November Trip to Florida

Having been goaded into action by my cousin Megan on Facebook, I will now post pictures from our trip to Florida last month. :) We went there in early November to visit my grandparents and meet up with my parents who were also in town from KY. The beginning of the trip was a little more crazy than usual with Virginia running a fever of 102. However, she was a real trooper about it, and no one else caught anything, thank God. It was a short trip but really very nice. Ee got to spend a bunch of time with my grandparents and parents, visit with my great-uncle, and two great-aunts and my uncle who also live in Florida. We stayed in a condo with it's own beach and got to make several trips down to collect sea shells. I even made it out to see the sunrise one morning. It wasn't too hot, though there was more wind than usual with the hurricane passing through the gulf! No rain until our last evening. It was a little crazy, but I'm so glad we went. We even bought a wedding gift (at half the price of CA) and fitted Virginia's flower girl dress. :) The pictures below are divided into two sets... pics from our camera, and some from my Dad.

PICTURES 11/11/09 (Liz)
PICTURES 11/11/09 (Dad O)

Halloween, Papa Borths visits

The first set of pictures below have a few random, at home pics. And also our trip to the local pumpkin patch.

The second set has pictures from Halloween. This year for Chris's jack-o-lanterns we thought, "Hey, if Target can decorate for xmas on Halloween, then SO CAN WE!!" Virginia dressed as Supergirl and John, in a last minute decision, decided that he would wear his skeleton shirt and go trick-or-treating after all. :) During the afternoon before trick-or-treating, our neighborhood had a block party with food and crafts...a great way to cut down on the "is it time to GO yet?" whining.

Finally, there is a set of pictures from Papa Borths's recent visit to Moorpark. We had a great visit and Papa was even able to attend the assembly where Virginia received an award for being a good example of the virtue citizenship. You'll also see a picture of our new Hobitat tent. Now we're all set for some serious car camping.

PICTURES 10/27/09
PICTURES 10/31/09
PICTURES 11/16/09

August....September....October :)

Hi, all. Long time, no post. There are three big, month long sets of pictures to peruse. I labeled them instead of describing here since there were so many. Hope everyone out there is having a good fall so far. We have been having a good time with our new minivan (Moby), new windows, lots of swimming and a number of little weekend/day trips. The start of school has been going well also. Virginia loves 1st grade and has a really nice teacher. She is also taking religious education (in preparation for 1st communion in 2nd grade), dance class and will soon be starting rehearsals for the school holiday musical program again. AND she has homework every week. She loves to be busy. John has started preschool this fall with Miss Darlene. He loves her very much. "Miss Darlene is funny. She's very silly." He is also taking a little sports class through the parks and rec again. Chris will hopefully be posting some pictures and a description of his solo backpacking trip soon. I am keeping busy taking the kids around, volunteering in V's classroom, getting the hang of being a room mom and thinking ahead about all the holiday madness coming up soon!

PICTURES 8/30/09
PICTURES 9/23/09
PICTURES 10/4/09

Auntie Ellen--2009

This past week my sister Ellen was in town!! Our first order of business was a trip to Disneyland... and that's the only event I have any pictures of. :) We had a really lovely day. The kids were well-behaved, the lines were mostly short, the food was good, the weather was cool in the morning, warm for the afternoon. Just pleasant...we stayed 12 hours. After recovering on Friday, we had a fun girly afternoon on Saturday...Virginia, Ellen and I got pedicures together. Virginia got little flowers painted on her big toes and ring fingers and didn't want to wash her hands lest they rub off. :) Sunday we went to church, finally got Ellen back to El Cholo for lunch (we didn't make it the last two years), and then spent some time at the Getty Center. It was a beautiful day for taking the in the view, the gardens and some famous artwork. There was an exhibit of French bronze statues that was very cool (Louis XIV, Cardinal Richilieu, Voltaire...) and it's always amazing to see Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne, etc. in person. Even when you're hauling around a very antsy 3 year old. We also managed to get some baking in...always important.

