Look who passed his road test and got his driver's license today! Congratulations Joshua!

After a thousand cars with wings, I suggested a completely different kind of Lego creation to our youngest son. He went for it. We built a hearse, but then we needed a coffin, and then we needed someplace to park it. A church seemed appropriate. It was nice to help him build something completely different for a change. He shares the results in the video linked below.

If you cannot see the video above, click here to watch it on YouTube.

The weather is getting warmer in Edinburgh but it is not quite spring yet.  Nonetheless, the kids are eager to get outside and do some biking.  See below for a fun 1 minute video of John biking around our apartment building and through the woods.  It's chilly but that's doesn't seem to bother him :-)

If you cannot see the video above, click here to watch it on YouTube.

Spending the summer in a tropical country, you'd think that we'd do lots of warm weather activities, but our kids spotted a skating rink at a local mall and desperately wanted to go.  Their only other experience of ice skating was a couple years ago in Bangkok and they were far from sure on their feet.  This time could have gone similarly but Joshua made amazing progress in only 90 minutes of ice time and even Caitlin started to learn a bit.  John wasn't quite there yet and he rode the seal most of the time.  But we all had a great time and Sun was able to resurrect her skating (mostly roller) from long ago.  Now they want to go again :-)  Enjoy the video and photos below.

If you cannot see the video above, click here to watch it on YouTube 

Edinburgh rarely gets more than a dusting of snow so it was a rare and wonderful blessing for our kids to experience the 2018 Scotland Snowpocalypse which dumped at least a few substantial inches of snow in the city.  I grabbed some sleds at a local store and the kids took to the backyard and nearby Holyrood Park to enjoy some sledding fun. 

Please see below for a short video compilation of the kids' sledding adventures.  Many thanks go to our friend Hendro who played cameraman while Joshua steered in the final segment of the video.  There are also a few indivual photos I have pasted after the video.

If you cannot see the video above, click here to watch it on YouTube 

When our family was on vacation in San Francisco, we happened to pass by a giant green screen sitting on the edge of the sidewalk by Pier 41.  If you are not familiar with green screens, these giant green backgrounds are used by moviemakers to project real actors and actresses onto fake backgrounds, such as in spaceships and so forth.  The kids and dad had experimented with a green screen app on the phone when we were at home but we really didn't have a proper green screen available.  Thankfully we had some toy lightsabers (from Star Wars) in our backpack and the kids had a good time playing in front of the green screen while I filmed them with the app to insert special backgrounds.  Then I plugged the video clips into the iMovie app (which has a nifty movie trailer template) and voila!

Watch "Return of the Green Screen" on YouTube