Okay, we just finished another holiday season and I’ve got some photo albums to make to get this site current. We had a great Christmas with me, Lisa, Little Matt, Maggie Belle and GiGi. We had a great trip to Colonial Williamsburg on Christmas Eve but forgot the battery for the camera so we’ve got no photographic evidence of the visit. But we did go; I promise.  I’ve got a couple more albums I want to make of me and Maggie Belle dropping GiGi off at the airport and of me and Little Matt exploring the railroads here on the Peninsula. We saw a nice CSX engine pulling about a hundred coal cars– and Little got the engineer to wave as he drove by. That’s all for now. Our album of opening christmas presents is here. Happy New Year everyone!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here but it’s not because we haven’t been documenting most everything that’s happening in the kids’ lives. Since my last post, we took another trip to the Botanical Gardens, visited the zoo, visited with Gigi, celebrated Maggie Belle’s first birthday, watched her take her first steps, went to the Poquoson Seafood Festival, had a fall festival at Little Matt’s school, carved jack-o-lanterns, went to the zoo for Halloween, went fishing at our favorite pond in Newport News, VA and have taken a number of miscellaneous photos. I just finished posting six new photo albums so with a few exceptions, we’re all caught up! The following are the links to the photo albums.

Another trip to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens, August 29, 2008.

A trip to the Norfolk Zoo, September 14, 2008.

A few pictures of Gigi’s visit, September 15-17, 2008.

Maggie’s first birthday party (the day she really took her first steps!)

A cold day at the Poquoson Seafood Festival.

Little Matt catching his first fish!

That’s it for now. I’ll try not to be so long in between updates for the next couple of months. Especially with Little’s birthday coming up and of course, the fall and winter holidays.

Well we didn’t get a real vacation this year, and since we live in Hampton Roads and Lisa and I both work in Virginia Beach, we decided to take our vacation after work one Friday evening. We started at the Purple Cow Diner for an early dinner then drove to the waterfront for the rest of our vacation. Little Matt and I got to drive a race car (video game) and rode wet bikes (again, video game), and even played some skee ball. We window shopped for a little while on Atlantic Avenue and again, managed to walk by all the shops selling hermit crabs without buying another one. We walked along the boardwalk for a bit and heard some Kool and the Gang cover band before getting some tasty chocolate at one of the Forbes’ Candy stores. That pretty much concluded our 2008 vacation and we drove back home to Hampton. Overall, a great night out!

That was last weekend. This weekend we spent Friday having a picnic at the Botanical Gardens and this morning, Lisa ran the Rock and Roll half marathon in VB while Little Matt, Maggie Belle and I ate breakfast and cheered her on. She’s a great runner and we are all very proud!

Check out the best selling Christmas toys for 2008 at Atomic Elephant Science and Toy Co.

So, I’m 38 years old today and another great year of my life has passed. I just realized that I’m exactly half way to the average life expectancy of American men. I only feel like I’m about a third done, but for that to be true I’ll have to live to be 124. Probably not very likely. But I’ll give it a shot.

Anyway, nothing too new to report. Maggie Belle is getting pretty mobile with her crawling and Little Matt is doing well with walking. Of course, he’s almost six so he should be pretty good by now. Here are a few pictures from last weekend’s trip to Sandy Bottom Park here in Hampton and of me and Little with my birthday cake last night. And I’ve still got to plug my store selling science kits and educational toys. Check it out here…

Today was a nice, uneventful Sunday here in Virginia. Instead of Little and I making our regular trek to McDonald’s for pancakes, we made our own breakfast with the cool as-seen-on-TV Pancake Puff Pan that I picked up yesterday. If you’ve never seen the infomercial, it’s a cast iron pan with seven round holes in which you put pancake batter. How it’s different from a muffin pan is that it’s made from a heavy iron (in which you use it directly on the stove top) and the holes are truly hemispherical, as opposed to the flat bottoms of muffin pans.

The first batch turned out fine. We made plain ones first and ate them with syrup. They had a standard pancake taste except they were like little balls. We put hot dog chunks in the second batch but we let the pan get too hot so they were a little burnt. That was okay, we ate them anyway. We made a third batch of plain since we had batter left over. We were both full so we gave a couple of these to the dog. He enjoyed them. My overall review of the new Pancake Puff pan: it’s kind of neat, but not nearly as easy as the infomercial makes it look.