PICTURES 7/31/09

Moby, etc.

Check out V boogie-boarding, more playing trains and our new minivan!! It is a big, white 2009 Kia Sedona. We call it "Moby". My sister Ellen and I thought "Vanna White" was a pretty good name too, but Chris wouldn't go for it. :) We have also named our silver Civic "Squirt". We have been enjoying the spaciousness of Moby and the ability to carry more than 4 people...even though Chris did make Ellen a little car sick in the back seat. And it is definitely more challenging to park Moby than Squirt! But we're learning to swing wide. So come on out and see us... we can drive you around!

PICTURES 7/26/09

Weekend in Long Beach

In this set of pictures there are a few of V & J with their friends Olivia and William playing in the water in our backyard, followed by a bunch of pics from our little trip to Long Beach this weekend. We attended the wedding of an old friend who grew up in KY, lived in our dorm at UK, attended Berkeley for grad school and who has now married a girl from SoCal! So, in general, he's been following us around for years! It was so nice to be able to attend the wedding here in town. They were married on the beach and the flowers, in particular, were lovely, having been brought back personally from Hawaii by the bride's grandparents. The gold circles you'll see are the traditional 1000 paper cranes, glued together to form a beautiful design. You'll also see that there was no wedding cake, but instead...wedding pies!! It was a lovely wedding and we had a good time. The kids had fun at the wedding, but maybe more fun staying in a hotel room for the night. :) On Sunday, we headed over the Downtown Disney and walked around there for a while before heading back home. As an aside, the traffic was SO BAD on the 405 going to Long Beach that we got off the freeway ASAP and ended up doing Mulholland Drive. It's a gorgeous drive with sweeping vistas of the LA basin and Hollywood hills. You can see why people would pay millions to live up there.

PICTURES 7/19/09

Chris's Gordon Conference Trip

During the middle part of our trip back East this summer, Chris attended a Gordon Conference at Salve Regina University on the coast of Rhode Island. At the conference he stayed in the college dorms, ate in the cafeteria, attended lectures and poster sessions and socialized with his chemistry colleagues. His mornings and early evenings were taken up with the science, but most afternoons, he had some free time to spend touring. Included are pictures of the summer mansions dotting the cliffs right on/near the university campus and from his trip to Newport, RI. Of course, as most of you know, Chris's FAVORITE unofficial conference event was the cliff diving! One afternoon, since it had finally stopped raining, Chris and four other attendees hiked out to a well-known cliff-diving spot. Chris jumped twice (about 15-20 ft). The jumping in was apparently no problem...it was the getting out again that caused some trouble. Since it had been storming the past 24 hours, the swell was quite high. After his first jump, while Chris was trying to get hold of the rocks and climb out of the water, the waves pushed him up against the rocks. He hung on tight, but got some nasty scrapes on his arms, legs, torso and fingers. There's a nice picture of that too. :) After his second jump, he found a better method...letting the waves lift him up. Chris had great fun telling all our family members about this adventure once he returned to KY/OH and showing off his wounds! The final pictures in this set are our friends from college, Dawn and Greg and their two children, Sawyer and Gwen. Chris realized (via Facebook) that Dawn and Greg lived quite close by and was able to drive out to visit them before catching his flight home. If you'd like to hear more about the chemistry he saw at the conference, you'll have to ask him. :)

PICTURES 7/3/09

2 Weeks Back East

All right, there is one gigantic photo album attached to this one blog entry for our entire trip! Good luck.

First up we have our day of boating on Indian Lake with Mom & Dad B, Emily, Bill, Jenny, Ethan and Adam! It was a gorgeous day and the kids spent 6+ hours on the pontoon boat Chris's parents rented for us all! We drove around the lake, pulled into a lakeside restaurant for lunch, and stopped to play and swim at a beach on the lake. There are also some pictures and a video of all the cousins playing in gma and papa's backyard. There are no pictures, but we took a couple of pleasant walks from their house down to the lake shore where the kids had fun throwing rocks, bark, etc. into the water. On Saturday, Chris took his dad to see Star Trek as a belated Father's Day event.

