January 30, 2006

One down, eleven to go


January is already behind us - wow - and I'm exhausted. Shannon and Daphne spent the last ten days with us and we undertook some serious house maintanience with them. Scraped, sanded, primered, and repainted our deck which was getting to be a:



  • hazard

  • embarassment

  • ugly dilipidated monstrosity


Looks fantastic. When we weren't swaeting in the tropical January sun we had a Kung Hee Fat Choi, lots of surf and watched a lot of TV on the he-yew-guh plasma that we snagged thanks to Kim's mondo bonus this past year

Aunty and Uncle enjoying the newly refinished deck
Jake and Aunty Daph-uh-knee
Aunty Daphne and the little Chinese kids
Ready for Chinese New Year
Lily checks out the freshly painted lanai
Everybody was kung-fu fightin' !
NOTE: We do not require labor from guests....often
Well it was head high for short people
DW misses the whole point
Jacob, if you are going to chop furniture, please wear your helmet
After
Lily Evans - self portrait
Lily working on her quilt
Before
New Years = Bouliabaisse !
Can I eat this Dad?
Throwing water
Misty sunset

January 13, 2006

Time for a new look

Happy New Year !
We're back at work and school and still playing with our favorite xmas gifts. Hope everybody else has a great holiday season.
Along with the new year, it seemed a good time to give the blog a new look and feel. Hope people like it and if not, there's only 340 days or so till we change it again.


Speaking of xmas gifts, Grandpa Gene knocked the ball out of the park twice for the kids xmas gifts. He sent Lily a reusable vinyl Disney Princess dress up book and Jacob a ginormous Tonka front-end loader. Both kids had to be told "TIME TO OPEN OTHER PRESENTS.....ONE....TWO....!"


I'm currently bummed that my favorite movie reviewer, David Edelstein, is leaving my favorite online magazine, Slate, to go to New York magazine which is a real nightmare of design AND it's hard to tell whose reviews are whose (or is that who's are who's?). All good things must come to an end.


Other Slate news is their new feature on the meaning of life which is sorta hosted/directed/facilitated by Robert Wright who has a couple of really interesting books out, including Nonzero. Meaningoflife is a series of short interviews with scientists, theologians, philosophers, and other interesting people talking about what it's all about.