Happy Eighth Birthday, Eejee

Our Eejee has always enjoyed cooking...

...so we decided to have a cooking-themed birthday celebration for him this weekend. 

First stop was the grocery store to pick up supplies, including a cake. With this birthday, Michael Delving is now carseat-less after almost 17 years of carseats being a continuous feature in our vehicles.

Eejee decided to have a Sunday chicken roast dinner.

Ready to feast.

Birthday cake!

The morning of Eejee's actual birthday dawned with evidence of a Grammy visit.

Delight over presents!

Happy birthday to our favorite 8-year-old!

Q1 Plus

Here is an update on the first months of 2022. In January, the Mayor and Ela went downtown to spend the day together.

We met up with Grampz and got to see "Beauty and the Beast" at the Fifth Avenue Theater.

On the Mayor's birthday, evidence that Grammy has struck again, plus a beautiful moon.

The hobbitlings got to spend some time down at the Cabbage over mid-winter break.

The Mayor took Ela out shopping, and here we see conclusive evidence Ela is a fashion leader. The mannequin is clearly wearing Ela's outfit, just not as well.

The Mayor got to gecko-sit "Gershwin" for a while, which was a nice treat.

The aftermath of a night-time easter egg hunt.

Through the winter, the hobbitlings went outside for recess as often as the weather permitted. Here they are playing "Mölkky".

Costco trips have, of course, continued unabated.

Here are Boookie and Ela at their homeschool co-op "Formal Day"

Seimi and Eejee doing spring cleanup. Here they are fishing gummy worms from the front yard.

The lads hard at work.

Hang on - zoom and enhance. Is that SEIMI pushing the lawnmower?!

Eejee destroying the Christmas tree during cleanup.

Spring Creations

Here is one of Seimi's mini LEGO creations, showing the US Marines landing on Okinawa, with Japanese defenders. Notice the Japanes Zero fighter plane crashing into the jungle.

Here is Eejee and Seimi's recreation of the Battle of Helm's Deep, using Risk guys and LEGOs.

Here is another Seimi mini LEGO creation, showing the USS Philadelphia at Tripoli, fighting against the Barbary pirates.

Yet another Seimi mini masterpiece, this one a British M4 tank from WW1.

Eejee enjoying a LEGO meal with bears.

Ela has been exploring digital art. Below is a portrait of Fennec Shand Ela drew by hand on her computer, with the source photo shown in the corner.

For one assignement from Boookie's Shakespeare class, he decided to use LEGO soldiers to storyboard a scene from "Macbeth." Seimi and Eejee served as grip and best boy for this enterprise.

For a sampling, below are two of the storyboard shots, describing the camera, lighting, scene direction, action and lines.

XLS frame, Bird’s eye angle, High-key lighting (On Macbeth) Low-key (On everything else), Soft focus, Macbeth walks forward slowly while the English soldiers cautiously surround him. Camera tracks slowly with Macbeth, Macbeth: “They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly, But bear-like, I must fight the course. What’s he that was not born of woman?"

MS frame, Worm’s eye angle, Low-key back lighting, Soft focus, Macbeth stands looking down at Siward, Camera is stationary, Macbeth: “Thou wast born of woman.”

All this cinematic exposure sparked Seimi and Eejee's interest, so they dove into doing stop-motion photography.

This is the first video Seimi completed, "The Battle of Trenton", which he filmed 3 short days after being introduced to stop-motion.

Both hobbitlings have continued making films. Below is Eejee's favorite film he created, "The Battle of the Caribbean."

Seimi filmed a longer film, called "The Battle of France."