Thursday, January 31, 2008

Ice Speed


It's Thursdays so it's ice skating day. I showed up, but because work was so busy I got there much later than normal there was no point in me even bothering to put on skates. Quinn seems to have gotten pretty confident out on the ice. He still can't stop and will with start going in circles to slow down or (and this is more typical) runs full tilt into the wall to stop himself. You can usually hear the collision throughout the rink. Catherine was playing her DS when I got there, but had reached her time limit for playing shortly afterwards. The rink area was particularly cold today. Or maybe it's always that cold but if I'm out skating and moving I don't normally notice. And to make the day even better no one hit my car today in the parking lot. Before last week I had no idea how that little fact could make it a good day.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Prominent Priority Planning Projects


Apparently I should just start a theme of pictures of items silhouetted in light from a window that are in black and white. Whatever works I suppose.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago Catherine decided she wanted to have a full up birthday party with where she would invite people from school. Since it was such late notice the earliest we could book a place was April. We hadn't really done anything to prepare since we have a couple months. Then a couple days ago we found out there was an opening in February. So now we've got lots and lots of planning to do in a very short amount of time. Ginger's been hard at work on invitations and Catherine's been trying to put together a list of people she wants to invite. We're trying to discourage her from inviting too many people though since the place only has a party size for 24 people total (including her).

And in addition to that the search is on to locate a place to book for our yearly beach vacation. Looks like we might end up changing houses after a week. We did that last year, and it definitely adds a bit of stress on the day you have to swap houses, but if you can work out a day overlap it's not that bad. It's not the most ideal scenario, but the place we were in last year that I liked so much (the ghetto house as I referred to it) isn't available for consecutive weeks.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

My New Doorstop


Well that's just flat out annoying. Last year when we got the new Series 3 HD TiVo we were gifted service on the old TiVo for a year. That year is now up and we decided there was no reason to renew the service. The Series 3 has two tuners and the old Series 2 only has 1, and with the dearth of new shows due to the writer's strike there wasn't a compelling reason to spend $10 a month to continue service on it since we were more than able to capture what we needed with the two tuners on the Series 3. And so I thought no problem, I don't need listing information and I would just use it as a VCR and have it record stuff like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. The biggest problem with the previous sentence is the "I thought" part since today TiVo informed our Series 2 that it didn't have service anymore and that was the end of that idea. Here's a snippet from TiVo's service agreement that I evidently didn't realize.

7. Your TiVo DVR Won't Work Without the TiVo Service! A subscription to the TiVo service is required in order for your TiVo DVR to have any functionality. No functionality is represented or should be expected from the TiVo DVR without a paid subscription to the TiVo service.

Little did I know that the Series 2 TiVo's without a subscription service is little more than a glorified paperweight. You can't look at what you entered on your season pass, you can't set up recordings, you basically can't do anything other than watch live TV. So it's a channel changer that degrades the quality of the picture slightly. I guess I should count myself lucky that it's letting me continue to watch live TV with the 30 minute buffer (and you do have the pause, fast forward and rewind capabilities on that 30 minute buffer). So there's really no reason to even bother keeping this thing. Now from what I hear, the old Series 1 TiVos can still funcion in VCR mode without service, so it's only the Series 2 that's the problem (which I suppose is why they seemed to be practically giving away the Series 2 models there at one point). When I checked online about what you can do with the Series 2 with no service (okay, I admit I was looking to see if anyone had mod'ed it so that it would work in VCR mode, but either they haven't or they're being tip lipped about it) the one suggestion I found amusing was "try and sell it on ebay to someone else that doesn't know any better".

Monday, January 28, 2008

Office Visit


Ginger and Catherine came by to have lunch with me at work today. It was a really nice diversion since I've been battling a problem at work for over a week now, but the good news is that I think as of tonight I've figured it out. Anyway, while Catherine was there she drew me a picture on my white board. I forget what she called the character she drew, but he certainly brightens up the office. And what the heck, I'll throw in another random picture that I took a couple weeks ago.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

More Of The Same


Much like yesterday the kids spent a good while outside playing. I really don't get it. I'm out there freezing my butt off and they run around and play like the temperature doesn't matter at all. Must be a youth thing.


Ever have a moment as a parent where you're watching your kid and thinking "This isn't going to end well." That's pretty much what I was thinking when I turned around and saw Quinn on top of the ice ramp with his scooter. Luckily I was able to talk him off the edge and convince him maybe he hadn't thought this out all the way. If he had been wearing a real bike helmet instead of that fake baseball helmet I might have let him go ahead and try it just so he could learn from this mistake. Either that or he would have loved it and gone onto create a new X-Games event: Scooter Halfpipe.


