Christmas

Everybody was excited for Christmas, especially us parents. Here's a shot early Christmas morning right after Santa left.

As you can see, Olivia and Carmen both got bikes as their big Santa present, and they've been a big hit. I'll post more on that in a separate post later.

The girls had a great time opening their stockings and presents. They wanted to immediately play with everything they opened, so we took a leisurely pace and enjoyed every minute of it.

Damon had a great time trying to shove the entirety of Christmas directly into his mouth, preferably all at once. He was especially fond of the nuts.

In addition to bikes, the girls both got some more My Little Ponies, some movies ("Hiccup" is Carmen's favorite, Rudolph is Olivia's) and puzzles. Grandma Roper sent some fancy dolls, complete with several outfits and an armoire, that the girls have been happy to take care of.

Grandma Brown contributed a very life-like cat that they like to brush, and a mini frying pan for eggs that Olivia loves (we've had many many eggs since Christmas).

Carmen also got a pair of rain boots that she has worn pretty much every day since Christmas. She's too cute in them to make her wear anything else.

I got another lens (50mm) for my camera, a new GPS, and a wonderfully dork pair of bowling shoes (more on that later, hopefully). Amber's big gifts were a pressure cooker and a fancy globe (and a "cross puzzle" book from Olivia).

We had just enough time to open all our presents before going to church at 12:30, then we resumed the festivities upon returning home, where Olivia managed to eat enough candy to get herself sick. Here's a rare photo of her lying down while awake.

But despite that, a happy Christmas was had by all, and it will be sad to see the decorations go back into the attic and to get back to regular life again.

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we had Dan's family over for the reading of the Christmas story, with live reenactment! Damon was the unwitting baby Jesus, of course, Tristan and Carmen were Joseph and Mary, Olivia was an angel, and everyone else were wise men and shepherds, and Dan might have done duty as a donkey at some point.

Our costumes and productions keep getting better every year.  Afterwards we played Christmas songs with handbells, which went surprisingly well with the number of notes covered by small kids, then we sang Christmas carols around the piano.

And of course, we wrapped up by unwrapping one present each to whet everyone's appetite for Christmas morning.  Not that the kids needed any encouragement, they were very excited about Christmas.

Damon crawling

Ok, well, it's not quite actual crawling yet, but when tempted by choking hazards or expensive electronics, Damon has learned to army-crawl and wiggle himself to where he can do the most damage.

Christmas thoughts

Online shopping has got to be the best thing to ever happen to Christmas shopping. You can get lots of different kinds of presents all at one time, you don't have to deal with going to stores, and since you don't need the benefit of having the items right away (you have to wait until Christmas to open them anyway), the shipping time isn't even an issue.

The one thing online retailers haven't gotten the hang of yet is not completely giving away what's inside the box they send you. I bought a unique gift for Amber this year, one of those ones you'd never guess. The box arrived, as many do, while I was at work. I came home to find it with a blanket over it and Amber swearing she hadn't read anything. Upon closer examination I found that this box had a detailed description of its contents printed on it six times - once on each side and on two separate stickers. Luckily, they forwent the full-color glossy pictures (I did buy it during their Christmas sale after all).

If you have kids at home and no Christmas train, you're missing out. Ours has done countless laps already. Definitely worth the investment.

Our neighbor down the street worked all year on his Christmas light setup and now has one of those programmable light shows with radio broadcast, so the lights do cool things to the music. We've had pretty warm weather the last couple days so we've walked over with a handheld radio several nights this week to watch (and dance) to the music.

The family next door to him must have been trying to keep up with the Joneses because they got a 21-foot inflatable snowman to go along with their lights and other sundry yard decorations. I literally LOLed the first time I saw it because it is so ridiculously huge.

Christmases are getting more and more fun as the kids get older. We're entering the golden age for Christmases, probably for at least ten years or so until we start getting surly teenagers.

Christmas train

I finally got around to putting up the last "Christmas" decoration.  I picked up a few extra piece of track at the model train show a couple months ago (that I apparently I didn't blog about... it was fun!) and I was able to expand it a little this year.

Thanksgiving

I'm a little late reporting on Thanksgiving, but as you'll see, I have an excuse.

I combined some vacation days with the Thanksgiving holiday and took that whole week off of work. I like to have some kind of project to keep me busy (and give me an excuse to buy power tools) when I'm home for that long, so I decided I was going to make a shadow box.

I bought a miter saw and router among other things and got to work. I got about this far by the time I ran out of vacation.

