always enjoyed watching when I was lucky enough to ride by while someone was flying their plane or helicopter.

It is a free event with free parking and runs from about 10am to 3pm 7/10 and 7/11 (I've seen 9-3 and 10-3:30 on their site, so you are probably safe planning on 10-3).  Here is their site if you are interested in learning more: http://www.sccmas.org/airshow/

If you've got the time and bikes, I highly recommend hitting the bike trail off of Cochrane Rd in Morgan Hill.  It's about a 2.5 mile ride to the Radio Control Model Airplane Area (Here is the map), but you can always go further if you are up for the challenge (My dad and I rode all the way to Tully on the trail once and came back on Monterey.  I don't recommend Monterey Rd for biking - it was pretty windy).

You know you want to go just for the chance that you might get to see a crash.

Capturing the Curls

We're going cut Gage's hair soon - we just can't decide when. Here are a few pictures I took yesterday in an attempt to document how cute he looks on a good hair day.

Graduation from the crib...finally!

Gage slept in his big boy bed for the first time last night!  As I was driving home from visiting Emily yesterday I was talking to Glen on the phone and we just decided kinda spur of the moment.  We had been waiting for a good reason like when he starts climbing out of the crib or something, but when I heard that Glen rearranged the furniture in Gage's room while we were gone, and that the bed was now right where his crib used to be, I decided it was about time.  So Glen threw the new robot sheet set in the wash so we could make the move as exciting as possible.

He has wanted to sleep in the twin bed ever since we set one up in his room and one in the office (where Nathan naps when he's over) about 3 months ago.  He helped us make the bed and seemed pretty excited about getting to sleep in it.  When bedtime came he did the same old stalling tactics and refusal to brush teeth.  When we finally got him in bed he seemed happy but a little concerned about the crib that was now sheetless. We said good night and shut his door. To make a long story a little shorter, he cried and complained for about 45 minutes.  I finally went in to check on him and he insisted he needed his crib blanket which I'd hidden in hopes that he wouldn't ask for it and that the new robot sheets would be enough.  I quickly gave in, giving him the blanket.  He then requested, "Sing song!" which I did and then left the room.  He complained briefly and went to sleep. Hurray! He never tried to leave the room or play with toys (which I'm sure is yet to come).  We had pillows ready on the floor next to him in case he tumbled out, but that didn't happen either.  We had to peak in on him a few times after he went to sleep and laughed to see him with his feet on the pillow. In the morning he called out like he normally does, "Daddy (or Mommy), I'm awake!" and never left his bed until we came in.  We are very happy it went so well.

The picture above is from nap time today - the second time in the big bed. It went even better!  I think it helped that he was tired from playing at the park and going down for his nap a little later than normal.  We got home from the park and he headed right up to his room and climbed on the bed.  I changed his diaper with no fight at all and then tucked him in with his TiVo bear and Elmo doll.  There was no complaining when I left the room.  I heard him over the monitor for about 10 minutes making small noises, but other than that there was not a peep!  Yeah!  I'm sure it will probably not always go this well, but I'm glad we started off on the right foot!

The Swiss Family Robinson Movie Is Better Than The Book

After seeing the Disney movie version of "The Swiss Family Robinson" when I was a kid, I built a Swiss Family Robinson tree house and fort out of Legos (Not that you can tell from the picture). It was a great movie.

(I just couldn't edit this picture - the socks add so much interest)

I just read “The Swiss Family Robinson” for the first time (and when I say “read” I mean “listened to” because I do most of my recreational reading by listening to audio books during my commute). Not to offend anyone who has read this book* and loved it, but I like the movie version much better than the book*.

Typically, when I watch a movie and read the book it was based on (or visa versa), I like the book better.  There's always more fascinating details and anecdotes in the book.  This book* is the exception for me.

Here are a few comparisons of the more notable differences...

The Book*:

• The family has many conveniences including a mill, a yacht, lots of animals, farms, several dwellings, tons of food, etc.
• They are on the island for ten years.
• There are no pirates.
• There is no tiger in a pit.
• They shoot and kill about every type of animal that they encounter on the island.
• The girl's disguise doesn't fool anyone, but they pretend to be fooled for a short time.  And her name is Jenny.
• There are four sons.

The Movie:

• The family doesn't have near as much stuff.  They do have an awesome tree house that makes you think they must be related to Macgyver, several animals, a raft, etc.
• They are on the island for maybe a couple years.
• They fight pirates.
• They catch a tiger in a pit which becomes a booby-trap for the pirates (Go to 3:53 in this video).
• The girl's disguise fools them and they are very surprised to learn the truth.  And her name is Roberta.
• There are three sons.

* When I was putting this post together, I noticed that there are actually several versions of this book.  I only read/listened to one of them, so I can't actually speak for the others, but I believe they are more like each other than like the movie.  The version I read/listened to is the one I linked to above.

Our Child Star

We had a small video crew over this afternoon to video how Gage does at meal time.  I had a hard time not laughing at him when he just starred at the camera for the first 10 minutes.  In his defense:

1. He was taking a nap when they arrived and set up, so he woke and came downstairs to find lights and a camera waiting for him.
2. We actually woke him up for this, so he may have still been recovering from sleep mode.
3. Cameras are cool.
4. If you've got someone shooting your good side, you might as well give them as much footage as you can so they have plenty to use.

It was an interesting experience.  They wanted to see him get a snack, so Aimee gave him a snack to eat before dinner while she was cooking (I wasn't in this shot).  We typically don't just give him snacks unless he asks for food and we don't give him more snack unless he asks for it either.  At least it was a healthy snack - apples and oranges.

We then moved on to dinner which didn't go very smoothly since Gage had just had a snack and we were eating way earlier than we normally do - 4:30pm.  But, they were actually hoping to film a kid not cooperate at a meal time, so Gage went along with that.  He wasn't really that bad, he just wouldn't eat much and wasn't too interested in being at the table.  I certainly can't blame him since I wasn't that hungry at 4:30pm either and he just ate.

I haven't decided that this was really worth the trouble for us.  I guess we get a copy of the DVD even if we aren't in it, a book by Ellyn Satter (The woman working on the video), a $50 gift card to Safeway, and a bookmark advertising the Ellyn's books and website.  Unfortunately, we didn't get as much done during Gage's nap as we would have if we hadn't been dealing with a video crew and didn't need to wake the guy up, but Ellyn did give us a few thoughts and tips after the shoot was over, which was nice.

Perhaps this will spark Gage's rise to stardom as he moves from this video to commercials to a supporting role in a TV series to the movies.  We'll see what happens and get some of the footage up if we end up being in the video.