Jason Tucker » Family

Jessalyn turns Six

Jason Tucker — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:41:01 +0000

My daughter Jessalyn 6th Birthday is today, at the exact time of me writing this actually. I remember being extreme nervous and super proud to have a baby in our lives. Jen and I packed up what we needed and me being me I video taped the entire experience. In the car I’m doing this documentary style quick interview of her but talking to the camera as if I’m talking to Jessalyn. I can remember just about everything that happened that day in vivid detail which is in stark contrast to our wedding day where only pictures can help me recreated the blur of saying I Do. It’s funny how some things you remember like that other others you get vivid detail. I’ve talked to other people about this and they too have said that usually you don’t remember the ceremony of your wedding but you can remember the birth of your children. I recall spending hours with Jess in the hospital’s nursery focused on my newly born daughter and being so proud and recording and photographing the entire experience. It’s funny to think about it now since I can remember every detail of that morning even without the pictures. Once the dust settled and a few days passed I looked at how many photos I took and was amazed that I ended up with around 800 photos and a few hours / tapes of video. Even with all those pictures and videos no amount of technology can capture that feeling of being a new Dad.

Dad, Jessalyn and Mom

Jessalyn’s my buddy, my lil best friend, when I’m feeling down she cheers me up and when shes is feeling down I do the same. On my desk at work sits this great Fathers Day gift that my wife made for me, it’s a framed collage of two pictures and some stars along with an outline of my hand and Jessalyns on top of one another. On it is a poem that reads:

Holding Daddy's Hands – 2007

Holding Daddy’s Hand
Walking down the winding path
I hold tight to Daddy’s hand
His firm but gentle grip makes me
Feel safe like nothing else can
I don’t know where we are going
But my Daddy knows the way
He leads us down the path that’s right
And will not let us stray
I hold on to his hand tightly
I know he won’t let me fall
For my Daddy is the biggest and the strongest of them all
I don’t ever have to worry
When I hold his hand in mine
Because I know he will protect
And love me for all time

Recently Jess has switches from holding my index finger to holding my hand when we walk together, at first I resisted the change but now it only feels right that we hold hands palm to palm. Every once in a while she’ll grab my finger almost like some muscle memory of years past has come back and when she does she’ll look up and me and we’ll both giggle.

I love you Jess, Happy 6th Birthday my big girl!

What is Family?

Jason Tucker — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:21:05 +0000

I’ve been thinking about this recently and I wanted to lay it all out there and define what Family means to me. You see recently for some reason my kids have been talking about relationships within our family and figuring out who is what and applying labels to them all. I overheard a discussion with my two daughters where they were talking about who their Dad is and why the older 2 kids call me “Jason” instead of “Dad” like our younger one does. You see, our older 2 kids are from my wife’s previous marriage, the older of the 2 is 16 her brother is 15. I’ve been a part of their lives for a long time, 11 years to be exact. Back when we got married almost 7 years ago the kids asked me if they wanted them to call me “Dad” and I felt kinda weird about that, I respect the fact that they have another Father and that whatever they felt right in calling me would be fine by me. I think they felt kinda weird about it too, going from calling someone you’ve known for a while one thing to calling them something else would be weird and kind of hard. It’s like when a family member has as nickname that is a shorter version of their real name and when they go into the business world they want to be called their full birthname, you know you’ll end up calling them the nick name for the rest of their lives just out of habit. You see, my Dad died when I was 5 and I’ve had 2 Step Dads in my life in which I called them both by their first names and referred to them as “my Dad” when asked unofficially by someone. Unless it was official business (a cop asking me, a judge… something legal) then they were “my Dad”. I’m a simple person and it cuts down on the extra explaining that isn’t pertinent to the conversation.

So, getting back to the discussion that our oldest was having with our 5 year old, she was explaining that they have different Dads and the same Mom and that she calls me “Jason” because of that. I think she may have mentioned that they are “half sisters” at some point in the convo but I’m not 100% sure. Later the younger one asked me “Dad, why does my sister call you Jason?” and at this point I knew I had to draw her a map. Using simple circles I whipped up a diagram and showed her how it all works. She asked me about Moms, Grandmas as Dads along with Step Dads and why we call these people these things. I explained to her that no matter what the label is they are who they are to you and that’s all that matters. It got me thinking, I almost NEVER call the older 2 kids my Step Kids. To be honest I still think some people think that I had a kid with Jen when I was 17 unless they took the time out to asked me about it.