The lobotomizing of the snowman continued today as Catherine continued to "clean out the snowman's ear wax." A little more cleaning and I think he might just lose his head ("There can be only one!").


Apparently Catherine's fall yesterday where she hit her head on the ice ramp did nothing to prevent those actions since today she was once again using a noodle to scale the slippery part of the ice ramp again. That's the same thing she was doing yesterday when she fell, but yesterday I was holding the noodle instead of Quinn.


And I noticed shortly after the scaling of the ice ramp that there was something odd about Catherine's feet. She claims that having the boots on this way wasn't bothering her at all (I don't know how it wasn't, it was bothering me just looking at them).


No story behind this shot, I just liked how it turned out.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Still Some Snow Left


Ginger wasn't feeling too well this morning. Another migraine issue I believe. Luckily she started feeling a tad better in the late afternoon, but still wasn't feeling good. Sadly she doesn't have any migraine medicine either though since she called in the prescription to CVS earlier in the week and they never even bothered to fax the approval form to the doctor until Friday, and then they never checked back with the doctor when they didn't hear back, so they're still waiting for approval before they'll fill her prescription.


I took the kids outside some this afternoon. It was cold out, but not freezing (I think the temperature was low 40s). But seeing as how it's getting warmer I figured this might be one of the last times the kids would be able to play in the snow before it melted for good. And since as I've mentioned previously for some reason the front of our house never gets direct sunlight and is always about 10 degrees colder than anywhere else, there's still a layer of snow in the front yard.




I grabbed some pictures of the kids playing at various activities while we were outside, but it wasn't until near the end that I discovered I had set the ISO to 640. I had bumped it up for taking pictures of Quinn at ice skating on Thursday and had forgotten to set it back, so most of the pictures are a tad grainy I think.




Sledding wasn't as big of a hit today as last week, and I think that's in large part due to the fact they just weren't going as far off the ramp as they were last week. Catherine started building structures in the snow, while Quinn concentrated on playing baseball and hamming it up for the video camera when I had that out.


At some point the snowman got lobotomized. It started with Catherine pulling out his arm and using the arm to clean the wax out of his ear. Next thing I knew the stick was going all the way through the snowman's head.


Catherine did take a pretty hard tumble on the ice ramp at one point and hit head first. Luckily though his was right after she was riding her bike, so she had her helmet on and that probably kept that incident from being much worse than it could have been.

Once we got back inside Ginger had set up a treasure hunt that was a follow the clues game. Pretty brilliant I thought since the clues were written down and they had to read them to figure out the next location to go to get the next clue. So in addition to having some fun, they get to practice reading also. Of course they had so much fun doing that it was all they wanted to do afterwards, so they basically reused all the clues and hid different items. I didn't see the appeal since after you've done the clue once you know where to go after that, but that didn't stop them from doing it a couple more times.

This kids were gender challenged today. Tonight at dinner Catherine surprised us by saying she wished she was a boy. When asked why she simply responded with "Then I could do all the things Quinn can do." We explained that she'll eventually be able to do all those things anyway. But what I found amusing about her comment was to contrast it to Quinn's comment this morning at breakfast. While I fixing breakfast and Catherine wasn't around, Quinn had said he wished he was a girl, and when I had asked him why he responded with "Because then I would grow faster since girls grow faster than boys." At least it was a logical reason I suppose.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Dual Sledding


This is from last weekend when we were out sledding. The reason we're all rushing is that we were using the small Nikon for filming (hence the persistent buzzing since that's prevalent in all videos I take with that). It only had 35 seconds of filming left at this point, so we were trying to get one last run in before we ran out of time. I took a lot of sledding videos, but haven't really had the time to edit them into a real video, so for now you get this snippet. We're using the small ramp I built in the front yard made from snow that I had cleared from the driveway. The camera itself is sitting in a makeshift groove I implemented in snow in the bushes.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Ice Ice Skating (2008)


Well today was Quinn's first week of ice skating. The first week he could actually go anyway since the first week was suppose to be the first week and the ice put the the kibosh on that. Quinn did pretty good all things considered.




He seemed a little rusty and fell a couple times, but for the most part he managed to pick up sort of right where he left off last year. That was good since we didn't have to worry about he feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.




