Famille Du Pentium

Tomorrow (Friday) we’re going to Union, Illinois to see the annual "A Day Out with Thomas" event.  This is at the Illinois Railway Museum, which features a huge number of running an non-running trains that you can tour, climb on, and ride on.  The highlight of the day is a ride on a train pulled by Thomas the Tank Engine.

We’ll take pictures, as always, however Mike leaves for Zurich on Saturday so it might be late August before the pictures are posted.  I know you will be simply salivating for pictures, so here are some from last year, this year’s will look almost exactly the same :).

BTW this will be my last post until I return from Zurich on August 29. 

Tommy Thompson, the former 4-term Governor of Wisconsin and DHS secretary under George W Bush, has dropped out of the Republican nomination race.

I said earlier that Thompson was a good man, but that now was the time for a conservative candidate who does not answer to the religious right.  I had concerns about Thompson’s religious backing and alignment with President Bush.

I wish good luck to Governor and Secretary Thompson, he did a lot of great things for the people of Wisconsin, and I hope he’ll go back there and do more for them.

Find the pictures of Ethan and Aaron in soccer camp HERE.  Justin was signed up for soccer camp, but he didn’t want to play.  We took pictures of him not playng, anyway.

It’s been a while since I posted something funny (Alberto Gonzales’ congressional testimony aside…); read the fine print.

There’s a new reason to hate spammers. These rodents have recently discovered that one type of unsolicited email that almost everyone not only opens, but trusts – will go to websites as directed, accept cookies, and perhaps even give up personal information – are electronic greeting cards. So spammers now are sending “you have received an e-greeting card” emails to their spam recipients. The problem is, the emails and websites that they direct you to will take over your computer, give the spammer access to your personal data, and also will set up your computer as a “spam bot” – basically a cog in their army of machines that send more spam out.

This is extremely dangerous, especially the social engineering aspect, because when you trust the email and website of the greeting card announcement, you’re more likely to let it do things to your computer that you shouldn’t – like install software.

Here is a link about the new type of spam: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/08/if-you-think-a-.html#posts

My advice: if you receive an email that says that you received a greeting card, delete it. As the article above says, “Don’t ever read electronic greeting cards. They have officially become more trouble than they are worth. ”

Aaron, Ethan, and Justin are all in Challenger British Soccer Camp this week, learning soccer from British pros and semi-pros.  Aaron is quite good at soccer and for him it’s an opportunity to improve his skills before AYSO Soccer starts in the fall.  This year, not only will Mike be coaching Aaron’s (U12) team, but Marla will be coaching Ethan’s (U6) team. 

Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures yet, and because of the wide angle of the soccer fields, it’s unlikely  that we’ll have any (but we’ll try). 

We went to Arlington Park yesterday; this was an employer-paid event that included admission, a program, food, beverages, and a private tent for our company.  The kids had a great time, and pictures are HERE.

Next event: A Day Out with Thomas, in August.  More pictures to come! 

So I’m catching up on some stuff that should have been done in late May / early June, if we hadn’t hightailed it out of Illinois so fast after school ended.

Aaron is a member of the District 73.5 beginner band, and this band won the 2006 John Philip Sousa Foundation Sudler Cup award for excellence.   This award covers the full band, including the beginner band that Aaron belongs to, all the way up to the elite Symphonic band.

So in honor of this award, the band had a concert during the last week of May, and we recorded portions of it.  

Here is Aaron’s band playing three selections of music [MP3].  This is an MP3 file, so you can download it but you’ll need an MP3 Player to listen to it (hopefully your computer already has one).  If this works out well, I may post other MP3s from the concert.

BTW as I was writing this post, Aaron received a letter from Illinois Congressman Louis Lang congratulating him on his class’s Sudler Cup achievement.  We, of course, are very proud.

Oh, I guess I should mention that Aaron plays Trombone. 

Epcot Day 2 had a lot of character 😉

That is to say, we planned two character meals for today: the Princess Breakfast at Akershus in Norway, and the character meal at Garden Grill in The Land pavillion.  

We planned the Princess Breakfast because the younger two of our kids still love the princesses (even though they’re boys) and Cinderella’s Table was full when I tried to book it.  So this is the next best thing.  

