We are finally back home. Mercifully I don't have to go back to work until Wednesday. We had a great time on vacation celebrating Christmas with various friends and family and now it is great to be back in our own house. More on everything to come. Have a Happy New Year!
December 2007 Archives
The first time I saw a digital camera was in 1997 in Evansville while attending an InterVarsity Bible and Life conference. The couple who hosted me and 3 other students that weekend had an original Sony Mavica -- the kind that wrote files to a 3.5" floppy disk.
When I was in Germany, one of my fellow exchange students had a digital camera. The oldest digital picture I possess is courtesy of him and dates from early 1999.
Jamie and I bought our first digital camera -- a cheap RCA -- shortly before our oldest son was born over 6 years ago. We quickly traded up to a Canon Powershot A20 (2.1 megapixel) which has been our workhorse ever since. I haven't counted but I'm sure we have more than 5000 pictures stored on various hard drives, memories of the past 6 years. But after 6 years, many technological advances, and the development of some signs of old age in the A20, we decided it was time for a new camera. We paid over $400 for that Powershot A20 back in 2001; the new Canon Powershot A560 we just purchased cost less than $150 and is much nicer in every way. Such is technological progress. (Here I must note that the timing of the camera purchase is indepted to my brother Jesse and his generous Christmas cash gift to our family. Thanks, Bro!)
Hopefully this new camera will capture as many moments of joy as the old one. After watching some home movies today, I've also decided I need to get out the camcorder more often as well. It's been almost 2 years since I've used it, and that's just not acceptable!
Speaking of which, I have been informed that Ye Olde Blog will be getting an overhaul by the end of the year, courtesy of our superlative webmaster Dave (and thanks to MT for making a newer version freeware!). Part of the improvement will be the ability to add sound and video files to the blog, so look for that bit o' fun at this location in the near future.
We've gotten our first real snowfall of the year and it is a good one (at least, good for this area). We got maybe 2 inches overnight last night and it was really wet, but it was enough to make for some really fun play outside today. We made a snowlady with a snowbaby, but then the 2yo busted the snowbaby. Then we got into a snowball fight, and Jamie came out and tossed more than a few herself.
Eventually the 6yo took it upon himself to tackle the snowlady, and that was the end of our building. After that, it was a lot of snow flying everywhere. A good time was had by all, to be sure. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of our snowlady and her snowbaby before their untimely demise.
Sometime this afternoon it started snowing again, and now we've got 4+ inches on the ground and it looks like it will be snowing for a few more hours. Hopefully the roads will be clear enough for us to make it to church tomorrow, because tomorrow will be the last time we worship at our local church this year. Next week we head out East for Christmas and I'll be off work for 11 days! In the meantime, let it snow!
I was unaware that Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time series of books, died in September. I knew he had been fighting a blood disease for the past 2-3 years and had good days and bad, but I hadn't checked his blog since August or so. He will be missed. I started reading the series in 1997, at which point I think book 5 had just come out.
CNN is reporting that the 12th (and final) book in the series will be finished by another author. Apparently Jordan left behind enough notes about the plotlines to allow the story to be finished the way he intended it to be. This is a good thing. I am sure the book will contain an appropriate tribute to J.O. Rigney, Jr. (Mr. Jordan's real name).
I have been doing history lessons with the 6yo and 5yo 2 or 3 nights a week the past few weeks. We are using a curriculum called "The Story of the World." One of the activities it uses to make the facts stick in kids' heads is map work for each section. The curriculum starts out with the early river civilizations (the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley, the Nile River, and the Yellow River Valley) and so we have been learning about where those places are via maps we draw and color on.
After our session tonight I decided to pull out our world map and see if the kids could identify on it any of the places we had been talking about. They did a fair job considering the maps we were working with were in black and white and had no modern political boundaries on them, whereas the world map we have is in color, etc.
Then we started looking at other places on the map and talking about them. We found Sydney (which they know about from Finding Nemo) and Paris (knowledge courtesy of Ratatouille -- are you sensing a pattern here?), as well as places in the U.S. that are of special concern to our family (St. Louis, Philadelphia, Goshen, etc.).
After that, I started talking about other great rivers. I wondered out loud if we would study the civilizations around the Amazon River in South America. Immediately the 5yo blurted, "Like Amazon.Com!"
Yeah, we're that kind of family. Good grief!
Out of the close to 20 persons vying to be their respective parties' nominees as presidential candidates, there is exactly one person who has a fighting chance to win my vote: Mike Huckabee. Until the last week or so, he was a very long shot to win the Republican nomination. On the off chance that he does emerge the victor from the GOP primaries, I would take a long hard look at ending my personal boycott of the major party candidates at every level of government. Probably. But then, he is exactly the kind of person whom I would never expect to be able to win a major party nomination. I'm now officially interested in the 2008 presidential race. On the other hand, a Romney or Giuliani nomination would instantly set me back to casting my vote in protest for the strongest third-party candidate available, be he Libertarian, Green, Constitution, or other (but not Socialist or Communist -- I'm not that desperate for an alternative yet).
. . .we welcomed our youngest child into the family. Today he begins his second year of life, and boy is he a fireball. Our middle three children were all pretty quiet up through their 2nd birthdays. Not this one. Like his oldest brother, he is very vocal at one year old and has a piercing scream he uses to let all of creation know he exists. He is a very happy little boy, but never more than when he is being held (though unfortunately the "I want to be held" stage is already coming to an end all too quickly).
Here is the birthday boy with his mommy:
My not-so-evil twin Jacob and his wife Kristin are parents! (most of you probably know this already by now, but if not, links are provided). Congratulations to the whole family. Like many first births (and parenting itself, come to think of it) not much went according to plan and yet it all turned out in the end. Hopefully little Gabriel will be coming home very soon. Many blessings to the newly-enlarged family!
