Mon. 1/7/13 :: Imagine This Face in a Book

This is a total cheater pic. I completely forgot to take any pictures today. This one is an extra from yesterday that I just like. Kaylee spent almost the entire day today in her room reading “Aliens on Vacation”. It’s one of the Texas Bluebonnet Award books for this year. The kids have to read at least five books from the list to be eligible to vote for their favorite, and this will be the first year that Kaylee has done it. She was never interested in trying before, but she really developed a love of reading this past summer. I’m so proud of her and so glad she’s excited about reading! :)

Sun. 1/6/13 :: Wii Race

Family game night – Sonic Sega All-Stars Racing. Intense competition.

I’m happy anytime I don’t come in last. LOL

Sat. 1/5/13 :: Updating

Temporary setup while configuring my new computer. Just a few little software updates to start out with…

Fri. 1/4/13 :: Sock It To Her

For some unknown reason, Kaylee was playing with the Mungi Bands she got for Christmas and… a sock. She struck up a pose when I pulled out the camera.

Mark decided to jump in on the next shot.

Kaylee was not happy about having a co-star. ;)

Thur. 1/3/13 :: Ornamental

Tonight is the last night our Christmas tree will be up.  It’s huge and sits right next to my desk. It will come down tomorrow to make room for the invasion of my new computer. We have gazillions of ornaments on the tree, and I decided to try my hand at snapping shots of a few that were in range of my tripod. I still need some practice with these settings; these shots are what came out best. :) 

Above are two out of the dozen or so felt ornaments we have that my mom made. We always had similar ones on our tree growing up, so besides just being really cute, they feel very much like “home”. :)

Next, a third felt ornament is having a polka-dot-elephant party with one of the huge plush ornaments from our Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer set. Mark is a big fan of those holiday specials. The snowman is also from that set. The metal and stained glass angel is one of the many many angel ornaments I have from a past obsession with them. I have enough that I once did a 6-foot tree entirely in angels. (We don’t have enough stuff-free space to set up two trees anymore.) The purple glass guy hanging below the elephant is Grimace of McDonald’s fame, a gift from Ronald McDonald, who Mark works with from time to time. :)

The fake stained glass drummer below is part of a DIY set that I did to help pass the time in my hotel room while working on the road for Ericsson. I think it was in 1991. If my memory is correct, I did these while working on a project in Wharton, TX. The town made national news when it was hit with severe flooding a few days after I left. The acrylic reindeer is one we picked up at the mall years ago. It just looks really cool when the light hits it right. :)

The Big Mac is another from Ronald McDonald. Kaylee received the candy cane star at a Girl Scout gift exchange last year. The Packer ornament was a gift from my dad who was a HUGE Packer fan. It was a little good-natured dig at Mark, who has become a die-hard Cowboy fan since moving down here in '91. I always hang it low on the side of the tree nearest my desk so that I can see it while I’m working. :)

Finally, we have our two “baby’s first Christmas” ornaments. We actually received two different ones as gifts for Matthew (both Noah’s ark themed – must have been big that year), but had to hunt down one ourselves for Kaylee and had a heck of a time finding one.

That’s it! Fourteen out of the approximately 7,352,687 ornaments that hang on our tree every year! :)

Wed. 1/2/13 :: Chocolate Map

More oh-shoot-the-day-is-gone-and-I-haven’t-taken-a-picture shots. ;)

We’ve had a tradition the past several years of each having a piece from a box of assorted chocolates every evening in December leading up to Christmas – sort of our version of an advent calendar. Not all boxes of chocolate are created equal, and some years we’ve run out and had to buy a second box. This year for some reason we ended up with half the box still left (I suspect it was mainly due to skipping nights here and there due to late schedules or other sweets), so the chocolate has spilled over into the new year.

In any case, choosing chocolate is serious business… ;)

Tues. 1/1/13 :: The Way It Goes

So here we are again. Another new year. Another fresh start. Restarting this blog has been on my mind for a while.  I took far too few photos last year, let far too many moments slip by unnoticed.

There were a lot of moments I could have captured today… the kids playing Wizard101 head-to-head (now possible thanks to the new laptop we got Matthew for Christmas… and his birthday… and…) … Mark watching his new Spiderman movie, insisting the volume be cranked up for the full movie effect (although I don’t know how photos would have captured the noise level of the battle scenes)… Mark making his annual batch of kumla… and forgetting that you can’t put potato peels down the disposal… Me getting sprayed in the face with potato water as I attempted to plunge the clogged drain… The mess when it became clear that plunging wasn’t going to work and we had to disassemble the drain pipes. Ah, yes, our new year got off to a rockin’ start! ;)

But the habit of grabbing the camera isn’t back yet, so instead you get these (hastily shot with blinding flash) – the result of me remembering as the kids were headed to bed that I hadn’t taken a picture and asking them what I should take. We had just finished a game of Uno, in which Kaylee had declared herself the winner, in spite of coming in last…

Yep. Siblings at their finest. One more week of winter break to go.

And that’s the way life in the Jensen house goes. :)