I went out and skated with him for a bit to film him some (and to just to goof around a bit). Catherine meanwhile was the most popular person not skating since she was playing her Nintendo DS. Ginger has mentioned that if there's a group of kids whoever has a handheld video game instantly becomes super popular.


Looking back though I shouldn't have hung around for the whole session, since as I was leaving my car got hit in the parking lot. Apparently someone else started backing out right after I did. I admit I was backing out a bit slower than normal since I was paranoid there might be kids crossing the parking lot. Guess I took too long though since once I stopped and was getting ready to move forward when I looked out the left I saw a mini van backing into me. It was surreal, because I was looking at it backing up thinking "They're perpendicular to me, surely they can see my car, surely they're going to stop." They didn't. I really should have blown the horn or something, but for some reason that didn't occur to me in time. So now I have a nice dent in the side of my car.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Shrek "Milk It For All It's Worth" The Third

Ginger and I watched Shrek the Third a while back. I actually bought the DVD of this one rather than rent it through Netflixs. I'll admit it was a risky move since I had never seen it and sequels of this nature tend to simply be rehashes of the previous films. But I had enjoyed the previous Shreks (the first more than the second) and figured that I would probably want this one as a matching set to the other two which I also own.

They seem to simply throw jokes out constantly and hope something works. Luckily most of the time it does. But every scene will have some physical comedy, some verbal wordplay or just humorous situations occurring in the background. The story isn't anything overly original, but there is a lot going on simultaneously. This time out the King is dying, and Shrek will be crowned ruler of the Kingdom (a role he doesn't want), unless he embarks on a quest to locate one of the King's distant relatives named (wait for it...) Artie. Yes, the legen ... dary King Arthur makes his first appearance in Shrek continuity, and to their credit I really didn't even notice it was Justin Timberlake doing the voice (kudos to those who get the "How I Met Your Mother" reference I threw in there). But wait, oh no, while Shrek is off gathering Artie the vile Prince Charming is rallying the villains to form an uprising and take over the Kingdom of Far, Far Away. Oh, and to add to the abundance of plotlines Princess Fiona is preggers and we get to see Shrek dealing with the idea of being a Dad.

There's lot of fan service going on also as some of the more popular minor characters from previous movies make their token appearance here also. Although I will admit that the scene where Pinocchio is interrogated I found absolutely hilarious. Puss in Boots has gravitated from his role as a support character in the second movie to full fledged confidant and traveling companion in this movie. I seem to recall I wasn't as fond of the second Shrek movie as I was the original, and this one is probably on par with the second one and maybe slightly worse. That's not to say it's bad, since it's all relative. Plus there are a couple bits of pure comedy gold in this one that make it worthwhile (the previously mentioned Pinocchio scene and later Eric Idle as the absent minded Merlin both come to mind). Possibly the one bad thing about the movie is that as we continue the sequels and recurring characters all jockey for screen time Shrek is starting to feel like a guest star in his own movie.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

You Are Really Really Late


I ended up getting home really late tonight. The kids were already in bed with books read and lights out. Luckily they weren't asleep yet though. Quinn scolded me telling me "You are really really late getting home tonight. What were you doing?" I tried explaining I was debugging a program to keep it from crashing, and he actually knew that a crash meant it wouldn't run anymore. Color me impressed. Catherine was nicer about me being late and basically letting me off the hook entirely (although she did insist that I had to rub her back for a bit while she went to sleep).

Neither kid sleeps through the night anymore. Both of them get up to use the bathroom at some point during the night. On good nights they'll just head back to their rooms and climb into bed themselves. On the bad nights they'll go to their room and call for one of us to come in and adjust their covers. Add to that Catherine's eczema causes her to scratch throughout the night usually waking her up a couple times and invariably she'll call for us and it's hard to remember the last time Ginger got to sleep all the way through the night I apparently don't hear them when they call, but I do tend to them up until I go to bed.

It was hard to swallow the news today that Heath Ledger passed away. At first I thought the news might be a hoax and part of some new viral marketing for the Batman movie, but sadly it looks like he really did pass away. Since the Joker was so key to the viral marketing they were doing for Batman I have to wonder how they're planning on handling this (to be honest, I have to question whether viral marketing increases the number of viewers by any significant amount anyway).


I'm still watching the Sarah Conner Terminator TV show, but from the looks of the numbers it looks like they're having trouble retaining viewers. Almost 9 million viewers would be fantastic if it was on the CW, but since it's on FOX, who knows if the network feels that's an acceptable number. Still, losing over half your initial audience by the third episode can't bode well. And having a skip week next week where they don't have a new show and just replay the pilot certainly won't help (that sounds like a desperate ploy to try and get more regular viewers to me).

