Ethan had been requesting a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese since going to one for a friend's. Even though they have security checking ultraviolet hand stamps to make sure nobody steals a kid, I was stressed and tired just being around the pandemonium. Check out the video!
So I participated in a few events for Engineers Week 2009. I almost won a paper airplane contest, failed in an egg drop, and came in 3rd in a team competition building a 20-ft tall tower out of 50 sheets of 8.5x11 paper in twenty minutes. The highlight though was winning the machine challenge with another Brett. We had to make a car out of K-nex which I'd never played with in my life. It was a classic case of the tortoise vs the hare as our competition in the final round shot out of the gate quick but had been experiencing trouble getting up the hill to the finish line in earlier rounds. For our race it flat out choked.
Liz suggested the family get out of the house so we went to the Los Angeles Zoo. Weather was great, people were rude...pretty much the status quo. We didn't get to see any elephants due to the ongoing controversy regarding the new enclosure being built. Here's a video but note that much of it is animals (shocking, I know) with a few shots of the kids interspersed.
OK, Ethan got a nice introduction to stage fright with his Thanksgiving performance (click here) but the Christmas performance was a big step up...at night and in front of four times as many people since the church was a full house. He figures out where we are in the crowd around the 1:10 mark.
Ethan's preschool held a Thanksgiving performance and his age group performed "Five Little Turkeys", "Thank You", and "Jesus Loves Me". Keep an eye on the 1:40 timestamp where Ethan sees us in the crowd. Enjoy!
We all flew to Aurora, Ohio (near Cleveland) as my mom was getting married on the 23rd. The lucky guy is John Petrenchik. I was asked to make sure I videotaped their first dance and got some memorable footage involving Ethan and the cake. The still photos are from Mom's cousin Cindy Wiser. On a related note, at the reception Anneliese rolled on to her stomach for the first time.
Ethan's friend Steven had a real firetruck at his 3rd birthday party! Lucky for us, Ethan was still cool with just having a swim party for his. Ethan got to hang out with his ex-girlfriend Avery (platinum blonde that moved away to Colorado) who was in town visiting.
Liz was a trooper and wanted to take Ethan to Disneyland though she's 8.5-months pregnant. I don't think she foresaw us staying there for 11 hours! We accomplished the whole thing without a stroller. Ethan was pretty good with his leashed doggy-backpack so we didn't have to keep an eye on him the whole day. We could of used a stroller around 4pm in line for the submarine ride because he was whooped but he really liked Nemo and friends so he was reenergized. He was a bit scared on many of the dark rides but never cried. Here's a video!
Well, we count ourselves lucky to have seen this in person outside Sacramento last Christmas because apparently the neighbors didn't think the $15,000 of canned food raised last year was worth the nighttime traffic in their neighborhood and threatened legal action this year (read more at http://www.lightupxmas.com/). My favorite one can be viewed by clicking here.
Well, probably around the time I was learning that Liz was pregnant again, Ethan and I went to the El Dorado Park Nature Center and walked around the 2-mile trail which is impressive for a two-year-old. Here's a video!
