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I’m sort of crazy about the Valve Way of doing things.  I’ve loved their video games for a long time, especially Portal and Portal 2. I’ve also really enjoyed Counter Strike and the Left 4 Dead games. Over the last two weeks, I managed to finally beat Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 & 2. The company makes great games in a very unique way. They work like great teachers work, and I’ve always admired that.

I recently discovered that their company runs a lot like the way we want The Hoofprint to run, so I shared that with my staff. They immediately began working on creating a handbook for our new members that explains how The Hoofprint works, what we’re good at, and what we’re not so good at.  We sometimes have problems retaining new members who aren’t great self-advocates, and we thought this handbook might be the first step in keeping new people around long enough for them to contribute something great.

After a BYOC meeting and a few hours spent after school, the final product was ready. It’s pretty great and I’m very proud of what we produced.

These pictures come from Koben’s First Year of Preschool Graduation on Thursday.

The first picture is classic Koben. Every single other kid in his class was really getting in to the song “Sticky Sticky Bubble Gun”, and Koben was just standing there watching everybody.

He reminded me of myself when I’m in similar situations with people dancing and singing. He hasn’t seen me in those situations, so I’d have to assume that character trait is genetic. Mandy even bribed him with a toy (a rubber ducky) before hand so he would sing. He sang for a couple of songs, but he couldn’t quite make it all the way through.

He is a total sweetheart, however, and gave his teachers hugs as he accepted his gifts from them.

Aver had his first Expo Night on Thursday. It was a fun experience for him. He got to show Mandy, Koben, and me all the things he made throughout the year and then he got to perform a couple of songs with his class in front of the school.

This photo of the boys together was pretty heavily PhotoShopped. It’s impossible to get both boys smiling together, so I had to take Koben from a different picture at a slightly different angle and insert him over himself.

This is totally Aver.

He’s staying up past his bed time to watch videos and lectures about how black holes are formed and how galaxies move. His shirt is on backwards.

The Hoofprinters are such amazing people. They knew that next week would be incredibly rough on me with yearbook distribution, so the staff decided to ship the final issue of the paper a whole week early. How cool is that?

The issue is wonderful. See for yourself.

We had our traditional breakfast at Perkins. I’m going to miss those for the next few months. It really is a close-knit group of friends, and I always just get a kick out of how they can work and play together so easily.

My day was busy with milestone events for Aver and Koben, but Mandy has all the decent pictures, so I’ll post about them sometime very soon.

Today’s activity: A continuation of my biking while gaming strategy. Basically, I’m fooling myself.

The brand new (50 PERSON!?) staff of The Hoofprint met with a remarkable person during AAA today. Chris Cloud from MPLS.tv discussed creativity, deadlines, inspiration, humor, controversy, getting stuff done, The Hoofprint, and so much more.

He was especially awesome, because he made it a true two-way chat. My staff was awesome, because none of them were afraid of asking questions.

All in all, it was one of our best Skype chats yet.

Aver was with me at school for a long time yesterday. The kids were talking a lot about Joseph Kony and his child soldiers at the time. He got really involved in learning more about the guy and the campaign that raised awareness about him. He decided to make a bunch of posters and put them around the resource area.

Last night, he dreamed he could fly and that everybody thought he was handsome. At night, he flew around the world just to make sure everything was okay. He said he fought and beat Kony.

He’s a good kid, even in his dreams.

I haven’t taken pictures the past couple of days. I’ve been more than busy. Today was a 14-hour day. I got a lot accomplished, but I’m exhausted.

These pictures are from Saturday. I took the boys to the lake and they got a little bit of swimming in as the thunder rolled in the distance. It was a pretty crazy day, because it was obviously pouring across the lake, but we never really got much rain at all. Yesterday night is when we got the downpour. I’m looking forward to some dry days.

Yesterday, the boys and I got to go to my mom’s house for the first time since she moved nearly a year ago. It was nice to finally get there. Aver and Koben didn’t want to leave. They loved her “new” place, and she treated them to pizza from a brand new restaurant, ice cream, and Popsicles. We checked out a really interesting and fun thrift shop as well.

So, life has been busy but pretty tremendous.

I’m tired and I need to sleep. I could only manage 20 minutes of exercise today.

My kids are “sticky kids”.

I took them out for ice cream on Saturday and then brought them to the park so they could eat their cones. I thought that they’d be able to eat them and then play, but we ended up taking a trip to the lake just so they could swim with their clothes on. That’s how messy they got. I mean, just check out these videos. The first one is probably worst.

Take a look at this blog post by Patti Digh for the full story.

Over the course of about an hour, The Hoofprint received enough money through generous donations to print for the next school year.

I’m incredibly grateful and proud of my Hoofprinters. We’ve been overwhelmed with kindness since we started our mission to be self funding as a newspaper.

We’ve managed to turn what looked like a terrible blow to the newspaper into a huge victory. This is truly a special group.