Monday, January 21, 2008

License To Wed: The Office Lite


Follow up to yesterday's post since Gaz made a comment that I was underawed with Cloverfield. I liked Cloverfield. I didn't necessarily love it, but I liked it. Not sure it'll be movie of the year (although if all movies throughout the rest of the year stink, I suppose it's got a shot). I will say if anyone sees it there's an audio clip after the movie's credits. I'm not exactly sure what the clip says (I've seen the internet theories on it though), but figured I should mention it in case you wanted to leave the theater once the credits start rolling.

While the kids had today off from school I still had to go to work. From what I heard the kids had a play date over at Cece's so they got to play with Perry and Drew some today.

And it certainly appears as if Quinn's two bottom teeth that are coming in are coming in crooked. I was really hoping somehow the kids wouldn't inherit bad teeth from us, but I guess they had no shot at that.

Ginger and I watched License to Wed the other night. Before anyone gives me grief this was one of Ginger's Netflix movie rentals, not mine (although I did suggest it and she didn't have it in her list before I suggested it, but I still maintain the movie choice was her's). It's rare these days that I watch one of Ginger's movie rentals, but this was an exception to that. It's a romantic comedy with a dash of Robin Williams thrown in that's pretty formulaic, but still manages to be funny at times. It's not side splitting funny, but has a lot of humor throughout the movie. It's got the guy that plays Jim from The Office in it. I get the impression his acting range is a lot like that of William Shatner's (that is he's playing his role pretty close to the vest). The Office vibe is definitely there since the movie has a couple of other members of The Office cast in various minor roles in the movie (also playing their parts pretty close to their roles in The Office). A lot of the movie has him making funny facial expressions during various socially awkward situations, so like I said, there's a definite Office vibe going on.

The premise of the movie is that Ben (Jim from The Office) and Sadie (Mandy Moore) want to get married. She wants to get married in the church where she grew up, and the reverend there (Robin Williams) agrees to have the wedding there but they have to pass his couple's therapy course. Hijinks ensue. Overall though it was entertaining and a good alternative to the recent glut of reality TV that's taken over since the writer's strike began.

They're Back...

Sunday, January 20, 2008

I Saw Some Thing In The Theater


Man it seemed cold today. I mean take what you think of as cold, then imagine going out in that without clothes on and it was that kind of cold. We didn't let the kids go outside and play because of that (partly because we felt it was way too cold to be playing outside and partly because neither of us wanted to the responsible adult that was out there with them). And after going out tonight I have to say I do think it really was too cold to playing outside. So instead of going out we settled for taking down both the Christmas trees. Yep, up until now both trees were still up (ornaments had been removed previously, but the trees and lights had still been up).


We had Ben over again tonight for dinner (one of these days I may even get a picture of him while he's here). Ben was over because he and I were going to see Cloverfield tonight. But before we did that he had to suffer through the kids telling knock knock jokes during dinner. Suffice to say Catherine still doesn't really understand he concept of a knock knock joke, but she thinks she's funny and the stuff she says invariably gets some form of a laugh, so she keeps telling them (sometimes the same one over and over).

As for Cloverfield both Ben and I like the fact that there's been a lot of mystery behind the promotion of the monster movie and figured if we didn't see it this weekend the chances of seeing it without it being spoiled would be slim to none. And I don't know what it is, but every time we go see a movie in the theater near where I live we also end up only being able to get tickets to the movie in the director's hall. Which I admit has a really nice sound system and sweet leather seats, but it's also a way for them to jack the ticket price up to $13.50 instead of the normal $9.50. I can't believe I'm going to see a movie for that price. You can buy the DVD for that these days (sometimes less).

Anyway, if you've seen any promotion for Cloverfield you know it's a monster movie, but they've gone out of their way not to show the monster. It's a monster movie from a different perspective. If you think about the old Godzilla movies you always got to see the guy in the rubber suit trashing the model town. And the camera point of view would be from what was (supposed to be) about 300 feet or more in the air showing the destruction. Typically in the old Godzilla movies there would be wanton destruction, but you would only see that from Godzilla's perspective. Cloverfield's whole concept is it's a monster movie with a street level point of view. The movie is shot camcorder style and told exclusively from the point of view of one group of people in the city as it's attacked. As such some things you don't get told (such as the origin of the monster), nor as in many other monster movies do you get a feel for the organized efforts against it (typically a Godzilla movie will have a scene that will cut away to the military leaders giving lengthy exposition as to what they're planning). None of that happens here. Also unlike Godzilla movies there's no monster bonding with a child, nor are there giant robots that show up to fight the monster (which is a shame though, because that could be an interesting movie in and of itself, since giant robots are inherently cool).

