Last week's kids trip to Big Canoe with GrandKnights

Here are pictures that Jim took from the getaway that Chance and Jack had with their cousines Callie and Byron.

Neighborhood basketball game

With the warming weather, late afternoon Sunday's are turning into a regular basketball game in the driveway. With Kevin, David, Kelvin, Isaac, Jeff, and John living right by, along with a host of promisting juniors like Ethan, Braden, Chase, Conner, Kamari, and Chance, we've been having some great games on the 7 foot goal. Last week with the younger crowd busy we ended up raising the goal back to 10 feet for some 3 on 3.

David 3 pointer and Rob gets a rare basket...



Mr. Dean has some speed...



Mr. Williams conducts child abuse...


Rob gets a steal...

Follow-up basketball pictures from party

Coach Shannon & his team
From left, Ryan, Chance, Joe, Bella, Brendan, David, and Thomas

Chance's last basketball game at Upward

These links are only for the die hard or truly bored, but I filmed most of yesterday's last basketball game. Unfortunately, the other team came back and won by 2 with a great play at the last minute. Shots didn't fall for the Eagles and my coaching of Chance to set picks was taken a bit to the extreme since he quite trying to score. Anyway, it was a great season and a lot of fun still for everyone.

Team introductions
Coach Shannon interview
Warm up layups from team
Bella shot
Interview with Bella's dad

1st quarter
2nd quarter
3rd quarter
4th quarter
last minute of the 4th quarter

Birthday videos

Chance blows out the candles for his 6th birthday. Can you count the # of candles and figure out why that is?



Chance opens Grandma & Grandpa Phillips card - beware if you don't like the chicken dance...



Chance opens Star Wars leapster game from them:


Chance opens Star Wars pajamas from aunt Corey & Uncle Mark, Austin, Kendall, and Owen:

2nd light saber video - inteview with Jack as Darth Vader Jack-style

Jack as Darth Vader wearing Jimmy Buffett & Braves fan attire...

Jedi fighting

Maybe I'll actually be able to hit the limit of storage on the site. youtube is nice to allow up to 1GB files now. A couple short clips of Chance and Jack playing star wars light saber fighting. This goes on around the house all the time. Somehow they have ended up with a completely unnecessary 5 light sabers. I guess it allows for good play time with friends and babysitters. Jack asked for another one already for next Christmas. Answer is NO. To all relatives, please no more light sabers.

Video from the past - Flag football season

First, just a note about the videos. Jack played Soccer in the fall but I forgot to get the video camera out so unfortunately do not have anything to share from the entertaining games he played in. Sorry Jack!

I finally uploaded the video of Chance playing football so enjoy all 20 minutes worth if you dare (grandparents).

Chance tennis lesson

Some of you will certainly find my recent flip video taking to become a bit less interesting, so I'll try to make sure I preface what the video is to keep you from spending time watching if you won't be interested. Last week's tennis practice at Windward Lake Club was a lot colder to watch than play, so I got out my flip video and entertained myself watching Chance hit tennis balls. About 6 minutes worth just to warn you. Windward is aligning the younger kids with the USTA QuickStart tennis program, which I find myself struggling a bit with in general. Supposedly this was adopted in Europe and one of the reasons for the success of a lot of the folks like Nadal and Djokovic. I can see the benefit for first time learners since tennis can be very frustrating until you can rally very long, but I am sitting at the lesson watching all these kids hit these pressureless slow bouncing, low bouncing balls on a cold day and it just is almost like squash or something with the ball not bouncing up to them. These are apparently going to be required for USTA tennis 10&under. Anyway, here is the video...

Tech knocks off Wake Forest in basketball today

Here a pictures of Chance with the Geico Gecko they took at the game.

Just got back from the big game with Chance down at Ga Tech. Finally Tech pulls out a big win against an ACC team. Here is a video someone took at the game. We were on the opposite side so I had the Flip Video with me but didn't think to record it.

Here are a couple other videos taken:

and the TV youtube of it:

Andy Stanley gives the prayer at the inaugeral prayer service

Many of you know that Andy Stanley is the minister at North Point Community Church where we started attending last year. I came across these links on one of the musician's blog site that I stumbled across. He give this at the National Prayer Service that took place late in the day on inauguration day. I'm not sure if there is any relationship to the LettersToTheNextPresident.org series that NPCC did last year, but here is the letter that Andy wrote --Link

(view includes the Obamas)



