thisoldblog.net » kids

what I found on my bedside table this morning…

thisoldman — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 22:58:10 +0000

while I was grumpily trying to sleep-in this morning, my 7-year old left me all that he had in his piggy bank with a little note wishing me a happy birthday.

that lil’ gesture just killed me this morning.

the kid knows me so well

thisoldman — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:35:34 +0000

aawww. my 6 year old knows me so well. Especially the part about me laying down on the sofa after working hard in the yard.

here’s the story he wrote in his kindergarten class (with the spelling errors corrected):

Suddenly, lightning hit the old tree in the front yard! It took apart half of the tree. When the lightning stopped, my dad used the saw to cut the tree to ten pieces. He took the wood into the woods. When my dad got back he lied down on the couch.

what do ya wanna do with your life?

thisoldman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:44:19 +0000

my kids’ career goals…

the 12-year old: “I want to be a paleontologist so that I can go on far off excursions to discover rare fossils.”

the 8-year old: “I want to own my own company so that I can hire and fire people.”

and finally the 6-year old: “I want a lemonade stand.”

fun in the snow

thisoldman — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:40:32 +0000

well it snowed over the weekend here in our area. yeah, I know, not really a *big deal*. BUT to us in the southeast, IT IS. significant snow events aren’t a regular occurrence around here so the kids take full advantage of these snow days. they played in the snow practically all day saturday and sunday.

we have a sloped backyard so the kids had a blast with their sleds. we even purchased a zipfy mini luge a while back just in case we had snow like this and so the lil’ sled came in handy. it worked pretty well in the snow but it turned out that a cheap $8 plastic sled actually performed better.

plus, the black handle on the zipfy… at certain angles.. made it appeared to me (at least when I was riding on it) that I was “very happy” about going downhill on all this snow!

what do you think?

a Wii Sports injury

thisoldman — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:07:32 +0000

Years before Nintendo unveiled the Wii motion controllers to the world, video gamers rarely had to worry about getting hit in the face while playing. But unfortunately gaming injuries are becoming a bit more common nowadays especially with sporting games on the Nintendo Wii. With arms rapidly flailing about in the heat of competition, it’s pretty much a given that someone would get physically knocked to the ground by their opponent.

It even happened with my kids this past weekend. We’ve had the Wii for approximately two years so it’s not like they’re not used to playing with the controllers in their hands. Anyways, the 12-year old and the 5 year old were playing Wii Sports Resort and the older one inadvertently hit the younger one pretty hard in the eye. Our poor 5 year old ended up with a big bruise and a nasty cut on the eyelid. ouch. it ain’t pretty.

and.. believe me we’ve told them countless of times before not to get too close to each other while playing these games but we all know how hard headed kids can be.

The 5 year old is fine but he looks like he’s been in some sort of fist fight. In fact, we’ve been calling him “Rocky Balboa” all weekend.

my kids sure do like breaking stuff

thisoldman — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:13:12 +0000

my kids just busted the remote to the TV in the play room. yeah, I know what you’re thinking – no big whoop. just get a $5 universal remote and be done with it. well, I’ve already tried a universal remote and the problem is that there’s a “feature” missing on those “universal” remotes. turns out that there’s no way to access the AUX mode (A/V inputs for the nintendo and the VCR) without the original remote control. and after doing some searching on the net, there appears to be a whole industry centered around people losing/breaking their remotes. you can find an endless number of websites selling overpriced replacement remote controls for the frustrated consumer. after spending a couple hours digging through online manuals and various discussion forums, I finally found that there are some “compatible” 2nd tier alternative remotes that apparently work on this particular TV brand via ebay. It’s approximately half the cost of an authentic replacement model but should be able to perform all the necessary functions of the original remote. we’ll see in about a week or so.