Happy New Year!!

We had a great new years eve here in Georgia. It is nice and cold here. Some friends (ok 26 people counting kids) came over and played cards and enjoyed some good eats. We played dirty hearts which I haven't played since I was at the cabin before I was married. Later on most of us moved over to another friends house and watched the Peach Bowl. The game ended in overtime and was pretty exciting. The kids got to do sparklers shortly before midnight. This is the first time the kids have ever stayed up until midnight. We will see how they function tomorrow. After midnight we watched the world record motorcycle jump set on ESPN. It was the worst 30 minutes of TV I have ever seen. The jumper made it but I will never get that 30 minutes back. Overall we had fun though! I hope each of you has a happy new years day. I know that mom will be watching the Rose Parade!

*** I had an attack of the clevers and animated this picture. Unfortunatley this website doesn't seem to support the animation on the main page. If you click on the pictures it should show all three of the kids with their sparklers.

A Georgia Christmas

I have been meaning to get this stuff up on the blog for a few days and I finally got to it. We had a great Christmas in Georgia and by the looks of it so did everyone else! Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all!

Apples to apples and football

Here is some of the after sledding party. We played apples to apples, uno, and the patriots' game was on the tele.

Sledding/ Snowmobiling part 2

This is the big hill that we started the day on.

David and Matt decided to do a bit more sledding on a small hill right by the cars. I had to jump back out of the way to avoid getting hit and Matt moved out of the way and still got run over!

This was David's last ride down the hill.

I had my snowshoes on so I ran over to pull David out. I was very surprised when I too sank down to my waist. I started yelling for help but we managed to get out by getting on our hands and knees and crawling until I could put David on the sled and pull him to safety.

Warming up in the car!

Snowmobiling/ Snowshoeing/ Sledding Part 1

Mike took us all snowmobiling and sledding east of Fairview. It snowed the whole time that we were there. It was the poweriest powder that I have ever seen. Snowshoing though it was a lot of fun. It felt like I was floating on top of it, kind of like you might expect walking through the clouds to be like.

I didn't understand exactly what Matt was going through in this video until he convinced me to ride down double with him, me in front. Not long into the ride down all of that light powder had formed at least a two inch mask of snow on my face.

Jaylin loves her jammies :-)

Little Jaylin had two pairs of Christmas Eve jammies for her first Christmas. listen to the video to hear her say, "thank you Great Grandma LaRee for my jammies made with so much love!"

Thank you from Maryland

We certainly feel fortunate out here in Maryland to have family send us such nice things for Christmas. The kids were tickled pink to find that Gram, Gramp and Grandma Great provided some funds, their wallets were very empty after Christmas. When they've all finished shopping you can expect a more dignified thank you note telling you what they selected!

We all liked our presents from Uncle Charlie and Uncle Breck - although as you can see in the [very badly shot - sorry it was me not Em this time] video, no one was happier than me.

We were also very glad for a completely unexpected gift from Lana and Dave's family of snowman ornaments dressed in camouflage. Lana, we were really touched by your note and impressed by how much you know and care about each member of our family; it also really helped us to not miss our Joshie so much! We'll remember your gift and your love in the years to come when we hang our little snowmen on our tree.

Thanks everyone ....!

Merry Christmas from Maryland

We all gathered at Papa Jon's house for a Merry Christmas. Clay made the pretty centerpiece; we all liked the sparkles!

Jay and Jaqui gave everyone their favorite team jersey!


Grammy Deb did the jammie thing; baby Jaylin was excused from changing into her jammies because she had another party to go to ..... in fact, she partied all night long, but never got cranky!


Joe's jammies were a LOT too big.

The three libras posing in front of the tree .... if Joshie had been home we would have been four!

Jaylin with her big new bear :-)

The best part of the day was a three minute phone call from Josh (totally unexpected!). He's doing great, getting ready for his final challenge (the crucible) and graduation on January 11, 2008. We're looking forward to seeing everyone there!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Sunset on Mount Cadillac, ME

It was a beautiful view but it was also VERY cold and was the culmination of a VERY wonderful trip to Maine. Today we're going snowmobiling and sledding with Michael and Laura in Spanish Fork Canyon. It is almost this cold here! Kristi is helping me learn to create a post and post a picture. Now if I can just remember after she has moved-----

Great Presents Grandma LaRee!

