Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah

My kids aren't exactly daredevils. They are very cautious children. Even though they are both developing a roller coaster bug, neither of them are really looking for big thrills. So I was pretty surprised last week when they both showed interest in doing a zipline course for kids at Jolly Roger Amusement Park in Ocean City, MD.

Jolly Roger has installed ziplines for adults over their waterpark, but they've also added a nice little zipline obstacle course for children. Once suited up, the kids cross bridges of increasing difficultly until they come to the end of the course where they must zipline back to the starting point. Elias and Tanner both tore up the course. I was really impressed with both of them and also very proud of them for stepping outside their comfort zone. The best part is: they had a blast.

Here's Elias zipping back to home base:



And then Tanner (You can hear him scream with excitement)

Proud Parent of a Young Artist

Every once in a while, your kid brings home a piece of art work that he or she did at school that is a little bit above the rest. These are the projects that get hung on the refrigerator or somewhere else in the house. My son Tanner brought this picture and short story home from preschool the other day, and quite honestly...I couldn't be prouder of him!

Before It Was Tangled

I've been in a bit of a writing slump this week but I wanted to get something up here today and I was thinking about this random picture so I dug it out.



This picture was snapped in June 2009 at The Art of Disney Animation attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida. It's Tanner standing in front of some art work for Disney's new animated feature Rapunzel. By the time the movie came out in November 2010, the name had been changed to Tangled. Anyone whose seen the movie will agree that Tangled was not a very good title for that film, yet I don't think Rapunzel was the best choice either. In Japan it was probably called The Girl With Long Hair Who Lived in a Tower. Actually, here's the Japanese poster.

Mad Monster Party

May I recommend Monster Puppets from Made By Me Junior? This is a wonderful arts & crafts kit that Santa Claus brought us (although I've also seen it at Wal-Mart for $10.) What I thought would be a one-time craft project turned out to be more than that. The kit comes with five basic hand puppets and then 75 pieces of different body parts likes eyes, mouths and hair. The really cool part is that the pieces are all backed with velcro so the kids can literally make hundreds of different puppets. They had a blast creating all different kinds of monsters. Elias even took to sketching some designs out before he made the puppets. You don't know how rare it is to spend an entire weekend evening at our house with the kids asking once to turn on the TV or the Wii.

I used to LOVE puppets when I was little. Let me just say that if YouTube had been around when I was their age, there would be 5,000 videos of my puppets online for you to enjoy. Here's the next best thing...my kids doing their own puppet video. (I don't like to brag, but I kind of directed it.)

And yes, there is an episode 1 too.

C is for Cookies (and Christmas)

We're not big bakers or chefs here at the WWoB offices, but every Christmas I like to do a little baking. This year we got a little ambitious and made cookies from scratch, something I've never done before. Tanner and I started early in the day (this was December 23) while Elias was still at school and got some of the baking underway. Both the kids really enjoy helping out in the kitchen, Elias is especially fond of cracking eggs and Tanner will do any job you ask him. I have yet to establish any sort of product that has become tradition for me to make for the holidays so most of what we made was all new to us.

Do you have any idea how far back in the cupboard this rolling pin was!? Tanner is rolling out the dough to make Gingerbread Mickeys and Donalds.


We've made these before, with antique cookie cutters I got for a gift one year. They look really neat, but I should try and find a good gingerbread recipe because the dough from the store bought package is kind of tasteless. But they sure look swell, don't they!? Tanner had a blast pressing out all the cookies.

We made these Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies from scratch with a recipe from an (unopened) cookbook I gave my wife for Christmas last year. The recipe mislead me in forming the candy cane shapes so the first batch came out shaped like boomerangs (or something more foul if you wanna go there). The cookies have white chocolate and crushed up candy canes on top. Tanner was in charge of unwrapping the candy and smashing it up with a crab mallet.

These Stop n' Go Cookie Pops turned out really cute and were a big hit with the kids over the holiday. Elias and Tanner both took their job very seriously of sorting out a huge bag of M&M's into the different colors we needed. They also took great care in placing all the candies on the cookies when they came out of the oven. I got this recipe from a Betty Crocker Cookie Cookbook that was sent to the WWoB offices as a promo. Well played, Betty!

Finally, we took some of the packaged sugar cookie dough and made cut-outs with a bag of cartoon cookie cutters that I didn't know we had. There were a lot of treasures buried in the cupboard back with the rolling pin. We also made some of our own shapes like letters, Pac-Man and the Pigeon. They turned out really cool but didn't last long enough to get a picture.

The cooking supplies are all put away now and we'll dig them out again a couple days before Christmas 2011.

Happy New Year, ya'll!

Operation: Sandbox

Five years ago, when we first moved into our house, we bought Elias a sandbox and set it up in a remote corner of our backyard. After a couple of messy afternoons in the sandbox, the new backyard attraction was avoided by Mommy and Daddy and so the investment just sat there...neglected...with the area around it slowly turning into a weed infested swamp. Now with two kids, both much older, I have been meaning to clean up the sandbox and return it to it's former glory. But ya know, with all The Golden Girls marathons that are always on, it's just hard to find the time to get things done.

