Entries from December 2009

My 2009 End-of-the-Year Endorsements

Date December 31, 2009

This post has nothing to do with the kiddos and everything to do with a list of non-family “things” I have found myself enjoying immensely or finding highly informative over the course of 2009. Documenting them here for posterity’s sake (with my signature verbosity, unfortunately). Podcasts As I think about it, I can trace my […]

Christmas at the Wilsons in 29 seconds

Date December 26, 2009

Camera, tripod, remote shutter release –> Picasa:

Merry Christmas!

Date December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas! Carson came home a week or so after Thanksgiving talking about how he needed to leave food out to attract an elf. His first concoction (Cheerios and a chocolate bar) didn’t take, but he got additional guidance from his friends the next day, and, on his second attempt, an elf indeed appeared the following morning. […]

When Dad’s Toy Meets Son’s Toy

Date December 20, 2009

When we were camping over Thanksgiving, I introduced Benton to the idea of slow-shutter-speed photography. During that trip, it was waving lightsticks and sticks with glowing embers on the end of them. Ever since, Benton has been coming up with other ways to put the technique to use. Last night, he dug out a couple […]

First Snowfall of the Season

Date December 19, 2009

We got our first real snowfall last night. Benton helped shovel the drive and then immediately headed into the yard to gather more snow to make a fort. Within an hour, all three kids were outside. Alana made little snowmen: Carson found the experience exhilarating: Even Molly got a little frisky (with Anabel, from next […]

And Now…Benton in Videos

Date December 16, 2009

Yes, we actually have enough pictures of Benton to throw together a video of him. And, hey, I figured out how to sort chronologically, so this runs the full gamut of his 10+ years. It’s a 4:28 video, and I stuck with Jerry Jeff Walker for the music — not the most appropriate lyrics, but […]

Okay…a little more Christmas

Date December 14, 2009

Alana practices for her school’s Christmas program — that’s singing and sign language, folks! My apologies if the video doesn’t play — click through on the image if you’re viewing this in e-mail and you should get to see it. You might have to turn the volume up a bit.

Images of the Holidays

Date December 13, 2009

A smattering of pictures with very limited explanations… House Lights This is a significant increase in volume from past years, largely due to Julie buying a couple of large tubs of used Christmas lights at a garage sale over the summer for $5. She used a lot of them, but they also got scattered to […]

An Engineer in the Making

Date December 6, 2009

One of the favorite XY-chromosome weekend activities in our neighborhood (all the adult men plus Benton) is to grab some glow-in-the-dark golf balls and walk down the street to “Smuirfield,” which is a set of six greens with flagsticks on semi-sculpted terrain that was set up 25 years ago by a couple of local residents […]

Picasa Facial Recognition –> Carson Video Montage

Date December 5, 2009

One of my excuses for not doing much blogging of late is that I got sucked into Google Picasa’s facial recognition capabilities and turned it loose on our entire digital photo collection. It’s pretty impressive, in that it identifies faces and matches them correctly something like 80% of the time. The problem is that that […]