All of this talk about labeling in our family structure got me thinking even more, does it really matter? You see, when I was in Middle School going into High School my Mom was married to a Latin American man who had 2 kids that came to live with us. They were 1 and 2 years older than I was (my Brother is 5 years younger than I) and they were going into High School. Since I’m white and they were Hispanic it was pretty safe to assume when I said “This is my brother” they knew something was amiss and I’d imagine they assumed that we were not blood related. With my Mom being married to their Dad came the fact that we now had quite a few cousins and other family members from his side of the family. Since I come from a small family myself we just adopted them as our own as far as we were concerned. I was always taught that family is what you make of it, labels don’t matter and they are to you whatever you think they are to you and that’s all that matters. With all that said, does it matter? To me it doesn’t and I try to show that to my own kids by treating them as if they are my own, because they are… and that’s all that matters.

Tell me about your family dynamic I want to know about labels, how you dealt with them and does it really matter? What makes you, you? Is a relationship defined by a label? Do you treat someone different because of this? Do they treat you different? Let me know in the comments, I’m curious.

World of Color

Jason Tucker — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:15:04 +0000

Last night we got a phone call from my Jen’s friend Christie telling us that she got fastpasses to see World of Color at Disney’s California Adventure for her whole family but they got tired and didn’t want to use them. She invited Jen to go with her and I asked Jen that if they had an extra that I’d be interested in going too. You see, Jen broke her ankle 8 weeks ago so she’s stuck using crutches or a wheelchair to get around I’m use to pushing Jen around Disneyland so I had no problem with going and helping out with getting Jen to the event.. that and I REALLY WANTED TO SEE WORLD OF COLOR! When Christie and her oldest son arrived at our house we had about 30 minutes to get to Disneyland from our house in Whittier so we had to haul butt make it on time. With Jen and her wheelchair we piled in the car and did the 12 mile drive to catch the 11:30 showing. Due to our lack of planning and lateness we opted to be sneaky and park in the Downtown Disney parking lot, our thinking behind this was that by doing so we’d have more control over how fast we get to DCA, people power vs waiting for a tram and riding it in. By the time we parked we had roughly 10 minutes to get in DCA and find the area needed to be at. While attempting my best to recreate Mr Toads Wild Ride for Jen by zig-zagging around late night visitors at Downtown Disney we made it to the gate in record time. With our hearts racing we showed our passes at the gate and hauled even more butt to the our Blue Line which was located next to the Sour Dough factory. Zig-zagging yet again with Jen this time with the opposing traffic of the exiting guests we arrived and spoke to a CM who stated that if you had a fast pass you line up here (end of the line was now at the entrance to the sour dough factory) and if not you lined up elsewhere. Jessi, the nice CM we ran into noticed Jen in the wheelchair and asked for us to follow her to the wheelchair viewing area. Accompanying us is was another group with a wheelchair as well. As structured as this lining up system was it was quite a mob of people to navigate through to get to the wheelchair viewing area. We departed ways with Jessi once we arrived at the viewing area and were told that with the wheelchair we should move to a special area that was quite a bit back from where all the action happens.

Also we noticed in our viewing area was one of the sphere shaped lights that we thought would be in the way of our viewing. Christie noticed some other wheelchairs have moved down to a level lower and closer to the action and said she was going to go down there. We thought the same thing and moved down to the center area too.

The “center area” was a few feet lower than our previous location which put Jen with her wheelchair at a disadvantage. So we moved back a bit to near the right side of the big circle on the ground and gave that a try. A few manual adjustment by Jen and she got the best view she could at the area we were at. There were lots of people in front of us and their heads were blocking lower fountains for Christie and I. Jen on the other hand was able to most likely missed the majority of the lower parts of the fountains including some of the smaller ones and the pop up round screens. Luckly the majority of the show occurs quite a bit high in the air so all of us could see that. The people blocking the lower field of view for us were at least 30 feet in front of us. Without having been at the location we started with I’m unsure of how well the viewing would have been. I’d imagine that Jen most likely would have seen a bit more lower into the field of view but I’m not sure if she would have been able to see the base of the water jets on the platform in the water. We’ll have to give it another try soon and see.

