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Dave & Pen's place on the Web
The culmination of a summers worth of swimming lessons.
Aug 11th
I know there have been a couple of these swimming video’s but we’re pretty proud of our little man and how far he has come since the start of the summer. Way to go Daniel!
A Boxing Match
Jul 29th
This morning I found this little gem that Penni had recorded.
It’s Daniel and Stephanie’s first boxing match.
Enjoy!
White Water Rafting
Jul 26th
I went White Water Rafting this weekend along the Occoee River in Tennessee. This is the river they used in the 1996 Olympic games for the canoeing etc.
20 guys camped overnight about 30min from the rafting place and had a great time just hanging out. In the US if you are camping at a National Park camp ground (or pretty much anywhere in the open) you are not allowed to have alcohol. All of the guys obeyed this rule, which made it quite funny when the local law enforcement paid us a visit at 12:00am.
The officer got out of his car, pulled out his flashlight and was reaching behind him to get his handcuffs ready. He scanned around our camp site and couldn’t see anything amiss at all. So rather sheepishly he said “You’ve got a c*ap load of people here. Just keep it down will you.” I’m sure he was expecting some excitement and was rather disappointed to not arrest anyone for drunk and disorderly.
The next day 10 more guys joined us for the rafting expedition. It was a lot of fun. It’s a bit like going on a mini roller coaster, except with the chance of falling out. We only had one guy fall out of our raft and he was swiftly recovered. Another raft from our group wasn’t so lucky. We got to see everyone in that raft thrown in the water except for the guide. 
Everyone agreed that next year we should do the full course.
4th of July Weekend
Jul 6th
This past weekend was Independence Day weekend here in the States. This gave us a long weekend to spend with the kids.
On Friday on Daniel’s request we went to IHop (International House of Pancakes) for lunch. I swear our kids are pancake eating machines. If you ever want to see them eat a TON of food, place a stack of pancakes in front of them.
On the Saturday I took Daniel to see his first baseball game. The church had organised $5 tickets for the local team (Gwinnett Braves) so there were a bunch of people there, sitting on the hill at the end of the ball park. Daniel enjoyed the game, but I think enjoyed his corn dog and the time he spent playing on the jumping castles more.
Sunday was water day at church for the 2-5 year olds. Even though it rained it was still hot enough that the kids had a blast in the water. Heck, if you’re already wet, what does water falling from the sky matter.
As Daniel is starting Kindergarten (Prep) in August, Pen has decided to take the next couple of Monday’s in July off to be with our little man. They played lots of games in the morning, but unfortunately, half way through today, Pen came down with a stomach virus. So I came home from work early and took Daniel to Monkey Joe’s (a jumping castle place) to keep him out of contact with the sick mummy.
Hopefully Pen will be better tomorrow and next Monday can have a real blast with Daniel.
Ripping Audiobooks to iTunes
Jun 26th
Thanks to my experience of trying to rip an Audiobook to iTunes this week, here is a handy little guide on how to do it.
(1) Click on the edit menu and select preferences.
(2) Make sure the Audiobooks option is selected
(3) Change your “When you insert a CD” option to “Show CD”.
(4) Click on “Import Settings”
(5) Set the “Import Using” to “AAC Encoder”.
(6) Set the “Setting” option to “Spoken Podcast”.
(7) Insert Audio CD into your computers drive and wait for the album to appear.
(8) Select all of the tracks in the album.
(9) Click on the “Advanced” menu and select the “Join CD Tracks” option.
(10) Click on the “Advanced” menu and select the “Make AAC Version” option. The tracks will now be copied to your computer in one large file of about an hour and ten minutes instead of lots of 3min tracks.
(11) On completion of the ripping, go to the “Recently Added” playlist and select the file you just created.
(12) Right click on the file and select “Get Info”.
(13) On the info screen select the “Options” tab and change the “Media Kind” to “Audiobook” and check the “Remember Playback Position” and “Skip when shuffling” check boxes.
(14) Repeat steps 7 through 13 for all of the Audio Books CD’s.
Your newly ripped Audiobook should now appear in your library under Audiobooks and act accordingly.
Daniel's 5th Birthday Party
Jun 13th
We had Daniel’s 5th Birthday Party today. On request from Daniel it was a Transformers themed party. It’s a good thing we set the time to be 11:00am because one of his friends (Jay) who was born 3 days earlier then him is also having a Transformer themed birthday party today, but at 1:30pm.
Along with the Transformer theme we also had two slip and slides, two wading pools and many water pistols.
The first hour was spent with the kids having a blast with the water activities. The most popular thing at the start was the water pistols. Even Stezza was walking around with a water pistol trying to shoot people. By the end though it was the slip and slide that could have two people on it at the same time that was the most popular.
Cake and the Happy Birthday song were carried out around 12:00pm, followed by the destroying of an Optimus Prime Piñata. By 12:30pm Daniel was opening his presents. Man was he focused. He just wanted to open present after present after present. He hardly stopped to look at anything. At least when he opened our presents (a Bulkhead transformer and a Bakugan tin with two Bakugan’s in it) he stopped and said something. For pretty much everything else it was open, go to the next present. Open, go to the next present.
By 1:15pm everyone had gone. By 1:30pm Daniel was out the door heading to Jay’s birthday party. Stephanie was down to sleep and I was able to clean up a bit. All in all I think we had about 50 people here for Daniel’s party.
This afternoon we have a pool party to go to. It is one busy day.
Pre-School Swim #2
Jun 1st
Daniel started his second round of swimming lessons today. This time instead of twice a week for 4 weeks, he will be going 4 times a week for 2 weeks. A real intense swimming course.
I got to take him for his first lesson. This had the added benefit of allowing me to try out the new video app that came with the new “cupcake” update to my G1 phone. You can see the results below.
I must say I do like the ability to take a video and then upload it straight to YouTube without having to mess around with cables and the like.
By the way Daniel rocked it, in his first lesson.
Daniel Graduated Pre-K
May 13th
Last night we went to Daniel’s Pre-K Graduation ceremony. Yes I know for Australian’s this is very strange to have a graduation ceremony for passing what would be kinda in Australia, but that’s what happens over here.
The Pre-Kers did a performance showing us all that they had learned throughout the year. Daniel did awesome and was really loud with all of his answers. You can watch the performance below.
Daniel also got to read a book all by himself to the audience. We were very proud of our little man.
Congratulations Daniel on graduating Pre-K!
Dancing
May 5th
This week was a recovery week so not much happened. So here is a video of Pen and I dancing from a few months ago at the churches Women’s conference.
Stephanie is 2!
Apr 27th
Stephanie turned 2 last weekend. We had a birthday party with lots of Stephanie’s friends. The theme was Tinkerbell, who Stephanie didn’t know of until the day, but as soon as she saw pictures of Tink everywhere and knew Tink’s name, she was proudly stating “I love Tinkerbell!”. Many presents were opened and a great time was had by all.
Over the weened I also ran a golf tournament. The tournament was to raise money for the Single Mothers of Gwinnett. We had 40 guys turn out to play and we raised over $1200 for the Single Mothers. Dad was a big help on the day, manning the Hole In One hole and helping with registrations.
Sadly though this weekend Nanny and Pop headed home after three weeks with us. We loved having them here, and the kids especially loved the attention that was lavished upon them. Thank you Nanny and Pop for the visit and we hope you come again soon.
