The Hendricks Family Experience

November 23, 2008

Fall comes to New York

Filed under: House & Yard,Kids — Steph @ 11:55 pm

The giant leaf pile
Reflective fall leaves at Silver Stream Reservoir

I love fall, and I love the colors, but I hate the leaves. This big pile was the fifth pile we cleaned up that day. We cleaned up a total of 58 30-gallon leaf bags, for a total of 1740 gallons of leaves. This was the 2nd time (out of 3 times) we had to clean up leaves.  The other times we only had between 18-20 bags each time.  The only reason this is fun is so the kids can play in the leaves. The piles were so big they jumped off a step stool.

There’s also a very small window to get pictures of the fall colors. One day after getting the kids off to school, Kate and I ran around and took pictures of the fall leaves by the lake and by the trestle.

Click here to see our set of fall photos!

November 10, 2008

Kids’ News in November

Filed under: Kids — chris @ 6:53 pm

A couple of Kids’ News items -

Sarah’s won an award at her school for Student of the Month in November. Her teacher wrote us a really nice note detailing what a nice girl Sarah is, and what an example she is to the other kids. We’re proud of her!

Chris Jr. won a spot on the All-County High School Orchestra. He worked really hard practicing for this slot. Apparently it is unusual for a 9th grader to get a spot in the High School Orchestra, because the other kids have been playing for so much longer in some cases. His hard work made the difference here – he practiced on the audition items for at least an hour a day, 6 days a week. This was in addition to piano practice, and bass practice for school and jazz band. What a great achievement!

November 4, 2008

Surprise?

Filed under: Kids — chris @ 9:14 pm

Well, some of you may be surprised.  But we weren’t surprised.  Baby # 6 is something we’ve been planning on and now it’s on the way.  The baby is currently due on May 4, but is likely to be born earlier than that.

Baby Hendricks #6We got the first picture of the baby on Monday.  It is about 14 weeks along at this point, so this shot is really zoomed in, it’s only about four inches long at this point.  We told the kids on Monday as well, and they are really excited.  They are constantly asking Stephanie if she can feel it, and making plans for its birth and living arrangements.  Kate constantly is coming up to Steph, pointing at her belly, and saying “baby in belly!”  Mason hopes this one is a boy because he knows it is his last chance to have a baby brother.  If it is, he is planning to kick Chris out and have the baby live in his room.  Mason figures that Chris won’t be in the house for too many more years, and also that Chris is an obnoxious teenager, so he needs his own room.  The girls want to come to the baby’s birth.  Chris was 7 when he saw Allie born, and Mason was 10 when he saw Kate’s birth. (No, they don’t get to see the full scene – they stay up by the head of the bed)  This has led to some interesting observations, like Chris thinking Allie was covered with bar-b-que sauce, and Mason cutting Kate’s cord.  But it seems to have been a good experience for them.

We’ll post more as we get pictures, and we’re excited to find out what it is!  We always like to know so we can plan ahead, and we’ll still be surprised at 16 weeks.  Who needs to wait until 38 weeks?

November 2, 2008

Our new YouTube channel

Filed under: General — chris @ 7:49 pm

As we’ve indicated before, we’ve decided to kick .Mac/MobileMe to the curb because it is sucking (sad, but true).  However, our other Apple iApps work just fine, and are pretty awesome for free apps.  iMovie has a feature that allows direct publishing to YouTube.  YouTube gives out free accounts.  So our newer “low cost” blog solution can now do video as well!

Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/user/hendricksfamilyny

I’m putting up the videos from the piano recital and All County we had published previously on .Mac.  What this also means is that I will need to start working on editing video again… so watch for updates…

November 1, 2008

Halloween 2008

Filed under: Holidays — Steph @ 11:49 pm

Halloween, as usual, is always very busy. This year we decided to add some fun by decorating outside. We have been saving milk cartons for a couple of months to make 3 more skeletons to add to the 3 we made last year. To this we added lights, a ghost, a pumpkin, and some scary sounds coming out of the garage. We had to scramble to set up the last of it after running around most of the day finishing up some errands and running to the girls’ school twice for their costume parades. We tried to light up the skeletons with some black lights but they were too weak. We got an excellent idea from our neighbor using fluorescent ballasts and bigger black lights. We will be looking more into that next year. Of course we also had some very last minute costumes to throw together for the boys who had to dress up at the last minute. If you don’t know what Mason’s costume is, you are not alone. He went with a friend to a crazy neighborhood that really gets into Halloween.  Only one person knew who he was dressed up as. He claims he is Spaceman Spiff, the space man from Calvin and Hobbes. It didn’t matter, he came home with half a pillow case of candy. This year, Junior decided to stay home and pass out candy. As it got dark, he would stand real still by the porch with the rest of the decorations and as people reached in to get candy he would scare them. (If you look here real close you can see him by the porch) He got a few people really good which was hilarious. One girl only touched his arm and when she realized he was real she jumped back and screamed which scared the rest of the group. He had a lot of fun and can’t wait to do it again next year. (more…)

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