Vacation Movie

I finally sifted through all our footage of Mammoth, and got some shots from our friends to supplement my phone pics, so if it looks like it was taken without an iPhone, and you haven’t seen it posted on the blog before, I didn’t take the photo. Thank goodness someone documented it, or else the entire video would be instagrams. I tried to compile the video where there’s a photo of the kid before they ski or snowboard. Greta is easy to pick out because she’s in the polka dot jacket and on skis, but the boys are both snowboarding. You can tell it’s Sawyer because he is snowboarding in class, and the video of Gunnar snowboarding is with us. If it’s someone who is snowboarding very fast and looks like he could possibly incur injury, then that’s Aaron. I love the music for this video. In case you are wondering it’s Avalanche City, ‘Love Love Love’, and Mat Kearney, ‘Hey Mama’.

signing off and how fast 2 years goes by

Last night the kids wanted to watch some old videos of when they were little. This one of Greta is from two years ago, and I remember her so vividly at this age. With her 3 year old pronunciation of words and her sweet smile that slowly spreads across her fact. It’s a compilation of her 3 year old preschool performances. I could eat her up. I thought I would share it with all of you to remind us how fast they grow.

Also, I’m signing off for the rest of the week, not as if I’ve really been in this space much recently. But, well, life, it just keeps going without much time to pause. And pausing as a family is what we will be doing for the rest of the week! Biking, hiking, reading, golfing, playing, with lots of eating and sleeping thrown in. See you all next week!

my heart dropped a little

Have you guys seen the trailer for this french documentary I Believe I can Fly? Oh my. Just watch it. When the guy cart wheeled off the cliff, my heart dropped just a little.

happy friday

This week has been spent spoiling my girl and doing special things with her. I am trying to prepare myself mentally for the start of Kindergarten in a week and a half, but not too sure how well that’s going.

I thought I could kick off your weekend with a smile. Check out Sawyer and Greta’s dance moves in this video. Sawyer definitely chose hip hop with some running man, robot and snake, while Greta I believe was channeling some interpretive dance. Enjoy.

Ojai July 2011

We enjoyed a little weekend away this past weekend, and although I haven’t finished sharing the Kauai photos, I thought this little video would be fun. I am keeping with my one movie per vacation promise and trying to document our little adventures. The video for Hawaii is much more daunting and I feel much better about accomplishing smaller tasks like this until I have enough time to devote to the bigger projects. You with me on that? Being able to cross off a little check, no matter how great or small, is still a check. We swam, slept in (thanks to an adjoining room with my mom, the kids don’t even bother to check if Aaron and I are awake, they head straight to her which meant we didn’t roll out of bed til 8:30 every day), picked apples, plums and tomatoes, and watched a movie by the pool with popcorn and blankets.

Enjoy! Because we sure did…(for those reading in Reader, you’ll have to click on the post to see the video)

a little bit of Gunnar

When I was creating Greta’s five year blog post, I came across a ton of old videos that kept me glued to the computer for days. Crying. Watching. Reminiscing. My babes are growing up. I put together this short clip of Gunnar to watch on Vimeo whenever I am missing him as a baby. I look at this 9 year old boy and wonder where the time has gone. I swear tomorrow he will be a teenager. When Gunnar was little he had quite his own language. You can see the difference if you watched the video of Greta at two years, and this is Gunnar at about 21-22 months old. Greta was quite articulate. Gunnar, well, at least I understood what he said. Most of the time. I love his little language and the kids love to sit around and watch this video and imitate the way he said things like ladder, and fireman, and popcorn. Cutest thing I ever did see.

This is from the time we moved in our house, before we remodeled. The first clip was on a Saturday morning and I was heading out the door for work while Aaron was prepping Gunnar for what they would see during a trip to the local fire station. Gunnar was obsessed with ALL things fireman related. And the second half of the clip is during dinner one night, I believe I was pregnant with Sawyer, but we didn’t know if he was a boy or a girl yet. Gunnar had just come home from a movie trip with Tati.

Watch. You won’t be disappointed.

spring breaking

I was really really really looking forward to this spring break. I just needed the time with my kids. No alarm clocks, no snacks to pack, just us and time. We did a lot too. Photos will follow soon. Auntie Rachel and Uncle Dave came out to visit and we spent 3 days with them. We managed to pack a lot in those 3 days. Strawberry picking at Tanaka Farms, a trip to the batting cages, a day at the beach filled with kite flying, a trip to Yogurtland and Greta was in her glory painting and repainting Auntie Rachel’s nails and toes over and over again. We also managed to fit in facials for them and lots of time talking and playing.

