Take a look at this picture.. now think of my wife.  Yep!  These guys are crazy, but we love them, every last one of them.

The boys of course are growing, enjoying things like:

Building a snowman

Working with Papa in the shop.

Doing crafts with Grandma

“Helping” mommy in the kitchen (that machine was not supposed to be opened!)

Preparing to take on the evil of the world.

Learning to build.

And of course be read to.  This is Lisa Passero surrounded by our boys and her family  - pictured here: Araya, Johanna, Caleb, Steven – Araya and Caleb were adopted from Liberia this last year)

All sorts of things are growing around here.. especially teeth!

To start the year off, Mimi, Papa, Scott and Julie came for a visit!

Isaac turned 6 in January (now he’s almost 7)

Simon turned one!

And Amy started homeschooling this year.. I don’t think it’s had any effect upon her and the children!?  What do you think?

Homeschooling has been great and takes on many forms.

This year Isaac got his first real mountain bike.

Micah started saving for college.

And Isaac is now tuning into quite a reader.

February

February took us on a trip to the wild north of New Hampshire to visit Grampy and Ellin

Simon was crowned King

We saw a dog sled race

And Grampy snapped our picture.

The kids enjoyed the enormous amount of snow that falls in the White Mountains

March

March brought the first trip to Europe for the year.  Daddy went to England to attend a conference with the company that purchased his business.

This trip didn’t afford much time for site seeing, but I got to see a bit of the English countryside.

With four boys, winter is always a long event.. everyone is eager to get out in the spring.  Here are the boys getting the mud sprayed off of them (Oh!  how many times did we do this).  The funny part is that this was supposed to be a punishment (getting sprayed off with the hose) and they ended up loving it!! 

This year we bought a used canoe.  Here we are taking it on its maiden voyage.

Finally summer came and it was sprinkler time!!!  This is Ava Wender showing lots of enthusiasm in our sprinkler.

Caleb in goggles

Joy Wender

Finally got the bathroom remodeled with a bigger sink.

Micah started potty training

And Simon was making tracks

In the Summer Grandma and Jim came for a visit.

And of course summer means everyone’s favorite: Ice Cream!

Isaac is taking on more and more responsibility.  This year he started mowing (with a little help getting the mower started from Daddy)

And in July, Grampy, Todd and Emily came for a visit and we went to Toronto to the CN Tower and Red Sox / Blue Jays game.

Here’s a view of the field from the tower.  Sox lost!

Summer means great times gathering at the Mumau’s farm to meet with the church.  Here are a lot of us just hanging out on the porch.

Isaac likes to go fishing in their pond.

Here’s Amy’s bike that she pulled out of the trash.   Some scrubbing, some new wheels and a seat and she was ready to go! 

Micah took us on a ride through the Erie Canal where we learned its history.

Headed into the Locks

And we got new neighbors.. the Doolittles.  Here we are with them at a Redwings game.

September took us to a vacation home on Cape Cod to visit with Grandma, Jim, Todd, Emily, Emily’s parents, Uncle Dave, Aunt Mary and Aunt Barbara.  It was good to see those we hadn’t seen in so long and enjoy the seashore with the family.

We toured the lighthouses

But the boys didn’t always get it.

Here’s their crazy Aunty Em!

Isaac and Caleb took the canoe for a spin all by themselves. (Daddy was close by in case of an emergency)

Lots of family love playing mini golf!

And walks on the beach

And the occasional family photo

Part of the homeschooling lesson was to have an archaeological dig.  Here are the boy’s excavating our garden bed.

A walk with the family in Highland Park

Here’s a real steam powered saw mill.  Not OHSA approved

September

Many of you know that work with my company took us to Europe for 5 weeks this past fall.  The boys and Amy were stationed in England while I traveled to Germany and France.  It was an amazing trip, the rest of pictures try to summarize just a bit of what we experienced there.

This trip was the first time on an airplane for all the boys.  They were very excited about it and enjoyed the flight.  They loved the in-flight consoles on the back of the seat.  Isaac got a little air sick before we landed in London, and we almost missed our flight in the morning… other than that it went off without a hitch :)  Note.. when traveling with 4 children, arrive earlier at the airport than usual

Soon we were in the air and flying over the same place where we were staying a couple of weeks earlier (look, it’s Cape Cod)

Our new home for 5 weeks.

