Happy Birthday!!!

J just turned 11! My new years resolution is to try to update the blog. He got so many lego sets over christmas & birthday. A large lego set that used to take days he can complete in a few hours now. We will have to think up some lego challenges for him.

North Carolina Transportation Museum

North Carolina Transportation Museum Trip

Aug 31, 2011

Yesterday J and Dad went to the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, NC. It is not a far drive, and our Science Museum Consortium pass gets us in here for free as well. It is one of the many local museums we visit frequently.

As you can see I was able to get Microsoft Photostory 3 up and running on my Win 7 machine. I found a how to link here. Basically you just down load and install it. Then you select properties/compatibility/win XP sp2. After that it worked fine until I tried to add the audio. MS photostory 3 is supposed to be compatible with .MP3 format audio, but it kept telling me it was not compatible. I  found an online site Online Covert .Com to convert my .mp3 to WMA. It was very easy and MS photostory 3 did recognize the WMA format. So still some troubleshooting to do, and looking about for better software, but for now this is better than the Picassa 3 movie maker.

DaVinci Catapult Model

This is working catapult built from the DaVinci Catapult Model kit. J had a blast with this. We used it to launch marshmallows all over the house. The dogs had fun with this too! The other pics are some of J's little lego creations. The tron light cycle he put together in about 5 min after watching Tron. I don't recall what the purpose of the other one was, but I am sure it was impressive :) Again I just don't like Picassa as much.

Hard Drive

We thought our hard drive on the desktop was fried, to make a long story short it turned out to be a fried motherboard, but in the process of troubleshooting I wound up with a half-reformatted hard drive. So we lost a ton of pictures. I have not had the heart yet to look at our back up. Unfortunately I do not run back up as often as I should. I know we lost pics, but I won't know how much until I check.......

We will be posting pics of space camp soon. As well as slowly adding old neglected posts mixed in with the new.

July 4 2011

The above movie was made using Picassa3. The pics are not that great. It's not surprising that it's hard to photograph fireworks you set off at home, you will have to take my work that they were a lot of fun and impressive. And the fireworks show downtown actually had an accident/explosion where luckily there were only minor injuries. What I like about Picassa is that it IS easy to upload photos and make a little movie. You can add captions to each picture, but not as easily as microsoft photostory3.  You also can add music. I was going to add the 1812 Overture. But there is no way to cut/adjust/slide the music like you could in photostory.    Therefore I did not include the 15 min Overture to get to the last 2 min of finale to go with the pictures. Overall I am dissatisfied with Picassa. I will have to check to see i photostory works with win7 or what the latest replacement is. The video below is just straight footage from the camera.

Zombie Dice

Our new favorite game is Zombie Dice! It is a really fast fun game. Here is a review from GeekDad.

This game can be addicting! There are 13 dice in the tumbler. The dice are: 6 green dice with 3 brains, 2 footprints, and 1 shotgun blast. There are 4 yellow dice with 2 brains, 2 footprints and 2 shotgun blasts. There are 3 red dice with  1 brain, 2 footprints, and 3 shotgun blasts. You roll 3 dice at a time you keep the brains and the blasts, but take any footprints (escaping humans) and add more dice so you roll a total of 3 at a time. Once you get 3 blasts you lose all of your brains. It is a very simplistic easy game. My friend has a four year old daughter who loves it! Some people even play zombie dice as a way to determine who plays first in a different game. Perfect for game night. Fun for all ages!

DaVinci Boat Model and V2 Rocket Model

This weekend J went to Hobby Lobby to the 2 for 1 model sale. We thought it was funny because Hobby Lobby actually called us to let us know because we are 'frequent model shoppers' lol. The v2 still needs to be painted. J plans on doing the black and white research test pattern on the model.

update: I am experimenting with using picassa to upload photos and make slideshow/movies. please bear with me while I figure out the new software.

Star Wars Monopoly

J played Star Wars Monopoly with a friend the other afternoon and he turned into this brutal maniacal monopoly winning tyrant. So this afternoon his father and I decided to teach him a lesson so we decided to challenge him to a game. It was brutal! We got schooled!!! He had never played monopoly at all prior to yesterday! I guess he gets his 'game gene' from his grandfather!! He would be so proud!

Neglected Blog

Since my car accident two years ago I have really neglected this blog. Since I now have some time off I will do a bit of updating. I am sure some of it will seem disorganized and out of order, but I want to catch up and to get back in the habit of sharing J's activities!

Snow Storm 2010

We had a snow storm come through about 6pm yesterday and left us with about 3-4" of snow! More is expected tonight! We have had lots of fun sledding and playing with the new puppy outside...and lots of mugs of hot chocolate!

This is 'Crazy Bird'. he has lived in our yard for several years. He has quite a personality!

Press play to see the videos! Above is J and our new puppy Gloria! She was soooo excited to play in the new snow! Below is J sledding.

Space Derby 2010 "SWISS CHEESE ONE"

After much observation in previous space derby races we noticed that the lighter the vehicle the faster it goes...so what better way to loose some weight than to drill holes all through it!?!?! Swiss-Cheese One was definitely the fastest rocket there today. It FLEW past the other entries!! But for some reason after several runs it just pittered out. He came in third overall. We have several theories as to why, so we have lots of bugs to work out before next years race. Perhaps limburger one? maybe roquefort one? Swiss-Cheese two??? But most important is we had fun making the rocket, and we are very proud of our son who showed great sportsmanship today!

This is a race between swiss cheese one and the rocket that turned out to be the overall winner. This is early in the day. You can see how much faster swiss cheese one is. We think something must have happened with the rubber bands. It was a big disappointment to come in 3rd after such a great start! We took it harder than J did!! I am sure next year we will have even tougher competition when the others put holes in their rockets too!

don't forget to check out our previous cub scout space derby entries here and here.

Washington DC 2009

Oooops! This post is out of sequence. Jeff and J took a trip to DC right after christmas but before new years! They took 400+ pictures. Most of them unfortunately came back blurry, so these are a few of the ones that turned out ok.

Daddy goes to China a lot and J has always wanted to try Peking Duck. There are no restaurants in our area that serve it. J LOVED it, and they wait staff at Meiwah loved him!

The Lincoln Memorial

The US Capitol

Bell X-1

Apollo 11 capsule

Mercury capsule

US Capitol

The Washington Monument

The Hotel Pool of course!!!

Another highlight of the trip that J really enjoyed was hailing the TaxiCabs!