Merry Christmas!!

We had a fantastic Christmas. Santa was good to everyone, as was everyone else! We had a great day with Grandma, Pa, Amber, Aunt Jean, and Uncle Bill. Despite a little morning snow, they made the trek from Hancock early enough to open some presents, and Aunt Jean helped Ethan assemble the amazing dinosaur model that Santa brought. Ethan also received a really nice new sled and some legos, among other things. I made him his own shutterfly calendar with pictures of memories from the previous year each month. The butcher talked me into a much larger roast than we really needed, but it made for an impressive display and a lot of leftovers. For dessert we enjoyed mom's famous cheesecake and some cookies. Can you see the afghan on the back of my couch? Aunt Jean arrived with a giant bag of them, she crochets them for something to do in the winter and we each got to pick our favorites- I even got two! I think Ethan's most fun was helping Grandma and Pa open their presents. They're moving, so we didn't want to make them pack much so we got them gift cards. Well, that's just so boring to open that we had to make it more fun by wrapping them each in about five more larger boxes. To make Pa's even more fun, we also included a wrapped box of recyclables (it had to feel like there was something in it) along with the box containing the box containing the box containing the gift card. Oh, what fun we had!!

The Comedian

Ethan is participating in a "duel" at school. They have a reading program called "One School, One Book" that involves everyone reading the same book and then an event at the end. The book was A Snicker of Magic, and in the book there is a kind of talent show they call a duel. The kids had to prerecord it and send it in. So we spent a good hour and a half trying to do this last night and couldn't get it under a minute. So tonight he did it on the first try. However, the computer I usually edit these things with has decided not to open any programs. My new computer has no software with which to edit the file format that comes from my camera, so I downloaded something that wouldn't work. So finally, out of complete desperation, I went back to my trusty ancient XP laptop- you know, back when Windows included "Windows Live Movie Maker?" About five minutes after I started, I was done. If only I had been smart enough to start there. So now I have about four hours invested in this one minute. But I think it was worth it :)