Living room

Dining Room

Sleeping Arrangements

The local town of Newbury was filled with all sort of interesting history and architecture.

Packet boats for rent that can be used on England’s extensive canal network.

This is a canal bridge that swings to one side.

One of the best parts of where we lived in Newbury is that we had to walk everywhere.  Shopping was just a 5 minute walk a way. Even better was the ruined castle called Donnington Castle that I think we visited a grand total of 5 times.  It was just a mile walk up the road and offered a great place to visit in the evening.

Walking the walls at Donnington Castle

Horses were friendly and along the way to Donnington Castle

Traveling in England we got used to taking the train.  It was our primary means of transportation and it took us all over the country.

Thankfully, when it came to sight seeing we had an excellent navigator.

Big Ben and Parliament

Westminster Abbey

Trafalgar Square

Chasing the pigeons was probably the boys favorite thing that day.

Of course Simon had to get in on the action!

I’m just thankful that I didn’t have to fish them out of the fountain.

London pedestrian bridge over the Thames River

The London Eye

Day 2 in London took us to the Tower of London.

We found this guy crawling around inside.

Tower Bridge, outside the Tower of London (this is not London Bridge)

Inside the British Museum

Lots of exhibits to reinforce what Amy is studying with the kids (Ancient civilizations)

And of course we didn’t always follow the rules.

Everything wasn’t always smiles and laughter.. sometimes people just got tired and that was enough.

After a couple of days in London we were headed off to the country side.  Driving in England.. yup on the wrong side of the road. Apart from one incident where I looked in the wrong direction, the Lord gave us a lot of grace while driving and we enjoyed our time in the car.

Our Chariot

Our tour of the English countryside started in Brighton

This is a pleasure palace in Brighton where the royalty used to vacation.

Brighton Pier

The boys enjoying the rides.

The best part of this day was a walk on the Southdowns way.  It took us through pastures and to some spectacular landscape.

A view of the “Seven Sisters”  These cliffs are made from chalk and it is absolutely everywhere. The boys wanted to take it all home to draw on the sidewalk.

Family picture!

Writing our name in chalk

By the time we got to the top I think we wish that we could fly down!

The boys of course had to take some time to throw some rocks into the ocean.

Micah’s feet got tired a lot

Day 2 on the country side took us to the ever famous hanging stones – Stone Henge means “hanging stones”.

And to some beautiful English country side.

Amy really liked the sheep.

And the very narrow roads!

Day 3 on the country side took us to Bath and Cheddar Gorge.

Side note to those of you traveling in Europe on Sundays.  If you go looking for a bathroom you might find it as follows:

The street musicians were excellent.

This was warm water that was flowing into the ancient roman bath.

You don’t see many of these in England.  It was so unusual we had to take a picture.

Cheddar Gorge – lots of rock climbing activity and the home of cheddar cheese.

The cheese was stored in the caves at the base of the gorge.

Gates like these were everywhere and let the people through but kept the animals (like Micah) penned in.

Of course there was always time for hanging around.

A trip to Portsmouth

The highlight was the fully restored HMS Victory which was Lord Nelson’s flag ship in the Battle of Trafalgar.

Admiral Micah

Micah was quite smitten with the fact that Lord Nelson was shot.  You can ask him about it.

Spinnaker tower in Portsmouth offered a view of the harbor.

Sleepy looking Simon.. the day is getting long.

Too long for some.

While Daddy was traveling Rachel Mumau came to stay with Amy and the boys.  They went to lots of playgrounds.

And around to some shops in the country side.

The Lord gave us a great connection with a house church while we were visiting in England.  The first week we went to meet with them they were meeting a five minutes walk from where we were staying!

Amy and Rachel stumbled upon a local children’s Bible program as well while we were there.

And they hung around on the playground.. did I mention that already.

Amy got to visit Windsor castle with Rachel and the boys.

But Simon spent most of the time on the phone (just kidding, this is an audio tour)

Rachel had her birthday when she was with us.

While the kids and Amy enjoyed England I traveled in Germany and to Paris.

My hotel in Germany was right outside the old German town of Steinheim

While Rachel was visiting, she helped usher the family to Paris for a weekend visit.

