Back to School

Brady and Avery headed back to school over a week ago. Avery's teacher's name is Mrs. Krug and she has quite a small class this year (12 girls and 7 boys) compared to previous years. They build a new elementary school in Geneva and so the school size and class sizes at Western Avenue Elementary have been cut in half. She has lots of friends in her class and is already preparing to do a 'book talk' the day after Labor Day weekend.

Brady is adjusting well to middle school. He gets to sleep in later and catches the bus a block from our house at 8:10am (Avery's still up early and walking to school by 7:40am). The first few days of 6th grade were kind of stressful with learning all the new teachers and finding classes in a new school. He has 3 lockers to keep track of - one for books, one for his violin and one for P.E.

Nora does not start her preschool until this Wednesday, 9/9. She will go on Monday, Wed, Thursday and Friday from 9-noon. Scott took her last week to meet her teachers, Mrs. Bloom and Mrs. Gift, and they had fun doing a scavenger hunt around her classroom.

It was raining on the first 3 days of school this year, so we did our traditional back to school pics inside:

I have a very light schedule for September because I backed out of a client/project that was scheduled to start in mid-August in Oak Brook. The client changed the travel requirements and it just wasn't the right fit for our family. I'm still facilitating several Change Leadership workshops for PepsiAmericas through October 6th and am hoping to find a new consulting gig by mid-October when we return from our Disney trip. Managing 3 kids at different schools, with different schedules, lots of papers and homework, and driving 6th graders to school when they miss the bus, has felt like a part-time job to me!

We are enjoying some extra summer-like days this weekend and Nora is tugging on me right now to go to the pool party at Eagle Brook! I'll post some pics of Nora's first day at preschool later this week.

Nora's Princess Party

In addition to the family party in Columbus and the trip to Chuck E. Cheese on March 12th, Nora also had her first official kid birthday party before we left for Spring Break. Her friends were invited to her castle for a tea party and were asked to dress up as their favorite prince/princess. We played tack the lips on the frog prince (similar to pin the tail on the donkey), hunted for glass slippers, made wands and crowns and then had a royal tea party (with cute pb&j sandwich circles) and lots of sweets! Kool aid and lemonade were served instead of tea and even Brady participated in the eating festivities (he commented, "Mom you sure have a lot of good treats out on the table"). I guess I'm getting a little 'soft' in my old age. Avery started out with a crown, but then quickly decided to dress up in her own way - with her voice activated Star Wars clone trooper helmet.

Taking a lick of yummy icing

Brady actually sat at the girlie table to eat some of the girlie food

Noni's friend Thomas (from Miss Amy's house)

Avery puts the kiss on the frog

Noni's friends Rachel (from ballet) and Avery (from Miss Amy's) work on their crowns

Noni blows out her candles

Princess Nora and Queen Mommy

Miss Amy and Ana

Avery making a wand (and wearing a crown!)

Princess Nora in front of her castle

Happy Easter

We had a very relaxing Easter Sunday. The kids attended 9:15am service with us and then we returned home to cook a big breakfast and hunt for eggs and baskets. Brady and Avery are on egg hunt probation right now and will need to reapply for egg hunting status next year due to the WWF style hunting that was displayed (and captured on video). How they managed not to break anything while blocking, jumping, amd diving over each other is a mystery to me. Remember, these are little plastic eggs, most of which do not even have anything in them. Maybe we can put that competitive spirit to good use on the soccer and baseball fields this spring! Here's a few pics of our morning and coloring eggs the day before.

"Nobody cares what you are doing" - a 30-Day Experiment with Twitter

It seems the media is all 'tweeting' about Twitter lately. I even saw some information on how to use it for business networking on LinkedIn. Needless to say, I am a skeptic. (In fact, this article on MSN pretty much sums up my unexperienced opinion on this new tool: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29534317/)

Having done some time on Facebook last year, I left with the opinion that if I wanted to spend a lot of virtual time with people from high school that I hadn't seen for years, I would have spent some energy maintaining a real friendship with them. So, I know from experience how one can get sucked in on Facebook. And now you can link to Facebook from about anywhere and even post a status from your phone telling people what you ate for lunch or which DWTS performance was your favorite. I remember feeling guilty about not updating my status more often or posting a 'Happy Birthday' on the wall for one of my long lost friends.

So, after saying good-bye to Facebook last spring, I've felt curiously free and haven't had one second thought about a need for a social networking site. Since consulting is my business, I do actually use LinkedIn to stay connected to former and current clients and colleauges. Although some people see it as a social networking site 'in disguise', it's worked well for me professionally. One of the professional groups I'm a part of was launched by Liz Ryan, who I think has a lot of great advice on HR issues, resume writing, interviewing and a host of other business topics. She is on Twitter as are many in the group. So...what's all the fuss about with Twitter?

