We had Cooper dedicated at church this morning and the boys were very well behaved which is really nice when the whole church is looking at you. Cooper didn't let Pastor Cole hold him and acted a little annoyed with his hand on him, but it seemed Pastor Cole has plenty of experience and handled it fine. It's great being a part of this church community and we have really liked being at FCF.
It was my week to run Powerpoint and a hardware failure and scrambling to work around it made for a stressful and interesting morning. It kind of reminded me of Hume which started camp last week and our church took their youth group there for the first time, kind of weird not to be there but we'll be in San Diego next week and may swing by the Hume SD camp and visit my cousin. Anyway, some more pics from the morning:
Friday night fun in the Watson family includes dinner out and hitting the local Barnes for some books and trains. Once the kids went to bed Elisa and I watched "Lars and the Real Girl" which was quite enjoyable.
Cooper is getting to be a big "little" brother and already figured out how to trap Kiefer under this Papasan frame, just like his dad used to do to his older brother...
After David Jay helped educate me on how great bats are, Kiefer got a book from the library called "Bats Own the Night" and it was also very informative on how cool bats definitely are, so no longer am I a "bat hater". Here we are reading the amazing book about bats.
The Schulers and Beth came for a visit this weekend and it's been great! They are great friends from our time at Hume and it's been a really fun time of catching up. Joel does the IT for Hume Lake and Beth worked at Hume for quite a few years while we were there but is now a teacher in San Jose. They decided to carpool together and hang out with us for the Memorial Day weekend. Below is Beth , Jen and Elisa out on the deck: Ellie and Kiefer playing in the backyard Ellie and Cooper on the deck Joel doing his world famous grillin which included Tri-Tip last night and chicken tonight: We had a freak snow storm blow through so it was a little cold and snowy for the first few days they were here which meant we stayed in a lot and played Rock Band :) Now that it warmed up we were outside a bit more today.
After hearing the news of the Simpsons leaving Hume, it got me a little sad as Eroc is THE Hume icon for me. I got a little nostalgic thinking about some of the great times we had at Hume, and especially the fun I had making videos with Eric. Eric was in so many great videos, but I decided to post an obscure one since it has the voices of so many great people from Hume. It's crazy because Jason Lackey did the animation on this and he now works for Showit doing graphics and support and Nate voices and sings for Azure and he does all of the design/marketing for Showit. It's too bad we couldn't steal Eric too, but maybe someday :)
In addition, there is also the voices of: Norm Daniels as the youth pastor. He also did the original sketches and is my other Hume icon that now works at a camp in San Diego. Darin as the nerdy Steven Jenkins. He also wrote the song and script and came up with the whole idea for Camp Gloryland with Eric and me. Jen Schuler as Esther. Their family is coming to visit us this week! Becky as Fuschia. They came out to visit us in December. Dunkin as Maximus and we worked together in media
And of course, the famous Eroc Simpson does the voice of QuickNick, the pumped up camp counselor. This is the role he did for so many years and what I'll always remember him as when I went to Hume as a camper. He also does the jock voice for Brody which is fantastic!
Hume is definitely losing a legend but I know Eric will be doing great stuff where ever he goes. He's such an infectious creative guy that you can't help but smile when you are with him. I can't wait to get pancakeart.com launched once he gets some free time...
Anyway, if you like making fun of "Contemporary" Christian worship songs with words that don't mean anything, then you should enjoy Azure's rendition of Vertical Amplitude Number X...
If you enjoyed that, we created a website back in the day and it's still up and the text for the site is so fantastic written by Darin, I still love reading it. We also have the original Gloryland video there with the awesome characters of Gus and Chowgal. Check it out at CampGloryland.com.
Last weekend Elisa and I had a weekend away in Tucson while my parents watched the kids and here are a couple pictures from my Mom of Kiefer and Cooper at the zoo and playing:
We had the Mothers Of PreSchoolers leadership team over this morning to shoot a one minute video as a contest entry to win a free trip to the national MOPS convention. It turned out pretty fun, enjoy...
We just got some new chairs for our deck on Tuesday night, but then it rained on Wednesday so we didn't get to use them Wednesday and then we went out of town for the weekend on Thursday morning. We spent the weekend in Tucson in some great Spring weather that got into the 90s and we even got sunburned at the pool. We got back to Flagstaff last night and then this morning we woke up to all this snow! I guess we'll have to keep waiting to use those chairs...
After a year of DVDs being made out of our house, we moved the operation down to Queen Creek which included packing our van full of 7 computers, the robot, cords, and a bunch of boxes. I already made a trip last week with 15 boxes of DVD cases and now everything is setup and running.
I've been a little silent on the blog recently as I have been pretty nose down working on the release of our next software project, Showit Sites. This weekend is the womens retreat for our church so I told Elisa she should go since I haven't had a chance to spend a lot of time with the boys recently. This is my first time to have the boys by myself for two nights since Cooper is not yet weaned.
Friday was great and we went to Peter Piper with the Tomich boys since their mom was also on the retreat. I still tried to get a little work in and didn't get to bed til 2, but the boys don't know that and happily greeted my day at 6 AM :) I decided we needed to get out of the house so we took a walk and hit up a garage sale and then went to the park. It was a nice day but that Flagstaff wind is really kicking in which can make the warmer weather feel cold during a gust. Here are a few pictures of the boys at the park. After the park we went home and then drove through McDonald's since I prefer to stay away from creating more work for myself with dishes whenever possible. While eating lunch I called my parents to see if they were going to my brother's baseball game tonight. They said they were driving up from Tucson and the game started somewhere around 4. My brother coaches the Chandler Wolves High School Baseball Team and they got the opportunity to play on the field where the Diamondbacks play to take on their big rival Hamilton after the Dback's game today. I was wanting to make it to the game but didn't think I could fit it into my work schedule, but since I was taking the day off to be with the boys I figured we needed an adventure and might as well make that going to a baseball game!
We packed up the car and headed out the door about 20 minutes after talking to my parents and deciding to go. Since I knew I would have reinforcements at the game I didn't mind the two hour drive down from Flagstaff. Cooper slept almost the entire drive and I expected Kiefer to do the same since it was during nap time but he just stayed awake and looked around the entire drive. Now that he is potty trained I also got to teach him how bushes in the desert are thirsty and that it's really nice to water them :)
We had a great time at the game and here are a few pics: Cooper with Grandpa trying out his hat: Coach Jon at third base coach: The rest of the Watsons were there including Grandma, Lexi, Jace and Tammy: The game was really close and tied in the last inning until Hamilton went on a hot streak and brought in 4 runs including a bomb of a home run. The Wolves fought back with one run but it wasn't enough and went home with an unfortunate loss. By then it was 7 PM so I decided to just suck it up and make the drive home since I figured both the boys would be tired and sleep on the drive. Cooper fell asleep at the end of the game but then woke up as we were leaving which was not good as he ended up screaming for about 40 minutes at the beginning of the drive and I made many frequent stops trying to figure out how to help calm him down. Finally he fell asleep and Kiefer quickly followed, so the plan actually "worked" and I got them home, transferred them into their beds without them waking up and am now getting ready to crash after a very fun day!
I just downloaded the pics from our other camera and here are the four girls that drove to the retreat together:
