Hernandez Family Blog

Trinity Youth Praise Band launches on ReverbNation and FaceBook

Ed Hernandez — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:05:00 GMT

Late this summer, several things came together for us musically:

Cyndi helped me put the Blue Skies Trio back together by identifying a singer in our church(Tammy), with Adam on drums. When Aaron's repertoire matches our set lists, it will become the Blue Skies Quartet. We played for Rev Jeanne's Ordination in July, and were very well received.
I got in contact with a youth minister from another church who was interested in having The Band play at their church as a special event for their youth
Our church Worship Team decided to have another Youth Sabbath less than a year since the last one, meaning, we want to do this more often than once a year.

The second item motivated me to make a demo CD with songs that we've done for church in the past. Last week, the boys and lay down the backing tracks at the soon to be famous Hernandi Music studios. Last weekend, we invited Lizzie and Travis to our house to lay down the vocal tracks, and record one or two more songs. We had a lot of fun together, and the kids worked really hard and were exceptionally good at constructive criticism and listening to each other's feedback and ideas. Many adults couldn't do better.

After I delivered our first demo CD to the youth minister, I thought that I need to explore the more modern methods of digital distribution. To make a long story short, and I launched us on Reverb Nation and FaceBook. Hopefully, this embedded link will work for you:

This has been, and will continue to be a fun project. Next, I plan to launch Blue Skies Trio in a similar fashion. I will post our original demo CD, as well as record a new one with the new members. Stay tuned, and spread the word!

Ah, This is the Life

Ed Hernandez — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 15:59:00 GMT

This morning, we awoke to the sounds of feet pounding up and down the stairs, and padding around the kitchen. Considering that the boys were both at Bass Lake, this was a lot of pounding and padding. Eventually, we got up to see what Arianna was up to, and guess what we found? HOT BREAKFAST!

She was very proud to have mixed the eggs, get the right pan, turn on the stove, cook and then turn the stove off, all by her-almost-nine-year-old-self. She even put eggs on the shopping list because we were getting low. Then she told us that she had also put her clothes in the wash, two loads, actually. Finally, we were treated to fruit smoothies, which meant that she had run the blender! This last one explained why we found the door to our bedroom shut; she didn't want to wake us while running the blender.

This put Cyndi in a house cleaning mood, so we went to attack the bathrooms; Cyndi and Arianna took upstairs and took the downstairs. I also cleaned the basement mess, because I forgot the change the lint filter in the washtub and water splashed on the floor when Arianna's load went into the rinse cycle, ick. Around lunchtime, Arianna came to me in the downstairs bathroom, and took my lunch order, with pad and pencil. A few minutes later, she declared lunch was ready. No, it was more like LUNCH IS READY, DADDY! Here's what she made me:

But it didn't stop here. After making breakfast, doing her own laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, and making us lunch, she wanted to make cupcakes. But now that we were up, she got mommy to help her:

So, how was YOUR Saturday morning?

Craftsman Hamster Castle Cleaner Attachment

Ed Hernandez — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:06:00 GMT

While Cyndi was out running errands, I helped Arianna clean out Fluffy's cage. When she cleans his cage, she has to put him somewhere else. Usually, she puts him in the hamster ball, and he rolls around kitchen for a while. But today, he didn't want to go into the ball, so we put him in his castle. This was a gift from Tricia, which came with lots of residents(king, queen, common folk, horseys, etc). But right when Arianna decided she was done playing with the castle, she got the hamster, and this is what we used before we got the hamster ball. How many hamsters do you know who have a vacation castle in the suburbs?

Anyhow, even the vacation house needs to be be cleaned. You can imagine not only all of the bits of food, sunflower seed carcasses, and miniature hamster scale dust bunnies laying around, but also hamster droppings. She was going to use this little miniature broom and dustpan I have, when I got the brilliant idea to fire up my air compressor. Hey, it's summer outside. Well, after we got the protective goggles on, she literally had a blast. She got stuff out of every single nook and cranny. Man, that castle has not been this clean since new! This is far easier and more effective than the little tiny broom. Chalk up another use for Craftsman power tools.

Good Morning Flowers

Ed Hernandez — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:28:00 GMT

This morning, I awoke from strange dreams around 5am, and could not get back to sleep. So I got up to head to work, figuring that if I arrive early, I could leave early. Showered, dressed, and stepped out the front door to a nice surprise I somehow did not see last night. I'm pretty sure they weren't there before I went on vacation to Texas. So I took this picture using my phone and sent it to Cyndi, currently in Grenoble, who loves her daisies. And I went to work smiling.

All-Star Dad

Ed Hernandez — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:40:00 GMT

Way back in April I was absolutely delighted to find out that I had been chosen to receive the 2010 First Annual All Star DadsFather-Daughter Award” by the Detroit Fathers and Families Coalition . I was nominated by Jacki Hayes from our church, who had already spoken to and interviewed my kids without me knowing.

At the banquet, we were treated to some fine keynote speeches about fatherhood, especially in relation to our daughters. We heard some very moving stories from a father growing up in Detroit, who himself passed on some valuable lessons he learned as a child from his neighborhood father figure, and his relationship to his own teen age daughter today. There was some funny things, and some serious things that made Pete and I automatically look at each other and mouth "right on, brother!". It was an honor to be there, and a pleasure to listen. After the keynote, we were treated to a small speech from each of the daughters about their own dads before receiving the trophy. Here's the Father Daughter dance that followed, showing my compadre, Pete Gregory and one of his daughters. Behind him is me, with Arianna dancing on my feet.

A total of three dads were awarded from our church. The other one was Blane Hansknecht. Here is a picture of the three of us, and our daughters and plaques.

We were in some high company that night, including members of Detroit City Council, Wayne County Sheriff, and one Manny Ramirez, member of the Detroit Lions offensive line. I learned that he is from Houston, TX, and attended Texas Tech. I went up to him to introduce myself as a fellow Hispanic from his home state, and lightly pounded his shoulder as a friendly gesture. I nearly broke my hand; it was like punching lightly padded concrete! He was very gracious and lived up to his billing as a gentle giant, and kindly agreed to a picture with me. Here's the two of us(I'm the short one on the left).

Poseidon and the Kraken

Aaron Hernandez — Sun, 02 May 2010 00:20:00 GMT

For my birthday, we went to Petsmart to buy two parakeets, one blue and one green. After a day or two of thinking, I came up with names for them. This year at DHMC, the Cultural Festival theme is ancient Greece, so the first thing that came to mind for the blue one was Poseidon, god of the sea. Once I had decided that, it was obvious what to name the green one: The Kraken. This way, whether he could actually understand me or not, I could tell Poseidon to "unleash The Kraken." However, The Kraken soon earned his name as "The Chicken," as he still isn't that comfortable with me and shrinks away in fear when my hand enters the cage. On the other hand, Poseidon will step on my hand now when I offer him millet.

Magic Bean Plant

Cyndi — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:18:00 GMT

Two Sundays ago Arianna and her friends planted magic beans during Worship Center. They are preparing for the start of gardening season and the planting of the Heifer Garden.*

So the beans aren't really magic beans, but the one we have is growing pretty quickly. (I guess that's why it's Jack and the Beanstalk, instead of Jack and the tomato plant.) Here is what the bean plant looks like after almost 2 weeks:

* The Heifer Garden is a tradition at our church. The children's worship center plants and tends the garden. Then they sell the vegetables to people. All the money raised is used to buy animals through The Heifer Project. Last year, they bought a goat.

Spring Break Cake

Cyndi — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:10:00 GMT

Arianna needed something to do today to keep occupied. I suggested baking a cake and she got excited about decorating it. Arianna baked it and we made the icing from scratch. Unfortunately I didn't have the presence of mind to take a picture of it before she cut it and and the eating began. (It was a face with two yellow stars for eyes and lots of sprinkle freckles.) But here is the one I got:

She cut it herself. The lines "curved a little."

Catholic Leagues

Adam Hernandez — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:45:00 GMT

This weekend, the Catholic League Meet was held. My school (Catholic Central), Brother Rice, DeLaSalle, and UofD competed in 12 events for the league championship. Prelims were held on Friday, and today (Saturday) the final heats were conducted. My school did well, taking 2nd place, and I swam personal best times in several events. In the prelims I swam the 200yd freestyle, the 200yd freestyle relay (each swimmer in the relay swam 50yds), and the 100 breast. On Saturday, in the finals, I swapped relays and swam the backstroke leg of the 200yd medley relay (like the 200yd freestyle relay, each swimmer does 50yds, but they all swim different strokes as well). During the finals, Arianna made me a nice card for our team's trophy, with me swimming down to retrieve it (we didn't actually have to swim underwater to get the trophy, but it's a nice idea...).

Here's the inside of the card:

Yet another upgrade to my drumset....

Adam Hernandez — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:08:00 GMT

Here I am, with another purchase for my drum set: cymbals. Thanks to both sets of grandparents and Debbie for the Christmas cash I used to pay for these, along with Dad chipping in as a birthday gift. I chose to buy the ZBT series from Zildjian. It sounds much, much better than the cymbals my kit came with. Here are a few photos of the new cymbals:

Me with the cymbals still in-box

A picture of the new hi-hats

Mount Abstract

Aaron Hernandez — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:31:59 GMT

A couple weeks ago (or maybe it was just one week?) Arianna and I were home alone because Dad had to go to Adam's swim meet and didn't get back until 4 or 5 pm. He gave us limits on the computer and told me that I had to play with her some. So after lunch, I asked her what she wanted to do. At first, she "didn't know" (sounds familiar...) but after a while, she decided that she wanted to paint. So we got out a bunch of old newspapers and what-not, then we got out the acrylic paints we got for Christmas two years ago. I got out this really small canvas that I also got two years ago for Christmas, and started wondering what to even paint. So I started messing around with some techniques I had never tried before. I was just using brown, and soon the whole canvas was pretty much just brown. Don't ask me how, but at that point I saw a mountainside in the midst of the brown, so I went with that. After not being satisfied with the way it started to look, I broke out the pallet knives that I got for Christmas two years ago (what else, an easel?). I did this because you always see Bob Ross painting rocks with a pallet knife, and the mountain I was imagining was just rock; No trees or bushes or anything. The pallet knife worked. I was satisfied. The funny thing is, it doesn't really look much like a mountain at all. I like it.

Arianna says that the little "mountain" that's supposedly in the background looks like a tree stump. Can't really blame her, can you?

Dynamic Cooking Duo

Ed Hernandez — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:02:00 GMT

This afternoon, Adam went and volunteered to cook up some muffins and brownies with Arianna. She loves to cook, and so does Adam, and I thought it was very nice of them to do something together. Of course, Arianna wanted to put chocolate chips into the muffins. I don't have pictures of the finished brownies. Let's just say they didn't last long after they hatched...

Adam prepping the ingredients:

Arianna stirring things up:

Both of them pouring brownie embryo into the pan:

The muffins hatched:

Arianna: I love my muffin! See the face I put on it? Now I'm gonna rip it off and eat it:

I'm Gonna Hug It and Squeeze It and Stroke Its Feathers and Call It George

Ed Hernandez — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:34:00 GMT

Some time ago, we stumbled upon an article in Craftzine Magazine that showed how to make a simple iPOD dock with relatively few and cheap parts(Volume 7). Right before Thanksgiving, I got Arianna interested in building it. Aaron also helped out. Adam was the project chef. Here's a little picture progress book.

This is the little tiny circuit board we got, with the chip on it. The chip is shown on the wrong side of the board! Yes, we messed up the first time...

Arianna asked what all the colors on the resistors mean, so, naturally, I showed her. Every time we needed one, she insisted on selecting it with the color chart all by herself. Here she is deciphering the resistors with a nice color chart I found on the web.

I have a multimeter that we put to good use for this project. Arianna asked what that was for, so again, I showed her. Then she wanted to check to see if the resistors she picked out were the right ones. And you know what? She never got them wrong! I have a variety pack of resistors, and Arianna deciphered them and then measured them all, so now they are labeled for future use. But she developed this important ritual before using the multimeter: ALWAYS put the probes to your head and make a monster noise(and grimace) before putting the probes to the component:

Here's a shot of her and Aaron(note: no eyes were harmed in taking this picture) stripping a wire:

After learning how NOT to use the wrong side of a circuit board, I dug out a breadboard I bought, jeez, about 20 years ago. This turned out to be quite fun, as Arianna insisted on hooking all the wires up. In doing so, I taught her how to read the wiring diagram for this project, and how the breadboard works, so she could determine where to put the wires so components were connected properly. In this picture, you can also see the switch she picked out from Radio Shack. Know why she liked this one? Because it came with four different color covers for the lever! This she changed every five minutes, until she settled on red. Apple, tree...

After we bent a couple of leads and wires, she started using the needle nose pliers to push things into the breadboard. You can see a little bit of the wiring diagram, too:

Okay, this picture need some explanation. Once we knew that we had to put the parts on the bare side of the board, we needed to keep track of the copper traces on the other side of the board, which we kept face up. So, Arianna maneuvered herself under the board like an auto mechanic, and put the wires and parts through into the right places. On her back. Every time.

Usually, I held the soldering iron, and Arianna applied the solder. She became very good at it, making no blobs or short circuits. But since I couldn't do this and take a pictures, we staged one afterwards. She is holding the iron to a pin bent onto the copper trace, and applying solder. If it looks like she knows what she's doing, it's because SHE DOES!

She picked out this little black box to put the finished circuit in, but we had to make holes in it for The Switch and a couple other things that needed to poke out of it. Usually, we used the hand drill, but plastic tends to grab the bit, so we used the power drill that Grandpa Paul gave me for Christmas some years back. You can hear it coming, can't you? "I WANNA DO IT!!!"

Here is the inside of her work, showing the simple circuit and battery that takes to run the thing. And an adoring engineer/builder, inspiring the title of this blog entry:

The finished product! We designed the jack to stick out the side of the box, so you just have to impale your iPOD onto the box, no cables required. Instead of the wimpy tiny speakers that Craftzine recommended to use, I found some car speakers leftover from the Villager(when I upgraded to Pioneer three-ways). I was surprised at how good they sounded, and Arianna was certainly sold on them. Therefore, we put speaker connectors so the speakers and box can be moved around independently. We've got ideas about building a cabinet for the speakers(now Aaron wants one JUST for his idea, which we will write about later, if we build it), but we need to build a second amplifier circuit for the other channel. There's room in the box, and extra posts on the speaker terminals...

The project is a tiny amplifier built around the LM386 chip. We got all our parts from Radio Shack, but there are two problems with the Craftzine plans:

You cannot connect two 8 ohm speakers to a single LM386 chip
You need a 10uF capacitor across the 9V battery to prevent distortion

Aside from that, this thing CRANKS!

"I'm not as spritely as I was when I was 80!"

Ed Hernandez — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:11:00 GMT

While I was in Texas, one of my traditions is to sit with Grandpa and play guitar with him. Many, many years ago, we swapped guitars. I think my brother got Grandpa's, and Grandpa got my little tiny one that I think my Dad got for me in Mexico. It fit his hands better than the larger guitar he once had, and he still favors it over the conventional size guitars we sometimes bring over to his house.

Since then, my 97 year old Grandpa has played the snot out of that little guitar. He keeps it by the couch in the living room, and he picks it up often. He told me last week that he often plays along with the guitar Mass broadcast on one of the local radio stations. Now that Aaron is playing, he picks up that guitar when we visit and toodles around on it. Aaron noticed how worn out that little guitar is. You can pretty much tell which chords are played the most, because the neck is literally dented a few millimeters where Grandpa's fingers have flown. You guitarists out there will know that the frets themselves are only 1-2mm tall to begin with, so dents that deep pretty much double the string deflection. You can actually 'see' popular chords like D7, G, E, A and so on. Even the back of the neck is pretty worn, where his palm slides. Near the bridge, the strings are a little thin, too.

Last week, we were trying to figure out(me) or remember(Grandpa) how to play Sabor A Mi, which we finally did. But while we were fooling around, Grandpa tried playing one of the Mariachi runs on the frets, a kind of scale that moves quickly between chords of the song. But he stumbled a bit on the run, then took his hand and shook it and flexed it a bit. "Arthritis, Grandpa?" I asked.

"No," he laughed out loud, "I'm just OLD!"

PS: The title of this entry is a line is from a Disney movie. Can you name it?

Road trip math, Hernandi style

Ed Hernandez — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:25:00 GMT

So, during the trip, we were listening to a story, and the reader mentioned 5 dozen things. Arianna asks what is five dozen, and I told her "It is five twelves." About six seconds later, she says "That's 60!" I said, "Wow, that was fast. Did you already know what five times twelve is?" And she says, "No, I just did five, ten, fifteen, twenty...sixty!" I thought about this, and I said, " Ah, so you turned it around and did twelve fives, eh?" She says, "Yeah(implying duh!), it's the same thing."

To which Aaron adds, "Yeah, Dad, it's the same thing, commutative property. Duh."

I love getting pwned by my kids.

Road trip!

Ed Hernandez — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:09:00 GMT

We just finished a two day drive to my 'crib' in San Antonio, TX. It took a while, but I'm very glad to be here. Adam was old enough to help me drive, this time. The kids did well. Adam and I shared the front seats and driving/navigation duties. Therefore, Aaron and Arianna had back seat to themselves, and the little center section for drinks and things.

Here is Arianna with two of her guys, G.P.(for Guinea Pig) and Squirrel. As is her tradition, she never names her animals:

And here is a wonderful sunset, taken in North Texas:

I "stuck it" to the man, but all i got was a broken stick

Adam Hernandez — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:37:00 GMT

On Monday, I was playing intramural hockey when i had my goalie stick snapped in half. It was the third period, the opposing team was down by 2. A forward from Red Team charged down the ice on a breakaway, so i came out of the net to meet him. When he was about two feet away, I figured he would deke, so I shifted my weight to push off. He didn't deke. He plowed straight into me, knocking me backwards and breaking my stick at the paddle (the flat part). The puck bounced off of me, and the Red Team scored anyways. This is what was left of the stick:

Objects in Mirror are Hairier Than They Appear

Ed Hernandez — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:38:00 GMT

For some reason, on a warm fall day, Aaron decided to try what it was like to be a dog and hang his head out the window. The picture doesn't do it justice, him having withdrawn from the slipstream a bit right when the shutter clicked. But you get the idea:

Another runner in the family

Ed Hernandez — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:24:00 GMT

Today, Aaron ran his first cross country meet, with the inaugural team at DHMC. The team is run by one of the teachers, coach John. They've been training for a couple of weeks, and this was their first competition, the Falcon Invitational. We had a rough start to the day, having trouble finding the park, then having trouble finding the entrance to the park, then having trouble finding the coach and team. But we found them, I let my blood pressure drop, and relaxed a bit before the meet.

I remembered to bring the camera, not just for me, but I thought perhaps coach John would be preoccupied with coaching, as opposed to picture taking. I took many photos, and tried to get as many kids and group shots as possible. But these are for you loyal readers. The first one, I got lucky and managed to align the stupid camera's own sense of timing with the starter's gun, and I got the kids right as they began to move. All the kids in black on the left are runners from Aaron's team. It's interesting that the boys have clearly begun to lunge across the starting line:

Here is the back of Aaron's coach and teacher, John, cheering Aaron on. BTW, coach John asked Aaron after the meet to design the team's logo!

Here is Aaron, crossing the finish line, flying hair and all. Even though we got it cut last week, it seems like he has a horse's mane here in this shot. Ok, I admit I think this looks kind of cool. He cut a 14:51.6 for the two miles in the cold rain, which gives him a 7:26 per mile pace. John was really impressed by this, and told Aaron so. Because I'm such a competitive person, I had to see how long it was until his next team mate crossed the line, about 2:30 later. I'm pretty sure both Aaron and Adam would smoke me if we went running together, but I can't wait to try, once my knee heals. I think it would be fun to run with them. They would try really hard to drop their Dad, and their Dad would try really hard not to get dropped. We be perfect training partners.

PS: when I last wrote about Adam's running last year, I mentioned that he was using my running shoes. Guess who's running in them now? Reuse, recycle...

General, take us to DEFCON 2

Ed Hernandez — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:57:00 GMT

Actually, it's not that bad. He seems conscientious, if not a little timid. But I'll fix that. And I am proud of him: he scored a 96 on the written exam, highest in his class. And in exchange for the inevitable 'help' he's gonna receive from me in the passenger seat, I've allowed and encouraged him to criticize MY driving. So far, he's busted me on a couple of things, so it works out. Him paying attention to me makes me feel better about his own driving. I've already promised him we're gonna find a parking lot and learn what it's like to stomp the brakes as hard as he can, feel the ABS(in this case), and not be afraid to do just that when necessary. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I hope to take him drag racing. Also, I hope to find an autocross somewhere, so he learns the limits of what the car can and cannot do. Not enough people know where the limits are, and are either afraid to approach them when necessary, or cross them altogether unintentionally. Mom, it's my kid, my house, my rules.

Oh, and before I forget, I want to thank my own father, who, years ago, simply handed me and my brothers the keys when it was our turn to take the wheel. I don't recall any backseat driving, or yelling, or panicking. I do remember one day, while Dad was working at the baseball fields at St Thomas Moore, he let me drive the Chevy around the parking lot, practicing braking, turning, using the signals with no other car in sight. I must have looked a fool, but I didn't care, and neither did my dad. I hope I can be as pleasant to Adam as my dad was to me. Alas, for those of you who know me, don't hold your breath. "General, take us..."