A few weeks ago while I was cutting the grass, I drove by the sandbox and noticed the amount of murky water and plant life that had been collected on the box's concave lid. I thought to myself, "Gee, I hope nothing is living in that mini-ecosystem I created." Before I could even finish my thought, a huge snake - the length of a small school bus, quickly slithered out of the water and around the box. It was a sign that now was the time to implement Operation: Sandbox.

I borrowed a neighbor's wheel barrow and the kids and I shoved out the five to six hundred pounds of sand in the box. We then cleaned the inside and out of the box and lid very thoroughly and let it dry. It only took less than an hour before the sandbox was ready to be placed in it's new home and ready again for business. I relocated our Little Tykes Endless Adventures Hidden Treasure sandbox to a position closer to the house and our swing set.

Later on, we bought an addition 100 lbs. of sand to give the sandbox that fresh "new sand" look. Elias tried to help carry one of the 50 lbs. bags of sand from the car to the box...

I love when the kids can forget about video games and movies and just have a good old fashioned kid-time playing outside with something simple like a box full of sand:

Oh...and the snake has not been seen since.

Letters to Santa

There's not many nice things I can say about the goshforsaken little town that we live in, but one nice thing that they do every year is have a little cabin in the town square where Santa visits with children every night of the holiday season. Sure, you could drive three more blocks up the road and visit Santa in the warm mall but there's something nice and cozy about seeing St. Nick in his own little Christmas cottage. Also, at the mall they don't let you take your own pictures of your own children with Santa (which should be a crime!) and at the cabin, even though you can buy a photo package with them...you can snap as many pictures as you like.

Anywho, the kids get a much bigger kick out of seeing Santa in his cabin than at the mall. This year I was very proud of my boys as they both wrote their own letters to Santa Claus.

Three months ago you couldn't even get Elias to write his name without wanting to put the pencil down immediately. Nowadays he spends half his free time writing words anywhere he can find the space. His favorite thing to do is grab a DVD or Wii game case and copy down the title or description. He did a good job on his letter to Santa...the scanner chopped off the right hand side of his letter.

Tanner is not even learning handwriting in school yet, but he's learned quite a bit from watching his big brother. He doesn't understand any of the structure or formatting of writing but he's got all his letters down pretty nicely. He didn't write out a list for Santa, instead he just wrote the big guy a nice greeting. He was very proud to read it to Santa. Tanner also thought it was funny to spell "We" as "Wii" instead...thanks Nintendo!

Nursery Rhymes With Elias and Tanner

This one's been sitting around the WWoB office in draft mode since July so today we're dumping it on ya. It's just some pictures of my kids with various nursery rhymes at the Enchanted Forest. Enjoy!

Elias falling down the hill with Jack and Jill. (He didn't break his crown!)

Hey Diddle-Diddle, they don't have a cat or a fiddle just a dish who standing with a spoon.



It's surprising the tortoise won considering he had two kids on his back!

Jack by nimble

Jack by quick

where the heck

is the candlestick?


Three Ugly Ducklings

A Special Message

We just wanted to take a moment at WWoB today and wish my mother a very Happy Birthday! She's been an awesome mom to me for so many years, always encouraging my creative spirit and always supportive in whatever it is I do. She's also an outstanding Grandmother to my children, who love her dearly and are always so excited when they see her!

Happy Birthday Mom!

and Thank You for everything you do!!!

Doggy Doctor

My son Tanner isn't exactly what you'd call cooperative. So, we were a little worried when the doctor ordered some x-rays of the little guy. His uncooperative streak combined with a child's natural fear of hospital equipment was going to result in one ugly afternoon at the x-ray lab. So as we were getting ready to go have the x-rays done and Tanner asked where we were going I told him that we had to take some of his beloved puppies to the vet to have their tummies looked at. "I think one of them swallowed a bone!" I told him. He knew I was only playing, but he was happy to play along. We went and found his puppy carrier toy and we gently placed two puppies inside. Sammy and Sparkles were chosen from among the 40 other toy puppies we have as the patients.

When we arrived at the hospital Tanner was too busy worrying about his puppies to worry too much about himself. Tanner introduced his puppies to the X-ray tech, and she was more than happy to play along. She asked him lots of questions about Sammy and Sparkles and we were actually able to get Tanner's x-rays without too much trouble.

After the x-rays were taken, the tech rearranged the x-ray camera and table and put Tanner's puppies up on the table for their x-rays. We thought she was just playing along and having a little fun with Tanner and then we went in the room where they snap the pictures without getting radiation all over you and she actually took an x-ray of Tanner's two toy puppies! And she even gave him a print out... I just hope that little bit of fun doesn't cost us $200 when the bill comes!

Tanner Says "No!"

I assume once the gosh-awful routine of the school year kicks in around here, we'll be able to resume more frequent posts at WWoB. Until then, here's an old home video that was recently unearthed, edited and slapped up on YouTube. It's my son Tanner, maybe not even a year old, answering a battery of questions...