japawo

We decided to pull Walker out of public school this year. He is very excited about being home schooled and is doing a great job so far. He's in his second week and his new computer finally arrived. He's been checking the mail and asking about it every day. Here is a picture of him at his desk with his computer and books.



And here is David hard at work making a video game. I got him the book The Game Maker's Apprentice (http://www.amazon.com/Game-Makers-Apprentice-Development-Technology/dp/1590596153) and he's loving it. It comes with software that makes it easy to create some simple games.

I had a work sponsored golf outing this past weekend in Star Valley so we decided to stay with our friends the Hokums for the weekend. The kids had a lot of fun jumping on the trampoline and playing games. We also thought it would be a great time to do our almost annual hike to the Intermittent Spring. It is a short 1.5 mile hike (round trip) up to the spring that provides most of the water for the city of Afton. It is a periodic spring which means it stops flowing for 12-18 minutes and then starts again. It is considered a cold water geyser although it isn't nearly as explosive as the normal hot water and steam kind. The area that you hike through is gorgeous, especially when the leaves start to change colors. Unfortunately I forgot to take our camera out of my work truck so we only got some pictures with Toni's cell phone and also a few that our friends took with their camera.


Stanley showing us the sign that explains about the spring:


David at the top of the spring contemplating the meaning of life:


Toni and Tori relaxing at the top:


The beautiful fall colors along the trail:


And finally here is a picture of the whole family:

A few months ago I was talking to David about computers and trying to explain what exactly binary was. He had heard me mention that computers used 1's and 0's to store and send information but he didn't understand how they could. So I started trying to teach him how we use base10 numbering (probably because we have 10 fingers) and that binary (base2) is just a different way to show the same numbers. After several minutes and many questions I think he almost understood it because then he asked if there were other numbering systems, specifically he wanted to know if there was one based on 3. I told him that you could have a number system based on any number you wanted and that another system used by computers was called hexidecimal which is just a different name for base16. Well, I hadn't heard anything about it since that day so I thought he had forgotten.

This summer we have been talking more with David about what kind of job he wants to get when he grows up and the career he has decided to try for right now is Video Game Programmer. We have talked with him and tried to get him to think about what things he would need to start learning if he really wanted to do that. One of the things we mentioned was that he should try doing some computer programming to see if he really liked it. They don't offer that at his school so he asked if I would teach him. This week I have started teaching him some basic programming skills using Pascal and we will then move on to C in a week or two (once we receive some books I ordered).

That brings me back to the base3 numbering system. I asked him what kind of program he wanted to write and gave him examples of simple games like Rock, Paper, Scissors or Guess a Number Between 1 and 10. He asked if we could make a program to convert a base10 number to base3. So that's what we did. Here is the program:


program base3 (input, output);

label user_input;

var x,y,z,a,b,c,d : integer;
begin
user_input:
writeln('Enter a number between 0 and 80:');
readln(x);
write('You entered ');
writeln(x);
if x > 80 then begin
writeln('Invalid number entered.');
writeln();
goto user_input;
end else if x < 0 then begin
writeln('Invalid number entered.');
writeln();
goto user_input;
end;
a := x div 27;
y := x mod 27;
b := y div 9;
z := y mod 9;
c := z div 3;
d := z mod 3;
write(x);
write(' in base3 is ');
writeln(a,b,c,d)
end.

It will convert a number from 0 to 80 to base3. For example if you enter 26 it would return 0222. Daivd was very excited that it worked and I hope to keep him interested in programming. If anyone has any suggestions please post a comment.

We decided to go to a Real Salt Lake (pronounced Ray-al) soccer game this year with Adam. After a couple of failed attempts we finally managed to do it. Jacob, David, and Stanley went with Adam, Joe, and Jon to see RSL beat the Colorado Rapids 2-0. It was a great game and we definitely will be going to another game (probably next year). Since it was Labor Day weekend we decided to stay in Layton and do some shopping and let the kids have a mini-vacation. We played in the pool at the hotel, went to Antelope Island, and also visited Paul and Rachel.

David and Stanley at the RSL game.



Sunset at the RSL game.



Pictures of kids swimming.








Lastly, here is a video of Walker performing a difficult forward front flip to cannon-ball from the .1 meter platform.

I've wanted to go hiking up at Harriman State Park ever since the Wood Reunion. I finally found a free weekend and convinced the rest of the family to go with me. We hiked 5 miles, saw both lakes, and even saw a moose. Here are some pictures from the hike.


Toni, David, Vyktoria, and Walker walking past Golden Lake.



David, Stanley, Vyktoria, and Walker on the bridge by Silver Lake.



Stanley in front of Silver Lake.



Silver Lake.



Momma moose. Her baby is further into the trees and not visible in the photo.

School has started for us and one of Stanley's classes this year is Orchestra. We thought he was going to play the violin, but he decided to play the cello. Here is a video of one of his first practices after school.



When the rest of the kids saw me record Stanley they decided to show off their musical talent too. Here is Walker playing the piano.



Here is Vyktoria playing the piano.



And finaly here is David playing the piano.



Let me know if the videos work ok. This is my first video post, and the files were kinda big so I'm not sure if they will stream very well.

Grandma and Grandpa Wood are putting aluminum siding on the cabin in Island Park this year so we headed up for a weekend to help them get it ready.

Here is Stanley trimming the dead branches from some trees around the cabin.



Here is David helping us pull this corner of the roof lower so that it was level with the rest.



Here is Adam getting ready to snap a chalk line on the scalloped trim so that we could "trim" it off. We were all a little bummed about losing the alpine look.



Here is Josh looking like a mad scientist carpenter.



Here are the kids enjoying wild strawberry milkshakes.... Well most of them are enjoying them. I'll bet you can figure out who isn't.



On Sunday we took a drive up Sawtell and walked through some wild flower meadows. We thought it would be a good chance to get a family picture.



We also got a picture of four generations of Wood men... in the woods.



It was a really nice weekend. I'm glad we could help with the work on the cabin and the kids had a lot of fun playing with cousins.