Sunday, August 22, 2010
Summer Break
It's Sunday, August 22nd, and I'm on break from RIT for a little while. The summer term ended on Friday, August 13th, the same day my brother, Robert, arrived from Tulsa, OK. Two days later, we completed the Sodus Point Sprint Triathlon - a 0.45 mile swim in frigid Lake Ontario (57 F), a 13 mile bike ride and a 3.1 mile run. Robert has run several marathons, but this is the first time either of us have done a triathlon and the first time I've ever done anything like this. We finished in just over 1 hour 58 minutes.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Our 2008 Christmas Letter
Dear Friends and Family,
Merry Christmas to you all. It's Sunday afternoon and we've decided to get our Christmas letter out online this year. I hope to find a group of photos and videos that will be interesting. The photo to the right is our stuffed animal Christmas tree. Notice the hat on the lemur puppet atop the tree. You can see larger versions of all these pictures if you just click on them. At the end of this post, there is video of Emily, Tim and Paul playing a trio at the Christmas Eve service at our church.
Family Vacatio
n
We went to lovely Taughonnock Falls in western NY for a camping vacation this summer. We did a lot of hiking around the falls. William, Michael and Emily did a lot of running - all preparing for Cross Country season in the fall. While we were there we went to Corning Glass Works. I was fascinated by the ruby glass, which used gold to generate the red color.
Will
Will had a busy senior year at Gates Chili High School and he graduated in June, 2008. We were very proud that he was named GCHS Athlete of the Year for his stellar work in Cross Country, Indoor Track and Outdoor Track. Here are some pictures from his senior year of high school.
Will began his first year at RIT in the Mechanical Engineering program. He survived his first term (he's on the quarter system, so it ended before Thanksgiving). He enjoyed a good first season of college level Cross Country racing - he was averaging 70-80 miles per week. It was much more intense than high school, but he really enjoys it and has made some friends on the team.
Emily enjoys reading, swimming, and big cats. She has a large stuffed tiger and many smaller stuffed animals in her room. At our house we have two Christmas trees. One is re
In addition to two parents and four children, we also have two enslaved guinea pig-Americans in our house. Here is one of our latest pictures of them.
nWe went to lovely Taughonnock Falls in western NY for a camping vacation this summer. We did a lot of hiking around the falls. William, Michael and Emily did a lot of running - all preparing for Cross Country season in the fall. While we were there we went to Corning Glass Works. I was fascinated by the ruby glass, which used gold to generate the red color.
Tim
Tim is in his 3rd year at Eastman School of Music where he is majoring in jazz trombone and music education. If all goes according to plan, he will graduate at Chrismastime 2 years from now - it takes a bit longer to get the double major in. His last semester will be student teaching.
Last summer he played in the Disneyland All American College Band. It was a great experience for him - even got to do some surfing and had a visit from my brother Gary and his family. Here are some links to youtube videos of the band. See if you can find Tim.
Tim is in his 3rd year at Eastman School of Music where he is majoring in jazz trombone and music education. If all goes according to plan, he will graduate at Chrismastime 2 years from now - it takes a bit longer to get the double major in. His last semester will be student teaching.Last summer he played in the Disneyland All American College Band. It was a great experience for him - even got to do some surfing and had a visit from my brother Gary and his family. Here are some links to youtube videos of the band. See if you can find Tim.
- 2008 Disneyland All American College Band (1 of 3)
- 2008 Disneyland All American College Band (2 of 3)
- 2008 Disneyland All American College Band (3 of 3)
Will
Will had a busy senior year at Gates Chili High School and he graduated in June, 2008. We were very proud that he was named GCHS Athlete of the Year for his stellar work in Cross Country, Indoor Track and Outdoor Track. Here are some pictures from his senior year of high school.
From left to right - cross-country meet, his "state trooper" look for senior dress up day, posing with his athlete of the year plaque and then at graduation.
Will began his first year at RIT in the Mechanical Engineering program. He survived his first term (he's on the quarter system, so it ended before Thanksgiving). He enjoyed a good first season of college level Cross Country racing - he was averaging 70-80 miles per week. It was much more intense than high school, but he really enjoys it and has made some friends on the team.Michael
Michael is now a high school sophomore. He plays drums in the Gates Chili High School Marching Band, Concert Band and Jazz Band, the Eastman Youth Jazz Orchestra, and the Parkminster Presbyterian Church Praise Band. He ran cross country at Gates Chili High School in the fall and plans to play tennis in the spring. In the spring he won an award from the Rochester Academy of Medicine for Outstanding High School essay for an essay he wrote about new treatments for Alzheimer's Disease.