(best view of Andy)

more ski pictures

Ski trip part 2

With Sara working on Monday, Jack having day care already paid for, but Chance and I having MLK day off, decided after church on Sunday to head up to the Highlands, NC area for whatever snow boarding and skiing we could arrange. I forgot my flip video camera so used the disposable camera in the glove compartment for the trip pictures. This worked out well in the end considering that the ski slope at Sapphire Valley only had a fairly short run. It was perfect for Chance to really polish up his skiing and get quite comfortable on the slope. It was also good for me to try to learn how to snow board for the first time. The young ladies at the checkout tried to warn me that my skiing experience in the past would work against me on the snow board, but I didn't believe them. It was a good thing I didn't have the flip video because I fell all the time and got banged up. So Chance got tired of waiting for me at the bottom of the hill but I couldn't keep up. On one run I made him wait so I could get a picture of him coming down. On the way up, stopped by Scaly Mountain to go snow tubing and that was a blast. It was very different from HawksNest which is also awesome, but fun. And the lines were not bad at all which helped a lot. Anyway, they have a Hampton Inn 0.3 miles from the slope which I was able to use hotel points from my Amex card to book. Only complaint there was the indoor pool was too cold for me to handle. Saphire Valley with no lift lines and a perfect easy environment to learn to snow board while a 5 yr old gets confident with the skiing. Great bbq joint in Cashiers and a great chance to do some father-son bonding time. Here are the pictures:

More basketball film

Well, I must apologize because the Windows Movie Maker software doesn't allow me to edit MP4 files that the flip video takes. And from everything I can tell the flip video software doesn't allow me to split or edit clips. So I'll need to research that. Meanwhile, I uploaded Chance's last Sat basketball game for the 2 quarters, 8 min each. Chance scored a basket in the 1st one.

Chance basketball game

Well, first I'll apologize for the lousy camera work. I had a 3 year old attacking me while I was trying to film the game, and then the battery went out so not too much to show. But who really has time to watch more than a minute or two anyway. Well, in the future I will try to edit things down. Next, I'll warn you that this is K-ball. So there is going to be as much teamwork and as maybe an NBA team might have. It becomes a little bit of street ball. But I did happen to catch one of the shots that Chance made tonight. After he gets the ball and closes it in with 2 hands to keep people off him, he gets to take the ball in. Check out the right hand, switch to left hand, switch back to right hand action before getting his own shot to drop. Just like he's heard me tell the Yellow Jackets to do so many times.

Chicken bowl bummer!

Like Ga Tech's basketball season, I've also been trying to forget about the Chicken bowl on New Year's Eve. Obviously, the score didn't work for Tech but the whole evening was just out of sync. Even before the kickoff went out of bounds, I knew something was off when at the FanFest field goal kicking I shanked the 1st 2 kicks before finally getting going with the 3rd. Didn't do any favors by wearing dress shoes that made me have to kick barefoot, but oh well - here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nRbQ7hMmVo

Some additional ski trip videos

Here is one where I tried to keep up with Sara snow skiing


Here is an interview with Chance going up the ski lift for our last run, which he did on the intermediate slope. About 1/3 of the way down he had become too stressed out navigating things, so we went back to having him ski between my legs which worked great for him and Jack with Sara doing the same thing.


A final quick video back at the condo of the boys after skiing.

Jack with his new guitar

Here is a nice Christmas present that Grandma and Grand-daddy gave Jack. You can enjoy his musical talent:

Where have we been?

So much for my great new plan of posting every day to the blog. I am even more amazed now how some of my friends are able to do this. So we went snow tubing and snow skiing after Christmas to Ski Beech in North Carolina with the boys. Sara gave me a cool Flip Video recorder so it is so awesome (Thank you Sara!) and portable that I was able to shoot some videos on the slopes. Enjoy...

Here is Jack telling me all about what he likes about snow tubing after several times down with Sara:


Here is Jack's first time snow tubing by himself, followed by my own trip down:


Here is Jack going down the long run by himself. You might want to skip to about half way through it since I filmed part of waiting in line. Then I catch up with him and bump him at the end.


Here Jack has decided to go on the long tube run with the big jump, followed by me and a giant collision.


Here is a conversation with Chance going up the ski lift:


Here is a conversation with Sara and the boys about half way down the beginner ski slope.


Here is Sara filming me on the long ski run. My ability to hit a jump in the slope has gone down from the old young days.


Here is what happens after a long day at ski school and on the slopes for the boys...

Ok, back at it on Wed night

So Wed night is here and Ga Tech plays Miami in football on ESPN tomorrow night. Unfortunately, we decided to sell our tickets since the logistics of Alpharetta to downtown & back on a Thursday evening were getting more complicated with a kid in kindergarten. Guess this is part of the getting old process, but getting a babysitter for 6 hours who can stay up until Midnight is pretty much impossible. Jack is not sleeping tonight but Chance is still going to be at 8pm and sleeping through the night until 6:45.

Not sure if I mentioned this before, but we went to Jack's teacher conference last week and it was about 100% opposite of Chance's as far as his interests and talents. Wants to be an art teacher. Has a strong verbal ability and likes to lead (or tell others what to do). It will be interesting raising two different kids.

One interest I have is coming up with sort of a best of breed solutions to things in life and sharing. One thing I really like is www.mint.com and the free & better alternative they have to MS Money and Quicken. Check it out if you haven't already.