After our Pancake Puff breakfast, we drove out to Buckroe Beach for a couple hours of fun time. Nothing too exciting, but you can see the pictures here. Little and I went to Target and Sonic afterwards to give mom a bit of rest time. We picked up presents for everybody! Little got a Lego Bionicle. Mom got a “Goonies” DVD for next week’s family movie night. I got a bargain bin video game (American Conquest), and Maggie Belle got a 92 pack box of diapers. The diapers were our whole reason for going to the store– the others were impulse items. That’s all for today. And as always, if you’re looking for some best selling toys, check out our store: Atomic Elephant Toy.

Nothing major to report this weekend. I worked Saturday and I think Lisa did laundry. Anytime I ask Little Matt what his mom is doing, he says she’s probably doing laundry. It was beautiful weather Saturday so we drove out to Bluebird Gap Farm to feed the ducks and pet the goats. And of course play a little bit on the playground. We did take a lot of pictures and you can see them here. I love this one of Mom and Little in front of the white peacock.

Sunday wasn’t as exciting as a trip to the local farm. Little and I caught a few more tadpoles in the morning then spent the rest of the day cutting up a huge tree that had fallen into our backyard. I think that’s going to be our Sunday afternoon project for the next few weekends. Oh joy.

Well I missed a week for posting so I’ll try to write a couple tonight. My dad drove up from Tennessee last weekend to meet his new granddaughter and spend some quality time with the family. It was a mostly uneventful few days but we had a great time visiting. We cooked out a couple of nights which is always great. On Saturday, Little Matt, Granddad and I cruised the ocean front at Virginia Beach while the girls did girly stuff. We met for lunch and came back for a quiet evening at home.

On Sunday morning I got to take my dad on my and Little Matt’s regular Sunday morning routine… we went tadpole hunting in the rain and then had fast food for lunch! We caught four tadpoles and came back and set up the aquarium. When the rain stopped later in the afternoon, we went out to Buckroe Beach to walk around a bit and see the sights. On Monday my dad drove up to DC to visit the Viet Nam Memorial Wall and we had another uneventful evening at home.

Overall it was a great visit and I’m glad my dad got to meet Maggie Belle and spend some quality time with me and Little Matt. Hopefully we’ll get to drive down to Georgia and Tennessee to visit soon.

See the photo album for Granddad’s Visit and Tadpole Hunting here.

So last night, Little Matt is upstairs, supposedly getting ready for bath time, when we hear a big crash followed by the extremely loud wailing of a five-year-old. He had pulled out the drawers of his dresser in a nice stair-step manner so he could climb up to the top. Of course this didn’t work and he pulled it over on himself. We’re lucky that he only managed to scratch one finger and one toe, but as he knew he was in trouble, the crying was really something to behold. I’m sure he was scared, and he should have been because he could have really gotten hurt, but in the end he was fine. Maybe he figured if he cried hard enough, he would get the sympathy vote from us and we would forget that he was climbing up his dresser. I would have probably tried the same thing at his age.

Maggie Belle had her six-month doctor’s appointment this week. I think she’s about 2′3″ tall now. Of course, she isn’t standing so the doctor calls her 27 inches long. Which is about right as she’s much longer than she is tall. But she’s only 18 pounds! I weighed her on our shipping scales at work a couple of weeks ago and she was tipping the scales at a healthy 19. I guess she’s starting to thin up a bit.

The toy industry is a multi-billion dollar market and consumers often find themselves bombarded with the latest and greatest toys from the major players in the industry. While I have never had anything against toy cars or dolls, and in fact my children have plenty of both, I am always on the quest to provide something a bit more educational for them. What I am about to write on comes partly from practical experience (buying and playing with toys with my own children), and partly from my experience as a former scientist and from being in the toy industry myself for a while.

There are many questions to consider when choosing science kits and educational toys for your children. Also, we have to keep in mind that what may be a great learning toy for one child may not be as worthwhile for another. Every child is different and learns at their own capacity and through their own best mechanisms. That being said, the following are some things for parents to consider when deciding what the best toys are for their children. (more…)