Michael is now a high school sophomore. He plays drums in the Gates Chili High School Marching Band, Concert Band and Jazz Band, the Eastman Youth Jazz Orchestra, and the Parkminster Presbyterian Church Praise Band. He ran cross country at Gates Chili High School in the fall and plans to play tennis in the spring. In the spring he won an award from the Rochester Academy of Medicine for Outstanding High School essay for an essay he wrote about new treatments for Alzheimer's Disease. He is the Senior Patrol Leader for Boy Scout Troop 402 and hope to advance to Life Scout by the spring court of honor. Classes are going well for him and he hopes to sleep some over Christmas break.
Emily
Emily
Emily enjoys reading, swimming, and big cats. She has a large stuffed tiger and many smaller stuffed animals in her room. At our house we have two Christmas trees. One is real and traditional (managed by Elsa) and the other is artificial and somewhat offbeat (managed by Paul). Last year Paul set a limit of five ornaments on the artificial trees. This year, we decided to go with a stuffed animal/puppet theme on the tree. Here is a picture of Emily with her grandmother, who joined us last June for Will's high school graduation.
Emily had a wonderful costume for Hallowe'en this year. She dressed up as a Rubik's cube. It was quite a job of design and engineering, especially designing arm holes where she could hold her candy collection bag. She made quite a collection, but it did not compare to Michael's - he went out running from house to house with some of his Cross-Country buddies, so he was able to visit many more houses than Emily.
Patches and Tanner
In addition to two parents and four children, we also have two enslaved guinea pig-Americans in our house. Here is one of our latest pictures of them. Emily, Tim and I played the introduction to God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen at our Christmas Eve service at church.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Merry Christmas
Dear Friends and Family,
Our kids are terrific. Our home is nice. Housing is cheap in Rochester because everyone thinks the weather is terrible - it's not San Diego, but it's not bad.
That's it for now. If you'd like to see the long, boring, self-congratulatory version of this Christmas letter, please stop by again in 3 days. (24 Dec 2007).
Paul
Our kids are terrific. Our home is nice. Housing is cheap in Rochester because everyone thinks the weather is terrible - it's not San Diego, but it's not bad.
That's it for now. If you'd like to see the long, boring, self-congratulatory version of this Christmas letter, please stop by again in 3 days. (24 Dec 2007).
Paul
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
State Street Stomp
| The Monroe County All County Junior High Jazz band performs State Street Stomp. Michael Craig on drums. | |
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Rompe Cabeza
| The 2007 Monroe County All County Jazz Band performed 4 songs at Spencerport High School on Saturday, March 3, 2007. | |
Monday, December 25, 2006
Il est ne, le divine enfant
| Tim and Paul played this duet to open the Christmas Eve service at Parkminster Presbyterian Church in Rochester, NY, on Sunday, December 24, 2006. | |
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Tim Craig Soloing with the Grammy Jazz Band
| This clip is taken from a concert by the Grammy Jazz Band at The Vic in Santa Monica California. | |
Merry Christmas Everyone
Dear Friends and Family,
This year we're going to try sending out Christmas letter out as a blog. We've had quite a bit of excitement this year and are grateful as we look back at 2006.
Family News
We took a couple of family vacations this past summer and they revolved around fishing and camping. In July we went to Long Island Sound, where Paul was working on a research project (for the curious - it's about scientific visualization - you can find out more at ez-viz.rit.edu). On the way to Long Island, we stopped on the Connecticutt side of Long Island Sound and took the whole family fishing for striped bass on Kingfisher Charters. Everyone caught some fish and we then spent a week together on the grounds of Brookhaven National Lab. There were some terrific trips to the beaches on the southern shore of Long Island.
Later in the summer we went camping at the Thousand Islands, where we did some fishing, Tim and Will did some running and we played a game called Nertz.
Elsa and Paul celebrated their 20th anniversary on November 22. In those 20 years we have had 4 terrific kids and have lived in 6 different houses. We had quite a dramatic celebration - we spent time repainting our family room and replacing our couches. We did take a big trip earlier in the year when we went to see Tim perform with the Grammy Band - more about that below. Here is a picture of Elsa at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. We also visited the Santa Monica pier and watched the dolphins playing in the water.
