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2011

2011, Part 2 – A Sans Kids 10th Anniversary Trip

Cancelled due to Irene.

Don’t forget to enter my Hot Wheels Nitro Speeders giveaway!

As I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts, NHL is heavily interested in Harry Potter at the moment.  The downside to this is that he loves pretending to be the characters that he’s interested in.  When he plays superheroes, he puts on his Iron Man mask and “flies” around the house.  When he plays Jake and the Neverland Pirates, he uses “gold doubloons” from JSL’s birthday party.

When he casts spells as Harry Potter, though, he has no wand.  Sure, he can (and does) just use his finger as a pretend wand or hold an imaginary wand, but there’s something special about pretend play where you utilize a real object.

We could buy him a wand, but that’d just be a recipe for disaster.  A couple of years ago, the boys got a toy drum set and began using the drum sticks as magic wands.  They wound up “casting spells” by physically striking each other with them.  Needless to say, the wands/drum sticks were confiscated for the safety of all.  Though the boys are a few years older now, I somehow doubt that they could keep the spell-casting from turning physical for too long.

As I was tucking NHL into bed the other night, I hit upon the solution.  You see, NHL has a dinosaur, Trike, that he made from Build-A-Bear.

One year, using a birthday coupon, he purchased a Jedi outfit for Trike.

See this?

That’s Trike’s lightsaber.  See how it compares to a movie lightsaber? (Ok, a toy lightsaber from ThinkGeek.)

Well, now look how it compares to a Harry Potter wand.

It’s straight, has a handle and a pointed end.  It’d make a perfect wand.  As a bonus, it’s soft so you could hit someone with the wand/lightsaber without hurting them.  (Not that I’m encouraging this, mind you.)

No need to worry about NHL casting Stupefy on me, though.  I’ve already informed him that moms and dads are naturally immune to their kids’ spells.  NHL has attempted to cast a “reverse immunity spell” of his own making.  Of course, since I’m immune to any spell he casts, I’m immune to a spell which attempts to remove my immunity.  Still, I’ll play along with Expelliarmus from time to time.

What toys have your kids used for purposes other than what the manufacturers intended?

Don’t forget to enter my Hot Wheels Nitro Speeders giveaway!

As Irene passed and the winds and rain died down, I noticed something strange on Twitter.  Some people were saying that Irene was all hype and a Fail.  I couldn’t disagree more.

No, Irene wasn’t as destructive as she could have been.  If anything, though, that’s a win, not a fail.  If Irene fails to kill more people or destroy more property, we win, we don’t fail.  Besides, I’d rather the government err on the side of saving lives instead of doing nothing.  Had government officials said “Irene’s all hype, don’t evacuate” and people died thanks to flooding in low-lying areas, people would have been criticizing them for Katrina-like inaction.

Besides, it’s not like Irene was without consequence.  Thousands lost power.  Many areas flooded.  Some people were even killed.

On a much less serious note, Irene forced us to cancel our plans.  We were going to leave the kids with my parents and then go to Disney World to celebrate our 10th anniversary.  The vacation was all planned out.  We had restaurants we were going to try (that we normally wouldn’t go to with the boys).  We had also purchased Hidden Mickeys: A Field Guide to Walt Disney World’s Best Kept Secrets and planned on going on some hidden Mickey scavenger hunts.

With Irene bearing down on our house and my parents’ house, and flooding and power loss (not to mention house damage) a real possibility, we decided to cancel the trip.  We didn’t want to be stuck at home, unable to go on the trip, and lose out on all the money we had paid.  We got refunds, but we’re still extremely disappointed that we didn’t get to go on our romantic Disney trip.  It’s not downed trees or extreme flooding, but Irene had an large affect on our lives.

Recently, NHL decided to drop a random scientific fact that he picked up along the way.  He told us that butterflies can see colors that we can’t see.  It’s true also.  Many butterflies can see into the ultraviolet range of colors.

I tried to explain to NHL about the electromagnetic spectrum.  I explained how light makes waves and how “big” or ”small” the waves are determines what the color of the light is.  Bigger waves can be seen as red light while smaller waves will be seen as violet/purple.  Between those are the orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo that anyone familiar with ROYGBIV should remember.

Of course, the idea that light is a wave is a very complex and abstract notion to an 8 year old.  I don’t think he quite got it.  He did seem impressed when I linked it back to something that directly affects him, however.  I let him know that just outside of the light that we could see was ultraviolet light.  (At the time, I didn’t know that this was the “color” butterflies could see.  I found that out later via a Google search.)  I explained to him that ultraviolet light was the kind of light that caused us to get suntans and sunburns.  Thus, we needed suntan lotion to protect us against this kind of light.

This resulted in a wide-eyes “aha” moment in NHL’s brain.  I love seeing those moments in action.  Hopefully, this year, I’ll see a lot more of them.

What science facts do you enjoy sharing with your kids?

Don’t forget to enter my Hot Wheels Nitro Speeders giveaway!

On Tuesday, an earthquake struck Virginia.  The shaking was felt all the way to New York.  For some reason, though, I didn’t feel anything.

