Me Too, Iguana

Nicky doesn't want to get left out of the project praise this weekend. He also had a project to complete - a poster of Venus. He did a really nice job on it.

Why is he working on it on an unmade bed with unfolded laundry behind him? Well, to tell it like it is, Scott and I are sick. I've had congestion and coughing and sneezing and headaches and stuffed up ears and body aches since Friday. Scott's worse off, though. He ate some expired yogurt and ended up throwing up all night so now he's exhausted and his abdomen muscles are in pain. Considering all of that, it's pretty good that the laundry at least got cleaned, the house is clean except for our unmade bed, the kids' projects are done, groceries were bought, Sunday School was taught, nieces were watched overnight, and the kitty box for our caged cat was replaced. Along with runs to the store for Gatorade, saltines, new printer ink, and various other needful things.

Tomorrow I will probably go to work. Probably. Cause I think I might get more rest there.

Kairi's Rocking Animation Skills

Kairi created this stop-motion animation film using Powerpoint slides and Windows Movie Maker. She changed each slide a little tiny bit, and then saved all 200 slides as .jpeg images. She then used the images to create her movie. It was pretty irritating to her that over 200 slides only made a movie about 2 minutes long (and that was with some of the slides repeating 20 or 30 times so that the characters would dance, talk and sing). Still, not too bad for a thirteen year old screenwriter/animator/director!

It was a project for her science class about the rock cycle, but I'm sure you'll figure that out when you watch. (The video seems to be only sporadically working. If you're dying to see her project, let me know and I'll send you a DVD.)

Not Even Possible

It's not even possible that I just went to a meeting about choosing my daughter's high school classes.

Not even remotely possible.

This course catalog?

Optical illusion.

The whole "this-is-what-she-needs-to-take-to-get-into-college" business? Inconcievable.

'Cause there's just no earthly way Kairi is going to high school next year. I haven't even gotten used to her being a teenager yet.

In fact, didn't I take this picture of her yesterday?

Playoffs? Playoffs?

Who needs the NFL playoffs? (Granted, we might have a slightly different take on that if either of our teams had made it past the first round.) But thanks to the thawing temperatures Scott and Nick had their own playoff round in the backyard.

Granted, football is a bit odd when you have no defense. Or maybe it was no offence. Hard to tell at times.

Basically, it involved a lot of running, catching, and tackling - so that's close enough, isn't it? And I did mention it thawed, right? So it also involved a lot of mud.

While victory celebrations broke out often...

I think the final score may have been "who knows" to "who cares".

P.S. Yes, I know I still haven't figured out how to work my new camera. It was nearly dark, and I was taking pictures out of the second story window. I'll get there!

One Resolution Down

One of my New Year's resolutions was to finally finish my Disney trip report. I didn't include our Disney vacation on this blog since I didn't want to duplicate it in two places.

Our summer vacation story can be found here:

A MouseEars View of Grand Gatherings

Whew! Now all I have to do is read the Bible, catch up on my scrapping, and keep this blog up to date. (Cause there's just no way I'm going back to over 200 lbs, so that resolution is in the bag.)

By the way...

Like my new camera? From Christmas morning on, all the photos on the blog were taken with my new Kodak Z915. It's not exactly the camera I wanted, but it's a million times better than the cheapo replacement for my last camera, and at least several thousand times better than my last good camera. It has a 10x optical zoom, too.

I'm still figuring it out, so my pictures aren't great yet, but I've taken a few that were pretty much beyond the range of my previous cameras. Like a shot of Kai that's reasonably sharp in very low light:

And our Christmas tree without a weird orange glow:

And an extreme close-up of some Hershey kisses:

Maybe someday I'll get an even better camera, but for now I'm lucky enough to have a husband who knows that I can't go without a decent camera for very long! And this one is more than decent. Lucky me!

And My Resolutions, too

The new year is a time for reflection and to find a guidepost for future goals. But for some reason, I'm just not feeling any of that this year. I do know there are things that need to get done, and some places where I can improve myself, so I'll go with this:

1. Keep my weight down. Both Jenn and I lost a lot of weight this year, but we still have some left to go. I want to be able to step on the scale come January 1, 2011, and see a number that indicates a healthy weight.

2. Be more patient. With the children, Jenn, work, traffic, myself...

3. Fix up the house. Finish painting the halls and bathrooms and garage door. Clean up the yard. Tedious work, but I'd be happy when it was done.

4. Read the Bible and pray more. This is always on my list, but never seems to happen. This time, for sure!

Happy New Year!

We had a very low-key New Year's Eve. I've been feeling a bit under the weather this week, and I took a long afternoon nap after sleeping late. When I finally surfaced, we headed out to dinner (Lone Star) and a movie (The Princess and the Frog). I liked the movie better than dinner and I liked dinner quite a lot.

When we left the movie, it was sleety and nasty, so we drove home carefully and spent the next two hours putting away all the Christmas decorations and doing a quick housecleaning. That left us with about half an hour to watch Dick Clark (who just makes me vaguely sad since his stroke) and wait for the ball drop.

My new year's resolutions for this year are:

1) Never. Ever. See a three-digit number starting with 2 on my scale. Ever again.
2) Keep up with this blog.
3) Read the Bible more.
4) Catch up my scrapbooks so that I'm less than 2 years behind.
5) Finish my Disney trip report.

My chances of acheiving those goals? Hmm....

1) I BETTER freakin' acheive that one. I'm so not going back there.
2) Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha.... (Okay, so I'm not starting out with the right attitude there...)
3) I'm going to try - and not just when I'm waiting for church to start.
4) Hm. We shall see. The problem is, I take too darn many pictures.
5) Question is, do I even remember the trip at this point??!!

Ah, well, here goes nothing! Welcome 2010!