After Indian Lake, Chris caught his plane for Rhode Island where he attended a Gordon conference all week. There will be a separate post of his pictures from the conference and a description of his cliff diving adventure!

The kids and I headed down to NKy where we had a quick bridesmaid dress shopping session with Em and Erin after Mass and breakfast. Then it was off to a picnic supper at the park with Heidi and another old friend from grade school and high school.

On Monday, we joined Jenny, Emily, Bill, Adam and Ethan for a trip to the Cincinnati Zoo. I personally enjoyed seeing the elephants get a bath and watching a peahen and her chick walk around under the table where we were eating lunch! The kids loved the kid-size cave near the polar bears and I think we all enjoyed two train rides around the zoo.

The next several days were spent visiting with Sarah who was kind enough to drive up from Lexington, taking my dad to see Star Trek for Father's Day, getting groceries for the wedding shower my sisters were giving Erin and making Erin's Mickey Mouse shower cake. We got to spend some nice time with "she" and "the papa who lives here" (i.e. Ellen and my dad) and got to meet my mom and all my sisters at St. E's hospital for lunch. You'll see some pictures of our portrait-taking session with Grandma Otte and all her great-grandchildren: Virginia, John, Ian, Lorelai and the newest baby, Aurora.

Chris returned that Friday, beaten up from his conference, but having had a good trip. The 4th of July was a wet day but we still made it to the Ft. Mitchell parade where we saw lots of fire trucks and the kids got tons of candy. In the afternoon, there was Erin's bridal shower, which Virginia and I attended while Chris and John got to hang out with Papa, Aunt Jenny and Ethan! The shower went very well and then all the boys came back for a 4th of July family party. Em had bought sparklers and we managed to light them by keeping out of the rain on the front porch! We rounded out the holiday with a trip to emergency room for Chris's nose, broken by John.

The next day we headed down to Lexington to visit Ben and Erin Gold and their twins, whom we hadn't seen since the day they found out they were pregnant with two instead of one. :) Then back up to Cincinnati to hang out at Rob and Julie's house. Uncle Rob and Aunt Julie very thoughtfully bought water guns for everyone to play with and there is a great video of J and Chris shooting each other in the face. :)

That next Monday was Erin's 21st birthday and we all celebrated by going to Miyako, a japanese restaurant that took over an old Bob Evans. It is decidedly weird to eat sushi in an old Bob Evans. We then had strawberry short-birthday-cake and Em, Ellen, Rick, Erin and Tyler and I go to go to a movie.

On our final day in town, we went to visit Aunt Mary and take her out for some Skyline. Then it was packing, a quick dinner at Frisch's and off to the airport.

Sorry if I forgot anything! It was a lovely long visit. Thank you all.

PICTURES 7/7/09

June/July whatnot

Hi, all. Here's some summer whatnot photos. In the 6/22 set you'll see V sleeping in her princess tent. She was not liking sleeping in her big bed all alone, but she was cool with sleeping on the floor, inside the tent. :) She slept in there for weeks. In the 7/14 set, there are photos of some stuff we got at IKEA including the canopy we got for V's bed so she'd sleep in it instead of her tent. And her new bright red big girl desk with matching chair. She loves it and had lots of fun organizing her drawing paper, markers, etc. Also there are pictures of Virginia's sunflowers. She started the seeds in a plastic cup at school and when she brought them home we planted them in the garden. They've obviously done well! We're thinking of having a whole sunflower forest next year! Finally there are some pics of the kids in a giant outdoor work of art at the LACMA (which we visited last week on it's free admission Tuesday). They had lots of fun weaving in between the strands of plasticware. They also quite enjoyed the modern art paintings inside the museum and had a good time interpreting each painting. "It's a firework! It's a pig! It's a microwave!"

