Andrew performed in his first violin concert the other night. Dad was very proud.



Even better - good form on bowing and left wrist for this camera shot! And Andrew followed dad's advice - at least start and finish at the same time as everyone else.

I'll post a few more pictures in the picture section when I get a chance. I've got a few weeks worth of pictures to post.

Tags: Andrew

So no offense to Christmas Tree 2007, but this tree isn't the overwhelming success of last year's tree.

We purchased the tree on December 9th - it is a nice Douglas Fir that has pretty full, even coverage, and a good shape for a Christmas Tree.



You'll notice though it's a little sparse on ornaments. And that the bottom half of the tree is even more sparse than the rest. First, this year we have a mobile and curious Declan to test the ornaments within his reach. This has relegated anything breakable to branches above his reach. And most of our ornaments are of the breakable variety...

Second, most likely because of the drought in our region this year, the branches on this tree aren't quite as stiff as the branches were on last year's tree. Our ornaments also tend to be heavier (though not heavy). This has required some creative placement and use of Christmas tree lights to support branches to support the ornaments.

The additional side effect of the drought is that this tree is shedding needles at a far faster rate than last year's tree. Last year's tree dropped needles sparingly. This one is dropping it by the handful (even though it's still drinking a good amount of water) daily.

But it's still a nice tree. And it's real and not fake. As much as I dislike vacuuming up needles daily, I dislike fake trees more (childhood trauma of memories of an overused artificial tree....)

Merry Christmas!

(If you're offended by the Christmas greeting, then Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or as one friend says, "Kwanukkahmas". Or can we just agree on Happy New Year then?)

I just went online and purchased a couple of items from Amazon.com - a piece of electronics equipment and a train DVD for Andrew.

Ordinary transaction, until I got to the "Thanks for your order" page. The recommendations they gave on that page really gave me cause for pause for just a minute. Based on a train DVD order and a gift for someone else, I get:

* DNS & BIND Cookbook (it's a reference book about configuring name servers so when you tell your web browser to go to www.stickman.org it knows how to find it).
* Just Your Type (apparently about creating a [implied romantic] relationship using personality types)
* Wedding Crashers (the DVD starring Owen Wilson)

If it were baseball, they'd be doing okay. The first one would apply (except I already have that book). The other two....what???????

Maybe they're using pigeons randomly pecking at keyboards to generate answers....