Christmas is always busy

It seems Christmas gets busier and busier for us every year. We started the month with Max's birthday, then Chris had two long weeks of work that just completed. Throw in shopping, cleaning, and all of the obligatory parties, and time is out before you know it.

We did manage to go to MGM Studios last night to see their incredible light show. I posted a few photos here:

2007 MGM Photos

I also took a video of the show and posted it on YouTube. Check it out:

Latest Events

The end of October rolling into November is always a busy time of year for us. With Halloween and Sarah's birthday, we are quite busy for a few days.

Halloween was really nice this year. Ella dressed up as a witch and Max was a pirate. Although by the end of the night Max was pretty tired and his costume was hanging off of his shoulder so he looked more like a drunken pirate, but we are pretty sure that he had a good time. They certainly raked in the candy. Chris' work had a Halloween party where all of the kids could go around and go trick or treating to peoples cubes and offices (they took half the cnady that I had out in my office, the little ferrets). Then they had a party setup in the big conference room with food, pumpkin carving contest and stuff like that. We then went to our old neighborhood to go trick or treating with Ella's friends Jacob and Ella Grace. Halloween has an altogether different vibe down here then up in Michigan. Maybe it is just because of the weather, but Halloween is a serious party holiday down here with many, many large groups of people outside and all around the neighborhood. I put some updated photos up on the web albums here (click on the word here if that wasn't obvious to you).

Sarah's birthday today was very nice. We had dinner at Kobe, which is a Japanese steakhouse that we had never been to. The kids really enjoyed it, with the onion volcanoes and everything. Max devored a ton of food, it was pretty impressive really.

Update on Max

Max was able to see a dentist yesterday to look at his front teeth. Both of the top front teeth are loose. The left one is very loose, the right one is a little loose. The concern now is over his adult teeth and making sure that the damaged teeth do not interfere with those. So, if they do not tighten up, they may opt to remove them to ensure that they do not interfere with his adult teeth when they come in.

Max busted his face

Max was trying to climb into his stroller yesterday in the garage, when it tipped over on him and he fell flat on his face. He had a bloody nose, a fat lip, and also knocked his tooth around. One of his top front teeth moved and the gum all around is all black and blue. The poor little guy is living on a diet of yogurt and ice cream because it hurts him to eat. He can't even use a sippy cup, so we have started to train him in being careful with a regular cup.

Sarah called a dentist and they said just to watch it and bring him on Monday or sometime next week to take a look. Its not loose or anything, but it definately moved a bit.

This is Max's third accident at this new house, not very good luck for him.

Updated Links in Navigation Bar

I updated the links on the navigation bar to the left. I added a direct link to the Ella and Max galleries since those are the most popular. Those will take you straight there, so you don't have to find them in the albums page.

They will still show up in the albums section, but if you want to get there faster you can.

There are also videos on the same site. There is only one right now as a test, but will eventually get more up there.

I also put a couple of photos of the new house up there. You can check them out here (or go to the albums page and click on the album). We'll get some more up soon, we have some newer ones on the cameras that we need to download.

Photos are coming now

I have everything setup now, so photos should be coming in regurlarly to fill it out. There are two new links over on the left, one to view the 10 newest images, and one that shows every album that is online. This is always dynamically updated, and you can subscribe to rss feeds of either one if you are into that.

With the new service hosting the albums it is important to note that if you download any of our photos to keep you should no longer right click on the image and select save. If you are on the Picasa website and click on a photo to view it larger, make sure that you look to the right for the download photo link. This will download the full image, if you right click on the image there you will get a scaled down version that does not look as good.

Photos coming soon

I am putting the finishing touches on getting photos back up and easy. You can go to the Ella photo page over on the left to see work in progress. The page is a bit messy, but at the top there is the 5 most recently added photos, then beneath that it displays each one of the albums that are hosted on the web. I will get that cleaned up, organized, and looking nice next.

We will be using Picasa to host the photos which is a free Google service. I have a bit of cleanup and then a lot of photos to upload.

The site is now being fed from blogger.com (for this section of the page), FeedBurner to show the photo albums that are being hosted on Picasa (feedburner is an rss promoter, so if you are rss savvy, you can subscribe on your own I think and be automatically updated whenever new content is added), and Google Calendar for the calendar. It is almost entirely automated, I just update content and the website gets updated. Pretty cool.

If you have a minute, click on the ads over on the right, I actually earn money for the number of clicks on that.

Football is here!

Football starts tonight, and I couldn't be more excited. I wrapped up my 4th and final fantasy football drafts last night. Here are my 4 teams.

Team 1
QB - M. Leinart - ARI
RB - S. Jackson - STL
RB - J. Norwood - ATL
RB/WR - M. Colston - NO
WR - L. Fitzgerald - ARI
WR - C. Chambers - MIA
TE - J. Witten - DAL
D - Colts - IND
K - S. Graham - CIN

Team 2
QB - T. Romo - DAL
RB - W. Parker - PIT
RB - L. Maroney - NE
RB/WR - E. James - ARI
WR - C. Johnson - DET
WR - B. Edwards - CLE
TE - T. Heap - BAL
D - Panthers - CAR
K - O. Mare - NO

Team 3
QB - T. Romo - DAL
RB - L. Johnson - KC
RB - D. Williams - CAR
RB/WR - M. Colston - NO
WR - C. Johnson - CIN
WR - M. Harrison - IND
TE - A. Gates - SD
D - Steelers - PIT
K - O. Mare - NO

Team 4
QB - J. Kitna - DET
RB - L. Tomlinson - SD
RB - E. James - ARI
RB/WR - M. Colston - NE
WR - S. Smith - CAR
WR - L. Fitzgerald - ARI
TE - K. Winslow - CLE
D - Panthers - CAR
K - N. Kaeding - SD

I like a few of those lineups there, think I have a shot at a championship or two. The first column is the most important, that is the one here at work, a lot of pride on the line.

Busy Holiday Weekend

It was a busy holiday weekend for us. On Friday night, we went to the Pirate and Princess party at Disney World. It is a special event that they do every year where all of the kids dress up like a pirate or princess and hunt for treasure and go on the rides.

On Sunday, we went to a BBQ at one of my bosses house. And on Monday, we went to a BBQ in Lakeland for a little reunion of sorts of a lot of missionaries that worked with Sarah's parents in Brazil. There was a pool, so the kids were able to go swimming.

With fantasy football wrapping up, and me still working on getting all of our photos organized and on the new site, it will be a few more days before we get the photos organized. We have about 2.5gb of new photos to still organize then we need to catalog and post them.

A few new photos

Helping Sarah with some cooking.



Max


Ella and Max with their cousins




New address and phone

Please take notice, we now have a new address and phone number. The contact page has been updated.

2597 Woodside Ridge Dr
Apopka, FL 32712

(407)884-1333

Latest News

All sorts of things have been going on as we have not updated the site in a long time. We are making some changes to hopefully make updating this easier. The calendar is all new, and much more dynamic now. The main page here is fed by a blog on blogger.com that we can edit anytime, from anywhere. I will be updated the photo galleries to an online hosted service next.

We moved into our new house about 3 months ago. We are almost moved in now, pretty much just need to unpack the garage which is a mess, and then get to work on all of the electronics.

Ella started preschool last week. She goes Tuesdays and Thursdays for 3 hours per day at a church not far from the house.

Our nanny found out she is pregnant, so she will be leaving us in February, leaving Sarah and I with some decisions to make.

Hope to get more up here soon.

Testing

Now this is being hosted at my site, let's see if this works.