PICTURE 6/22/09
PICTURES 7/14/09

First part of June

Here are a bunch of pictures from the end of May, first part of June. There's a bunch of random stuff, but you will see a bunch from our big tree getting trimmed. It was wicked cool...two guys with chain saws on their belts used only ropes to scale our tree and trim it. Then we have pictures from John's last class at Horizon Hills with Ms. Georgette. Next fall, he'll be heading to preschool! And finally there are a set of pictures from Peach Hill's final spirit assembly. Our principal challenges the school to record a certain number of reading minutes every year. If they meet their goal, she has to do some previously agreed-to stunt. This year, she had to go in the dunk tank and all the top readers from each grade got to have a go. Virginia got to throw the ball...she and all the other K's missed, but the last kid in line got to hit the button anyway!! It was very funny. The school read 3.5 million minutes this year, btw.

PICTURES 6/10/09

Grandma and Papa's visit

Whoa, end of school year craziness has made me late in posting these pictures! Almost 3 weeks ago Chris's parents were in town for a great long weekend with us. The first order of business of course was hitting the In-N-Out Burger. After that, we kept busy going to the beach, cooking out, visiting Pasadena (Eaton Canyon and Caltech) and just talking and visiting. As always, we appreciate it so much when people come to see us in California! Soon (in less than two weeks!) we'll be seeing everyone back East...can't wait for some heat, humidity, bugs and maybe even a thunderstorm!!

PICTURES 5/24/09
PICTURES 5/25/09

Beach and Boat

Hello, all. Back at the beginning of May we spent a really lovely afternoon at the beach with our friends the Vazquezes. Another mom and daughter, friends of the Vazquezes, came as well. It was so nice for V & J to have their friends Olivia and William, and a new friend, Ella, to play with! They ran in the water, dug in the sand, played with a giant kelp that had washed ashore, hung out in the beach tent... At first they wouldn't touch the kelp, but after a while, the girls were jumping rope with it! See pictures from 5/9/09.

Last Thursday, John and I went with our Horizon Hills class on a cool field trip. The class chartered a boat ("The Dreamer") to take us on a short cruise around Ventura Harbor, then out into the ocean to a buoy where sea lions hang out! We were only out in the ocean for a few minutes, but you can really tell the difference between the harbor and the open sea. I didn't feel sick at all, but I'm quite glad it was a calm day. On the way back to the dock we all sang "Slippery Fish"...hence the hand motions. :) The lady in the pink coat near the end of the pics is Ms. Georgette, our teacher. Also check out the yacht called the "Erin Marie"! I just had to take a picture of it for my sister! Whose name, of course, is Erin Marie. See pictures from 5/28/09.

PICTURES 5/9/09
PICTURES 5/28/09

Virginia's (second) 6th Birday Party

Last Saturday we had our second (and final) birthday party for Virginia and her kindergarten friends. Since they were different people, we had much the same party...making pizzas again. It was very nice ...not too many kids, but almost all of Virginia's favorites were there. The kids ran around, spun each other in the spinning chair, made hats, made pizzas, had cake and did a great job on the pinata! It took three times through the line (of maybe 10 kids) to break the thing! And nobody in that line had a weak arm. But then Virginia herself busted it. In fact, she decapitated it. :) Chris wanted to keep this paper unicorn head but I thought it was creepy and tossed it. Finally we had cake...pizza cakes!...and opened Virginia's gifts. Then it was time to go. A very nice party.

PICTURES 4/25/09

Beach, Birthday Party, Backyard

The pictures linked to here are from the day over Virginia's spring break when she, John and I spent a lovely day at the beach. It was a little chilly, but that never bothers the kids. The tide was exceptionally far out that day--the lifeguards weren't even letting people out in the water because the land was dropping off so close to the shore. Because it was out so far, there were many pretty rocks exposed and we had fun collecting them. Well, V and I did. I got the ones on the sand, she got ones from the water's edge. John spent his time hurling them back into the sea. Narrowly missing V's head a few times. That boy! As soon as possible we are going to divert his energy to more constructive pursuits like martial arts and baseball.

There are also pictures from a birthday party we attended at an indoor playground called Bright Child. This one (the first of three that week) was for three of our neighbors' four children.

