49th Year Bucket List

So, point of clarification:  I’m 48 years old currently, having just celebrated my birthday yesterday.  I’m not 49, but that this year is actually my 49th year of living.  When I celebrate my 49th birthday, that means I’m completing my 49th year, not starting it.

And I know, it’s not really a “bucket list” if the deadline isn’t the end of your life…when you “kick the bucket”.  Indeed, maybe it’d be better to call this a “49th Year To-Do List”.  But that’s catchy sounding, don’t you think?

So this is a list of things I’m hoping to have achieved by the time that me being able to say “I’m 48 years old” is cold and buried in the ground.  What do I want to have achieved / completed / accomplished by then?  That’s what we’re looking at here.

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Looking Back at Being 47

Today is the end of me being 47 years old.  I’ve been writing all year in one way or the other about how 47 is my favorite number, and now we’re here at the end of the year and all I can wonder is, did I actually do justice to this iconic moment in my life?  After all, I don’t get to go back and do it again.

Can I, indeed, think of 47 things I did or experienced this year that made the year notable or cool?

Let’s try!

Geeking Out With My Daughters: Preparing for the Future [Doctor Who–The Empty Child]

I’ve been watching Doctor Who with my children recently, going back to the beginning of the revival series (aka, what’s easily available on Netflix).  Just today we got up to The Empty Child by Steven Moffat, and part way through the second episode of the two-parter, The Doctor Dances before real life got in the way.

If you are familiar with it, you know that it’s pretty creepy stuff, and I’d say the first great story that the series produced.

Anyway, shortly afterwards as we were getting ready to go, my middle child (13 years old now) starts chattering to me about what’s she’s taking away from the show, and says this:

So, rules if you are in a little-child-in-a-gasmask-pocalypse:  don’t open the door, don’t answer the phone, tell the child to go to his room but then don’t go to his room yourself.

It warms my heart as a parent to see my kids offspring pulling these important life lessons out of their popular entertainment!

Geeking Out With My Daughters: Confusing Comic Book Epics

So I’m walking with two of my daughters to school a while ago—the middle one and the youngest one (aged 10 and nearly 12, at the time)—and the one turns to her younger sister and asks her what she thinks is the most confusing comic story that I have ever read to them.

Presenting…”Little Red”

A while ago, my kids and their friends decided to put together a movie, a modernized Little Red Riding Hood.  They wrote and filmed the entire thing, and I edited it.

Enjoy!

Again with the hands: Funny Things My Daughter Says (#10)

My kids are getting a bit older so it’s less and less often that they come out with really random and funny comments.

However, recently my youngest (now 10 years old) and I were coming back from a playground and she suddenly pipes up with something like, “I wish people’s hands could come off.”

24 Hour Film Challenge: A Strange One Down the Street

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Recently, some colleagues at the missions community that I live and work in ran a 24 Hour Film Challenge.  This does not mean you have to make a film that is 24 hours long (that’s how my youngest daughter interpreted it, originally).  It means you have 24 hours to make a movie, going all the way from story conception through writing to filming to editing & post-production to handing in your final project.

A Birthday Message From My Children… [Funny Things My Daughters Did]

…not to me, but to my mother-in-law.  She celebrated her 70th birthday recently, but she has been away overseas, too far away to go visit or anything.  So my three daughters and I put together this little video to honor their Oma’s special day.

This is an edited version, with our personal messages removed, but the “dramatic” portions retained.  My girls had a fun time making it, and something about all of their personalities really shines through here.

Enjoy!

A little funny, a little creepy – Funny Things My Daughter Says (#9)

So, recently, I’m putting my kids to bed, and I’m having a funny little chat with the youngest.  She’s all of 9 years old now, but still enjoys, I think, being the youngest.

Funny Things My Daughter Says (#8)

An oldie but a goodie from many years ago, that I haven’t shared on this blog before…

When my oldest daughter was only about four years old, my family visited a modern art museum in upstate New York.  It wasn’t really our cup of tea.  Certainly, there were pieces that we appreciated, and perhaps more for me than my wife, but there were also plenty that we just had a hard time understanding where the artist was coming from.

And maybe it’s also that we just didn’t want to go to the bother of understanding where the artist was coming from.