While this was going on, Hurricane Irene threatened to hit Florida.  This brought back memories of growing up on Long Island.   There were two hurricanes that I can remember: Gloria and Bob.  Gloria slammed us hard.  Trees were knocked over, cars were smashed and houses had extensive damage.  A tree in our yard fell over towards my room.  At the last second, a gust of wind blew it to the one safe spot on our lawn.  (I was in my room at the time and might have been injured had it hit.)  Down the block, a neighbor had 2 cars in his driveway: a brand new one and an old one.  The old one suffered no damage, but the brand new one was smashed by a falling tree.

Years later, Hurricane Bob hit Long Island.  This one wasn’t as severe as Gloria.  I remember my mother went out during the storm to deliver some food to a family who was in mourning.  Looking out my front door, I saw the mailman deliver the mail.  I guess “during rain, sleet and snow” includes hurricanes!  Yes, I ran out in the intense winds to retrieve the mail.  There’s something exhilarating about running through 75mph winds.

There’s nothing exhilarating about Irene, however.  We had plans to see my parents, but Irene is headed right for them.  This throws our entire plan up in the air.  I hate having to “wing it.”  I like the order of a plan.  Even worse, if the hurricane hits my parents full-force, there might be flooding and/or evacuations.  There’s so much uncertainty all around.  The whole situation’s got me stressed out.

My Aloha Friday question is: What earthquakes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters have you experienced?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #102

The kids love cars.  They’ve got a whole plastic carton devoted to various Matchbox, Hot Wheels and other assorted cars.  Up until now, though, their RC experience has been a bit limited.  We’ve had a few RC-type toys meant for kids (a Lightning McQueen car and a Buzz Lightyear spaceship), but they were bulky and never quite worked right.  These toys were soon pushed aside in favor of others.

When the Hot Wheels Nitro Speeders box arrived, I was excited to (re)introduce them to the world of RC cars.  The kids, however, were even more excited than I was.  They barely tolerated me taking photos of the box and cars before I put batteries in the controller/case.

I was stuck by how small these cars were.  You can see, in the comparison photo above, that they are just bigger than a quarter.  I’d worry about the cars getting lost, but, luckily, Hot Wheels has addressed this.  The controller doubles as a case.

Even better, the case triples as a charger.  The car itself contains a non-replaceable Lithium-Ion battery, but the case runs off of 4 AA batteries.  Connect the car to the case via a cable (inside the case) and the car can quickly be charged.  I didn’t time the charging, but it was definitely ready in under an hour.

All of this wouldn’t matter, though, if the cars weren’t fun.  Luckily, they are plenty of fun.  Again, my kids put up with me clearing the hallway of any obstacles (and closing doors so the cars wouldn’t scoot under beds).  Then, they not-so-patiently put up with me videoing myself playing with the car.

Once this short video was done, I let them have at them.  Notice the two cars.  B got selected for this review as well.  It wound up being a good thing because otherwise the boys would have fought over the controller.

Of course, still photos of smiling faces and racing cars is one thing.  It’s quite another to hear their reactions and laughter.

The box says that it is for ages 8 and up, but JSL (age 4) had no problem operating the car.  I’ll admit that I couldn’t quite get the car to go where I wanted it to go, but that could be the fault of my inexperience with RC cars more than the fault of the controller.  Even without pinpoint accuracy, I had fun making the car race, turn, and spin out.  This is definitely a toy that I’d recommend for kids or even grown-ups.

Giveaway

You can win a Hot Wheels Nitro Speeders RC car.  To enter, simply leave a comment below answering this question: What kind of cars do your kids like playing with?

You can also earn bonus entries by doing any (or all) of the following items. Just be sure to leave a separate comment for each item that you complete.  (Don’t just leave one comment listing everything you did.)

• Follow @TechyDad on Twitter. (1 bonus entry)
• Follow Hot Wheels on Twitter. (1 bonus entry)
• Tweet about the giveaway on Twitter. Be sure to include @TechyDad, @Hot_Wheels and a link to this post in the Tweet. (1 bonus entry per day) For example: On your marks, get set, RC race with @TechyDad and @Hot_Wheels Nitro Speeders #Giveaway http://bit.ly/n5848v
• Subscribe to my RSS feed or let me know if you already are. (1 bonus entry)
• Leave a comment on any of my non-giveaway posts from August/September. Leave a comment here letting me know which post you commented on. (1 bonus entry per comment, maximum 3 entries)
• Enter B’s Hot Wheels Nitro Speeders giveaway.  Leave a comment here letting me know that you’ve entered. (1 bonus entry)
• Write a post on your blog linking to this giveaway. Leave 3 comments about this to get credit for all of your extra entries. (3 bonus entries)

To enter, please follow the rules above within the comment section. Contest starts today, August 25th and ends at Noon EST on September 12th, 2011. You do not have to be a blogger to enter, but must leave a valid e-mail address for me to contact you for mailing address once the giveaway is over. I will select the winner using random.org and contact you via e-mail. You will have 48 hours to claim the prize. If there is no response, another winner will be selected. Open to U.S. residents only.

Disclaimer: I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by MomSelect.  I received a Hot Wheels Nitro Speeder to review.  All opinions above are my own.

(Pssst…. His secret identity is JSL.)