Finally there are pictures from a play date we had at our house with friends from V's preschool. It was one of our really hot-90 degree-days last week so we made popsicles and got out the water toys.

Enjoy!
PICTURES 4/24/09

Easter Sunday

Pictures from Easter Sunday...also Virginia's 6th birthday! First, witness Virginia's new candy apple red Fender Squier 3/4 size electric guitar. It rocks. We started our Easter Sunday quite early with an Easter egg hunt. The Easter bunny did things a little differently this year. Normally, he leaves a trail of clue eggs around the house that lead each child to their Easter basket. This year, Easter bunny said that he had hidden all our real Easter eggs (dyed and glittered!) around the house along with ONE clue egg for each child to find their basket. After all the eggs and baskets were found, Virginia said she wanted to open all her birthday presents! She gots lots of great stuff (thank you to everyone) including some Care Bear dolls and videos, some cute clothes, new crafts, jump ropes, and a Cinderella play dress! Next we attended Mass. Then we hurried home, packed our picnic lunch and headed to the LA Zoo...along with many many other people. It was super-crowded but we had fun making and wearing our bunny ears around all afternoon. After the zoo, we stopped off at Red Robin for supper. We were lucky we got there early since they were closing at 6pm for the holiday. There were very few people there and only one waiter...who was sitting and chatting with his girlfriend and parents when he was not serving! It was kinda fun and you can watch a video of John dancing around at the end of the meal while Virginia was having her birthday sundae. There weren't enough waiters, our guy said, to do the birthday song. :( When we got home from THAT, we quickly assembled and iced a bunny birthday cake...but we totally forgot to sing! Oh well. Virginia will be having another birthday party NEXT weekend for her kindergarten friends. All in all, a very full but fun day celebrating our beautiful daughter.


The pictures will repeat themselves a bit because both Chris's pics and mine are here together.

PICTURES 4/12/09

Fillmore train, classes, etc.

Here are some older pictures that got overlooked the last time I posted here. First there are a bunch of pictures from the trip John and I took with his Horizon Hills preschool class on the Fillmore train. It's a real full-sized train that takes short trips (maybe 30-50 minutes) up and down the local train track. You go past beautiful mountains, orange and lemon groves (blooming at this time of year) and (when the track isn't being repaired) you can get off at a local fish hatchery and feed the fish. We had to drive to the hatchery, but it was close and really quite cool. The fish go NUTS when you throw the food pellets into the pools.

PICTURES 4/2/09

Beautiful Flowers

Here is a link to some more pictures from our visit to the Descanso Gardens. These pictures were all taken by Chris. There are some really beautiful flower pictures here...I think I'm going to have to make a photo collage.

PICTURES 4/4/09_Chris

Power Out and Proud of V!

Hi, all. Well, we had a pretty eventful couple of days this week. On Wednesday, about 5:30pm our electricity went out...right in the middle of my dinner preparation and laundry! It didn't come back on again until 4:45 AM. Luckily, the meatloaf was basically done, but we had to finish cooking some of the sides on the grill. As you see in the pictures, we did our bedtime routine by candle light. Which was pretty fun! And since it was not really cold , we didn't have to worry much. I was just a little annoyed that my load of laundry had to sit under water all night. We didn't lose any food in the fridge or freezers, so that was good.

On Thursday, Virginia had a very big day! She was named one of the Peach Hill students of the month exemplifying the core virtue "integrity". That same day, she also received a certificate for a free meal at Mimi's Cafe for having the most reading minutes in her class! Plus she celebrated her birthday at school that day and had dance class and got to choose Panda Bear for dinner! Big day for V!

Also in this set of pictures are some photos of John in his preschool class at Horizon Hills. And with his two best friends William and Billy.

PICTURES 4/10/09

Heidi!

