Wildwood Vacation 2008

Last month, we did our annual family excursion to the Jersey Shore, spending a week collecting seashells on the beach, bicycling on the boardwalk, splashing down waterslides, riding every possible amusement ride, and eating lots of pizza and cotton candy.

Vacation photos (courtesy of Uncle Matt) can be seen here.

The Strawberry Thief

Linda and Phoebe have been trying to grow strawberries in the backyard for the past couple years now, but every time one of the underripe green berries gets big enough to notice, it disappears.

Recently, Linda caught our strawberry thief in the act.

Make a Little Birdhouse In Your Soul

Once a month, our local Home Depot holds a workshop where kids are invited to come and work on developing important life skills, such as wacking things repeatedly with a hammer, avoiding injury while performing said wacking, and in the process building a small project.

Pictured here is Ben, having successfully completed building a small birdhouse. Note that all digits are still intact. Victory!

Houserspawn(tm) in the News

Zach made an appearance in our local Town Talk newspaper last week for his role in a service project he participated in at school.

The text of the article reads as follows:

Three Amosland Elementary School students of Lauren Derby, Reading Specialist / LEP (Gifted Support) Teacher for Ridley School District, recently conceptualized and executed a community service project that helped students as Park Lane Elementary School in Darby. The trio conducted a drive that asked classmates, parents, and teachers to donate old, new, or gently used items such as; notebooks, art supplies, books, teaching materials, and even sporting goods to a school that had a wish list of needs. With the help of their clever marketing that included morning announcements and letters to both parents and teachers, they collected, sorted, packed and delivered over 30 boxes of goods to the classrooms at Park Lane. Above, l-r Zachary Houser, Gurleen Kaur, Varshini Malliredigari are pictured packing donations.

Wanna Buy A Bridge?

Since he's been four years old, Zach and I have made at least one trip every summer to see a baseball game with Uncle Matt and Aunt Elizabeth in New York.

Baseball wasn't in the cards for this year's visit, as Yankees tickets are at a premium with this being the last year at Yankee Stadium. (Not to mention seeing the Mets play at Shea being generally undesirable, and the minor league Brooklyn Cyclones and Staten Island Yanks not having started their seasons yet.)

So we we spent the day on Saturday walking the Brooklyn Bridge, browsing the giant LEGO scuptures at F.A.O. Schwarz, buying up vintage sweets at Dillard's Candy store, and taking a powerboat ride around New York Harbor.

More pictures here.

Slave to Fashion

Being a typical four-year-old, Ben likes to dress himself.

There are a few ways of thinking about this. On one extreme, there is the Control Freak approach, where you have all of your child's clothes chosen ahead of time, and the kid has no say in the matter whatsoever. (Which, of course, can only cause the child to rebel hard, directly resulting in all manner of unsightly facial piercings, tattoos, and other unfortunate body modifications.)

Then, on the other end of the spectrum is the Anything Goes approach. This means allowing your child to wear the clothes that they want to wear, even if the outfit they pick out is hideously ugly, not sized properly, aggressively unfashionable, or not appropriate for the weather (like, for example, the long sleeve shirt Ben wanted to wear in the 98-degree heat yesterday.)

Linda and I try to find a balance between these two extremes, and the end result is generally tolerable to all parties involved.

As the picture below illustrates, we took the more lenient approach when Ben dressed himself for his preschool graduation ceremony.

(Yes, those are camouflage rain boots.)

So You Think You Can Dance

Last month, Zach and Phoebe performed in a musical at church.

As you can see in this video, it's just a crying shame that Zach is so inhibited on stage. We have to find some way to get that boy to come out of his shell.