I’ve let my blogging duties slide, and now I pay the consequences: you sneak in with pictures from a Merchant Ivory film production in China. Well I ain’t got no China. But I have lots of pictures and crafts and stuff going on that’s been piling up. Now that I’ve got a fire under me, expect a few more posts this weekend.

And finally pictures to show you what a great holiday break it was!
** means be sure to click on the pictures for glorious enlarged details.

On the second day of the big blizzard we said “to heck with this!, ” chained up the car, drugged up the cat, and skirted off to Grand Junction to jumpstart vacation.

**the small red sign say “No Parking, snow storage area, you will be towed or buried”

Dad and Amanda made two kinds of nut brittle

Mom and I painted the study

Andy did his mac thing

This brittle was devine

Christmas eve carols

and cat picture outtakes! I love that only me and Amanda are looking in the same direction out of all six of us.

We kids got dad a rc airplane. After a couple days the snow melted enough to give it a whirl

And dad loved Andy’s wii almost as much as Andy. He got his own recently – and so did we! I mean wii!

Dad whaled Andy on both tennis and boxing

Addison is getting cuter everyday! Read about Kristin’s family on her site.

All three Waterhouse kids teethed on this Sesame Street finger puppet.

There was a bonfire party at the Graves house. Ben was in heaven with their dogs

Later in the trip we were able to give the plane a proper run. I think it took two trips to the hobby shop to replace parts, but we had a great time flying.

**Love mom’s face in this shot

**zoom in to see Dad watch his plane take a nose dive! This was a hilarious lucky shot.

Mom and dad have a fantastic aquarium in their office. These shrimp are fun to watch

At the end we had a beautiful drive back over the mountains.

We left later than planned because of more snow on the front range. I was spoiled with presents, got to see a lot of friends and family, and came back thoroughly relaxed. Merry Christmas.

How did there ever become a show that has fart jokes for Ben and musical references for me? I’m not sure, but I’m so glad Family Guy is still on the air! Last night in the Road to Rupert episode, they gave 2 1/2 minutes (10% of the show really!) to a musical gag. They took the footage from Anchors Aweigh and put Stewie in for Jerry the mouse. Stewie and Gene Kelly dancing together! I almost fainted 🙂 Here’s the clip in case you missed it:

My friends in Brooklyn have made a splash on Myspace with a music video:

We have no idea how this happened, but the “Earth Versus the World” music video has reached the top of the MySpace.com video section today, reaching almost 8000 hits as of this writing. Here’s a link to the MySpace page just so you can see it in all it’s glory.

Congratulations!

Sigh. My life is so suburban I could puke.

View them here.

My thoughts:

Abigail Breslin is up for best supporting actor?? She’s 7! And she didn’t do anything remarkable in the film but act like a 7 year old!

The art direction category is really interesting. Diverse films.

I hope An Inconvenient Truth wins best documentary just so Gore can run his campaigns with the tag “Academy Award winner Al Gore . . .”

How did Volver get skipped for best foreign? I thought it was sure to be a standoff between it and Pan’s Labyrinth?

If Dreamgirls doesn’t win best song it will be truly sad (only because they hold 3 out of the 5 nominee spots).

Click? Click is up for Best Make-up???!!!! Give me a break!

A lot of variety overall, good. It’s boring when the same 5-7 films fill every category. I’m pleasantly surprised The Prestige is up for a few things. Even Borat squeezes in. I’m sad to see Marie Antionette only up for Costumes.

according to this article. As a budding expert on depression, I recommend a hearty dose of cat videos (at least that’s how I spent my lunch hour). May I suggest:

Soothing cat

Do I laugh or cry cat

Unusual cat

Biscuit making cat

Circus cat

Clever cat

Acrobatic cat

Kind cat

Deliver cat

Feel better now?

Hello! I’m not dead, I swear. Just very busy and ill.

After an awesome trip to Disney World I got a head cold that took me out for several days. I should be back soon with more pictures and notes from our journey (and Christmas) (boy, I’m far behind).

The presents keep coming for me this year! My parents thoughtfully let us decide what we wanted for Christmas, and just gave us the money to make it happen. Based on how frequent I take and post pictures, and the fact that my Fujifilm finepix camera was 2 megapixels, 4 years old, and slow functioning, a new digital camera seemed like the perfect thing to spoil myself. After much research and store searching, say hello to my new Canon Powershot SD600.

In addition to the gorgeous 2.5 LCD viewer it has 6(!) megapixels and lots of manual functions. The zoom is only 3X optical, but I didn’t really use it much, and with the outrageous resolution I can do plenty of digital zooming and cropping in post if needed.

I love my fujifilm, and I hope to use it occasionally still as a back-up camera, as it has nice 6x optical zoom and runs on regular batteries instead of a built-in. But the other reason I wanted a new camera is that my fujifilm is bulky. The compact models are much better for travel, something I tend to do a lot. My new canon is about the same size as my photo ipod.

Sample awesomeness:

All were taken without a flash. Check out that dim restaurant! It was darker than it appears, I wouldn’t have even tried to take a picture with my old camera. Thanks Mom and Dad!

I realize now that these images are taking way too long to upload. I’ll fiddle with blogger settings to get them into more manageable sizes for posting.

My other present from my folks that I bought myself is . . . .

a little fishy! Mom got me this sweet wall aquarium at mod livin’.

She has no idea 🙂

(a little late 🙂

I have a lot of pictures that I never posted. Here they are in particular order (yes, because I’m lazy).

I painted a portrait for the big empty space on the kitchen wall. I pumped up the contrast on this picture, then used a projector to draw the outlines. A week of painting later, and she’s done!

Bread pudding made from chocolate sourdough.

She really puts up with a lot 🙂

Julia and I hosted a cookie decorating party. I forgot to take pictures of the cookies, but here’s the braciole I cooked.

The fantastic No-knead bread recipe from NY Times.

My favorite holiday cookie – Big Soft Ginger Cookies

Lots of Scrabble. I had a 4 game streak of wins! This game was my favorite played, my winning word was koala.

Finally! We got rid of that extra washer in our basement. Hurrah!!!

Delicious Ham sandwiches leftover from Thanksgiving (I haven’t posted photos in a while!)

Checkerboard cookies.

Yea for waterproof mascara when you’re chopping onions!

An earlier snow storm, I layered up two pairs of socks, legwarmers, long johns, and waterproof pants to visit the library on foot.

I wish our neighborhood had better sidewalks.