I’d have to say my favorite part of the show would have to be:

Up – the water screens in your whole field of view light up in color as the balloons from the movie UP fly past you in an upward motion.
Little Mermaid – The whales moving about the water screens were just amazing.
Toy Story – The only true “3D” looking vector graphics generated from what I can tell to be lasers use the mist from the water to create Zirg in an awesome 3D looking animation. I think I mentioned to my party “I love living in the future” while that was playing.
Trees – There is this jaw dropping scene where the water screens fill up with trees and the scene moves through an opening in the forest as the trees move past you. It’s amazing how water and a HD projected image can make such a great scene come to life.

If I had to pick one cool technique they used it would have to be the way in which they play with light and the mist from the water jets. Disney has figured out how to trick your eyes into thinking that 3D orbs and globs are floating in thin air. Also using this same trick they can make rays of light shine out from an object or scene. The light beams are so thin you cant tell if they are lasers or pin point accurate lights.

As a techie this stuff gives me the chills watching this show, it’s awesome what can be done with water, lights, lasers and a crap load of money. As a Dad to a 4 year old it makes me want to take her and see this time and time again. You bet our family will be seeing this show many time this year and for years to come.

Whittier Earthquake – March 16, 2010 & October 1, 1987

Jason Tucker — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:09:43 +0000

I have lived my whole life in Southern California and I’ve felt quite a few earthquakes in my time living here. The biggest one I’ve been involved in was the Whittier Narrows earthquake which was a 6.1 back in 1987. I was 10 years old at the time and my 5 year old brother and I were staying at my Grandmothers house the quake happened in the morning while we were all still sleeping. Both my brother and I were on beds that had casters so they could be rolled when the earthquake hit our beds moved around quite a bit. I ended up on the other side of the bedroom and so did my brother it was pretty amazing how much it shook. After watching the news we found out that the 3 story parking structure at “The Quad” was leveled luckily no one was injured since the stores there were not so early in the morning.

Fast forward 23 years later to March 16th 2010 and at 4:04am we had more seismic activity which woke me everyone in my apartment complex including me. I went to bed kinda late after watching TV and falling asleep on the couch. I crawled into bed at 1am and only had a few hours of sleep when our bed began to shake violently. I heard kids screaming across the courtyard and Caitlin popped up out of bed with a fright. Jen and I got out of bed and rushed into the bedroom to check check on the kids. Jessalyn (4) woke up but quickly went back to sleep. Caitlin (15) work up and was quite shaken up stating “I’m too scared to go back to sleep”. I had work in the morning so I told her everything was going to be all right and I went back to bed. I wasn’t about to go to bed without knowing the magnitude of the quake so I went to Twitter and the trending topic was “Earthquake” which I think was still ranked under “Justin Bieber” or something. Anyhow All my twitter friends flocked there to update their statuses stating if they felt it or not.

I then went over to the USGS “Did you feel it” website and posted that I indeed felt it and answered their 10 or so questions. Not many people posted to that site 3-4 minutes after the event so it was kinda cool to be one of the firsts to do so. After that I tried my best to go back to sleep.

Below are some postings from various websites that I copied from WWU.edu and Wikipedia so save you the trouble or finding them yourself.

From Wikipedia: Whittier Narrows earthquake

On Oct. 1, 1987, at 7:42 a.m., the Whittier Narrows earthquake struck, the epicenter six miles (10 km) north by northwest of Whittier. The seismic event, which registered 5.9 on the Richter scale, resulted in eight casualties and massive damage to uptown Whittier’s historic buildings. In the years following the earthquake, the city’s deteriorating uptown business district, which suffered substantial damage in the earthquake, became the focus of renewed development, which has met with opposition from many Whittier citizens. Out of the rubble of the earthquake the Whittier Conservancy was formed in 1987 in an effort to stop the demolition of many historic buildings and residences after the disaster. The city also created a Historic Resources Commission to oversee the approval of historic designations and Mills Act proposal.

From WWU.edu: Partial Collapse of Parking Garage, Whittier, CA, 1987 Earthquake Earthquake of October 1, 1987, Whittier Narrows, California. Partial collapse of the May Company’s three-level parking garage at Quad Shopping Mall in Whittier. The structure, built in 1965, is located at the corner of Whittier Boulevard and Painter Avenue.

