April 2005 Laura Birthday Pics and Video
(I'm still trying to bring my photo albums up-to-date. I'm up to April 2005, so I'm only 3 months behind.)

On the first Sunday in April (the 3rd), we had a small party to commemorate Laura's Birthday (which is on the 5th). The Corays came over for dinner, as did the Thurmonds and the Sorensons. We had a great time. However, I only have one picture from the event:

We did capture some video of the cousins dancing around... Laura was leading them up in the bonus room. It was very cute. There are two 30-second video clips of the dancing available here:

April 2005 Laura Birthday

The Beethoven Experience on BBC
Bryan is giving me all kinds of music tips (see previous post on Magnatune). Last month the BBC aired, on nine successive nights, the nine Beethoven symphonies as performed by the BBC Philharmonic and conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, collectively titled The Beethoven Experience. Not only that, but the BBC made each perforance available on the BBC web site to download for free. Nice.

Well, the one catch is that the downloads were only available for 10 days after their respective original airing. So today only symphonies 8 and 9 are still available. Fortunately, Bryan had a torrent file already googled and passed it along. In just a matter of minutes (okay, maybe half an hour) I was able to download the nine symphonies (all 340+ MB of them). This here new-fangled internet sure does whip the llama's arse!

The Blue Car
Berkeley and I went shopping this evening (while Kristy put tired little Eliana down early). When it is just he and I running errands, sometimes I'll give him a choice for transportation... the "grey car" (the Mercedes) or the "blue car" (the BMW). This evening he chose the blue car.

Our errand took us to Costco to get some milk and some other sundries, taking us down snake hill and on toward Issaquah. As we approached the bottom of the hill, the light was turning yellow... it was getting late, and I didn't want Costco to close without us inside... so, after a split-second decision, I gunned it. It must have taken Berkeley by surpise (he was busy fiddling with some buttons), because he was forced toward his right and into the door of the car as we banked left through the intersection. As we were passing underneath the traffic light, he looked up and said "Daddy, yellow... sloooooww." Heh. The blue car is fast.

We arrived at Costco in time, picked up all the groceries on our list, and made our way back home. While we were travelling up snake hill, I couldn't help but notice that Berkeley was leaning to his left and paying attention to all the console buttons again (he particuarly likes to illuminate the hazards). The sharp right hand curve was approaching, so I said "Berkeley, you need to sit up straight while we are driving." Oblivousness followed. So I accelerated into the curve and around it (the blue car is tight), forcing Berkeley to grab the door handle with his right hand to keep himself from falling over onto the left side of his face. "Too fast Daddy... (pause)... faster!", he said with a big smile on his face.

I'm not sure how to interpret that last response, but I'm quite sure that he loves riding in the blue car.