Chloe would like to tell Grandma LaRee how much she loves the new toys. They were a big hit! I am also surprised how I'm "barely" annoyed with the "talking" mouse toy (wink). I should mention that Chloe is wearing her Halloween costume in the video. She was a giraff.

THANKS MA!

Spudman

Dear Previous Spudman Registrant, This email serves to announce that the 2008 Burley Lions Club Spudman Triathlon online registration will open Monday, January 7, 2008, at 12:00 NOON, (MST). A link to the online registration process through active.com will appear on our website: www.burleylions.org/spudman in advance of that date and time. There are no refunds or transfers of registration slots to others if you register and then subsequently cannot attend the event. We set the registration limit higher in anticipation of naturally occuring no-shows. All of the funds raised through the event go toward local, national, and international Lions Club causes. The event is staffed entirely by community volunteers. For more information concerning registration and the event, please visit our webiste at www.burleylions.org/spudman We appreciate your support! Sincerely, Burley Lions Club

Geek message

I just found out how "geeks show they care." I thought that it was quite a cool use of Google earth. Click on the link to see the message.

http://www.geogreeting.com/view.html?ydsUvyFoUIyEUkvvad975

Ancient Family Pictures

For those of you who have not seen the pictures that Dad scanned yet I have uploaded them to my smugmug site. Here is the link to the gallery:

http://crystal-images.smugmug.com/gallery/4043025#235389122

I should put a warning in the gallery that it contains indecently short shorts and CRAZY hairstyles.

Christmas Eve in Georgia

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so.... The bottom line is we miss you all and wish we could be with you tonight! I'm sure Dan will post more pictures later. NORAD says that Santa is right over Atlanta so we are all hushed up and trying to get to sleep.

Happy Christmas Eve!

We just got back from our anniversary cruise, we had a great time. We did go with the lowest price cabin trying to save a little money. The lowest price cabins typically are guarantee in a class of cabin so you know you will not get stuck somewhere else in the ship. We guaranty a class in the middle of the ship, about half way up the ship. We figured that if we were given an inside cabin, we would just spend more time on deck. We were a little worried about getting sea sick, and did not want to be high on the ship or towards the front or back of the ship. I took a video of what we ended up with.

On our last cruise we had a table to ourselves, but this cruise we were assigned a table with others. After starting at one table, we moved to another table for a little more secluded area of the dining room. We really enjoyed the couples at the new table, and ended up spending most of our time in port with them. We were all about the same age, I was the oldest, Laura the youngest. One couple was from OH the other was from OR just south of Portland.

The is us in a church in MEX, we were a little tired, taking in the view inside the church.

We are still unpacking, so I will post more after Christmas when I have a little more time.

A Stone Mountain Christmas

Now that I am finally home for a few days we can do some things we normally do at Christmastime. One of those things is to visit stone mountain and watch the Christmas laser show and see the fun lights they have there. This picture does a fabulous job of showing the kids with the lights in the background. If you can't see the lights in the background, don't worry that just means you are old and legally blind. (it might mean I did a poor job as a photographer but I don't think so)

We had fun. We got there with winter coats on but the kids were running around so much that they soon had those stripped off and were rolling down the laser lawn and trying to jump over the Christmas shapes projected onto the lawn by the show.

Doughnut Falls

Charlie and I went snow shoeing today up Big Cottonwood Canyon. It was a beautiful day with a lot of deep snow that we occasionally fell into. Charlie said that it was about a five mile trip. I was quite exhausted but I felt better when Charlie mentioned the altitude. I liked that excuse for being tired rather than being out of shape because I haven't done much physical activity since November when the end of day light savings time turned the lights out in Maine.

Charlie noticed this snow art along the trail. It is always fun to see how winter and snow transforms the world.

This is a cave at the top of Doughnut Falls. It was a really cool place to go, especially in the winter where you have the paradoxes of running water, ice, and green lichen.

This is a view of the cave from the outside.