Birthdays

Jason Tucker — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:21:10 +0000

My youngest daughter Jessalyn is 4 and has only been to a few birthday parties. Her take on a birthday party is one of the following or a combo of any of these:

Place:

at a park
while camping
at the beach
in the living room
in someones back yard
a restaurant

With some of these activities:

see people you’ve never seen before and hide from everyone
only close family and a few close friends
eat food
sing happy birthday
eat cake
eat pizza
watch others take a wack at piñata
watch a baby eat a special cake no one else wants to eat because he put his face all over it

My 32nd birthday is tomorrow and Jessalyn is VERY excited and I’m curious as to what she thinks my birthday will be and what combonation above she thinks will be occurring. I didn’t plan my birthday this year my wife did, my understanding is that she hasn’t told Jessalyn about it since she wasn’t quite sure what the activity would be. It was either going to be a trip to the mountains to see and play in the snow or a trip to Disney Ice to go ice skating. Jessalyn hasn’t done much of the former and has never done the latter. Due to the harsh weather that we have been having here in California it looks like we’ll be going to Disney Ice and have fun ice skating. Lately Jessalyn and I have been reading this book before bed called “Skating with Bears” by Andrew Breakspeare. It’s about a boy that isnt good at skating and sneaks out and night and puts his skates on and tries to learn. These mounds of snow near the rink turn into bears and they help him learn to skate. With us reading this book from time to time she’s been asking me about skating and if I’ve ever done it before. We talked about how I use to go skating yearly and how I also use to roller blade quite a bit. The connection of skating and roller blading didn’t quite work out in her head until one day I put them on and showed her. I’d imagine once we take her ice skating she’ll get the connection even more.

Ice skating and my birthday have quite a history. When I was a kid we would pile in as many friends as we could into the car and drive up to Blue Jay to go ice skating at the Ice Castle. We must have went to the Ice Castle at least 4 or 5 years in a row. In 2001 I wanted to go to the Ice Castle for my birthday and that year after a major storm the Ice Castle was severely damaged when the roof collapsed and they closed the place. A few years later we went ice skating at Disney Ice which looks like is now called The Rinks Anaheim Ice and we’ve been going there ever since. I wouldn’t mind making my birthday all about ice skating, everyone but Jen loves doing it. She typically sits on the side or in the bleachers and watches and takes pictures of us. Some day I’ll get her on the ice!

Happy Birthday Jessalyn, she turns 4 today.

Jason Tucker — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:46:27 +0000

Jessalyn and Dad

My Daughter Jessalyn turns 4 today; she’s grown from this little tiny infant to an awesome 4 year old “big girl”. It’s funny the nicknames you give your kids and how sometimes they contradict themselves. I call Jess by many names: “big girl”, “short stuff”, “sweetie”, “sweet pea” (she gave herself that one) and my fave “love bug”. Big girl and short stuff are all relative and it just shows how much she’s grown over the last few years.

When she was born:

Was 19 1/2 inches long

Weighed 7lbs 0.4 oz

Current Stats:

She’s 41 3/4″ tall

She’s weighs 40 lbs.

We’ll be celebrating her birthday at Disneyland and she’s extremely excited to get to buy some stuff with the money that Disneyland is giving her due to us having Annual Passes. Your gift from them can be the value of a ticket or a few other things. She’s had her eye on this awesome Disneyland castle so we’re thinking she may end up with that.

Jessalyn, thanks for giving loving me the way that you do and letting me be the best Dad that I can be for you. It means a lot to me and I hope it means a lot to you.

Much Love,

Dad

Tips to make the most of your Disneyland Annual Pass

Jason Tucker — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:32:51 +0000

My wife Jen and I bought Disneyland Annual passes yesterday (3/20/09) and we’ve been working on ways to make technology help us on our trips to The Park. Before we bought our passes (and went to Disneyland) yesterday I started looking on the iPhone to find some apps related to Disneyland and found these two:

Disneyland California Mini Guide [iTunes, $0.99]
Not the most in depth look at Disneyland by any means but it does not require internet access for the app to work. It displays a map ala google maps of the Disneyland park that can be scrolled around. It includes POI links to various attractions and where the bathrooms are (great since I have a 3 year old going into potty training). Also, the map can find you via GPS if your using an iPhone.

Disneyland Resort Time Guide [iTunes, $0.99]
This app does one thing and that one thing quite well display times for various events happening at the Disneyland Resort. The data is updated via an internet connection so if your have an iPod Touch you can just update via WiFi before hitting the park. On the iPhone you can update whenever since your internet connected via your data plan. This app is great because it shows all the things you need to know to get the most from your visit: Disneyland Park (DL) Park Hours, Magic Morning Hours, Parade Event, Fireworks, Billy Hill & the Hillbillies, Fantasmic, Flag Retreat Ceremony, Closed for Refurbishment and etc. It also includes times for Disney’s California Adventure (DCA) and times for Downtown Disney (including who is playing at House of Blues that night).

