Robot Atake

Look what I found! Aural pleasure. ;-)

Seriously, I found this in the garbage last week on the way to work! It was sitting there in the rain...looking all lonely at the side of the road with a CD player as well. I let them dry off for a couple days and then tried them out. The CD player is totally FUBAR'ed, but the receiver works brilliantly. It is a 5 channel surround sound receiver that is probably about 10 or 12 years old, but it does the trick for us. I've already watched Matrix Revolutions (awesome on this setup) and as a family we watched Aladdin. I ran the rear surround speaker wires through the joists last night, so it looks good too. I think I need a proper centre channel with magnetic shielding, though. Right now the speaker sits on the floor so as not to wreck the TV.

Surround sound is cool.

Artwork!

This is the "artwork wall" which is mostly A's stuff, but E has some up there too. Lately he has been making 'comic books'. See future posts for one of these gems. They are awesome...be forewarned though...they might need a little creative interpretation (spelling is a little interesting).

This is one of E's Pokémon cards that he drew.


The kids' new favourite thing to do...for hours! They are very creative and in fact make their own designs (like the 'aliens' you can see here). You just heat them briefly with an iron (wax paper in between) and the plastic beads all stick together.

Some more creations!

Something is wrong with these pictures.

Ain't right. Just ain't right. I mean it's great that there are birds, but what's up with the grass?!?!?!!!

Spring is here...I think.

I saw this guy out the side window over the kitchen sink. Actually he was one of nine (!!) that I saw out this little portion of the sideyard. Yesterday, H saw no less than twenty (!!!!!!) of these guys hopping around the backyard, along with 10 grey-eyed juncos, 4 mourning doves, 2 blue jays, and some chickadees. Whoa! I can't help but think of that scene from Ace Ventura when Jim Carey sings as the birds flock to him in his apartment.

The sleddin' hill

This was our sledding hill that we built in the backyard (this was taken at the beginning of March). The kids actually made it all the way down into the ditch from this!!! Lots of fun...but it is gone now.

Art in the capital

This is at the national gallery downtown. We went for a short jaunt in there with the kids. My patience was waning pretty quickly as the kids yelled, ran, touched things. ACK. Too bad really 'cause (almost) everyone else wanted to stay longer.

Christmas 2006

So, this is obviously from Christmas. This is only half of the presents. We had a full (and fun) house!

This gingerbread house was a group effort. Yummy too.

Although it does not look very big, this snowman was about 9 feet tall. The middle ball was increadibly heavy...like back-breakingly so.

Family and friend built two big snow forts and in fact had a great snowball fight. However, we were almost completely bagged by the time it came to fightin'.

A nice beginning to a beautiful holiday morning...

Snow buntings all winter long

These guys have been coming to the feeders for several weeks now. They are snow buntings and have very nice colouring. We had never seen them before, but they are now our favourites... It is interesting, they come by for about 5-10 seconds, then they will all fly off, usually vertically up to the eaves. Then they will return 2-3 minutes later, only to fly off again. They feed on the scattered seed on the ground and only when there are lots of them will they perch on the feeder, although they don't seem to adept at doing that. They can hover for a few seconds though (while waiting 'in line' at the feeder), which is interesting.

I'll try to post some better pictures another time!

E's birthday party

So, E had a reptile zoo come and do a demo at the house for his birthday party. There were a hoard of boys and it was crazy, but we all had fun. Apparently, this is the biggest reptile in the province...a huge snapping turtle...this thing was MASSIVE as you can see.


Jay, you would like this scorpion...huge...and scary.


This is Elvis, he is a king snake...get it? He was very smooth too.

Disney World

Strollers in Disney World...just outside the PhilharMagic, which is an interactive 3D, 180 degree theatre...very fun to watch. Windy!

This one needs no explanation.

During the day...

And at night!

Sea World

Underwater tunnel...very cool.

I've always loved these lion fish.

This is a seahorse that looks like a floating weed...in fact that's exactly what I thought it was when I first looked into the tank!

Kennedy Space Science Center (not 'Centre!)

This is the building within which they attach the shuttle - vertically!!! - to the booster rockets and the main fuel tank. The crane that does it is apparently accurate to within a few 1000ths of an inch!

Here is the 'crawler'. It weights something like 18,000 imperial tons when it is loaded. It crawls on a bed of fresh pea-gravel over to the launch pad (below) at a very fuel efficient 45 feet/gallon...yoikes! After it has crawled over the gravel, the gravel is pulverized into a fine dust.

Lodging...fancy-fance

So, this is where we stayed in Kissimee...pretty swanky.

Space Shuttle Discovery launch

We were lucky enough to be around when the shuttle was launching, although we were about 40 miles away. It was still incredibly bright and larger than the size of a big sunset. We did not hear anything, but it was still quite an amazing thing to witness in person.

It was neat to see how the colour of the fire (?) changed as the fuel changed (according to my bro).

This was about the last visible point before it was too difficult to see. It seemed to fly away horizontally rather than straight up. I'm not sure why...

Gators!

An everpresent danger in Florida...

Blue Spring State Park - Orange City, FL

Manatees are also called 'sea cows'. They are basically slow moving balloons with sealion-like faces. These are one of a few protected species left in the world. They come up about once every 5 minutes for a breath of air and spend the rest of the time eating plants and sleeping...sounds healthy and relaxing.

The day that we visited the park, there were over 130 manatees counted.

What is the opposite of phallic? This is the source of the spring...it is probably about 10 feet wide and 70 feet long.

more Florida

H took this photo of the shells...I love it and took a few more on my film camera. My dad says she has a great eye for photo composition and I agree!

This is so cute with the little footprints...there were a ton more all over.

I totally love the Scion xB. So boxy...so fuel efficient.