What if the world ran out of toothpaste?
Update on Claire’s MLP Channel
Claire’s started her own My Little Pony channel on YouTube back in June. She now has 14 MLP videos published, mostly original stories, plus some of her opening newly bought toys (along the lines of Bin’s Toy Bin). I am really proud of Claire for pursuing her passion and showing the dedication to create 14 videos.
Now that Claire has started school, she is concerned about getting new content onto her channel. She doesn’t want to keep her fans waiting. But she spends most of her weekday afternoons on homework and doesn’t have much extra time. With what little time is left, she is torn between filming MLP videos for YouTube and watching other people’s MLP videos.
Claire does has footage filmed for six more videos. She waiting for me to edit them and upload them to YouTube. The issue here is that these six videos amount to roughly 40 clips, all mixed up in iMovie. I told Claire I would need to dedicate “half a day” to getting them all straightened out and published. I hope I am exaggerating.
Trip to Houston
While Kit was on call at home, I took took girls for a quick one-night trip to Houston. Here are a few pics.
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Molly’s Fifth Birthday Party
We were planning to have Molly’s birthday party at Pease Park, but the weather forecast called to 50% chance of rain, so we decided at the last minute to move it to our house. Of course, it did not rain after all, so we have it outside at our house. Anyways, it was a great party. Here are two genuine quotes overheard from her friends at the party:
This is the best party ever!
I don’t want this party to ever end!
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Molly Turns 5!
Molly turned five years old today! Way to go, Molly. We love you!
Instead of a blog post, I put together a quick video montage of her birthday, which was a regular school day followed by present opening (mostly Frozen (movie) stuff) and a special pancake dinner at Kerby Lane Cafe.
Trip To Dallas
We took a quick one-night trip to Dallas this weekend to do two things that Kit had been dying to do for months: (1) visit her friend Clarissa, who moved to Dallas a few months ago, and (2) see a Rangers baseball game. We combined the two, and met Clarissa and her family at the game on Saturday afternoon, then stayed with them for Saturday night.
A few notes…
- As usual, we were only able to take a one-night trip since Kit cannot take a “long weekend” on her job. It is a week or nothing.
- As usual, Claire was bored to tears at the baseball game. Literally the most exciting part of the game for her was when it ended. We told her the game was over, and she cheered for the first and only time of the day (see picture below).
- Claire and Molly had a grand time playing with Clarissa’s daughter, Layla.
- The biggest highlight for Claire was when Layla gave Claire a few of her My Little Pony toys. Apparently these were pretty special ponies. Claire was soooo excited and thankful and said she would mail them back if Lalya ever changed her mind.
- A lowlight of the trip was the drive up to Dallas, when Kit, Claire, and I all wanted to have a nice discussion about shows, movies, news or whatever. Molly made a concerted effort to prevent this from happening. She was constantly and loudly interrupting and complaining even yelling and crying. This went on for hours. Eventually Kit just about lost it and yelled back, and then at least it was quiet for a while, but everyone was sad. Molly did better on the way back to Austin the next day.
Thanks For the Great Summer, Jackie!
Here is Claire’s note to her nanny, Jackie, who spent most of the summer with Claire. Claire loved having a nanny for the summer. She could have friends over, go summing, go shopping, cook, or just take it easy. Jackie took special care to make sure Claire had a fun summer and did not sit in front of the TV very much.
We kept Molly mostly in her pre-school routine throughout the summer, although she did get to come home early some days and had the last week of the summer off with Claire and Jackie.
Jackie would later tell us that this card was the sweetest thing she had ever received, and it made her cry.
What Do Bob Dylan and Lava Have In Common?
Molly is at that age now where she is trying to figure out what in the world is real and what is made up. Tonight she asked if lava is real. Why yes. Yes, it is. Reflecting on this fact some more, it seemed strange that lava is real. I mean really… super hot molten rock that oozes out of mountains and cannot be stopped by anything? If you fall into it, you die? That is a ridiculous comic book idea, right? That can’t be real.
On the drive home from school, Molly asked if Bob Dylan was real. Molly is not typically a music fan, unless it’s from Frozen or another Disney movie, but she asked to hear “that Mr. Tambourine Man thing”. She asked who was singing it, and I said Bob Dylan. “Is Bob Dylan real?” Yes, of course he’s real. Jeez, he’s Bob Dylan! But then again, he is singing a song just like Elsa from Frozen, and Elsa is not real. “Is Mr. Tambourine Man real?” No, Mr. Tambourine is not real. He’s just sort of a character, or an idea, or something. Jeez.
And consider Elsa from Frozen. Of course she’s not real, she from a movie, silly! What about Winter the dolphin from the movie A Dolphin Tale? Oh yeah, she’s real. We saw her in person. Whaaaaa?
This must be terribly confusing for a kid. It seems so arbitrary. Dinosaurs are real, or at least they were real, but now they’re gone. So you’ll never actually see one. Oh yeah, and nobody even knew they existed until 150 years ago. This is pretty clear, right?
Claire had some questions about dinosaurs back around this age too. Nowadays, Claire and I are talking a lot about other mysterious real things, especially atoms and molecules. The big question is “How many atoms are in a ___?”, where the blank might be a muffin, a speck of cinnamon on the muffin, a dog, or the world. The answer is always the same: “Too many to count.” At her request, I looked up how many atoms are in the world. The answer was roughly 133,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Claire was not impressed. That did not look like such a big number after all. I tried to explain to her why that was a bigger number than you could possibly ever wrap your head around. Her eyes glazed over. Then it was back to discussing My Little Pony.
McG Kids 