The movie does take a few liberties with some technical aspects. The camcorder used has one of the longest taping times I've seen for one tape, plus it never seems to require a recharge. There are also a couple times a cell phone gets used where it seems improbable that you would be able to establish a connection under the circumstances. But aside from that, the concept for the movie is pretty good. I found I was fine with not being told the reason for everything and just going along for the ride. And in case you're wondering, you do get a money shot of the monster, but to be honest, I would have been just fine had I not gotten that (although I can see how some people needed that). I think my favorite reaction of other people in the theater was once it ended someone loudly said "You've got to be f***ing kidding me." So take that for what it's worth, not everyone is going to like this movie. I'll admit I wasn't overly happy with the idea of the camcorder shooting the entire thing although I can see all the reasons why they felt they needed to do that. Overall thought it was a nice change from normal monster movies.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Snowplay Redux


Ginger was feeling a little better this morning, but not a lot better. So rather than make her cook we headed out to eat at Pomodoro's. This place has quickly become one of the favorite places to eat out since we located it and learned they're peanut free and don't use peanut oil to cook (of course, they're right next to Five Guy's which gives out free peanuts, but apparently we're not that concerned about that).


After lunch we ran by the comic book store and the grocery store and then it was back to home. Ginger went inside and laid down for a bit while I stayed outside and let the kids play in the snow some. Quinn got to experience Netwon's first law firsthand today. See once we were outside Quinn insisted we had to do some sledding. The problem is if you look at the picture above, you can see the ground at the bottom of the hill doesn't have a lot of snow anymore. I recommended against it, but Quinn really wanted to sled down the hill. So rather than just tell him no I decided he could make the decision himself. So he cruised down the hill, but then when the rubber tube hit the non snow patch of ground the sled just stopped from the traction. But an object in motion will stay in motion, so Quinn flew off the sled and landed on the ground (and then the sled flipped up over top of him and handed on him also to add insult to injury). I just wish I had gotten a picture of the incident. So after he got up and brushed himself off, he decided that he didn't need to sled all the way down the hill anymore.






Of course both of them still wanted to sled down the lesser sloped portion of the hill. This presented the problem of there was nothing to stop them from continuing down the hill except for me. So I would stand there and catch the sled as it was coming by and hope that I could stop it before it gained enough momentum to continue down the hill. We did have one minor incident where I stopped it too quickly and dumped both the kids out the other side, but it didn't phase either of them in the slightest and they both still wanted to slide some more.




What was really nice was that during this time the were both getting along while playing together. They were taking turns on the sled, and a bunch of times they would sled down together. It's always nice to see them playing nice together and getting along. They probably do it more than I think, but they times when they're getting on each others nerves are the times I end up remembering more it seems.


Eventually we went back to the front yard. And there I had built up a large slide with snow that I had shoveled off the driveway a couple nights ago. So I would balance the sled at the top of the slide and they would get on and cruise across the front yard. I don't have pictures of that though since I had to hold the sled while they were getting on (I do have a couple mini movies taken with the hand held Nikon, but I haven't transferred any of those to the computer yet).


At some point the kids started a parade around the cul de sac. Quinn was carrying one of his Nascar checkered flags and Catherine had a "marshmallow" (which is to say a snowball on the end of a stick). We stayed outside until it became obvious the kids were getting tired (Catherine would statt to whine about Quinn getting too far ahead during the parade and Quinn would start to whine if Catherine ever was first).

Friday, January 18, 2008

Friday Roundup


The snowmen out front have taken on a decidedly droopy appearance with today's warmer weather and a couple have fallen over. Ginger went with us this morning to drop off the kids at school so I could pick up my car. The roads seem perfectly fine now and even though schools were late this morning I didn't notice anything wrong with the roads (although there were reports of accidents and flipped cars earlier according to Ginger). We also had to stop by the store on the way to school since it was Catherine's day to bring in snack for the class, but since it was snowing the day before we hadn't been able to get to the grocery store to get anything. And sadly Ginger got another migraine. She started getting it Thursday night and kicked into full gear later on Friday. This means she'll probably be somewhat out of commission for the next couple of days since when she gets these they usually last multiple days. The kids aren't too upset though since when Ginger's not feeling well they typically get to watch a TV show.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

So Much More Fun Than Ice Skating


As I mentioned yesterday, today was going to be the first day of ice skating sessions through the school for Quinn. Too bad the weather didn't cooperate. I guess I had heard that it was suppose to snow today, but I really didn't think anything of it. Even when Ginger said it was suppose to start snowing right around lunch (which is when the kids from the school would be car pooling out to the ice rink). I guess I realized how serious some people were taking it when I got to work and the parking lot had already been treated. And then around 9:30 I saw some light snow flurries and still didn't think anything of it. But then after working for about an hour I turned around and suddenly the outdoors was a winter wonderland.

