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9-21-06 Blog #73 David |
Rowing, Laughing and Sailing
My school staff had an in-service today and we were able to go home early. I used the extra day time to take the girls out on the rowboat. We brought my $1 garage sale sailboat with us and took advantage of a mild breeze. Svea and Brigitta laughed, sang, shouted, screamed and basically spazzed-out. They were so loud I heard echoes.
I've been working on a Brigitta's Birth page for the past couple of nights.
Be sure to check it out; look for the link on the main
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9-17-06 Blog #73 David |
Gorge Hike
We hiked the Gorge trail today. This trail is fairly rocky and has many cliffs.
This cave (above and bellow) was inhabited by Indians in 1764.
"Fearless Britta" we call her.
This shot is nearly straight up.
This little stream (above and bellow) feeds into the Cuyahoga River that formed the Gorge.
Some of the colors and patterns (above and bellow) on the rock walls were pretty cool.
The Canon's battery had died halfway through our hike. When Svea pointed out these mushrooms, however, I thought it might have just enough juice to power up and take one last shot. I'm happy with this for a snapshot.
Joan repainted the girls room and painted this clock onto the wall. The works are imbedded in the wall.
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9-10-06 Blog #72 David |
Oktoberfest Zwei
Joan worked at the schnitzel booth today. She enjoyed the experience. The tent fabric is made of colors of the German flag; this cast a dominant orange glow that made the volunteers skin Oompa-Loompaesque. Joan looks better in black and white than in orange.
Annika Anecdote: Just a few minutes ago Svea interrupted Joan and I while we were talking. My standard punishment for children who interrupt adults is a set of push ups; I told Svea to give me ten. Annika was watching as this unfolded. Before Svea had made it off the couch little Annika hit the carpet and assumed the push-up position. Earlier this week Joan took Annika to the library for "Baby Story Time". She was sitting in Joan's lap as the children's librarian spoke to the parents about the session agenda. The librarian told the parents, "... be sure take a dog home; they had several left over from the summer reading program". Annika immediately hopped off of Joan's lap, walked over to the table that displayed a dozen inflatable toy dogs, picked out a brown one and brought it back. We think that Annika understands language very well.
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9-7-06 Blog #71 David |
Oktoberfest Eins
Today was the first Oktoberfest performance of the season. The Akron German Family Society's Kindergruppe has doubled in size in the past few months. This makes Svea and Brigitta relatively experienced. The girls danced well and appeared to enjoy the experience.
Check out the animated pictures of each family member on the hallbuzz homepage; each of them has been updated with new pictures taken this year. You may recognize some of them; most of the pictures were cropped from larger ones that were published in this blog. I figured that it should take about two and a half minutes to watch all frames in all seven gifs.
Yes, that is Annika laughing as the blog page loads.
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9-7-06 Blog #70 David |
Anniversary Day
We snuck in dinner tonight at Hibachi Japan before attending open house.
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9-6-06 Blog #69 David |
10 Years
Tomorrow is our ten year anniversary. Unfortunately I have to work tomorrow night as it is Open House at IHM. We will do something for our anniversary, but not tomorrow night.
In my last post I mentioned the term seamless background; let me explain: above is the entire background for this page. When a browser loads a webpage it "tiles" the background across the page horizontally and vertically. Splitting graphic elements along the seams helps create a seamless look so that it doesn't look "tiled". Below is our old background.
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9-4-06 Blog #68 David & Joan |
New Look
Joan and I have spent much of the day collaborating on new graphics for the website. Joan drew the banner backgrounds and words and I drew the seamless page background and people. The style of the artwork is of Joan Miro, an early 20th century surrealist. We'll put the look into the other site pages in time.
We all went on a hike this afternoon. Summit County sponsors a Fall Hiking Spree program that we are participating in this year. If you complete eight of the fourteen listed hikes, you earn a hiking staff (the first year) and colored shields in subsequent years. This was hike number one for us. In addition, we went on our first Letterboxing adventure. Letterboxing is like a treasure hunt, using Internet clues, to hidden boxes with hand carved stamps which you use to stamp to your own booklet. Today we followed the clues and found a small plastic box hidden in a tree. We used the stamp and returned the box without being seen. The girls thought it was great and pretended to be pirates in search of buried treasure. There are at least a dozen letterboxing hunts in our area and we may even end up “planting” some of our own treasures. See www.letterboxing.org for more information.
Svea & Brigitta in the deep, dark forest.
Joan finally finds the letterbox.
Opening the letterbox and stamping books.
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9-3-06 Blog #67 David |
hallbuzz.com
It may look the same, but our family website has a new domain name and has moved to a new web host. Formerly, The Hall Family Website was in a folder within wwiirt.com. wwiirt (World War II Round Table) is the website that I created and maintain for a local veterans' group. I figured that since I paid for the wwiirt domain name and web host out of my own pocket, no one would mind if I imbedded my family site inside it. As much as I'm interested in history and veterans, my family is my real passion so I get a kick out of updating our family site compared to the minimal maintenance that I've done on the wwiirt site. I also have not been completely satisfied with my old web host; their less than perfect record includes "upgrading" my account and billing my credit card without authorization and then not responding to my complaints. I've been with my new web host (BlueHost.Com) for only a few hours at this point, but everything seems to be working as promised. Actually I was amazed that http://hallbuzz.com/ was a valid URL within a couple of hours; typically it takes at least a full day to register a URL. I've already uploaded nearly a billion bytes (1 Gig) of files and the download times seam to be very fast (at least on broadband). One benefit of my new host is that I can host six domains on my one account, so it only costs me ten dollars a year more to have a second domain and separate site. The bottom line is, add http://hallbuzz.com/ to your favorites, or remember the URL: hallbuzz.com
Just for the record, Googling "hallbuzz" at this point produces zero results; Google has indexed billions of webpages and the term hallbuzz has never appeared, even as a typo. Prepare to skim: Joan and I brainstormed and searched for available and registered domain names for a few hours yesterday. Some of the available domain names we found were: ohiohalls.com, 5happyhalls.com, happyhallfamily.com, 5halls.com, houseofhalls.com, hallasylum.com, psychohalls.com, wackyhalls.com, hallscircus.com, hallsway.com, houseohalls.com, hall41and14hall.com, davidandjoanhall.com, hallhappenings.com, hallosphere.com & halloscope.com. Some of the already registered domain names we found were: hall5.com, hallfamily.com, happyhalls.com, hallzoo.com, hallfam.com, hallabaloo.com, hallasylum.com, cyberhalls.com, hallmonitor.com, halleffect.com, hallsworld.com, hallworld.com, hallzone.com, hallszone.com, hallway.com, hallfamily.com, halls.com, hall.com, hallclan.com, hall.com, hallhome.com, thehallfamily.com, thehallfamilywebsite.com, hallforone.com, hallspace.com, hallinthefamily.com, hallswell.com, hallogram.com, deckthehalls.com, hallball.com, perfectfamily.com, theperfectfamily.com & thegreatestfamilyever.com.
Svea and Brigitta made dinner tonight and even cleaned up. It's nice that they are now old enough that their punishments can be of use. Last night Brigitta learned that although she can somewhat fly, she needs to work on her landings. Now that all three girls are sleeping in the same room Svea and Brigitta have learned that waking up Annika, who goes to bed a bit earlier, can result in having to listening to their baby sister cry. When Annika does wake, Brigitta often entertains her. Last night Britta amused Annika by bouncing on her bed and launching herself across the room. Her face still bears the marks of an improper landing. Annika does not talk all the time, but we are still hearing one or two new words from her each day.
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