On the first day of Christmas,

the Lord granted me a day of rest in which to enjoy the fruits of all my pre Christmas preparations. (and be surrounded by women while doing so!) As many of you know, the last few days before Christmas can turn into a whirlwind of activity, especially with young children in the home. Christmas Day is very enjoyable, but non-stop. Today we got to sleep in, catch our breath, and just exist in the moment.

My mother is visiting with us for 2 and half weeks and I finally got to sit with her and chat over breakfast this morning. Nothing extravagant or philosophical, just chatting about life and other good things with the occasional comment from one of the little tigers.

_________________________________________________

One of my daughters, the self proclaimed 'Empress Tiger' received Clubhouse for Nintendo DS which features all kinds of traditional card and board games as well as bowling, darts, billiards and etc. The most fun for me was making the two Nintendo DSs transfer/download game info thru the built-in wireless connection and be able to compete head to head without having to buy another cartridge.

Mario Bros, LotR, and Pokeman are all fun Nintendo games, but there's also something enjoyable about the Clubhouse version of Battleship and losing to a giggling ten year old.

A physics demonstration is worth a thousand words.

This past weekend, we went to the Rutgers Faraday Christmas Children's Lecture presented by the University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. My wife had read some good reviews, but I was a little apprehensive that it would be mostly lecture with some visuals thrown in. Kinda like blah blah blah blah…[insert technical terms] blah blah…wish we could show you, but safety…etc, etc. Boy, did I underestimate them. (Similar to how everyone underestimated the football team this fall.)

It was a spectacular demonstration that was fun to watch, educating, and kept you wondering what was going to be next. Professor Mark Croft, Dave Maiullo, and those who assisted did an absolutely, excellent job. They exploded a hydrogen balloon, shattered a beaker using vibration, worked with liquid nitrogen, blew smoke rings, and kept us entertained for an hour & a half. My five year old daughter kept turning to my wife after each demonstration and whispering, with wonder in her eyes, “How did he do that?”

Perhaps the best line of the evening was, at the end of the lecture, from my teenage daughter who said “Now I want to go and take a college physics class.” That too was priceless.