Merry Christmas

Getting the house ready for Christmas is arguably the best part of the whole season. We threw on some Mannheim Steamroller (you may be interested to know where that name comes from) and Sufjan Stevens, and put Kim to work baking up some gingerbread ornaments.


I used my new Petzl headlamp (anniversary present) to get a better look at the fuses in our strands of lights, in a failed attempt to find out why the top section wasn't working. In our tree manual (ha) there was actually a toll-free help number, but, as you can imagine, it wasn't very helpful. That has to expected, since their tree technicians sit around 11 months out of the year wishing for someone, anyone to call in.


Megan started celebrating a little early by opening a package from Grandma. The cleanup that this required was nowhere near worth this cute picture.


Henry thoroughly enjoyed his first decorating experience

This year we let Megan put the ornaments wherever she wanted -- an idea which proved to be folly.




As a bonus, here are four years of Megan putting the star on our tree:

2008

2007

2006

2005

(after I took this picture, she climbed up the tree and put the star on top. Sadly, this was before we had a digital camera, and I had run out of film.)

P.S. Apparently every year for Christmas I have the same hair and beard combo. Interesting.

'Tis the Season

**Warning: Cynicism ahead, read at your own peril**




Since we are now thigh deep in the giving season, I feel it is pertinent to share my complete and total disgust with the fact that shoppers trampled a man to death on Black Friday. If you're not familiar with the story, and don't mind having your faith in humanity tested, read more here. A few onlookers even stopped shopping long enough to make jokes about how overweight the person was that they had just killed in their haste to save five bucks on a panini maker.

The crowd counted down: "Five, four, three, two, one!"

A worker inside slowly opened the door. Everyone pushed from all directions.

They knocked the door off its hinges. A worker tried to use it as a shield, but the glass shattered...Augustine kept going, down packed aisles, moving with the crowd, still heading to the deals. She raced for the toy section and snatched up a bike, a dollhouse and 10 Hannah Montana dolls for $5 a piece.

Two hours later, she checked out, just as the store announced it was closing. She got in line and spent $495 on 36 items. She had no idea what became of the man who had fallen.

In order to maintain my giving spirit in the face of such a dreadful story, I've decided to give you five good reasons to do your shopping at your local Deseret Industries, Salvation Army or other community thrift store:

1. Your money will not be going to support sweatshops. Even if you do end up purchasing that awesome Gap-emblazoned sweater that you've always wanted, you can rest assured that that your money is not directly supporting the company responsible for forcing the 10-year-old who made it to work 16 hour days.

Can you guess where I bought my sweater?

2. Thrift stores often employ people who are otherwise "unemployable," and run their stores on a model that is dedicated to keeping the store open and the employees paid, rather than maximizing profits. By patronizing thrift stores, you are directly helping these people to earn a living, without simply giving them a handout (a practice which has lost its luster these days, to the point where "giving someone a handout" is as popular as giving someone the bubonic plague.)

Hey there, I've got something for you...

3. It's cheap. And there's no need to wake up at four in the morning and line up outside the thrift store, because it's cheap every day. Buying clothes, books, movies and other items at the thrift store is often ten times less than you would spend on comparable (or even the very same) item at a mall or department store. I buy many of my books at thrift stores, and I can often find them for a dollar or less, and many of my compliment-receiving work ensembles cost less than my lunch on a given day.

This is actually Megan's closet, not a thrift store

4. It's green. Everyone seems to have jumped on the green bandwagon lately, and shopping at a thrift store is a great way to be environmentally concious by reusing perfectly good items instead of consigning them to a landfill and then wasting resources by producing the same good again. Beyond that, almost nothing in a thrift store has the excessive, and sometimes dangerous, packaging that seems to accompany everything for sale these days.

6,000 American go to the emergency room each year with injuries

caused by trying to pry, stab and cut open their purchases, according to the

Consumer Products Safety Commision [I did not make this up]

oh, the irony

5. Thrift stores are nowhere near as crowded as the other stores you will visit this season. Unless this post is wildly succesful, you will have zero chance of being trampled by -- or trampling -- any other humans in your quest for a Christmas present. If you shop at the thrift store you will also be able to avoid obnoxiously loud teeny bopper music, scantily clad people in clothing advertisements ("Hey look, they're nearly nude, maybe I should buy a shirt there!"), and the temptation of that stand at the mall that sells those incredible smelling peanuts for only $18 a bag.

Man, these things are good

So choose to go visit your local thrift store today, because, at least for now, you can still call it a choice.

The Protestant Vatican, The Buckle of the Bible Belt, Little Kurdistan or Athens of the South

Kim's sister and her husband (who also happens to be my friend from before they were married, I always feel like I have to provide this little detail) moved from Reno to Nashville this year for graduate school at snooty Vanderbilt (I bet that if you didn't already know, you never would have guessed that Vanderbilt was in laid-back Nashville, right?), which means that they are just a short 10.5 hour drive away (where is the sarcasm button on this keyboard...), so we jaunted over there for Thanksgiving.