I'll post more about this later when I actually finish it. The reason I didn't finish and why this post is so late is because Amber wanted some help making an idea she had for Christmas presents. So I busted out the jig saw and whipped out few of these.

It's an advent calendar, made of wood, with little nails sticking out. Each day you unwrap a little wood disc "present" and hang it on the tree like an ornament to tell the story of Jesus' birth.

I wanted to wait until everyone had received their tree before I blogged about it. But don't get any sneaky ideas you lucky recipients, I pixelated the later ornaments so they will still be a surprise!

Thanksgiving itself we spent with friends. We got together with two other families in our ward and joined forces to make a delicious meal. We entertained ideas of playing games afterwards, but kids, football, conversation, and late desserts filled our evening instead.

We didn't do our Christmas decorating the day after Thanksgiving like usual because of the advent calendars, instead putting up things here and there are throughout the next week. We let the kids decorate the Christmas tree.

They weren't much of a match for our 9-foot tree, but they tried their hardest to put all the ornaments on, even if some of the lower branches got a little crowded.

We still haven't gotten around to fixing it yet, so our tree still looks pretty much like this.

I thought I'd missed the window of good weather for putting up the outside lights after the rain brought cold weather with it the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but I got off work early the next Friday after a holiday luncheon to find the weather was too perfect not to be outside. I put up the lights in a t-shirt (on Dec 2) and even got a bit hot when the sun was shining on me, then Olivia and Damon helped me rake the pine needles in the front yard.

Damon wasn't very helpful, but he was very cute and had a great time chewing on pine needles.

November kid update

It seems like I've been having a harder time blogging lately. Probably not at all connected with the recent blocking of all social media sites at work. So here's a recap of what I have in picture form of the non-holiday portions of November.

Damon has been growing up quickly lately. He's right at that stage where babies get kind of fun. He's been sitting up for a few weeks now.

He's also very much into solid foods and gobbles down anything that comes near his mouth, be it toy, food, or foot.

He's also getting very mobile. He rolls all over, and is starting to get up on his hands and knees, but is only sliding backwards at this point. Perhaps that's for the best with Christmas around the corner. And of course, he loves to jump.

At this point with Olivia and Carmen it's hard to talk about the one without the other. They are best friends and love to play together. Some friends recently donated their outgrown My Little Pony collection and it was like Christmas a month early at our house.

I think Amber already posted that picture on her blog, but here's a behind-the-scenes look at them playing with the My Little Pony motorcycle/car that I resurrected from the dead.

And here's a fashion-police mug shot of the girls after they dressed themselves one day. Such style.

Somewhere between the first video and the second, Amber had had enough of Carmen's shaggy hair and gave her a cute bob cut. Carmen's been kind of terrible-two lately, but we'll just pretend she's always like this.

And in case you were wondering what Damon looks like up close and slobbery, here's a final picture.

Oliviaisms

When describing Olivia, it is impossible to overemphasize how much she talks.  She has so much she wants to say that she's starting to mumble and clip off the ends of her words in her haste to get all those words out.  She wears out babysitters (fresh ears) by jabbering at them non-stop for a couple hours.

I have to admit, I don't actually hear some of what she says until a few seconds afterwards when my brain finally processes what she said.  Among all the inane chatter, here are some Oliviaisms I've collected in the last couple months.

Me: What did you learn in school today?
Olivia: I can't think about it because Carmen hit me in the brain with a book

[Out of the blue]
Olivia: They say Medicare a lot on TV.  Medicare Medicare Medicare.

[While modeling Halloween costumes with Carmen]
Olivia: Who do you think is cuter?
Me: You're both so cute I can't decide.
Olivia: I can.  It's me.

Idea: Salsa Bowl

This is an idea I've had so many times (every time I eat salsa, actually) that I was sure I'd blogged about it before. Apparently not. In any case, I can't claim royalties on this one, because it's already being sold on ThinkGeek here. It's kind of expensive for a bowl, but I wouldn't complain if I got one as a present.

Jury Duty

I received my very first summons for jury duty a few weeks ago.  To be honest, I'd been a little miffed that I'd never gotten summoned before, so I was excited to get to try it out.  Leave it to the court system to disappoint me.

I went in on Friday morning, sat in a big room for a while (free wifi!), turned in my paperwork, sat around some more, listened to the district clerk, sat around some more, walked around a little, sat around some more, then got told that (presumably) none of the lawyers wanted to have their cases be broken up by the Thanksgiving holiday, so the vast majority of us were free to go.

So that was that, I didn't even get to the selection stage or see or hear anything remotely interesting about any cases.  Judging by the cheers that went up when we were released, however, my disappointment seemed to be in the minority.  I guess other people like going to work?

