Goodbye HD DVD's, Hello Rice Cereal

Upon hearing that the HD DVD player has gone the way of the cassette tape, I couldn't help but be disappointed considering Mel and I own one of these now obsolete units. Luckily we got a good deal on it and it still plays normal DVD's. Breast milk could also be going the way of the HD DVD as Tate has now developed an affinity for rice cereal. He had his 4-month checkup on Monday and his results were rather positive: 24 inches long - 51%; 17 cm. head - 90%; and 15 pounds, 3 oz. - 90%. In other words, the kid is short and stout like his dad. He has been sleeping close to 11 hours a night which has been lovely. He is super cute when he first wakes up in the morning, smiling and cooing like a young jaybird. Mel and I are continuing to enjoy parenthood. Bauer meanwhile is less than impressed and is in the process of trying to divorce us and get adopted by the Perry's. We'll see what happens. I have taken a ton of footage of him lately and now that I have finished the MSM snow trip video I will get started on editing a video for him. Below you will find some pictures of Tate and the aforementioned Biggest Snow video from the MSM winter camp trip to Hume Lake a couple weeks ago. It is pretty entertaining - especially Kyle Clark's snowboarding antics. Check it out.

A picture Justin took and edited for school (stolen from his blog)
Tate loves rice cereal.

Biggest Snow, 2008.

Hume

This weekend the MSM went to Hume Lake for their middle school winter camp. Like last year, it was a fun, exhausting weekend. Unlike last year, there was snow. Lots of snow. Mounds of snow. In fact, it snowed 4 feet while we were there. Our guys made it to the second round of the broom hockey tournament and some even cried when they lost. No joke. It was intense. We played a rousing game of snow football too and yes, some guys (guy) cried on the losing team. Again, it was intense. Three students gave their lives to the Lord which was great. I had a conversation with one of them (Jamie - the guy I hit in the face twice with a dodgeball a year ago) after the speaker's talk the last night and it went really well. He had a lot of great questions and we talked for about an hour. It was really encouraging and puts the rest of the weekend's events in to perspective. On Saturday night they had a box sled race. Each church was asked to build a sled using only cardboard and duct tape and were timed going down the sled hill and judged based on style and creativity. The event took place at close to midnight under the neon glow of multiple spotlights amidst a deluge of falling snow. It was pretty incredible. Our 4-man sled held up pretty well, but lacked speed, style, and manueverability. In short, we lost. No one cried this time though. Yesterday, in an attempt to make it home early enough to catch the Super Bowl, we departed Hume at 11:30 am. Hume had a plow lead the cars out of the lake basin. We missed the first departure time and had to wait for the plow to return to catch the next group. However, a bus got stuck on the road at the summit and we had to wait a couple hours until they cleared it out of the way. Fortunately we were able to get some lunch and hang out in the cafeteria. We finally left Hume at around 1:15pm (or so we thought). About 8 miles up the mountain we suddenly were forced to stop. We found out that another bus got stuck on the road and when a bus tried to pass the other bus, it too got stuck. So there we were at 6500 ft., under a blanket of falling snow, waiting for the CHP to pull out the buses. Long story short...the Hume staff informed us that we may have to stay the night and since we didn't have cell coverage there it was sort of a nightmare. Fortunately they were able to move the buses and we were back on the road around 5:45pm after being stuck in our cars for 4 hours. We made it home by 10:30. It was a good trip despite the debacle at the end. I will post a video from the trip in the next couple weeks.

Biggest Snow, '08.