I also started looking for online resources to help us out one of which is having our Deluxe Passes blackout dates on our iPhones. To pull this off on our Mac’s in iCal we “subscribe” to google calendar that has all these times listed. You can do the same on a PC using Outlook, check out the icons below to inport the Deluxe Pass blackout dates:
Official Disneyland Resort Podcast [iTunes Link]
What a great video podcast coming straight from the Disney company.
RideMax is a great service for planning out your Disney trip. For $29.99 a year you plan out your day in the most incredible way. Instead of me explaining how the service works you can read their PR speak:
RideMax is a computer software program guaranteed to help you save time waiting in line at Walt Disney World and Disneyland.RideMax allows you to specify the attractions you wish to ride during your visit, then uses a sophisticated scheduling algorithm to order your attractions so that the amount of time you spend in line is minimized.Using historical wait time statistics for each attraction as a foundation, RideMax analyzes millions of different ride sequences in order to create a minimum-wait-time itinerary. This schedule is tailored to the expected crowd patterns on the day of your visit, for the attractions you want to ride!

I know this is a partial list so if your an Annual Pass holder and have other tricks of the trade please let me know by leaving a comment and I’ll update the list above.

Wedding Bells – Corey and Brandon Tucker

Jason Tucker — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:49:08 +0000

Brandon and Corey

My brother Brandon is getting married tomorrow and today we’re trekking out to Hesperia where his soon to be bride lives to take part in the festivities. Today is their wedding rehearsal, my youngest Jessalyn is in the wedding as the flower girl and I hope we can practice dropping flowers enough that she does awesome in the wedding. After that is the rehearsal dinner and then we’re staying the night out there since it’s about 78 miles one way. Friday is the wedding day, from what I gathered from Corey is that March 6th is her parents wedding day so she wanted to have it on the same day as theirs. I hope the traffic out to Hesperia isn’t bad for everyone tomorrow since the way there is also the most popular route from LA to Las Vegas, this is also why were staying the night out there instead of fighting traffic to make it to the wedding in time.

The wedding day I’d imagine will be filled with excitement and will be a joyful occasion, I’m glad to see my brother settling down and I’m happy to see hes settling down with such a great girl.

http://www.coreyandbrandon.com

I will be streaming some of the back end stuff happening before and after the wedding so feel free to checkout my live page.

TwitterCouples the hashtag experiment

Jason Tucker — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:10:41 +0000

So does the family that tweet together stay together? My wife @jentucker and I @jasontuckerboth use twitter and I was curious if other couples do the same thing. I thought I’d start a hashtag that tracks couples that twitter together. Feel free to post to twitter to join in on this meme by clicking here and put in your couples names at the end of the tweet.

Below are the results of this experiment:
[inline]
[script language="javascript"]
var jtw_search = ‘twittercouples’;
var jtw_width = ‘auto’;
var jtw_pre_html = ‘

TwitterCouples hashtag results

‘;
[/script]
[script src="http://tweetgrid.com/widget/widget.js" type="text/javascript"][/script]
[/inline]

View the results over at search.twitter.com

Birthday sleep overs and shooting stars

Jason Tucker — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:27:38 +0000

This weekend is Caitlin’s birthday and she has some friends over spending the night to celebrate. She and her Mom agreed to X number of friends over to spend the night, it looks as if that number doubled or something. The small apartment we live in has been quite loud downstairs where the girls have taken over. From what I’m gathering the girls are planning on TPing some ones house in our neighborhood. All I know is these girls couldn’t keep quiet to save their collected lives so I’m sure but this may be their last time ever doing something like this.

I remember growing up we’d pick a random “rich house” and TP it. I have no idea why we went about it that way since we didn’t have any way of finding out what their resulting reaction was.

I’m debating on staying up or not, this weekend’s nights are suppose to be filled with shooting stars. Chris and I after seeing The Day The Earth Stood Still with a friend of his came home to the girls outside looking at the sky ohhing and aaahhing at the shooting stars. I looked on twitter and others were reporting seeong LOTS of them Chris and I wanted a better experience so we got in the car and drove up the hill to find a decent spot to look at the sky with very little poluting light around us. We found a good spot and did some ohhh and ahhhs of our own until we got too cold to stand being outside in pitch black.

I’m off to bed, it’s getting late. Let’s see what happens with these girls tonight.