6 posts tagged “fun”
That was a lot of fun. We should do it again next year.
We had a blast this Christmas season. The only thing that was a little awkward was that our family crashed a Christmas party for my Sister-in-law’s family – if we do next year exactly like this year (without the in-law thing) it’ll be perfect.
Our Christmas Eve traditional Chinese Dinner was a little different this year – it’s always been take out up until this year – and since Michelle was working at 5 at our favourite Chinese restaurant we had the buffet there at 4:30. It was a lot of fun (although Michelle really felt that she should be helping to serve the customers there – so I don’t know if she ever fully relaxed and enjoyed the meal).
The Christmas Eve gathering at my Brother (and his S.O)’s place was fabulous (a little late for Christmas Eve for our family). Danielle tried to absolutely STUFF us full that night. She pretty much succeeded. There place is very nicely decorated, the TV is amazing, the bathroom is breath taking and the décor is spectacular, not to mention the kitchen. They’ve done a tremendous job taking a very small house and making it really usable. Next they plan to dig out the basement and double their floor space. Should be good.
Everyone enjoyed their gifts and we were given season passes to the Playhouse Theatre – which is an amazing gift for us. Not only do Sherry and I date every week, we love live theatre! Very thoughtful gift
.
Christmas Eve night was a late one and when we woke up at 5 it seemed like it was a little early to get up, so we all had coffee in our room and went downstairs around 5:30. Everyone was pleased with their gifts. I’m going to be the best dressed guy at work now and Sherry was pleased with her mirror (she was impressed that I found exactly the right one!) Michelle was happy with her gifts and especially with her new phone (although I’m a little worried that she’s going to spend more on the phone than she really should. We gave her $100 of airtime with the phone – I’m hoping that lasts for at least four months – she’s going to have to be a little disciplined to get it to last that long).
Breakfast at Mom and Dad’s was next. That was amazing too. Way more food than I should have eaten (sensing a theme yet?) and it was all really tasty!
We stopped in at the church on our way home to see how Rick was making out with his Christmas Day event at the church. One of the guys in our church decided that people that don’t have families (for whatever reason) shouldn’t be alone on Christmas day, so he planned a whole day’s event for anyone that wanted to come. Rich volunteered to take care of the food for the day – which meant Breakfast a snack for Lunch and then a full blown Turkey Dinner at 5.
We came just as Breakfast was being served and Sherry helped prep the birds for supper. We only stayed an hour or so.
Back to our place for a little bit and then off to my Sister-in-law’s party for her family. The meal was incredible. Ham, Turkey, Veggie casseroles, stuffing, chocolate, cream, sugar, sweets – wow! The pool table was well used and we had a nice visit too.
As soon as we were back from Robyn’s we packed up to drive 2.5 hours to Sherry’s Mom’s place. Michelle drove the whole way (which was kinda nice – I had a chance to take a power nap which really helped out). Dinner at Sherry’s Mom’s was really pleasant (even though I was way too full to really eat!)
We had a nice visit with the family and pretty much called it a night. It was really nice seeing them while it was quiet and calm.
The next morning was spent getting ready for Sherry’s Christmas gathering. We drove to Kitchener and had a really nice time at Aunt Cathy’s place. Way too much food again and a really pleasant visit with Aunt Patsy, Drew, Nathan and Uncle Leigh. Good times.
Home by 8:30 and in bed by 8:37 – asleep by 9:12. Whew.
This morning is a good day – I’m going to finish the proposal document that I was working on before the holidays struck. I’m just rebooting my Virtual Machine now and I’ll be documenting in a couple of minutes.
I’m thankful that Michelle and I are doing well again – it was really nice being able to chat with her this holiday and not have any tension between us.
I’m thankful that my gifts were well received (whew) I always enjoy it when I pick out good gifts to give.
I’m thankful that Christmas went so well all around – I really do hope that it goes this well again next year.
Ok, not to sound too excited, but we’re only two weeks from Christmas Eve. Yaaa.
Date night this week was really nice. Sherry and I went out for supper and then did a little Christmas window shopping. Then back to our place for dessert. Very nice.
My daughter and I went shopping early the next morning in the States. We crossed over around 7:30am and then headed for Breakfast (her treat – very nice). Then to run an errand for Sherry for Alpha and then to the mall to find perfect gifts for Sherry.
We had a great time. The trip home was easy and we were waived right through.
We had guests over Sunday for lunch (Greg and Audrey) and it was a lot of fun. They brought the youngest daughter with them (the rest of the kids were elsewhere – teenagers!) She did really well for being stuck with all adults.
Lunch was really nice and we had fun chatting afterward. I took Audrey and her daughter downstairs to my studio and did a few portraits to try out the lights. I used two lights on the background, one umbrella and one flash directly pointed at them over my shoulder. I think it worked out pretty well.