So a tad later just after noon I got a phone call from Ginger. She was at the school, the ice skating trip had been canceled due to the increasing bad road conditions, and lots of the kids at the school were being dismissed early (some had left around 11). Ginger's never been fond of driving in the snow, and after seeing numerous accidents on the way to the school and that people were having trouble getting back up the hill that leads out of the neighborhood where the school is she was really concerned about driving home. I asked if she could take the back way out and she said that the people at the school had said that way was bad too. Growing up in the southern part of Virginia driving in the snow isn't that big of a deal for me. It's just something you do when it snows. So next thing you know I've volunteered to drive to the school and drive her and the kids home.




Now in Ginger's defense, the roads were in pretty bad condition around noon and the snow was still coming down pretty hard. And there were some accidents that I saw and the hill down to the school was pretty treacherous. In the other direction no one wanted to stop on the hill itself, so at the light there would be two cars, then nothing all the way down the hill, then a long line of cars at the bottom. On the way up the hill over to the side were a couple of vehicles that had tried to get up the hill and didn't make it. But I went really slow down it and didn't have a problem and got to the school and picked up Ginger and the kids. They had been playing out in the snow some before I got there and Ginger had taken some pictures of them playing out and you can see how hard the snow was coming down at this point (those are the two pictures up above).

I took the back way out of the neighborhood to avoid the hill, and while the roads were untreated with four of us in the wagon we had enough weight and traction that it wasn't a problem. Once we got back on the major roads we were fine (although the roads were still in pretty crappy condition, but easily drivable). We did have some slowdowns in our neighborhood, but that's only because the people in front of us obviously didn't know how to drive in the snow and were driving like five miles and hour.


After we got home it was time to head outdoors and enjoy the snow. I have to admit, I'm really glad Ginger wanted me to come get them from the school because otherwise I would have been trapped at work all day and missed spending a couple hours outside with the kids. And it was well worth any vacation time I'll have to burn to play outside with them. I had my camera out, but also was trying to hold an umbrella since the snow was still coming down pretty good and I wouldn't have been able to just have the camera out without some protection. And I would have been fine, but Catherine kept trying to hit me with snowballs.


I'll go ahead and apologize in advance. I'm going to throw up a ton of pictures. I'm still doing the photo manipulation on the laptop due to my computer's profile still not working properly, so some of the pictures have had the contrast overdone I think, but I can't really break out Gimp on the laptop (too slow and not enough memory). Anyway, sometimes the photos outside without the flash have the subjects too dark (I assume from the white meter overcompensating for the snow) so to lighten them up requires changing the contrast. I should have been taking photos of the kids using the flash from what I could tell. The few that had the flash looked pretty good (I just have a tendency to try and avoid the flash if I can help it and it looks like that came back and bit me in this instance).












We had a great time outside. The kids sledded for a while (somehow I missed out on my getting a turn). And Catherine went down by herself just fine this year. Although she claimed she was "scared" of doing it by herself, but once she started going down the hill a couple times she wasn't acting scared at all.




After sledding we moved to the front yard where there were snow angels and snowmen. The snow was perfect for snowmen. It was some of the best packing snow I've seen.








Quinn didn't really want to help with the snowmen, so I put him to work shoveling the driveway, which he turned into a game of creating a "road" (path) around the driveway (all of which meant later in the night I had to go out and shovel the driveway myself). Part of me was hoping that like last year we were going to get a freeze tonight and have the snow be covered in a thick layer of ice. But since it's like 2 am at this point and still a couple degrees above freezing maybe I don't think that's going to happen. Man, I guess that also means school won't be delayed tomorrow (which I was sort of hoping it would be). Guess whenever I do end up having to take the kids to school I'll have to have Ginger go along with me so I can get my car from the school and she can still have her car.




Might as well close out with a couple pictures of the finished snowmen.