The Think Tank

I finally got the pics from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day up on the Gallery site.  There are some really cute shots of Mairi and some good ones from the Blazer game Christmas night as well.  Follow the link above to check them out!

I hope you all had a fantastic end to 2009 and welcomed in the new year with good times, good friends, and most important of all, family.

We had a little party at our house on New Years Eve as we usually do.  We played Apples to Apples and Pictionary for most of the evening and then headed outside to welcome in 2010 with our annual fireworks display.  I took a video of it on my phone, but it didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked.  Still, I went ahead and posted it so you can get a glimpse of how it turned out.  If you want to view the fullsize version you can right-click on the video and choose “Full Screen”.

Happy New Year, and GO DUCKS!

Another party has come and gone again.  Mom and I made a very concerted effort to make sure the decorating and cleaning were done well ahead of the event, and we did a pretty good job: we finished the last bit of actual decorating last Monday night, and this week we just had to do the clean up and last minute details.

Because of the ease of the week leading up to it, we were well rested and relaxed for the first time more years than I can remember.  It also gave us the time to visit with our Cousin Dan and his fiancee came for a visit from Montana.  It was doubly awesome to have them here because Dan is a luthier (guitar maker) and some friends of his – who are playing instruments that Dan made – just happened to be in Portland this weekend as well, so the whole lot of them regalled us all with wonderful, live music.  That was fantastic.

As for the rest of the party, it went very well.  Things started a little bit later than usual, with the first guest not arriving until around 3:15 or so, but after that things got moving and the house stayed pretty darn full until after 10pm.

Mike and Becca brought baby Quinn to her first Christmas party, and naturally she made the rounds as well as quite an impression.

Mo and I had to sacrifice our Blazer tickets tonight, but we happily gave them to my cousins Aaron and Sarah, who apparently did a very good job of routing the team on as we put the kibosh on the losing streak, beating the Huston Rockets 89-88 thanks to some last minute heroics from Brandon Roy.  Sadly, though, Oden went down with a fractured patella and is likely out for the rest of the year.

All in all this was one of the most enjoyable parties we’ve had in recent history.  Thanks to everyone who came for making it a wonderful event, and for those of you couldn’t come, please stop by some time during the season and share a Christmas bowl.

As has become my custom, I was much to busy enjoying myself to be bother with taking pictures, so there are no photos from the party itself.  I will try to post pics of the house and decorations in the next few days.

Happy Holidays!!!

It’s that time of year again!  Two weeks ago Mom, Mo, Shannon and myself picked out and tagged 16 Christmas trees for ourselves and several other people.  Mom found a farm out in Oregon City where she got us a really screaming deal.  Normally we get 6-8 trees for ourselves, Maure, and the Janes’ but since we were able to get the trees so cheaply it gave us the ability to pass on the savings to a number of families who would not have been able to have a tree this year.  We got 16 in all.

Today we went and picked them up using the Janes’ truck and delivered them all around town, making several different stops as if we were Christmas elves doing Santa’s work – sans the reindeer of course.

I completely failed in my photographer duties for this year, forgetting my camera for both the tagging day and the cutting day.  I did snap a couple of pics after we got home and started dropping them off everywhere, so I guess that will just have to suffice.

Headin' back up

I was going through the pictures from last year’s snow storm to find an image that I could use for the invitation for our Annual Holiday Open House, and in so doing I came across a clutch of photographs that I never posted at the time.   They are mostly candid shots from around the neighborhood, taken the week before Christmas 2008.  Some of them are pretty darn cute if I do say so myself!

If you want to have a look-see you can follow this link to check them out.  They are mostly on the last couple of pages.

Pray for more snow this year!!!  I don’t care if you like it or not, you still have to do me the solid and pray for it!