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Posts tagged Daniel
Golf Tournament and a lost tooth
Jun 27th
Golf Tournament and a lost tooth. I bet that makes you think someone got hit by a golf ball while playing in a tournament? Not quite.
The golf tournament and the lost tooth are two completely separate instances.
On Saturday I played in the C3 Church Annual Golf Tournament (as a side note I also helped organize the tournament for the 3rd year running). 50 guys played golf in 90+ degree heat at Reunion Golf Club. $2000+ were raised for the Quinn House and a blast was had by all. I didn’t win, which is how it should be, I also didn’t come last as happened last year. 
Here are some highlights from the tournament.
The lost tooth also happened on Saturday. Daniel has had a wobbly tooth for weeks now and it just refused to come out. Saturday night after the golf tournament and before Daniel went to bed, Daddy got a tissue, grabbed the tooth and yanked it out! Daniel was very happy and though a tissue stuffed mouth said it didn’t hurt at all. Now he has a nice toothy gap!
The tooth fairy did come and left another dollar for Daniel. He now has three crisp clean dollar bills from the tooth fairy.
It's a Mario Kart Wii Birthday
Jun 15th
Today is Daniel’s 6th Birthday. Due to his birthday falling during the week we celebrated it on the previous Saturday.
When planning his birthday we had gone through many options of what to do for it. Finally we decided on what Daniel had requested the first time around, to have his friends over and play Mario Kart Wii.
It turns out Daniel’s idea of a party was a great idea. We had two Wii’s going with Mario Karts and kids every where. Daniel had a blast! The great part about Daniel’s friends is that a lot of them have little sisters who are Stephanie’s friends, so she had a great time too playing with her mates.
Daniel received lots of Lego, and racing car presents. Mummy and Daddy took the cake though with the gift of Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the Wii. Nanny and Pop did pretty good with Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga for the Wii, while Gran and Granddad’s gift of LEGO Pirate Code Game (3840) got the Daniel nod of approval too.
All in all I can’t believe that we have now been parents for six years.
Daniel Graduated Kindergarten
May 22nd
This past Wednesday Daniel graduated from kindergarten (prep for our Aussie friends) from Oxford Falls Academy. They had a performance where they sung some songs, and they received their graduation certificates. Pen’s and my favorite part of the performance was the “Thank you” song at the end. It is really worth waiting for.
The sad part of the graduation ceremony was that some of the kids Daniel graduated with, he has known since he was a baby. They have grown up and have gone through every class at Oxford Falls together. Now they will be all attending different schools. 
Daniel knows this and has has said to us that it makes him sad. We just remind him that he will see most of his friends on Sundays at church, and that he will make tons of new friends at his new school.
Speaking of new schools, Daniel’s elementary school for next year will be Freeman’s Mill Elementary.
It’s hard for us to believe that Daniel will be catching a bus to school and from school next year.
He is really growing up.
A Week at Home
Jan 1st
Christmas was lots of fun with Santa delivering a Wii, Maxus Bakugan’s, Baby Dolls, books, DVD’s and electronic photo albums. A delicious Lamb Roast for lunch followed by a day of just hanging out and playing, made it a perfect day.
To add to the Christmas fun, Pen and I both took the week after Christmas off to be with the kids.
On the Monday we took the kids to the Georgia Aquarium. As you can see from Stephie’s expression, it was a day of amazement for her. As for Daniel, you can see it was a day of map reading.
Tuesday was quite simple, we asked the kids what they wanted to do, and they requested McDonalds for lunch. So that was it. Pen also took Daniel to see Alvin and the Chipmunks at the cinema.
Wednesday we headed off to Ink which is not as some people have suggested a Tattoo parlor, but instead an “Interactive Neighborhood for kids”. We followed this up with Pizza for lunch. Another big hit with the kids.
Thursday morning we took the kids to Monkey Joes where they got to play with their friends Caden and Caelan McMullen. It was awesome to see Daniel and Caden running around together and Stephanie and Caelan playing together. Stephanie was addicted to speed (not the drug) as she kept climbing the biggest jumping castle and zooming down the slide as fast as she could go.
Friday looks to be a play date day, with either us visiting or people coming to visit us. Either way it will be good and the kids will have a blast. Daniel can’t wait to show anyone who comes through the door how to play the Wii.
With the year 2009 coming to an end and 2010 approaching fast, I just want to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year, and pray abundance and blessing upon you in 2010.
Happy New Year everyone!
Thanksgiving 2009
Nov 24th
This year we will be celebrating Thanksgiving with our good friends Collin and Sarah McMullen. We were really honored to be asked to celebrate with their family, as we love hanging out with them. As an added bonus our kids are great friends too. A funny fact about our two families is when we were doing face recognition through Google Picasa, Picasa keeps getting our kids faces confused.
Last Thursday Daniel did his Thanksgiving performance at school. Once again he got to be the Pilgrim Minister and once again he had the loudest voice of all.
You can view the performance below.
Internet makes the world smaller
Nov 15th
In the 8 years we have been here in the states, we have been really lucky that it has been in the internet age. Before the internet people would either make long distance phone calls which cost a fortune or send a letter which would take a week to get to Australia. Once it made it you would then have to wait for the person to respond and then wait a week after that for it to get back to the US.
Now all that is required is to send an email. Or if that takes too long, send a SMS message to your family overseas (instant communication). Or if you want to see them, have a video conference via Skype or www.tinychat.com (if you want to see multiple people).
All of these things have really reduced the need to make international phone calls to family. It was great when Penni’s family came over to help us when Stephanie was born. I collected Gran and Granddad from the airport and then we went to get Daniel from daycare. When Daniel saw Penni’s mum he immediately said “Hi Gran”. It also helped greatly when we went Australia earlier this year. The kids were already familiar with their grandparents so the amount of time it took them to warm up to them was much smaller.
With data enabled phones becoming more common place, I can only see the internet becoming more and more necessary. Maybe one day the internet will be treated like a utility?
Travel through the eyes of a 5 year old.
Sep 21st
Today I’m going to be lazy and just update based on all my twitters and Facebook updates over the past few days. Basically it’s snippets of our trip through Daniel’s eyes.
After landing in LAX and seeing a Qantas plane, Daniel states: “The kangaroo plane takes you to Australia the AA plane takes you to Africa because it starts with A!”
After going through a gate into a wild life sanctuary, Daniel states “It’s like going into Grouchland!”
A observation from Daniel: Everything is backwards here, when you turn on the hot water cold comes out, and its spring here not fall.
Apparently the name of “Big M” chocolate milk, is incredibly funny to someone from the USA. Daniel laughed his butt off about that one.
More info to come.
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!
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.