Here's what I've learned so far. You only have 140 characters to 'tweet' something to people who are following you. You can also choose to follow others, including celebrities like John Mayer, Ashton Kutcher and Ryan Seacrest. I don't think there is a maximum number of tweets you can post, since Ashton Kutcher seems to have his cell phone or computer permanently attached to his body in order to tell me some meaningless detail about his life every 4-6 minutes. Using the Twitter people search feature, I located some of my contacts (not even close friends) and one family member (Aunt Linda) who are on Twitter already and elected to 'follow' them. I also invited some of my friends and a lot of family members to sign up on Twitter. Maybe you'll think about joining in on my 30-day experiment? Click here to join or follow me.

The biggest challenge seems to be finding or getting people to follow you, otherwise, why bother posting meaningful insights or, as it seems most often, mind-numbing drivel. I tried to write my personal bio in a way that might interest people of similar backgrounds or interests. I included my work, my mom and wife status, tagged myself as a Christian and listed some hobbies. So far, I only have one follower, and I'm pretty sure he's got some method of finding only the newbies to Twitter because he claims to be working his way through college (University of Michigan, no less) using Internet marketing. Businesses seems to love Twitter since they can blast their promotions or new info in a very effective and lightning quick manner. However, I am not a 'brand' and don't intend to find one or be one (sorry Rachel Zoe), so what's the use for Twitter for someone like me? I'll post my experience as it continues and will try to tweet updates throughout our vacation to Florida in the next 10 days. Any opinions on Twitter?

President's Day Trip

We are really behind on doing anything remotely close to 'blogging', but instead of making excuses or whining, I'll just cut to the chase and tell you what we've been up to. Over President's Day weekend, we flew with the kids to Wilmington, NC to visit David, Emily and Grayson. I just spent some time uploading the entire photo album to Kodak Gallery, so I'll just post a few highlights here:

1. The Brazik Zoo - The Brazik house is truly a zoo (especially compared to the Smith house with our measly 1 dog) and our children would have been happy to stay there the entire weekend 'managing' all their animals. However, because cats are evil and they like to hang out near the people who are allergic to them (me!), we needed to escape and see a little bit of Wilmington.

2. Port City Java - Scott and I indulged in our espresso habit at Port City Java in downtown Wilmington, which is where they film the show "One Tree Hill" on the CW network. Never seen the show, but it was a good latte.

3. Elijah's - We were happy to be able to eat out on the porch at Elijah's, an excellent seafood restaurant along the Cape Fear river. The outside heater was very helpful in the chilly weather and so was the boardwalk nearby where Nora could escape every few minutes to run around and try to get out of eating, as usual.

4. Snakes - Two choices for our time downtown Wilmington after lunch - The Children's Museum (sounds so nice, doesn't it?) OR the Serpentarium (not so much). Of course, we chose the serpents and actually paid money (cash only please) to go into a dark, humid and very creepy 2 story building which housed more snakes per square foot than any zoo or haunted house I've ever been to. I don't mind snakes that look dead and just sleep while you look at them through the glass. These snakes were active, huge and, apparently from the explanations on each window, deadly. I had forgotten my paper bag for hyperventilating, so I just casually strolled around singing my happy song and not making eye contact with the snakes. Scott, on the other hand, gave each snake their very own personal photo session - mostly close-ups. When we were finished and I was sprinting for the exit, the nice little serpentarium worker mentioned that if we wanted to get our hands stamped, we could come back and watch them feed the snakes in 30 minutes. That sounds disturbing, no thank you.

5. Boombalatti's - a fabulous homemade ice cream store with lots of yummy choices. We visited twice over the weekend for treats, but going more often might turn you into a 'fatty boombalatti'.

6. Pony Rides - Emily keeps her horse at a barn about 20 minutes away and we all had the chance to spend some time with the dogs that run around the barn and a lot of beautiful horses. The kids took turns riding a small horse and everyone had fun feeding the horses peppermint candy treats afterward. This was Nora's first time on a horse and once we got her helmet to stay straight she couldn't stop smiling. Of course, she needed to make a fashion statement with her hot pink cowgirl boots too. Avery's ride ended with a request for horseback riding lessons this summer, which we're looking into at a barn in St. Charles.

7. Playing the Wii - I haven't had a chance to play a Wii yet (even though it seems most of extended family now owns one...interesting) so we played some golf, bowling and then I tried out the Wii fit and did some step routines, which was really fun, but kind of intense with everyone watching and critiquing all your moves.

8. Straight No Chaser - David and I always like to 'share' any new music we've discovered when we get together, so while I was pirating his iTunes library, we discovered a group called "Straight No Chaser". Take a minute to search their 12 Days of Christmas performance on YouTube or read their MySpace page. It's a very cool story about an a capella group from Indiana University.

Noni takes her first pony ride

Brady and Grayson are playing in the horse ring (kind of like a giant sandbox, I guess)

Avery's all smiles on the horse

Aunt Emily adjusts the saddle for Brady - he was almost too big for this small horse now

Petting the other horses at the barn

A cold and quick visit to Wrightsville beach

Noni running (again)

David, Emily & Grayson

"Oh, I just love snakes!"

Avery, Grayson and Noni playing in the bathtub (no water, though)