Halloween

Halloween has come and gone and Amber once again had too much fun creating costumes.  Luckily, Halloween is a two-week event around here, so the kids had plenty of chances to wear their outfits.  Olivia got to wear hers at her cousin Aaron's birthday party, and they both wore them to "Zoo Boo" at the Houston Zoo, the ward trunk-or-treat, and Halloween night itself.

We got free tickets to the Zoo Boo from work (we already have zoo passes, but this included lunch!).  They had trick-or-treat stations and some fun games and activities.

When asked what she wanted to be for Halloween, Olivia responded, "A red bird," so that's what she was.  Carmen became an owl, and Damon was an egg to complete the bird theme.  I thought Olivia's outfit with the wings was cooler, but Carmen won out in the cute department and got the most comments.

By the time Halloween night finally came, Olivia was bouncing off the walls and acting crazy and that was before she got candy.  They both seemed to have a lot of fun and returned quite happy with their piles of candy.

Carrying on the Brown tradition Part 2

Here's Carmen following in the footsteps of Olivia and many others before her.

Fall is here

We had our first day of fall today! I don't care what the calendar says, it has been summer here for about 5 months, so I was delighted to put yesterday's high of 90 degrees behind me and enjoy some actual fall weather. When I got home Amber had already opened all the windows to air out the house and I changed into long pants instead of shorts for the first time in ages. I'm excited to feel some cool, brisk air again and bundle up a little, and for the "holiday season" (greetings!) coming up. Good bye summer. I'm sure we'll meet again soon enough.

Kid videos

I haven't been good at keeping up with videos.  Here are two representative videos from the last couple months.

The first is Olivia and Carmen towing their toys with their tricycles around the kitchen.



And this is Amber making Damon laugh.

Attack of the Killer Spam Robot

I recently encountered this phrase on a webform captcha:

To ensure that you are a real person and not a spam robot,

please answer the following math problem:

I had to laugh thinking about how language has changed in not too many years.  Someone 30 years ago would have thought the author of this was completely bonkers.

Galveston

Last year we rented a place on the beach for a long weekend and enjoyed it so much we did it again this year.  Last week we drove down to Galveston on Friday morning, got a bite to eat, then spent a few hours on the beach before checking into the beach house we rented.

Carmen had a great time at the beach, but Olivia nearly had a full-on panic attack because she was afraid the ocean was going to come and wash away all of our things (which I had put a good distance above the high tide mark), but we eventually got her into the water.

The beach house was pretty nice, with the glaring exception that we did not have, nor did we get after calling the owner several times, the wireless internet we were promised.  Grrr.

On Saturday we went to the historic Strand district of Galveston.  They have lots of old buildings, interesting stores, and museums to look at.  Here's a building that survived the devastating hurricane of 1900 (lower plaque) and that also shows the high water mark of the flooding from Hurricane Ike (upper plaque).

We also stopped by the Railroad Museum, where we had fun taking pictures with these guys in the lobby (a restored train station).

And we took a look at the bay and pier area, where we found the historic ship Elyssa.

The historic buildings on the Strand weren't as cool as I had hoped, but the Bishop's Palace did not disappoint.  It's a mansion on Broadway built in 1892 by a rich Galvestonian lawyer and politician that was subsequently sold (basically given) to the Catholic church to be used as the Bishop's house.

It's beautiful on the outside, as you can see, and the inside is even better.  We took the tour (no pictures allowed, unfortunately) and the whole interior is covered in beautiful hand-carved hardwood, stained-glass windows and really cool architectural features, like the first known instance of recessed electric lighting.  We're thinking about buying it for our summer home.

We spent Saturday evening at the beach, but I have no photographic evidence.

On Sunday we attended church at the Galveston Ward, and it started to rain during church.  We played in the beach house after church, then after the rain died down we went out in the evening for a walk on the beach.  I opted not to bring my camera, because it was still raining a little, and of course it turned into a beautiful night, with a colorful sunset in one direction and a huge rainbow going out over the ocean in the other.  Here's the view from my camera phone.

We had the beach to ourselves (literally) on Monday morning for one last chance to build sand castles.

The kids had a great time and it was hard to drag them away.

In fact, Carmen was having so much fun she forgot to, uh, well... I have a great picture but it's too inappropriate to post on the blog, but suffice it say the trail of brownish-orange stuff you see in the following picture is not mud.

It wasn't actually too hard to clean up, however, since in a gag-inducing act of service the seagulls started to eat it up like doritos.  State bird of Utah everybody!