This is Charlie thinking "she sure takes a long time to take pictures, I hope we make it down before it gets too cold."

Charlie and I just before we slid down the waterfall.

Audrey's Baptizm

Mom and I attended Audrey Powell's baptizm in early December. As you can see from the pictures, Audrey and her family, including her Grandma (Aunt Kathy) had a great day. I tried to post this on the Marley Acres site but evidnetly I don't have access to post on that site. If one of you will copy this post to Marley Acres that would be nice.

Our travels

Here's are the States we visited or lived in.
Here's the ledgen:
Yellow - States where we've lived
Magenta - States we have visited
White - States we haven't visited (mom hasn't been to Alaska or Arkansas)
Green - States where I have worked and both mom and I have visited
Looking at this we both want to visit every State in the United States. I think I might be able to accomplish this by scheduling my work so that we can drive to locations rather than flying there. That might mean that we'll be dropping by to stay a few days while we're traveling. Hope you'll have room!

Road Warrior

It has been a long week for me. I was supposed to fly up to Toledo OH to work at our new plant in that area. I was flying through Cincinnati, however my plane was an hour late getting off the ground because it had to be de-iced. By the time I got to Cincinnati my plane to Toledo was gone. The next plane didn't leave for 4 hours and it is only a 3 hour drive to the plant. I went ahead and rented a car instead of waiting. That trip was 205 miles. After two days in OH my co-worker and I drove down to Mt. Sterling KY to finish up some loose ends at that plant. That trip was 312 miles. I tried to change my ticket to fly home early but good old delta wanted over $400 to make a change to my ticket. I ended up driving the rental back to atlanta. The mileage for the 4 days was over 1000 and I can say I am truly sick and tired of driving! I hope Crystal and the kids don't want to go anywhere. I might throw a fit. :)

It was interesting to see so much of the country though. I can't believe how flat Ohio is. It seems like there isn't a hill in the state. As soon as you cross the ohio river into KY it is very hilly and extremely beautiful. I would move to KY if I had the chance. It has some of the prettiest country I have ever seen.

On a positive note I did find a geocache in KY. Crystal found one for me to get as I was driving home from lexington. She gave me such good directions that I was able to find the cache without my GPS!

It's Emilia again, made another video. This time I decided that theres a person in my life who has made some choices which have made it eaiser for me to be me. I made a video for my mom to show everyone that she works hard to make us all happy. She is very open minded about anything. If I need someone to talk to I know i can always go to her and she wont be judgemental and she'll try hard to understand. I don't think she knows how much a huge part she is to all of us and I don't think any of us have shown her how much she really means to us. So mom this video is for you, it shows many pictures of you how I see you, a hard working yet fun-loving person. You even take at least one day out of the week to work at home so you can put food on the table and still spend time with us. You invite the whole Maryland family to Thanksgiving dinner, and made wonderful food displayed in the video. This is just a small little thank you for all you've done so far for me and all you'll do for me in coming years.Thank you mom for teaching me how to be myself, I love you.

Tinnitus

I learned a new word today. Tinnitus. It's a clinical description of the ringing I've been experiencing in my ears, and it's caused by hearing loss.

Yep. That's what I said. Hearing Loss. I've just found out that I have "significant" hearing loss in both (but primarily the left) ears.

The ringining has been persistant for months, and is mostly just an annoyance (other than it prevents me from falling asleep occasionlly), so I casually made an appointemnt today with an ENT specialist where I had the hearing tests which confirmed his initial diagnosis. Here's a link to hear what tinnitus sounds like.

It's just like that except it doesn't ever stop. Sometimes the tone changes slightly when I eat or yawn. It's most apparent when there's no other sound (like at bedtime).

"Luckily" my hearing loss occurs in the higher frequencies. "Lucky" meaning that right now I have no difficulty hearing normal conversational noise. Not so lucky in that I don't understand well in noisy enviornoments (restaruants, concerts, theater, etc.). Furthermore this type of hearing loss causes difficulty understanding high frequency speech sounds which often give meaning to words. Ch, th, sh, f, p are high frequency sounds.