Hi, all. Last weekend my very oldest friend, Heidi, came to spend the weekend with us! On Friday she took the train up from San Diego (where she was attending a conference) to Moorpark. Saturday we started our beautiful sunny day at the Descanso Gardens. The kids and I visited the gardens once before with Aunt Ellen and loved it...and we loved it again this year! It's not a very formal garden, though it is divided into themed areas. There is always something in bloom every month of the year and there is a real air of peace and beauty there. After a yummy lunch at Zankou Chicken (where they have the BEST garlic spread EVER), we headed home for a nap. But later in the afternoon, we headed out again to pick strawberries! We took a tractor ride out to the strawberry field and each picked a pound of berries. In the evenings, after the kids were in bed, Chris and I introduced Heidi to the joys of Guitar Hero! She rocked! Finally on Sunday, Heidi and I got to have a ladies-only lunch and go shopping!

PICTURES 4/4/09
PICTURES 4/5/09

Virginia's 6th and John's 3rd Birthday Party!

Yesterday we had a big party to celebrate Virginia and John's birthdays with many of our family friends. We made pizzas, decorated hats, ate cake and opened presents! Enjoy the pictures! I especially love Virginia's pink party dress and everyone wearing their little sunglasses. :)

Happy Birthdays, V & J!

PICTURES 3/28/09

Yeah, it's been a while.

Hi, all. It happens every year around this time, I think. I just can't seem to update the website during February/early March. Anyways, I'm back and have lots of pics to share. First, we have a few extra photos from our sledding trip on Valentines day (2/14/09_b). Then we have a bunch of "around the house" stuff (3/21/09) including taking down John's crib, building a new herb garden and planting our vegetable garden and Chris' outdoor fire pit. If you've been reading Chris' blog, you'll have seen some of these pics already...he's been much better about writing than I've been lately! I've added captions to a lot of the pictures since there are so many. Finally in the album 3/27/09, I have a picture of my birthday cherry pies and one of the beautiful roses Chris and the kids gave me. Also some pics of Virginia and her Care Bears cake since that is what I spent my whole birthday doing...decorating cakes! It was a nice way to spend the day. :) I will say that I'm pretty proud of the cakes this year...I managed to remain patient and not rush the prep, assembly or decorating...at least not until the very very end. Then, I will admit I lost it and was unable to do any writing. But I don't think they suffered much from that. I really enjoyed my new gel food coloring and was impressed by the deep red (it took a whole jar!), green and black I was able to make. I will also mention that since we were using Oreos on J's Cars cake (they look like tires!), I made the cake inside look like a big Oreo too. I don't think we have a picture of it, but the cake was chocolate-white-chocolate inside. I got the idea for J's cake from pictures on the internet and the idea for the M&M rainbow too. Chris has given me a cake decorating class for my birthday, so we'll see what I can manage after that. Roses? Fondant? Who knows!?


PICTURES 2/14/09_b
PICTURES 3/21/09
PICTURES 3/27/09

Valentine's Day Sledding

For Valentine's Day this year we decided to get together our motley snow gear and our brand new sleds and head up to Frazier Park to find some snow! We had been meaning to do it for, like, 4 years but never did. It's about an hour and a half drive from our house up into the mountains. It had just snowed the day before so there was plenty of snow on the ground, and still some hanging onto the trees and bushes. Very beautiful! Especially since it wasn't very cold...only 38-40 degrees. We had a marvelous time. Virginia fearlessly slid down the hills by herself, and John loved zooming down with Mom or Dad. Mom and Dad loved it too. Chris has already blogged on this trip, so check out his website for more pics and video.

PICTURES 2/14/09

Random February Stuff

Here are a few pictures from our February here. There're some pics of J and Chris playing trains (more on Chris's blog), a few pics of Chris and the kids washing the cars, and one picture of J and C watching the Superbowl.

