The kids and I went out for brunch for Father’s Day.

This past weekend I took my daughter to the Durham Skate Park in downtown. She loves skateboarding, so she was pretty up for it. The funny thing is that she doesn’t really know how to ride. She knows the names of all the tricks, but can’t even really ride on a flat surface. I figured taking her to the Skate Park would provide some inspiration and she would get some practice riding along the edge of the park. She really didn’t ride at all, but she was very interested in shooting some video. The above video was completely shot by my 9-year old daughter on a Kodak ZI-8, handheld HD camera. I cut it together using iMovie, but with some simple direction regarding cutting on action and creating a narrative thread, she organized the shots, and even discarded a few that didn’t work. This kid is not your normal 4th grader. She really gets this stuff. We will definitely be shooting more video, and soon she will be managing the editing software too. Oh, and we scored it in Garage Band and she made the choices in that too.

My nine-year-old daughter still gets presents from Santa Claus. It is hard to tell if this is true or not, but this year she has gotten concerned with contacting St. Nick himself. Her mom has always told her that parents communicate with Santa by fax or email. Well recently her 11 year-old brother convinced her that she could actually call Santa herself, and his number is 1-800-NORTHPOLE.

Tonight she dialed that number and was so shocked by the response, she hung up. She quickly realized that she did not dial Santa. She is still pretty innocent and doesn’t use bad language. She had to whisper the words to her mom. The voice on the other end of the phone said, “Please hold, a hot porn star will answer your call shortly.”

I used to take pictures of Grace while she was asleep. Click here to see all of them. Anyway, the other night she said she wanted to sleep on the couch. I’ve never slept on the coach before, she said. So I let her, and I had to take a picture of her.

Here are Peter and Grace on our Thanksgiving trip to Florida. I didn’t take too many pictures on the trip, but here’s a link to the ones I did take.

My daughter Grace gets a list of spelling homework choices at the beginning of the week and must choose 5 of the options each week. Tonight as she sat down to do her homework, she got out the computer and started working on something. After a few minutes I noticed her obvious frustration and asked if I could help. She said she was trying to find what English letter each letter of the Hebrew alphabet stood for.

I found a site with the Hebrew alphabet and started going through the letters, but told her that they did not all have an English equivalent. I asked her what she needed to do. She read me the choice from her homework sheet that said she needed to write 10 words in a foreign language and those same words in English. She told me that everyone was doing Spanish, and someone had already done Chinese, but she wanted to be different. Hebrew is very different.

So next we looked for simple Hebrew vocabulary sites that listed words in Hebrew and English. I showed her a few that I knew, like mother and father. She sat down with the computer and started looking through the words. She told me she wasn’t finding her spelling words in the lists. At this point a lightbulb goes on over my head. She doesn’t need to translate 10 random words. This is her spelling homework. 10 of her spelling words are what is needed.

At this point I showed her Google translation tools and we typed in 10 of her spelling words. I selected English to Hebrew and clicked translate. Lo and behold, Google returned 10 Hebrew words. And now it was up to Grace to write them down. Quite a challenge for a half-Jewish kid who has barely seen Hebrew, let alone tried to write it.

Grace and Peter are looking tired after their first day back to school.

Last week Grace attended Girls Rock NC. The girls were put in bands at the beginning of the week, and they chose a band name, wrote a song, made posters, t-shirts, learned instruments, practiced their song, and made rock zines. She had a great time. This is a tremendously empowering experience for these young girls. Below is the video of Grace’s band in an extra performance. Tonight she performs at Cat’s Cradle, a well-known indie rock club in Carrboro.

Here are photos from the last day of camp rehearsal and here are photos from the Pittsboro show.

Grace offers Happy 4th of July wishes.

Grace offers me a real life challenge.