Tim had quite an eventful year that included a trip to California in February to play with the Grammy Jazz Band. You can read about the program at Grammy in the Schools. He returned to our home in Rochester, NY, in time to go through the audition process for music school and is now enrolled at the Eastman School of Music, where he is studying jazz trombone and music education.
Will spent the year growing and running. He is now the tallest in our household and enjoys driving his remote control car. Earlier this fall, he found out about a place with hills and curves and a racecourse for remote control cars. We went to a park and followed the directions he had for wandering through the woods and we found it. Here is a shot of him from the Cross Country Sectionals at Mendon Ponds Park just east of Rochester. Will cut 1'45" off his average time from last year and was given the Coach's Trophy as the outstanding member of this year's team. He will be a captain next year and his goal is to make the New York State races. He thinks he needs to cut about 45" off his time to get there.
Michael loves to fish and play his drums. He plays in the band and jazz band at Gates Chili Middle School and he also plays drums for the praise band at our church, Parkminster Presbyterian Church. In addition to our family fishing trip to Long Island Sound, Michael did a lot of fishing in a neighborhood pond, where he caught a 2.5' pike one afternoon. Paul and Michael also went fishing in a stream that runs through an old lock of the Erie Canal one Sunday. Michael caught a fish with just about every cast (about 10 small mouth bass). Paul caught one, but had a lot of fun watching a master at work.
Emily loves to read and work all kind of handcrafts. Our home is decorated with much of her work, including some stars and a latchhook rug of a tiger. I've also added a picture from her birthday party. One of her gifts was a french horn soloist playing Mozart.
This year we're going to try sending out Christmas letter out as a blog. We've had quite a bit of excitement this year and are grateful as we look back at 2006.
Family News
We took a couple of family vacations this past summer and they revolved around fishing and camping. In July we went to Long Island Sound, where Paul was working on a research project (for the curious - it's about scientific visualization - you can find out more at ez-viz.rit.edu). On the way to Long Island, we stopped on the Connecticutt side of Long Island Sound and took the whole family fishing for striped bass on Kingfisher Charters. Everyone caught some fish and we then spent a week together on the grounds of Brookhaven National Lab. There were some terrific trips to the beaches on the southern shore of Long Island.
Later in the summer we went camping at the Thousand Islands, where we did some fishing, Tim and Will did some running and we played a game called Nertz.
Elsa and Paul celebrated their 20th anniversary on November 22. In those 20 years we have had 4 terrific kids and have lived in 6 different houses. We had quite a dramatic celebration - we spent time repainting our family room and replacing our couches. We did take a big trip earlier in the year when we went to see Tim perform with the Grammy Band - more about that below. Here is a picture of Elsa at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. We also visited the Santa Monica pier and watched the dolphins playing in the water.Tim had quite an eventful year that included a trip to California in February to play with the Grammy Jazz Band. You can read about the program at Grammy in the Schools. He returned to our home in Rochester, NY, in time to go through the audition process for music school and is now enrolled at the Eastman School of Music, where he is studying jazz trombone and music education.
Will spent the year growing and running. He is now the tallest in our household and enjoys driving his remote control car. Earlier this fall, he found out about a place with hills and curves and a racecourse for remote control cars. We went to a park and followed the directions he had for wandering through the woods and we found it. Here is a shot of him from the Cross Country Sectionals at Mendon Ponds Park just east of Rochester. Will cut 1'45" off his average time from last year and was given the Coach's Trophy as the outstanding member of this year's team. He will be a captain next year and his goal is to make the New York State races. He thinks he needs to cut about 45" off his time to get there.Michael loves to fish and play his drums. He plays in the band and jazz band at Gates Chili Middle School and he also plays drums for the praise band at our church, Parkminster Presbyterian Church. In addition to our family fishing trip to Long Island Sound, Michael did a lot of fishing in a neighborhood pond, where he caught a 2.5' pike one afternoon. Paul and Michael also went fishing in a stream that runs through an old lock of the Erie Canal one Sunday. Michael caught a fish with just about every cast (about 10 small mouth bass). Paul caught one, but had a lot of fun watching a master at work.
Emily loves to read and work all kind of handcrafts. Our home is decorated with much of her work, including some stars and a latchhook rug of a tiger. I've also added a picture from her birthday party. One of her gifts was a french horn soloist playing Mozart.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)