Watson Family News

I just uploaded a video of Davis singing and playing his guitar.  I especially love his hound-dog warble, so make sure to watch for that.

Happy Holidays to everyone visiting.  In anticipation of the flood of visitors who just couldn’t get enough news from our letter, Sheryl posted a whole bunch more pictures.  Check them out here.

I read this interesting article in Scientific American about the best way to encourage your kids to learn. For parents out there it’s worth the read:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids&print=true

A few weeks ago we went down to my parents house for the weekend.  As usual, the moment we got there Evan and Davis wanted to play with the toys my parents have.  Among other things, they pulled out the Legos and I recognized some of the pieces from one of my very favorite  childhood Christmas presents - a Lego spaceship.  Today I got the following email from my Dad:

Rained all day Sunday.   This is what Mom did.

Sheryl’s Dad emailed this comic to her. I’m not sure where it’s from, but it’s too appropriate not to share — just substitute “Evan and Davis” for “Marcus”.

Update: the comic strip is Cul De Sac by Richard Thompson

I never wrote about our end-of-summer trip yurt camping at the beach.  We went with three other families that all had boys in Evan’s class last year.  All counted, there were 11 children and somewhere between 5-9 adults; as usual I was the token dad for much of the week.  Needless to say it was pretty wild at times.  It’s amazing how easy it is to get your kids to bed when they’ve spent the whole day running and playing outside.  Some nights the boys were literally begging us to take them to bed.

One highlight of the trip was our outdoor movie night.  One of the dads brought his home-theater projector and a mini-DVD player down one night.  We strung up a big white sheet between two trees and weighted the bottom corners to keep it still.  Then we lined up all of our camping chairs and after sunset watched “Happy Feet”.  It was a pretty magical experience.

After that we had a quite week or two before school started.  After a month we are all adjusted to the school schedule.  Davis goes to preschool three mornings a week and really enjoys it.  This year Evan started taking the bus to and from school.  He wasn’t so sure about the idea at first, but he seems to really like it now.

My friend Bryn is in town this week and last night we met up for dinner at Dan and Trish’s house. Sheryl left to bring the kids home and the night was winding down. Either Dan or Bryn  brought up the Simpsons Movie. We checked the movie times and saw a show was starting in four minutes. Ten minutes later we were sitting down in our sits just as the last previews were ending. It’s amazing how spontaneous we can be .. when our wives agree to watch the kids.
Thanks Sheryl and Trish!

Evan finished up school last Wednesday and had his first few days of summer vacation. After finishing up his Karate class, little league baseball and school all in the last couple of weeks I imagine he’s ready for a little more free time.

For Fathers Day I got a copy of the Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook. My parents came up and I made some actual green eggs and ham, which were surprisingly good. Here’s proof that I’m not making this up. More pictures are available here.

We were watching Ugly Betty last week when her dad had a line about “shimmying up the drainpipe”. As soon as he said it, Sheryl turned to me and asked, “is that the guy from

Grim Fandango?” A quick IMBD search showed that Tony Plana did do the voice acting for Manny Calavera. In case you aren’t familiar with Grim Fandango, it’s one of the best computer games ever made.

Anyway, I was very impressed with Sheryl for noticing that.

Sheryl uploaded a picture of herself and came up with these celebrity look-alikes. I’d like to point out that I never had a thing for Donny Osmond, although I always thought Marie was pretty cute.