What Santa Does With His Free Time

I have been looking at this every day for the last couple months and finally got around to taking a picture of it. While standing in my kitchen at the sink I get a great view of the back of my neighbor's house. She placed a large Santa Claus figurine outside her slider door which, from my perspective, appears to be peeing on her house. Perhaps she thinks it is cute to have him looking through her windows but I find the concept of a voyeristic jolly old elf disturbing. Maybe Santa's real name is Peeping Tom.

Winter Returns

Sorry for the light posting of late...you've got to have time to update a blog, and neither of us have a lot of that!

We had a little snowstorm Friday night into Saturday. When we woke up Saturday morning, everything was quiet and beautiful. Pete threw on some shoes and a sweatshirt and ran outside to capture the following shots.

Pete then spent the balance of the day working on the entryway. We discovered paneling underneath the wallpaper out there, so instead of taking off the wallpaper, we decided to dig out the "grooves" in the paneling (which had been filled in by whoever decided to wallpaper) and then paint, so it will look like we've simply painted over paneling. Hopefully anyway. We're now ready to prime, which I hope happens this weekend. :) I hope to post some "in progress" pictures soon.

Here are a few shots from our Christmas Eve with the Meyerings and Christmas Day with the Andersons:

Pete and Katie enjoying putting together a puzzle.

Gavin helping Pete open a present.

Gavin opening his Little People Discovery Airport from Uncle Pete and Aunt Amy. Unfortunately, he wasn't feeling very well by the end of the evening - can you tell by his (very cute) rosy cheeks? But for feeling as yucky as he did, he did great!

Christmas Day, we hosted the Anderson clan at our home - our first official holiday hosting. The day was fun and went well (thank goodness for Honeybaked Ham!)

The Anderson men: (L-R) Dad Anderson, Pete (in the Santa suit), Henry, Phil (Henry's dad) and Paul

With the kids (they belong to Phil): Annie, Kitty, Tori and Henry

And the star of the day, Santa, hands out presents. Isn't he a hottie? :)

More is coming...

I've finally found the time to sit down and post - all to say that more pictures and posts from Christmas are coming soon. The holidays were a happy whirlwind and now it's back to the real world. Look for pictures of our upcoming house projects too - front entryway, here we come!

The Meyering Christmas Gathering

This gets me caught up to the present time. Tonight we had the Meyering get-together. Rachel was plugging her blog and, incidently, inspired us to get going on ours. Once again, Gavin managed to steal the show.

The Wagner Christmas Gathering

Wednesday afternoon was a get together with Amy's mother's side of the family. We ate, opened a few gifts, played a game of Pop Culture Trivial Pursuit and pretty much watched our nephew, Gavin, be the center of attention.

Arnie's Day (December 21)

This past Wednesday we celebrated "Arnie's Day." Two years ago we met after church for the first time to go on a blind date (we were set up by Kate York) and went to Arnie's for lunch. This year we went for breakfast and got to sit at the very same table we sat at two years ago. The hostess was going to seat us at a table nearby so I requested "our" table and explained why it was so important. We reminisced about how nervous we were, how conspicuous we felt and how Amy dropped her boxed up leftovers in the lobby on the way out and how her fries went all over the floor. Arnie's gave us a little cake (more like a big cupcake) to commemorate the occasion.

It's no longer all about me

I haven't done well keeping up on writing this blog at all. Part of it is because my life doesn't seem all that exciting to me but also because I really wasn't writing this for anybody but myself and I've never had much sticktoitiveness with journals. Amy and I had talked before about doing one together but it never really got off the ground. We've thought a little more seriously since Rachel, Amy's cousin, started writing hers and has found it a really good way to keep in touch with the family. Since mine wasn't going very far on it's own we are going to make it about us and not all about me. This should also make it much, much more interesting to read.

Let Joy and Innocence Prevail

In going through the special features on the Mary Poppins DVD, the reason I am a Disney fan was crystalized for me. Over and over again people gushed about having the privilege of working with Walt Disney. They talked about his love for children and the inner child and what he loved most about children was their joy and innocence. When I heard that, everything inside me yelled, "That's exactly it!" That's what I love about children and what pains me most is when it's not there. What I love the best about most of the stuff the Disney company has done is that it fosters joy and innocence. I have been concerned about Disney as of late because I think they are starting to lose that.

It got me thinking about the movie Toys again. The theme of the movie is etched on the statue of Milton the Friendly Elephant - "Let Joy and Innocence Prevail." There are so many things that threaten to steal them away from us and, while war is antithetical to joy and innocence, we need to fight to preserve them.

Planarity: Turn Your Mind into a Pretzel

Planarity: Turn Your Mind into a Pretzel: "Planarity is complete waste of time. It's also fiendishly addictive, lots of fun and a perfect de-stresser for a Friday Afternoon. The idea is this: you drag dots around a graph until none of the lines cross each other."

I'm a puzzle guy and I found this quite absorbing. Levels 1 through 10 increase in difficulty and, while you can go past 10, it doesn't get any harder after that. (I stopped after level 11)