Once we had to say goodbye to them on Wednesday, we were bummed. Happy we still had a few days left to enjoy spring break, but sad they didn’t stay longer. We had Sawyer’s buddy Ethan spend the night. We had plans to visit the zoo, but those fell through and being that Obama was coming to town, I was relieved to not have to worry about battling traffic for hours to get home. Instead we made a trip to the library and rented Hotel for Dogs. We went to the park, Barnes and Noble and stocked up on Legos. A truly great spring break if you ask me.

This weekend was full of things. Work for me, baby shower, congregation talent show. Gunnar decided he wanted to play the trumpet and the two little ones(I realize I shouldn’t be calling my almost 5 and 7 year old “little ones” but I can’t help it) decided to bust out their breakdancing moves. Last second Sawyer and Greta chickened out, in Sawyer’s words “I didn’t know there would be a HUMONGOUS crowd here!” There was a slide show, music, hilarious skits, and the most comedic spinoff of the Newlyweds game, aptly retitled Oldieweds. They took our three longest married couples and my parents were one couple. I added up the totals and there was over 100 years of marriage between the 3 pairs. I cannot begin to describe how much we laughed. My cheeks hurt a bit now. I took some photos but haven’t loaded them yet, there’s a chance they may all be blurry from laughing so hard and trying to take photos at the same time.

I also put some volunteer time in, and with 6 days to go, I have 5.5 hours left to make my 30 hour goal. Crossing my fingers that my goal will be met by Saturday.

To put a smile on your face, here’s a little video of my nephew. He’s delicious and such a blessing to my sister and brother in law. This past week has been heartbreaking for my sister and her husband as my brother in law’s father passed away. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

sharing the computer

you’d think now that we have a 27 inch imac that greta and I could easily share the screen. but as you will see in the video below she is a hogger. i’m trying to do something, i forget, probably catch up on some blogs or check my banking. but it’s kind of difficult with this girl on my lap. it doesn’t help that she knows how to open itunes, find Miley Cyrus and then open photobooth and take videos of herself. take a look for yourself.

 

Mammoth 2011

Here she is. Dare I say the new iMovie is awesome. So much easier and quicker to use than the last version. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I finally gave in to Aaron’s requests for a new iMac. She’s obnoxious she’s so large. But she sure is fast. Thank you California State Tax Refund. I had fun making this video, and I am pretty sure you will be able to tell the kids apart. Greta is on skis, and our friends’ kids Maddie and Mallory are on skis as well. Gunnar is the snowboarder who is with us on the slopes and Sawyer is the snowboarder in class learning to slow down and stop. We had a blast. Thankfully we have photos of Greta in ski school and us getting on the chair lift, thanks to Amanda for documenting. It’s in chronological order pretty much. I’ll post a few photos as well next week so I can explain some of them. But for now, Enjoy!

mt baldy

I feel so lame, I haven’t picked up my camera since I took Romeo’s newborn photos. So lame. So lazy. But I been loading a lot of video from the last year and a half. Aaron talked me into getting a new computer that he’s been talking about for a few months. The great thing is that it can handle all our HD videos and the firewire to import them is working, unlike our last computer where the firewire went bust a year ago. So I’ve gotten to relive some sweet moments like Sawyer’s kindergarten graduation and Greta’s tap recital, and other preschool events of Greta’s. I’m just relieved it is in a second location because if something happened to the tapes, that’s it. In loading all of this video I am trying to also familiarize myself with the new iMovie.

Here’s my first attempt at a short, very short video. Nothing fancy. My goal was to figure out how to import clips, add audio, and title pages. That’s it. Oh, and in the last minute I figured out how to fade audio.

Aaron forgot to take any video of the boys on their first visit to Mt. Baldy, and he took them again today. The conditions were fantastic since they got about 2 feet of snow just this weekend. He said it was great. And if you can believe it it took them only 45 minutes to get there today. Where else can you drive 45 minutes from the beach where it is 65 degrees to mountains where you can snowboard? The boys were signed up for lessons and thought they were going to have to do group lessons since the private ones were sold out. Low and behold it was just the two of them. So they were with one instructor and Aaron made sure he had the videocamera this time.

Gunnar usually only takes lessons in Mammoth, but we are really trying to get him to practice his toe edge and thought he would benefit from some one on one time. And it worked. He is much more comfortable with his toe edge now and hopefully he won’t struggle with it in Mammoth next week during his group lesson.

The video is mostly Sawyer, but midway you see Gunnar practice a toe edge turn. Can you believe it’s the second time Sawyer was on a snowboard? Love it. Love them. Greta and I held down the fort and babysat Romeo so his mama and daddy could have a date. Excuse the music, my boys are obsessed with Daft Punk, I think they think the synthesizers are cool.