Assisi at dusk after 18 hours of traveling and hardly any sleep... But being up here makes it all worth it!

Nate's group selfie #airselfie

O'Hare- the calm before the storm...

"Le Scale" by Brennan and Nate

 

Brennan and Nate did a workshop for their cinematography merit badge, and here is the video they produced. The workshop was at a Microsoft store, and each pair of boys had to pick an item in the store and make a short film of it. Brennan and Nate chose a scale (which is out of focus in its first shot, unfortunately.) The actor is Nate (wearing a fake stomach.) The narrator is Brennan, trying out his French accent. :)

An EPIC movie trailer! :)

Here's the just-finished movie trailer Annie created for the film - the Memoirs of Jason Kikyobut, which she, Brennan, Nate, Bethany, and Zachary created while our kids were visiting the Greens in Georgia for the last few weeks. (Mark and I were having a lovely adventure in Europe, but that's a story for another blog post.) We'll post the finished film as soon as Annie finishes the edits, the special effects, and the soundtrack! :)

Annie at the pub!

I guess that title needs a bit of explaining. Annie has been learning Irish fiddling from Anne Hatfield, who is an amazing fiddler who tours with Lord of the Dance. Anne is from Joliet and plays Irish music with a group of musicians every Monday night at a local Irish pub. Anne invited Annie to join the group this week. So, here's our Annie (in the checkered bandana below) playing at the pub, next to Anne! (And by the way, if you click on the four little arrows on the bottom right of the video, it will make it full screen)


Here's one more song, called Orange Blossom. Forgive my shaky camera work at the start. (It will stop shaking around 25 seconds in.) And stick around to watch the last two minutes of the song, where the group plays faster, and faster and FASTER!

The dog ate our blog!

Not really, but since Chewie's arrival began five months of radio silence in the blog, I thought I could conveniently blame her. (Chewie did, by the way, chew up the corner of a student's paper I was grading last spring. I was embarrassed when I returned the papers, but I did note the irony of a teacher saying to a student: "My dog ate your homework.") Above, Nate and Chewie play tug of war, their favorite game.

The Renaissance Faire, 2010

We had a good, but busy summer, and it feels enormously intimidating to try to recap it in one post (which is probably why I haven't done one in a while!) So maybe I'll just start at the end, with the Renaissance Faire, which we attended a couple of weeks ago. We go every year, and since we're massive history geeks, we dress up! This year Annie and I were country lasses, Mark was a peasant, Nate was a jester, and Brennan was an assassin. (that's why you can barely see his face in the family pic above...he was being mysterious and covert. Or something like that.)


Doesn't Annie look all cute and grown up? We were afraid that guys would start flirting with her. Mark suggested carrying a pike to ward them off.

Nate and a much larger jester do some jester bonding in the pic above. Nate should have taken lessons on how to be a more playful jester, though. He had about five people ask to take his picture, which was fine, but whenever one of the costumed Ren Faire participants called out, "Prithee, jester, tell us a joke!" Nate would just say, "No!" We teased him about being a grouchy jester.

This past weekend we went to my nephew Greg's wedding, in Steubenville, Ohio. Here's Greg saying his vows with his beautiful bride, Ali.

Such a fun family reunion for my side of the family, and since our family weddings are big on dancing, we all had a ball. My camera battery died before I got any pictures of us dancing, but below is a pic of the kids at our table at the reception. Brennan has been practicing his Calvin and Hobbes face and (unfortunately) has gotten pretty darn good at it.


Annie took lots of video of the dancing, but needs encouragement to post it. C'mon Annie, don't be shy!!

I will try my best to get some more summer pics up in a week or so.