Summer Break

It's Sunday, August 22^nd, and I'm on break from RIT for a little while. The summer term ended on Friday, August 13^th, 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.

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 Vacation

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.

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)

If you search youtube for 2008 Disneyland All American College Band, you'll find a lot more links to videos.

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.

 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 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

al 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.

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

State Street Stomp

The Monroe County All County Junior High Jazz band performs State Street Stomp. Michael Craig on drums.

Rompe Cabeza

The 2007 Monroe County All County Jazz Band performed 4 songs at Spencerport High School on Saturday, March 3, 2007.

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.

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.

Flowers in our Garden

Elsa has a perenniel garden by our deck and the flowers are coming up beautifully this year. The first picture on the left shows the entire garden. We have 3 poppie plants, an iris and several others that I can't identify.








This is a closeup view of one of the poppies.

It's been almost a year...

It's been almost a year since my father died (June 8, 2005) and I'm still not used to it. I was talking about this with my cousin Todd shortly after Dad's and he shared his experience of losing someone very close to him. He said something like "The pain does not go away, it just becomes part of who you are." That has certainly been my experience as well. I'm not angry about it and I don't mope around, but I certainly miss him. Here is a letter that I wrote to him the night after he died.

A Letter to My Father

Dear Dad,

It’s late and it’s hard to say goodbye. I wonder what I will miss most about you.

A Saturday phone call to find out how to fix the fan
…or the sink
…or the toilet
…or the lawnmower
Can you fix the ache in my heart right now?

I will miss… working together on Adelman’s lawn,
painting houses together,
putting in a driveway,
shingling someone’s roof

I loved to work with you. I love to work because I learned that from you.

I will miss… playing sports with you and talking about the Red Sox
the fact that you really wanted to know about the weather
fishing with you (or at least talking about it)
the way you always looked for a bargain

I will miss… the sure sound of your trombone
your love of music
playing songs with you

It is an honor and a privilege to follow in your footsteps.

I will miss… your daily display of courage in facing hardship
your deep and abiding faith in Jesus Christ
your tender heart that was so easily bruised
your example of faithful care and provision
for Mom
for your parents,
for your children,
for your extended family,
for your tenants (your own personal welfare system),
for your neighbors – in other words for everyone you met.

I will miss you. You have always been my hero. I learned to be a man from you – not from Rudyard Kipling, not from a thousand sermons or from ten thousand books. I learned it from you.

This is a picture of the band at The Vic, a jazz nightclub in Santa Monica. Elsa and I were joined by my brother Gary, who came clubbing with us for one night on a break from a conference in northern LA. 

The American Idol folks were also on the USC campus for the Music in the Schools day. Please notice Randy standing right in front of the Mercedes SUV. 

This is a Bentley that was parked (in two spaced as you can see) at USC. I posted this because Will and Michael really like nice cars and this is as close as I'll ever get to a Bentley. 

This is the Jazz Ensemble getting ready to play at the Music in the Schools day at USC on Monday afternoon, February 13. 

This is the recording booth at Capitol Records. It was quite impressive. There was room for about 5 spectators, so we had to leave after about 25 minutes when our turn was up (there were lots of parents who wanted to see what was going on). 

Here is my lovely bride waiting to be discovered at the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

This picture was taken at Spaghettini's - a wonderful restaurant that had a remarkable brunch. The Gibson/Baldwin GRAMMY jazz ensemble, combo and jazz choir all played there on Sunday February 12. Their performances were broadcast live over a local jazz station. I highly recommend the Jazz Brunch if you're in Seal Beach, CA, on a Sunday. I have a wonderful movie of Tim playing a solo with the band. I'm still trying to figure out how to post it to this blog. 

Here is a picture of Clint Eastwood's signature at Graumann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Elsa and I went there on Saturday, February 11, after visting Capitol Records to see Tim's band recording. 

This is Tim on a break at Captiol Records. When the band was playing he was in the shadows and all I could get was the back of his head. 

On Saturday, February 4, Tim's band recorded 4 tunes at Capitol Records. This is a picture of Elsa at Capitol Records.