Taking in some French cuisine.

Notre Dame

Playgrounds abounded in Paris, this one is right outside of Notre Dame.

Simon was fascinated.

Seine River and the infamous Concierge where prisoners were held before being executed during the reign of terror (French Revolution)

The Louver

Walking on water is easy when you control the camera angles.

Yes, he would have jumped right in if I let him.

For the most part this place was for the birds. 

Lunch time in a park in Paris.

And on to the Eiffel tower.

Simon was a hit wherever we went.  He loved to make friends.

Caleb loved to climb.

Simon making more friends in the park by the Eiffel tower.

Is it me, or are the kids starting to look more intelligent.

The Eiffel tower at night was an amazing site.

And the bread.. so good!

Street side cafes everywhere.

And subway mechanisms that try to eat you for lunch.

Day 2 in Paris included a trip to Versailles

And of course.. Micah’s feet got tired again.

Pony rides at Versailles

After coming home from Paris we were on the final stretch.  I spent a couple days in the Netherlands for the EECI 2009 conference.

Windmill in Leiden, Netherlands

Right before we left we had chance to visit Oxford.  This is Christ Church College.

The museums here were amazing.

And perfect for kids

There was plenty to touch.. and the best part: is was OK.

With Micah.. there’s always time for a granola bar.

Coming home was a welcome change.  After 5 weeks away form our home, our church and our friends, we were quite ready to come home and reconnect.  The trip was a lot of work.  Some people might say we were crazy to take four kids under 7 and a pregnant wife to Europe for 5 weeks, but we thoroughly enjoyed it – difficulties and all.   Speaking of pregnant wife.. did you know we’re having boy number 5!

Coming home also meant settling in to some Brithdays. Caleb turned 5.

And Mimi and Papa couldn’t wait to see us again, so they came for a visit.

This year Chris has started to read the classics.  Initially he started to get prepped for homeschooling, but he found that he has enjoyed it immensely.  This year he read:  Tale of Two Cities, The Three Musketeers, My Bondage and My Freedom, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Hard Times, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Moon is Down, The Scarlet Letter, Of Mice and Men, Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, Kidnapped, Frankenstein, The Grapes of Wrath, Fahrenheit 451, Around the World in Eighty Days, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Moby Dick (ok.. he only read 3/4 of Moby Dick) and now he is in the middle of The Jungle (not exactly reading to promote Christmas cheer)

Micah turned 3 this year.. he wanted snow and he got it.  It snowed the very morning of his birthday.  He even got some snowmen on his cake.

The end of the year is nearly hear.  The boys are playing and enjoying their time indoors and out.

Sledding

Playing Games

And just generally hanging around.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures, we certainly enjoyed making them.  We are thankful to the Lord for all that he has done this year and hope that you will join us in giving thanks to God for the best gift of all: Jesus.  Without him, everything that you see above is worthless and without meaning.  But with Him, our hearts can overflow with thanksgiving. 

The happiest of Christmases to all of you,

The Pollocks

    $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; 

    $url = "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20ip.location%20where%20ip%3D'{$ip}'&format=xml&env=http%3A%2F%2Fdatatables.org%2Falltables.env";
    $xml = simplexml_load_file($url, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);

    // if you need to see what is coming back.. uncomment below.
    // print_r($xml);

    // store the information you want using xpath

    $country =  $xml->xpath("/query/results/Response/CountryCode");
    $city =  $xml->xpath("/query/results/Response/City");
    $lat =  $xml->xpath("/query/results/Response/Latitude");
    $long =  $xml->xpath("/query/results/Response/Longitude");

    echo "<p>" . $country[0];
    echo "<p>" . $city[0];
    echo "<p>" . $lat[0];
    echo "<p>" . $long[0];

Download: ext.edit_custom_field_by_label.zip

To use the extension, install the files in their standard locations, enable and then edit the settings (fill in your field with the appropriate field label).

If you have any problems feel free to leave a comment and I’ll help you when I can.

My wife found this site and I just spent 20 min watching the video: http://www.storyofstuff.com

If the consumption mind set of our culture troubles you.. check out the video, it’s worth watching.  I’m not sure about the validity of all the stats or claims.  A few of them seem a little over the top and might be “spun” to further the argument she is making, but with that in mind, I think there’s still space for thoughtful review of how and why “stuff” is purchased. 