I'll be wearing hearing aids within three years. The amount of hearing loss which I'm experiencing is typical in someone 30 years older than I am right now. That's the worst thing about the diagnosis, suddenly I feel old. Much older than I felt 4 hours ago at least.

GA Jingle Jog

Kristi joined us in GA for our annual Jingle Jog this year and we had lots of fun. Dan, Katie, Chas and Kristi ran the 5k. Well, I heard that Chas ran and everyone else chased him. Emma and I walked the 2k as Em is still rehabbing from her surgery. Our favorite part of this race is all the free food and games provided by the sponsors. The kids rock climbed, slid down a sinking Titanic slide, rode a pony and we all ate alot! You just can't go wrong with hot wings and Mayfield icecream bars on a beautiful December morning!

I am also including a picture of us making Buckeyes, the candy previously known as peanut butter balls. Chas is show casing his peanut butter snowman.

This fine picture of Dan and Kristi chilling out with their laptops made me laugh as they were both reading/posting to the family blog.

Trippin' down memory lane

Thanks for the letter and Photo disc DAD! It's always fun to get mail that isn't bills, but this was especially fun... A (very) few of my favorites...

Dave's hair and Mike's face. tee hee.

What a bunch of goof-offs! I don't remember this, but BOY do we look like we're having fun at Dan's expense OR WHAT! HAHAha!

Grrrr!

Shazam!

Synchronized Christmas Lights

We took a long drive last night to see a Christmas light display wherein the lights had been synchronized to music. I took the video with my cell phone so the visual and sound quality is not great but you get an idea of how fun it was. We also drove around and saw many other lights including the house of Santa's cousin and the house with 30+ Christmas blow up lawn ornaments!

Can't post to Marley Acres

Am I the only one not able to post to the Marley Acres Blog?? Maybe not because there aren't any new posts this week.

Jaylin Talking

Here is beautiful Jaylin saying beautiful words ... and Auntie Em, Mommy and Grammy Deb egging her on.

Catalina Island

Breck & Charlie gave Mom, Grandma and I tickets to the Lion King in Hollywood for a Christmas present while they were living in Long Beach (and also invited Aunt Kathy). The play was about as good as anything I've ever seen. The picture above shows us visiting Catalina Island. What great fun we had all the time we were there. If you haven't been to Catalina Island you need to add it to your list of things to do. I know this is old news but it's Christmas time and we didn't have the Blog then so I post it now as a reminder of a great time and enjoyable trip.
Thanks again Charlie and Break!
We love you,
Dad

Playing Golf together at Pebble Beach

Mom and I standing on the 7th green at Pebble Beach a few years ago. What a great time we had golfing and site seeing together. Mom hit a number of good shots on this day including a 40' putt in front of a big gallery on #18. We always have fun on our trips and this one was no exception.

Nate and Clay - cookin' Big Pig Style

Nate and Clay looked upon my dinner offering with disdain. "What IS that mom?" they asked. "Taco noodle" I replied, providing a made up name for a made up dish. They each tasted a bite and then in the blink of an eye genetics took over and they started opening cans, crushing chips, squeezing cheese and dumping olives into the dish just like a Big Pig. It was a virtual frenzy of dumping seemingly random ingredients into the pan and endless stirring to combine. Moments later, their dish strongly resembling vomit and the kitchen filled with giddy laughter we all decided that there is something to dump cooking: their dish was PDG (pretty darn good).

Tia comes to Maryland (again)

We were so happy to have our dear tia come through Baltimore on her most recent world tour.

Em and Joe collaborated on a deliciousus breakfast that included Em's 'bangin' french toast (see video below) and Joe's masterful ham and eggs. Em's wonderful pal Myra made the coffee and we all enjoyed a delicious Sunday brunch. Joe even made sure Grandma LaRee's cute Christmas decorations made it to the table ....!

Then we all worked together to make Christmas cookies. We took the recipe out of the Joy of Cooking, which Grandma Marge gave me years ago and laughed out loud when it said, "Grandmothers and aunties who roll cookies for and with children are rare these days." We had a lot of fun, Kristi and I even merged our two cookies to make a tree cookie with a cookie star!

... Em has a special way of cracking eggs. check it out.