All in all, a fun weekend at the beach.

Holiday weekend

We didn't really plan anything for our three-day weekend, mostly because I hate the thought of battling the inevitable crowds anywhere remotely fun, but it ended up being a great time to get some stuff done I should have done a long time ago.

On Saturday I dropped the blue car off at the dealership to have them fix the transmission, which had started to "judder" at low speed. It was something I'd been meaning to do for months, but it was good timing, because the big plastic splash guard under the car decided to fall off on my way to work on Friday, and was being held on with zip ties. Plus, since I didn't have to work on Monday there was no rush to get the car back.

After dropping off the car we ate at the Humble Inn in downtown Humble since we were close by and Amber had always wanted to try it. The food was pretty good and it has great Texas ambiance and a decor. We'll have to take our next visitors there.

After lunch we went bowling, where we had lots of fun, but the prices have us seriously considering purchasing our own bowling shoes. We had the bumpers up and a ramp for the girls and, I'm ashamed to say, with some aiming assistance Carmen was the winner. It's a good thing we were at "Humble" Lanes.

Sunday was my aforementioned day of resting in nice weather. We also had a failed video chat attempt with Grandma Anne, which spurred me to thing number two that I should have done a long time ago.

After mowing the lawn on Monday we loaded up the van and headed over to our nearest big box electronics retailer and bought a new dual-band wireless n router. The one I'd been using was embarrassingly ancient and to my chagrin, some of the problems I had been cursing our internet provider for magically went away after I got this hooked up. I had a sneaking suspicion this was going to happen. Again, I should have done it a long time ago.

After playing with my new toy for a while, we ended the day by picking up the blue car. The transmission was fixed for free under extended warranty and the splash guard was salvageable so I just had to pay $27 for some new bolts. Not a bad way to end the weekend.

The end is near

I think summer may finally be coming to an end! I haven't blogged anything for a while because it feels like all we've done is sit inside being hot to avoid going outside and being super-duper hot.

Houston set every record in the book this summer in regards to heat. We had 24 straight 100+ degree days in August and 43 100+ degree days overall (so far), breaking records from 1980. June and August were the hottest those months have ever been, and of course the humidity just makes everything worse.

To add to the misery, we're also in a terrible drought. We haven't gotten a 1" rain event since Jan. 24 (223 days ago) and it's been 361 days since the last 2" rain event. The last 8 months have been so dry you have to go back to 1917 to find second place and it is still more than 5" ahead of this year. And of course all the tropical storms are going east this year.

So on Sunday when I went outside for a second I was confused at this strange sensation I felt, of not feeling like I was suffocating in heat, but instead feeling... comfortable. I grabbed a lawn chair and a book and sat in a shady spot in the backyard for several hours enjoying being free of my indoor prison. I outlasted even the girls, who eventually gave up on me after a couple hours and went inside.

It was quite pleasant mowing the lawn this morning and I didn't end up completely soaked through with sweat like normal. I also noticed people playing in the up-till-recently abandoned neighborhood playgrounds today.

Summer may not be completely through rearing its ugly head this year, but I'm thankful it's stranglehold is finally releasing. I'm looking forward to Fall this year.

Big Tech

As you may have heard, Apple recently surpassed ExxonMobil as the most valuable company as measured by market capitalization.  At this time of economic uncertainty, it is unconscionable that Big Tech continues to take advantage of hard-working Americans by inflating prices on essential portable computing devices.  With the technological advances we have made in this country, it is absurd that we have to pay upwards of $800 per iPad (not to mention the astronomical costs of data plans) when Apple's past history clearly shows that their products will be obsolete within a year.  It's manipulative and deceptive and it's time for the government to discontinue its policies promoting Big Tech at the expense of the middle class and give some of the benefit of this windfall back to the people who need it most.  There is no reason Apple should be so obscenely valuable, and it's time they paid their fair share (or at least were paid fairly for their shares...).

Damon Pictures

We've had a busy summer and I've slacked on posting pictures of our baby.  Here's one from mid-June.

The last I blogged about him, we were ready to sell him to the gypsies.  I'm happy to report that shortly after our return from the Roper family reunion he repented of his fussy ways and has generally been a good happy baby for the last few months.  Here he is sleeping (without fussing) in late June.

He's very aware and loves to talk.  We often have long conversations of oohs and goos.  Here is in late July.

He always gives me a big smile when he sees me.  I'd feel special, but he smiles at everybody.  Here are some more recent pictures.

The one thing he doesn't like, apparently, is getting kissed by his mother.  Typical boy.