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July 2006 - Underwater Adventures

The biggest news recently for our family was the aquisition of some new pets. I believe that the total number was 21 new pets: 10 freshwater fish, 10 ghost shrimp and 1 crab. To put this into proper context you need to realize that we have not had any pets for 10 years.

It happened that the kids saw someone in the neighborhood throwing away a rather large aquarium. That's when the major marketing campaign started to convince mom to let them have it and fill it with fish. They succeeded then began pooling their money together to buy the equipment and fish. Everyone was very excited getting to the pet store to get the stuff. Everyone became very disappointed when we found out we had to let the tank sit for a few days with the water before adding fish.

It all worked out in the end and we finally ended up with all the species listed above. However, that is when the real underwater adventures began. We tried to be careful and asked many questions about the mix of aquatic life we purchased. Unfortunately, no one could have predicted the underwater drama that would follow.

June 2006 - 1 Large Tent, Some Fishing Poles & Some Storms

This was the first all-family camping trip for the year. Everyone was quite excited to go and the anticipation was evident for weeks prior to the trip. We had some issues with the weather forecasters. We postponed the original trip from May and moved it into the later part of June because of an earlier forecast that turned out to be bogus. The weekend that we postponed from in May was a beautiful mild weekend that was perfect for camping. The weekend we ended up going was hot and humid and scattered with thunderstorms.

We had a few highpoints from this camping trip. One was some excellent fishing. Another was a great peach cobbler the boys made in the campfire coals using a cast-iron dutch oven. We were also harassed by what seemed to be super intelligent squirrels. The best was simply spending time with each other around the picnic table and campfire laughing and playing.

The low point was when a summer storm appeared out of nowhere right when we were getting the campfire ready for dinner. We quickly loaded into the van in enough time to see our dining tarp blow over and begin to soak games and other items on the picnic table. After re-securing the tarp, we started to drive out of the campground to grab some fast food for dinner but the storm cleared as fast as it came. We were able to rekindle the fire and make a decent dinner. The corners of the tent leaked a bit but everyone held up well in the extreme conditions.

There is an album with recent pictures in Recent Shots.

June 2006 - Lemonade Season Has Begun

This past Sunday the boys set up their lemonade stand for the first time in 2006. It was windy and cool but they still managed to attract 20 customers. The main reason they set up was to get some updated photos of their complete stand with the banner.

They are very excited about this year for a couple reasons. One is that they have calculated how much money they could potentially make which is in the three figures range for each person after they split it. Also, this is their youngest brother's first year to be able to participate in the B-Brothers venture. They have chosen the theme of "4 is strong", since all four brothers are involved this year.

For more information on the lemonade stand business click here. There is an album with recent pictures in Recent Shots.

Spring 2006 - Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island

We recently visited Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island while on a week-long vacation. The kids were very excited for several reasons. This was the closest they had ever been to New York City and this was the first time any of them got to ride in a boat out in large waters. We all learned quite a bit from Ellis Island which was very informative. We also enjoyed going inside the Statue of Liberty, even though we could not go up to the top.

There is an album with pictures from this trip in Recent Shots.

April 27, 2006 - Updated Photo Albums and More

I have performed a few minor cosmetic updates to the site. First, I changed most of the buttons and basic graphics by smoothing them out and making them look better. Then I went through and cleaned up small bits of lay out here and there.

Finally, I updated the photo section, Recent Shots. This was a major endeavor as our digital pictures were all over the place. I had to find all of the pictures and structure them into a decent directory tree. Then I went through all the photos to identify ones that I thought should be posted on the site. I then used this really cool album creator called Porta.

April 8, 2006 -  Realistic Expectations

Now that the family website has been fairly established updates to this page will be much less frequent. I would suppose every other month or after we have some new capers.  Please check out each of the kids' web pages by clicking the links on the left.  There are (or will be) blogs under Randomness, Mom's Corner and Big Daddy .  These should be updated pretty often.

March 20, 2006 - Some Really Cool Updates

I have been using my spare time to add and change some things over the last couple weeks. I am amazed as I look at the last update with all the stuff we have been able to update.