We got up at 3:00 in the morning the day before Thanksgiving, loaded the car up with snacks and sleeping kids, and hit the road. We made sure to stop at Bob's Burgers, Taylor's favorite burger place from when he served his mission in Tennessee.


Kim and Alisha thought that if they dressed the same, their team spirit would help get the meal ready. It must've worked, because the food was awesome.


They invited the missionaries over to join us, who proved to be far less weird than the cricket-noise making missionaries we hosted in Austin (memo to missionaries everywhere: stop being weird at the dinner table)


And watching the kids play together made up for the terrible drive (at least the drive there. The drive back is a whole different story...)




















P.S. Memo to The Opryland Hotel: Africa is not a country



P.P.S. I just realized that I'm nowhere to be found in these pictures, so here's a late addition, since I don't want to disappoint my fans.

I don't know anything about football...

... and I don't really consider myself a die-hard fan, but how could it be the case that Oklahoma deserves to be ranked over Texas, thereby going to the Big-12 title game with Missouri? I can understand that there are many intangibles in football, and it's pretty hard to decide which team is best. If only we could pit Oklahoma and Texas against each other in some kind of neutral stadium, and just let them play, then we could see who wins in order to determine which team is better, rather than relying on some asinine BCS computers and a bias-driven coaches' poll. Wait -- they already played each other this season? on a neutral field? and TEXAS WON?!! Then how in the world did they decide that this little fact was less important than whatever stupid statistics they ran to come up with their ranking schema?

Here's a good analysis from someone who knows more than I do.

Non-football fans, stay tuned for Thanksgiving pics.

That is the Question

To beard,


or not to beard.


To hair,


or not to hair.


This is what I bug Kim with every month or two.






Really, it's the question of our times.

Kim Gets Her Hands on the Camera

I love the fall, and it is especially beautiful here in Virginia. I had to take the traditional fall pictures (pumpkins, leaves, hats, umbrellas, crying), so enjoy.

Here are the few pictures (out of the 150 I took) that made the cut. After seeing these you will understand why there are only a few pitiful pictures of them together.



I love these of Henry. I can't believe Henry is now 6 months old. Henry did pretty good tolerating Mom and the many pictures.







Megan and her new Sleeping Beauty umbrella, which goes everywhere with her. She rules the neighborhood with her umbrella, making all of the other kids jealous every chance she gets.





Megan went on the carousel on the National Mall all by herself, which I thought would be fine, right until the first go a round, and she started slipping off and got nervous and then cried the rest of the ride. The attendant keep having to push her back up, and he wouldn't stop it so I could go get her. Fun times.


Our after dinner entertainment.

Same Body, Different Spirits

The second in our, "Gee, don't our kids look similar" series.

But honestly, could you tell them apart if it weren't for the fact that Megan was obviously born way back in the B.D. (Before Digital) era?





Some things to look for in the pictures --

• both Meg and Henry grabbed the outside of their right foot, and the inside of their left foot;
• they share that impossible-to-comb, pomeranian-wispy not-quite-brown/not-quite-blond hair that grows straight up;
• we're obviously still using the same brand of lotion, and the same box of wipes;
• for some reason the gender-neutral yellow changing pad cover that we had for Megan was inexplicably replaced with a blue cover for our man-child.

HOPE

Congratulations, President Obama.

The People's Holiday

Last year, Hannity was prescient enough to warn us of an insidious communist plot to turn our children into lazy, handout-seeking liberals -- that's right, Halloween.

If you're still skeptical, despite hearing it directly from that sage of the airways, just take a look at who was out trick-or-treating yesterday


You guessed it, that Halloween-promoting, candy-wealth redistributing, soon to be socialist-in-chief himself.

We celebrated The People's Holiday all week long. First, there was the Trunk or Treat at the church. Kim set up a touch-and-feel booth, complete with brains, tongues, teeth, hearts and intestines. It was a hit.


Megan joined up with her fellow princesses, and spent most of the night running away from me and proving her independence.


At least Henry has no choice but to stick with me.


On Sunday, we made a spur of the moment trip out to the Shenandoah river to enjoy the fall leaves. It was a beautiful day.



Meg and Henry loved the outdoors




And the leaves were out in full force


Later in the week, we had our traditional pumpkin carving night



Megan wasn't too sure about gutting the pumpkin at first


But she eventually deigned to touch the slimy innards


Henry had no qualms about it at all


As usual, my pumpkin won


Then it was on to All Hallows Eve itself. Our kids got back into their costumes, for the third or fourth time this week.



We met up with our Halloween comrades, and sought handouts from all the fat cat candy-capitalists on our street.


After all that, the good news is that Megan prefers all of the worst candy (suckers, smarties, airheads, etc.), so I have full access to the candy bars. I love socialism.













And, by popular demand, here is a picture of Dr. Gregory House, with his cane and boot.