The other day I was cleaning up after dinner.  As usual, the kids were performing their responsibilities of wiping the table and cleaning up the floor.  Anyone with young children will understand that keeping children focused on task, doing the job that you have asked them to do is a lot of work.  I began to think to myself, maybe I should just let the kids go outside and clean up the dinning room myself.  Why was I thinking this?  Because in reality it was easier then helping my children to do a good job.  If I had gone down this path I would have been “busy” but I think I would still be considered lazy. 

On this occasion the Lord was reminding me that laziness isn’t so much about how busy I am as about whether or not I’m taking up the responsibilities that God has given to me.  The man who lays in bed when he should be working is not lazy because he’s in bed, he’s lazy because he is ignoring his responsibility to provide for his family.  In short, laziness is about not performing your responsibilities that the Lord has given to you, NOT about your current state of activity.  If your busy, but you’re not actually fulfilling the responsibilities that God has given to you: watch you, you might actually be lazy.

I welcome you to visit the site and give feedback (use the black tab on the right side).  In the future I plan on releasing some posts on the ins and outs of the architecture of the site.

Here’s a bit of information about the site:

Simplified Safety is a company specializing in safety products and advice.  We aim to provide customers with tested, top quality safety gear and the appropriate advice to identify the products that are needed by each individual customer.  Working closely with each customer to arrive at a tailored safety solution is how we hope to set ourselves apart in the industry.  Here are a few examples of the safety products we supply: Guardrails, Skylight Protection, Lifeline Systems, Personal Protection Equipment, Harnesses, Lanyards, and more.

A couple of years back I worked for Roberts Wesleyan College, a higher educational institution that made frequent usage of the routing feature found in Excel.  One of their bright developers, Todd Andersen, has developed a plug-in to bring routing capabilities back to Excel 2007. 

I invite you to check out his routing plug-in for Excel 2007.  He offers it for reasonable price, and knowing Todd’s programming ability, I have no problem recommending it as quality plug-in that will help fix what Microsoft has broken

The function below take a datetime string (mysql formatted) and then returns the next delivery date.  The idea is that a whenever an item is submitted, it looks at the last item that was cued, get’s it’s time, and feeds it to this function to determine when the next item should be cued.  This function used the logic that items should be cued hourly between the hours of 10am and 5pm on Monday through Friday.  

This logic could easily be updated to accommodate your own needs, let me know if you find any problems or if it helps you solve a problem.

        /**
        *
        *    Description: returns the next time to cue up an item based on the logic:
        *       Every hour between 10am and 5pm, Monday - Friday
        *
        *    Example input value $latest_item = "2009-04-15 17:01:00";
        *
        *   @params $latest_item datetime string
        *
        **/

        function get_cue_time($latest_item)
        {

            $next_item = strtotime($latest_item . " + 1 hour"); 

            if ($next_item < time()) // compare to now
                $next_item = time(); // set to now

            // Before 10 am?
            if (date("H", $next_item) < 10)
            { // set to 10 am
                $next_item = mktime(10, 0, 0,
                                date("n", $next_item), date("j", $next_item), date("Y", $next_item));
            }                

            // After 5pm?
            if (date("H", $next_item) > 17)
            { // set to 10am the next day
                $next_item = mktime(10, 0, 0,
                                date("n", $next_item), date("j", $next_item) + 1, date("Y", $next_item));
            }

            // Saturday Check
            if (date("N", $next_item) == 6)
            { // set to 10am Monday
                $next_item = mktime(10, 0, 0,
                                date("n", $next_item), date("j", $next_item) + 2, date("Y", $next_item));

            }

            // Sunday Check
            if (date("N", $next_item) == 7)
            { // set to 10am Monday
                $next_item = mktime(10, 0, 0,
                                date("n", $next_item), date("j", $next_item) + 1, date("Y", $next_item));

            }

            return date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $next_item);
        }
        

EECommerce is trying to make it possible to have the entire user/developer experience defined within EE.

