Today we left for our family vacation at the beach. We had plans to be in bed early and on the road by four so that we could get the kids out of bed, still sleeping, drive most of the early morning and arrive around lunch with an afternoon of swimming to look forward to. But after finally getting into bed somewhere near three-thirty four didn’t sound so appealing. We did eventually get on the road but not until after nine. Not too far down the road, right before pulling onto the expressway, Carol was curious if I shut the garage door. Of course I did…right? We had to go back into the house several times for this or that prior to leaving and neither of us could remember if we shut the door the final time. We called in a favor and the thought paid off – sure enough I had left the door wide open to the world.

One the road the kids had plenty to keep them busy. We packed books, games, movies, music, and thanks to the modern marvels that go into today’s vehicles, the GameCube. (I remember playing the license plate game, the alphabet game, sitting in the floor board while coloring or playing in the seat) The ride itself went pretty smooth, note that a good ride over such a long distance with four kids of very different age groups, is a good ride for everyone, and somewhat hard to come by…. There was one moment though that brought both of us near tears with laughter. We were listening to the kids tell us which of the characters from whatever movie they were watching that they “wanted to be” and we heard from the back seat, innocently, “Mom…Can we go to the Lion’s Den?” I guess Isaac had been not only watching the movie but also checking out the billboards. I guess the name works but I think it is off a bit for their target market We were able to get away not only without a visit but without even a response and the topic thankfully never came back up.

We neared our destination at the beach and the kids switched gears from mellow, hanging out, watching movies, reading books, generally having a good time to beach crazed, high energy, children of the corn. The switch happened just as we crossed the top of the bridge leading from the mainland to the sound and didn’t stop until we pulled in. We quickly unpacked the van and headed to the room. It was getting late and we had plans to hit the pool and burn off any remaining energy so that each of the kids would not only sleep but would pass out in exhausted mushy piles of sleeping munchkins.

We made it to the pool just before dark and swam for a while. Piper put on her big girl shorts and went down a quick, high speed water slide into the deep end. I jumped in to grab her in case she went under and started to panic but was surprised after she hit the water, went under briefly and came up no worse for wear – she wanted to do it again but said that her hand hit one of the rocks around the slide and she was scared it would happen again. Isaac was all over the pool – up the slide – down the slide – on the rocks – swimming side to side – chasing Piper and Jacob around – and doing cannon balls. Jacob played on the slide as well but wanted more than anything to hold Piper’s hand and escort her, The Princess, around the pool.

Bed time came pretty quick after showers for the lot and a late night snack of muffins and milk. Isaac crashed first in the chair and once the beds were set up the rest of them not far behind. They all had long days and after a good swim and full belly, not to mention it was midnight, it wasn’t long before they were all crashed hard.

Day One Complete.

Related posts:

1. Family Beach Trip – Buckets of Energy
2. Family Beach Trip – SeaWorld
3. Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch

I have had my xbox about 3 years now.  In that time I have played only a few games, my favorite being Call of Duty 4.  With that exception it is even rarer that I have ever played games on xbox live.  What I do use xbox live for though is access to Netflix streaming services.

An interesting bit here is that I still have an xbox live account – and will until it expires next April.  I am uncertain what I can actually do with it barring purchasing another xbox to use it with.  I don’t even want to play games with my console, I just want access to Netflix – why can’t the Microsoft gods understand this and kindly re-enable my console.  There certainly is no one to blame for this but myself.  I guess insisting that I had backup copies of my games wasn’t worth the price after all. 

Until we figure out what to do the Tivo will be our interface to movie heaven.  Purchasing another xbox is one option but it would have to be new from Microsoft to ensure that we weren’t buying a xbox that had been banned just like ours had.  Unfortunately the Tivo interface is significantly subpar to that of the xbox when it comes to Netflix streaming.  I am curious why though.  Microsoft certainly went the extra mile in their design providing access to the top 100 lists for each of the primary movie categories, access to the queue and the ability to setup movie parties.  Tivo offers only a vanilla connection to the current queue with no ability to actually manage the queue.  Hopefully the Tivo developers get off their rears and deliver an interface at least as useful as the xbox version.

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Just like the other millions or so people around the world we love our iPhones.  The problem is, so do our kids.  And whats wrong with that…why nothing of course.  Who doesn’t want to play an endless array of free or inexpensive games to pass the time of a ride in the van, or listen to the discovery channel, or…well point made.  The damned thing is brilliant (or at least many of the apps are), but I digress.

Our kids play on our phones a good bit.  Mostly in the van or while visiting somewhere or shopping, anywhere they don’t want to be or anywhere that invites boredom.  Other times and places we push the device on them like the local crack dealer so we can focus on a task at hand – try taking four to the dentist, all with back-to-back appointments and keep your sanity – like I mentioned – we love our iPhones.

The problem isn’t that our kids play on the phones, it is the lack of one key feature: Kid Mode.  What, per se, is Kid Mode?  It is the missing ability to lock portions of your phone before handing it over to your kids, or anyone for that matter.  It is the ability to create a profile for each of the users of the device and the ability to manage or change those profile only with some super secret password.  It is the ability to hide or disable applications.  A way to prevent connections to the Internet.  Ability to lock sensitive or private settings, features or applications.  The prevention of text messages from either displaying upon receipt or from being sent.  I really think I could make this list go on for a bit…however, there is one more that sits at the very top of my list – the ability to disable the Home key - that unmistakable indention that attracts your attention, your hand, and screams push me, you know you want to – which so happily turns off whatever the iPhone happens to be doing and transitions the screen to wherever the Home key happens to be mapped.

Some of my complaints…er suggestions assume younger kids, but I think they apply across the board and perhaps even in general – you can access a good bit of your life from that applications available.  Our boys can certainly navigate around the phone quite well – to well maybe – and our girls are getting better at it.  Should some of these ideas ever be implemented I envision being able to hand the iPhone to our two year old, setup to play a twenty minute episode of her favorite Disney character, and not hear requests to play it again shortly after – that big button that says “push me” wouldn’t do anything anyway because it had been disabled.  I envision being able to setup a profile for each of our kids or a guest, and perhaps using iTunes, add applications, games, podcasts, music, and other features to their profiles that are appropriate for their age, intellect, and desires.  Then when we offer our phone for them to play, we select a profile, enter a password and pass it happily.

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The show is no longer in production and only three seasons were produced but that hasn’t stopped the kids from watching each of the twenty-six episodes over and over.  The interest is significant enough that both Jacob and Isaac have asked, and thus been shown, how to access Netflix over the Tivo to start an episode.  Looking for season three I found that the show is based on a web-comic that grew into a graphic novel that was picked up and produced by Cookie Jar Company and aired by WB4Kids.  Should their interest remain high a graphic novel sounds like a good gift recommendation for Santa.  There are now two graphic novels that make up or continue the story.  Hopefully another studio will pick up where WB4Kids left off and continue producing and airing new content.  The kids love it and I hope they get to see the series run to the conclusion of the story.

Related posts:

1. Phineas and Ferb

There are plenty of other elements of the show to keep the story fun and interesting, including Perry the Platypus, Phineas and Ferb’s pet, who is a secret agent working to keep the evil plots of  Dr. Doofenshmirtz in check.  The evil doctor is my favorite character, his plots are hair brained and wacky and equal in proportion to that of the brothers, only with poor, but funny, planning and execution.  The show is funny, entertaining (even for me), thoughtful, imaginative and fun.  What used to be the girls asking to what Mickey Mouse has recently turned into something refreshing and new and perfectly appropriate for both their ages.

No related posts.