PICTURES 2/1/09

Ventura Harbor

Last Sunday, we spent the day at Ventura Harbor. They have a huge marina where you can park your boat, or catch one to whale watch or visit the Channel Islands (a national park). There are also a bunch of restaurants where we didn't eat because they all take cash only and souvenir shops. One of the big reasons we went, however, was because a historically accurate replica of Christopher Columbus's ship the Nina was docked there. It is really a very tiny ship and it's hard to imagine actually crossing the Atlantic on it. The current crew have put in some modern conveniences like bunks, a kitchen and a modern compass. Plus they get to live in the hold area, while Columbus's crew slept, ate, etc. on deck all the time. The 1/18/09 pictures show our tour of the ship. There are also pictures of our afternoon at the beach near the harbor. It was super-windy...blowing sand up off the beach into our faces...but gorgeously sunny and warm and we all had a lovely time!

We found out while touring it that the Nina was leaving the next morning "at first light" and Chris decided it would be very cool to watch it sail out of harbor. So on Monday morning, he got up way before "first light" and headed out. The crew of the Nina interpreted "first light" somewhat less strictly than Chris did, however, and he ended up hanging out for several hours while they all stood around drinking coffee, getting groceries, then finally loading up a bunch of ice and getting under way. He was hoping to see the ship drop its sails and really sail away but it turns out she has a secret engine underneath and they used that even after they got out of harbor. Oh well. The 1/19/09 set of pictures are from the Nina's departure.

PICTURES 1/18/09
PICTURES 1/19/09

Holidays in KY and OH

On xmas night we flew out of LA to visit our family and friends in Kentucky and Ohio. After stopping at Chris's sister's house for the afternoon (and a nap for the boys), we headed down to KY to visit my family. We basically neglected to take ANY pictures until the very very end, so I will tell you that we had a great time and did lots of stuff including: have a big dinner party with my Mom, Dad, sisters, Grandma, two aunts, an uncle and several cousins, go to Jungle Jim's (the coolest grocery store in the world...or at least Ohio), and to the GAP outlet, hang out with the dogs, have dinner with my oldest friend, go bridesmaid dress shopping with all my sisters (for like, THREE hours!! It was so fun!) and open presents! We also managed to hit a couple of our favorite back-Midwest restaurants: White Castle, Skyline and O'Charley's.

Btw, if anyone else took any pictures of us, I'd love to get a copy!

Then we headed back up to Chris's sister's house in Columbus. We had a great time there as well with Mom and Dad, both Chris's sisters, brothers-in-law and our two nephews. On New Year's Eve we enjoyed a very big buffet of food, the brothers doing the traditional Deep Fry Everything and Anything, and some party hats and horns for the kids. We headed to Mom and Dad B's house for New Year's day and more presents. We finished up the week by heading to COSI, a hands-on science museum in Columbus. I personally thought the most fun, however, was had just playing with our two nephews and watching the four cousins play together!

Chris needs me to mention, for the benefit and jealousy of some of his coworkers, that we got to eat Tim Horton's doughnuts and bagels in Ohio. They were really yummy!

PICTURES 1/15/09

Holidays at Home

Here are some pictures from our Christmas in California. We opened all our presents to each other, and some that Gma and Papa B had brought out before the holidays. Since we were leaving on xmas night, we opened them all on Christmas Eve and since nobody, including Chris, could wait, we were done by about 8:30AM! Besides, I had to have time to do the laundry. :) The beautiful wooden signs with the kids' initials on them handmade by Chris were a big highlight. Apparently we didn't take any pictures (probably just video) of xmas morning and Santa. But the last few pics are of Virginia showing you around their new cardboard house that Santa left. He left a bunh of other nice stuff too...but you'll have to wait for the video.

PICTURES 12/25/08

A new computer, a new website.

Hi, all. Well, the difficult financial times and the fact that my MacMac could no longer handle the volume of digital music, pictures and video we were throwing at it has forced me to turn to the dark side and get a PC. :) Well anyways, I like our new HP (big monitor, real keyboard!) and Picasa has been doing a great job with all our digital pictures so far, so it's all good. Picasa likes to upload pictures to it's own web albums and I'm not going to fight it. So for now I will be replacing our old web page with this new blog and including links to Picasa web albums. Let's see how it goes! At the end of each post, I will type the word "PICTURES" and a date and link it to the album.