The goal of the module is to port everything necessary to have a seamless shopping cart experience without ever leaving Expression Engine.  While that was not necessarily what I was looking for in merging the two systems together, there is a lot of potential in this approach as it will mean that the designer/develop does not have to mess with Magento’s somewhat confusing templating system.  Their goal is to make it so that you can define your entire store in EE templates, using the plug-in tags to harness Magento’s inherent functionality.  Of course you would still access Magento’s backend (e.g. product entry, order management) directly, but the actual user experience would be defined in Expression Engine.

EECommerce will be a complete encapsulation of the Magento API.. along with several extensions.

EECommerce’s tag system will encompass everything that can be done through Magento’s API and more.  This is by no means just a subset of Magneto functionality that is being brought into EE.  Far from being a subset, they will actually be extending the API in several ways that can be used with or without Expression Engine (as a developer I like this).

PHP UK seems to have passion for the project and a desire to garner community feedback.

For my own part, these guys drove a couple of hours to meet up with me at my business headquarters.  The drove up and listened as I explained the level of user integration that I was looking for between the two systems.  I laid out my architecture and they responded with what they believed their module would be able to accomplish.  They also assured me that they would talk to their developers and give me a better idea of when I might expect to see and beta test some of the features that I need to have developed for a forthcoming web site that I’m developing.

EECommerce was a bit more undeveloped than I might have hoped

I was hoping to see EECommerce a bit more developed when I met up with PHP UK.  For sure, they showed me that the module was working “in principal” but it seems that there are many bugs to get worked through on a bridge that is this involved.  Although they are hopeful to have something a bit more polished by some of the upcoming MAGE:Camp it seems as though they will have their work cut out for them.  In short, don’t plan on using this module in your ecommerce project that needs to be deployed next month.

A Word About Price

Clearly some of the biggest reaction in the community has come at the sticker shock of the EECommerce module.  Obviously everyone loves getting something for nothing, but as you and I know there is nothing that is truly free.  Everything cost something (even if you’re not the one who has to pay).  As an ecommerce entrepreneur, not just a developer, I think there is some real business value in the module that is being developed.  If built correctly, the module could be used to rapidly deploy ecommerce micro sites.  The tool has the potential (we’ll see when we get there) to greatly speed up the development of ecommerce sites that are simple and complex.

The Jury is Out

At the end of the day, the jury is still out.  Until the beta truly gets out there and a the developer community really begins to put some pressure on the module, its hard to see what will come of EECommerce.  I for one, am willing to give it a go and am looking forward to seeing if these guys can pull together a supported tool that helps make online commerce even easier by bringing the feature richness of Magento into the flexibility of Expression Engine.

If you have questions about my meeting and what I was able to see, please post your questions in the comments and I’ll try to address them in a timely manner.

Here are the basics of wiring up the JavaScript navigation to the slide show.

In the flash document (fla) in a new key frame I placed the following:

   1:  import flash.external.*;

   2:  ExternalInterface.addCallback("sspNextImage", sspNextImage);

   3:  ExternalInterface.addCallback("sspPrevImage", sspPrevImage);

   4:  function sspNextImage() {

   5:     my_ssp.nextImage();

   6:  }

   7:  function sspPrevImage() {

   8:     my_ssp.previousImage();

   9:  }

This code basically exposes the SSP API to an external agent such as JavaScript

Then in my web page document in the HEAD tag I included the following:

   1:  <script type="text/javascript">

   2:     function sspNextImage() {

   3:        thisMovie("ssp_kg").sspNextImage();

   4:     }

   5:     function sspPrevImage() {

   6:        thisMovie("ssp_kg").sspPrevImage();

   7:     }

   8:     function thisMovie(movieName) {

   9:        if (navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft") != -1) {

  10:           return window[movieName]

  11:        } else {

  12:           return document[movieName]

  13:        }

  14:     }

  15:  </script>

Note that “ssp_kg” is the name of my slide show presentation.

The only thing left to do was to setup the links to call the new JavaScript functions:

<p class="gallery-nav">
<a onclick="sspPrevImage(); return false;" href="#">&laquo; Previous</a>
|
<a onclick="sspNextImage(); return false;" href="#">Next &raquo;</a>
</p>

In the end it was very straight forward and I was well satisfied with the results:

Sample Page: KeeGuard Roof Top Railing – Fall Protection System