Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

Bella and Gilli’s Tinker Toy creations:

This was also a year of homecomings. Amy and her family came in from Wisconsin. Wil and Jessica and Mark and Melanie came in from Boston. Amy arranged a gathering of all of Karen’s friends from high school and luckily Wil & Jess were able to swing by as well, so we all got to see old friends we don’t see much anymore. Unfortunately we missed out on seeing Mark and Melanie since we had to pack up and head back home and they were meeting up for dinner.

Jessica and Erin:

Wil and Erin:

I need to find a picture from college to compare 10 years difference

Similarly I wonder how much Karen’s friends have changed from high school:

Santa came and brought the girls presents! The chairs were a big hit, not that it shows in the picture. But when their Uncle Dave asked them they excitedly told him about the chairs.

Opening presents:

After a fun morning we packed up and headed out to Grandma Gail and Grandpa Greg’s house. Murphy and his law were in full effect and we forgot the bottle liners for Erin’s bottles. I think there is only one or two days a year when this is a problem. Usually a quick trip to a store (even Fredonia has 2 stores that are open 24/7) will solve any lacking supplies, however on Christmas it means a quick trip home to get them. Of course we didn’t realize it until we hit the last bottle and realized we couldn’t make any more. But it’s only a two hour round trip, so it wasn’t a big deal and a good time was had by all.

The girls playing with presents:

Bella found the pickle. I love Gillian’s expression in this shot:

Hey, check out my hat!

We have traditionally opened non-Santa gifts on Christmas Eve. In the past we have squeezed it in with dinner and church, which doesn’t really leave much time to play with gifts. So this year we opened presents in the morning.

After temperatures in the 50′s it came as a surprise that we had a white Christmas. It was actually pretty nice, since it snowed Sunday – Monday it was nice on the ground but did not hinder traveling.

After opening presents the girls decorated cookies:

We couldn’t find the tripod so we didn’t get a pre-church family picture. We did manage to get a shot of the girls not making faces at the camera

I hate reading blog posts that are pages long, so since I did not blog Christmas as it happened rather than give you one long post I am going to break it up. Hopefully that will make for easier reading. I uploaded a whole bunch (technical term I know, it was 60-70) of pictures to my Flickr page. You can also check out the Christmas Season 2007 set if you prefer. I also noticed the date/time stamp on our camera is slightly off, so some of the dates taken are wrong (example some taken Christmas Eve are dated December 23), so hopefully that isn’t too confusing.

On the way to Buffalo yesterday we saw a very full and pronounced rainbow. It was one of the only (maybe the only) time I’ve ever seen a full rainbow where you could see both ends. I put up the pictures on my Flickr page. Here’s one of them:

Last week we got to visit Bella at her school to make a gingerbread house. That was a lot of fun! There are a few pictures on my Flickr page. This picture really shows off the missing tooth!

I found an online fantasy game called Duels that is pretty fun. It is an asynchronous PVP game, so your opponents don’t have to be online to play. Check it out, if you decide to sign up use this link and I get an in-game bonus:

http://www.duels.com/users/register/lordbios

Erin is 2 months old today! I can’t believe how fast the time has gone! Karen took her for her checkup today, she’s up to 13 lbs. and 23.25″.

Add one more thing to the list of things we shouldn’t have to worry about. I like the message about buying American, it’s too bad that American companies are allowed to outsource their manufacturing to other countries. It’s a Wal Mart Christmas, brought to you by a sweatshop in China.

Toxic Toys Jingle

Here’s an interesting holiday video for your enjoyment:

Billy Idol – Jingle Bell Rock