Getting there was confusing (my fault – I didn’t plan our route in advance) but once we got there, we were let it pretty quickly even though we were a few minutes late for our Priority Seating time.  

I must say of all the character meals, the characters in this venue really sort of rushed through.  We didn’t get much time at all with them, they just dropped by to sign autographs and snap a few pictures, no real bonding with the kids.  That bonding experience is what makes character meals special, and without it, you might as well set up cardboard cutouts. 

The food was actually better than a lot of breakfast venues, featuring both a buffet of authentic Norweigan breakfast foods, and a "family style" serving of standard American fare.  

At this point I’m going to stop and direct you to the pictures HERE, because the Breakfast pics were on a memory card that crashed and are thus in a different album in the gallery.  It’s pictures of the kids with all the princesses at breakfast.  

Moving on,  we toured (again) the world showcase and got very tired (it is so huge).  Maybe next time, we’ll allow for one day for each country – that would be fun, eat meals in one country and just hang out in that country all day.  Yeah, when we’ve got all the time in the world.  But not soon. 🙂  So the kids got their faces painted in Africa (it’s a country now, according to Disney!) and then we made our way back to the front of the park where all the rides are to take ride inside the geo-dome (Mission:SPace?)  I remember this being a more fun ride, but this time it seems like it was just a documentary.  I guess my memory isn’t what it used to be.  Next, Aaron and I finally used our Test Track fastpasses from the last time we came to Epcot, and I finally got to ride.  That was a really fun ride, and I hope it’s there next time we come to Disney.

Finally we made our way to lunch at the Garden Grill.  We had been waiting our entire trip for this character lunch;  last time we came to Disney, we were exhausted at lunch time and had no reservations.  We had just toured "the land" and were ready to sit down and eat.  We walked up, unknowing, to the desk at Garden Grill, and asked if there were any stand-by seats available.  We were seated immediately, and only after we sat down did we realize that it was a character meal.  This was one of our most memorable experiences, both because we "lucked" into a stand-by seat at a character meal, but also because this is where Ethan got chocolate all over his face, and the characters made a big deal about him and sort of danced around him, making fun of his face. 

This time, again our great memories failed us.  I’m not saying it was a bad experience, by any means, but it didn’t live up to our memories.  The characters were so-so and came by infrequently for quick snapshots, and the food was not-so-special.  But hey, we lived.  It’s Disney, you can’t really have a bad time at Disney, can you? 🙂

Here’s pictures of the kid’s facepaintings, plus the char meal at Garden Grill.   

This wraps up my Disney trip narrative.  We certainly had a wonderful time, and it was well worth it.  We’re going to go again, in about 3-1/2 to 4 years, so I can start my planning as early as 2010! 

OK June 12th, Aaron’s birthday.  We decided that we hadn’t built enough rest into our plan (even Aaron was tired), so we decided to swim at the resort, eat lunch, take a nap, and then go to the park.  The cool thing is that once you figure out how to "work" the parks, it’s easy to go late and take as many rides as you want – you just work them around the crowd-grabbers, like parades and fireworks. 

So after some R&R we made our way to MK for the last time.

First, we drove to the TTC and took the Monorail in. and Aaron sat up front in the captains compartment.  This is a great time for the kids, and the driver always treats each kid like it’s the first time he’s ever had a visitor in his compartment, and tells them all about the Monorail and how it works.  

Next, I’ll just highlight stuff – we took rides and met characters.  Here are the pictures starting at DSC00231, and an explanation: 

• Waiting for the Monorail, riding in the front of the Monorail
• We met Rafiki (from Lion King)
• Aaron’s birthday dinner at Crystal Palace (Pooh & Friends) – note that Tigger is leading a parade, that’s in honor of Aaron’s birthday
• More pics from Jungle Cruise, we took it again
• Pirates, which we took again
• The Teacup ride
• Buzz Lightyear, which we took again
•  Indy Racers again
• 3-D Glasses from Mickey’s Philharmagic
• Pictures of the Castle and Main Street at night

Tomorrow – our last day at Disney, Epcot.