We took off Ellie's training wheels a couple of weekends ago but didn't really get much practice time.
So yesterday we went out to practice. Ellie was pretty nervous and she wanted me to run next to her in the beginning. Then it just clicked and she got it. I'm glad I had my camcorder.
She was on cloud 9. We were so proud. Sophia and James were cheering for her too.
We were all getting a kick out of James latest discovery last night.
James starting walking on his own the last few days. He's wobbly and falls down plenty but his determination is winning.
Great to see as a parent but I think we are in trouble now :)
I took this clip yesterday. Ellie (our 2nd) is in the background cheering him on with me.
We had a little party tonight at our house with Sophia & Ellie's friends and a few parents. I counted 10 kids.
They practiced a few tunes at our house than went caroling around the neighborhood.
Here's the video.
Our little one has started to crawl this week.
My mom came up from NY this weekend. It was great to see Grandma and the kids were spoiled as ususal. So were we. Lauren and I went out last night for dinner. Before dinner we had drinks at a new place in Beacon Hill called Bin 26. Great place. Then we met up with Brian and Judy for dinner at The Blue Room in Cambridge.
After brunch today we took everyone bowling. Loads of fun. Ellie won with an 8 on the last set beating out sophia by 1. Lauren and I came in last place (pathetic but true). Video of Sophia and Ellie below and photos here.
This summer I migrated all of my digital photos to Flickr. Previously I hosted my photos on my servers using Gallery. Gallery is fine but didn't have the social/community features that I wanted so I made the move to Flickr. The migration took several months since Flickr limits uploads to 2GB/month even for the pro account.
I now have 4,400 photo's on Flickr.
With the help of Keyword Assistant I have tagged approx 86% of my photos. I can't wait until it's 100%. Tags rule. My daughter Ellie recently turned 5 and it was so nice to have her pictures available with a click. I easily grabbed all of the photos tagged "Ellie" and made a cool slide show that I had running on the macmini connected to our TVs during her party (geeky dad). Flickr doesn't do full screen slide show so I used Photocastr (developed by my friends Stuart Roseman and Jason Yanowitz) to get the high res pix from Flickr onto the Mini. Sweet.
Having tasted the benefits of my tagged photos, I now want all of my home videos tagged up too. I don't know where to start but I'm going to figure it out.
I'm guessing most consumers don't want to spend the time tagging all of their photos and videos.
We need an auto tagging system for video and photos that support existing apps (iphoto, imovie, moviemaker, picassa, photoshop etc) and existing web services (flickr, photobucket, fotki, youtube, veoh, etc). Riya tried to do photo autotagging but they wanted to replace stuff that we all use already with a new service. That's really hard. I think this quote from Munjal's blog is spot on:
"We had realized that there was one major thing different about Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0. In 1.0 no one had anything on the web so if you had a new service people would just use it. In 2.0 most people have something they already use on the web to do the task. So if you have something better (even if it is a lot better) you also have to have the key features they used from their 1.0 site before they would shift to you. Web 2.0 has a lower cost to awareness (due mostly to blogging), but switching costs are considerably higher (at least for photos). This was a big insight for us."
This new research from Penn State looks promising. I'm going to spend time checking it out.
Having fun with James at a local cafe this afternoon. This guy loves playing with straws.
I took a short video of James last night before bedtime. He is growing up so fast these days. He can sit up by himself and he lunges forward to grab the toy of his choice. He loves Jackson and the feeling seem to be quite mutual. Enjoy.
Sophia had an end of season gymnastics event last night. We saw Tim and Renee since their daughter Meegan was also in the event.
Sophia did two routines. Here's video of both the routines (photos here). She loved it and so did I. I thought the finish was really cute.
Here's a video from Sophia's ballet recital. She did three numbers during the evening. I liked this one the best.
Sophia is on the far right at the beginning of the dance.
Video of James "talking" to Sophia and Lauren from this morning. He's 9 weeks old and already 14lbs !
Girls are having fun with the spring weather. Here's a short clip from the yard taken yesterday.
(click triangle in the middle of the screen).
Tomorrow is actually Sophia's birthday but we had a party for her today with friends and family. Grandpa, Grandma and Nana came up for the big day.
We let Sophia decide what kind of party she wanted this year. Well, she thought about it and decided that she wanted a "Build a Bear" party with lunch beforehand at California Pizza Kitchen. Oh my god. A party at the mall. Yikes. Well even though it wasn't something we would have picked it worked out great and everyone had fun.
Here's a short clip of Sophia blowing out the candles on the cake with Ellie helping out.
Sophia heard this song and wanted me to print out the lyrics. She started signing along and Ellie joined in. Sophia takes the song and the emotion...um ... rather seriously. Ellie is enjoying the moment and Lauren is feeding her lines - off camera - since she can't read. Pretty cute stuff.
(Click on the triangle in the middle of screen below)
Video of little James.
[Click on the triangle "Play" button in the center of the video below]
Last month Sophia and her buddies performed a song at their Friday school mtg. I thought she was pretty brave and it was really great.
This past Friday, Sophia and her friends performed again. This time it was a dance number and the girls designed the choreography all by themselves (if you couldn't tell).
Sophia is the one in a pony tail and red tights. Enjoy.
[Click on the triangle "Play" button below]
Each Friday afternoon at Sophia's school, the entire school gets together for a meeting where the principle/teachers make announcements. Sometimes kids voluntarily sing songs, tell jokes, play piano, etc. Today, Sophia and a few of her friends performed "Joy to the World". Sophia is the one in the pink skirt up front. Me, Ellie and Lauren were cheering her from the audience. It was really cute.
Ellie shares some of her holiday thoughts.
Today, both girls had Halloween parties at their respective schools. Ellie dressed up as Raggady Ann and Sophia was "Stephanie" from the show LazyTown. Ellie had such a ball with Lauren at her school and then this evening we all went to Sophia's school for their annual "Halloween Monster Mash". It was a lot of fun & pretty spooky.
I also posted some new pictures from the parties and here is a short video of the girls pumpkin carving. Enjoy.
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Andala Coffee - 10am-12pm