I added the building plan/design for the boys lemonade stand in a PDF. Ana's and Johnny's web sites have been updated each with their own set of pages and navigation. I got a lot of practice using cascading style sheets (CSS) with their sites. I also did my personal page and created Arrica's shell for her pages.

Bryce and Brett added a lego comic book that they built and took the pictures.

March 3, 2006 - Website Building Is Hard Work

We spent several nights this week working on various pages. I stayed up until 1am working on the lemonade stand pages last night. Bryce's webpage, Bricks, was updated during the week and he added a new song that he just wrote. Brett's webpage, Doodles, was updated today with a gallery of his drawings and some very funny stories. I just built a very cool shell for Ana's webpages, Randomness, which she then went in and put up some quick content to fill it in with. Arrica has promised to have something for her Mom's Corner this weekend.

This whole site has been built using Dreamweaver 8. I have installed it under the trial period of 30 days and only have 23 left. I think it is truly a great program for developing and managing an entire website. Unfortunately, we do not have the $400 to purchase the license to continue use after 30 days, so I hope to get most development done before then and just use Notepad after that. I will be checking some online auctions for cheaper copies but I doubt I will find anything that is not pirated for the money I want to spend.

February 25, 2006 - 3...2...1...TAKE OFF!

The new website FamilyCapers.com has been launched. This is something that the kids have been wanting for awhile. This is not to say that dad didn't mind having something new (like building website) to play with. I am sure mom will also find some use out of sharing her thoughts and ideas on her own page. The credit for the catalyst should be given to Bryce who four days ago came to me and said he wanted to have his own website about legos. Soon after that all the kids were clamoring to put their voice onto the net. As of Sunday, February 26th, only the photo album is up and running. The kids, mom and I will be updating our specific pages over the next few days.

Fall 2005 - Trip Back In Time

We went to Colonial Williamsburg for a week as our vacation in the fall. Everyone agreed that this was by far our best vacation yet. We stayed in Williamsburg at the Woodlands Hotel. In addition to visiting Colonial Williamsburg, we also went to Historic Jamestowne, Jamestown Settlement, and the Virginia Air and Space Museum.

We must be honest and state that we were sorely disappointed when we went to Historic Jamestowne. This is not to say that this archeological site does not hold interest for us. It is just that we were expecting something different as we were not aware that Jamestown Settlement was a different attraction. Once we truly found the Jamestown Settlement, we were like, "doh! it was right there all the time." The Jamestown Settlement is one of our nation's true treasures for children as they could see history in action and participate in everything. Where Williamsburg was much larger and contained numerous artifacts of tremendous worth, it was also like a museum since you can not touch very much. In Jamestown nothing was off limits for the kids to touch.

My personal favorite was the Virginia Air and Space Museum. We would have never thought of this place on our own but a coworker recommended it to us. This place was awesome with three levels of hands-on exhibits of flight and space. I can not even begin to describe everything we saw and did there - just check their website. A final note on the museum is that they had an IMAX theater on premise where we saw Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag (and we later bought the DVD for this very exciting doumentary.)

For pictures from this trip look in Recent Shots.

Summer 2005 - 2nd Year For Turning Lemons Into Cash

This was year two for the B-Brothers Lemonade Stand. It had lost its newness from day one this summer since the boys had done it the year before. Instead of rampant enthusiasm like they did the first year, they viewed it more like work and begrudged it occassionally. However, the money was motivation enough to get through those times. If one of the brothers bailed out for the day, it just meant that the remaining brothers got a bigger share of the profits.

Click here for more information on how we set up and ran the lemonade business. There are also some pictures in Recent Shots of their first year doing the lemonade stand.

July 2005 - Garden Party

Arrica decided to have an event that would gather together moms and their daughters. She called it a garden party and put together formal invitations for mothers and daughters that she knew. I was banned (actually I was just watching the rest of the kids) so I can not give too many details. I know that they did several crafty activities and actually put together a fairy garden with real seeds and soil. The moms and girls that were involved still rave about it to this day.

Summer 2005 - Paris When It Sizzles

My wife and I took a five day trip to Paris, France. This was an absolute blessing that we viewed as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The only reason we were able to do this was because I had to travel to Europe for work. I will not go into too may details here but let's just say that Arrica and I had some of the best times of our fifteen-year marriage.

For pictures from this trip look in Recent Shots.

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