I’m thankful that we have an opportunity to rebuild old friendships and start new ones.
I’m thankful that I serve a God that wants to bless me (and does!)
I’m thankful that Christmas comes every year and every year it’s a lot of fun!
My new flashes are in, my new flashes are in!
What a lot of fun they are. I’ll post a couple of test photos that I made with them – we didn’t bother doing our hair (or Sherry’s makeup) we just set up the flashes and BOOM took the pictures.
They’re gorgeous. I’m showing you these right out of the camera without any photoshop work so you can see how easy it’ll be for me to clean them up and make them professional level.
What fun. Thanks, Paul! Thanks, Holly! Whoohoo!
In other news I’ve calmed down after my surprise yesterday (the project that I was working on had its scope radically altered. I’ll have to go back and redo the design document from scratch).
I’m looking forward to date night tonight. I’m hoping that part of it involves Sherry putting on a lot of makeup and sitting patiently in the line of fire while I do what I love doing (taking photographs, if that was too cryptic.)
Dinner at Mom’s house was really pleasant last night. We were celebrating Danielle’s birthday (which isn’t officially
until tomorrow, but last night was when most of us were available).
I’m thankful for my family being so close – both geographically and emotionally.
I’m thankful for tastebuds (have I used that one?) Mom is an amazing cook.
I’m thankful for a regular paycheck. It’s really nice not needing to drum up contracts all the time to make ends meet.
Ok, technically I love working with computers as long as the hardware does what it’s supposed to do.
I had run out of hard drive space on my data drive (I have a drive that is dedicated to nothing but my data – photos, spreadsheets, email, source code, etc). That drive is backed up on a very regular basis to an external hard drive and then occasionally that data is taken off site in case a meteor hits my house. If the meteor is big enough to take out my house and my offsite data location, then I have bigger problems than some lost data.
But I digress.
The data drive was 99.4% full when I finally ordered a new drive. Since the drive was a lot bigger than I needed I decided to make it a new video drive, so I copied the video drive’s projects to the new hard drive, the data drive to the video drive and then removed the data drive.
BOOM!
That’s exactly when the whole thing went south.
Four hours later I figure out that the plugs for the new SATA drives suck rocks through bent straws. Once I pushed it firmly back in everything started working.
I hate computers.
I love computers.
It’s complicated.
In other news, we had our yearly portraits done. I took all the ones that don’t have me in them, Paul did the ones with the three of us and my daughter Michelle took the ones of me.
Fun, fun. Now I want a set of studio lights for my own basement. I have a massive Home Theatre room (17x24) that would double nicely as a studio. The floor in the middle-right of the room has to be empty most of the time since that’s where the 144” TV screen lives. (that’s not a typo, by the way – my screen is 12 feet across).
We were hoping to light the 30’ Blue Spruce in my front yard this weekend. We have to bring in a boom truck to do the top part and the truck wasn’t available. It may have to wait until this summer now :-( Oh well. At least we own all the lights now… we have 1200 LED lights that stretch 500’ to wrap around the tree. I’m hoping it lights up the yard!
My car’s battery died this weekend. Really inconvenient considering the PC fiasco too.
I hope you’re not looking for anything deep today.
Michelle is pleased with where she is in school now. Her final projects are due in about three weeks and she’s on top of all of them. She’s finally realizing that when you put effort in you get results out. Yaaaa!
Sherry has just over 2500 minutes left in her season. It’s sad that we know that. The weather is supposed to turn miserable next week. She’s really happy that she’s done this week.
I’m thankful that I have a computer to break. I love working with technology, not only is it my job, it’s also my hobby and brings me a lot of joy.
I’m thankful that I have a car to break down. Life is so much easier with a car. I have a buddy that’s between cars now and it’s just a pain in the butt to get anything done.
I’m thankful that the weather is turning nasty *after* Sherry is done for the season. Whew.
Ok, gotta run.
As I've mentioned, I'm in Canada (and I don't know how to change the country on my profile - it seems to be locked)...
It was a fabulous long weekend!
Not only did we get Monday off (and get paid for it!) the whole weekend was a lot of fun.
Friday not a lot happened (other than telling Bernie that I had a job opening that I was considering - that did not go over well at all). We had pizza for supper and found out that Michelle had driven the 2.5 hours to Sherry's Mom's place -- without telling us she was going to. Cool - I guess.
Saturday was spent lounging, sorting, prepping and doing. It was really nice. The home theatre is back up - I have a 12 foot screen (across) at one end of my 25x17' media room. The projector is about 2/3s of the way back and the image is fabulous - it's only 800x600, but for what we do it's more than enough.
Sunday we went to my Mom's house for Thanksgiving dinner. I went a couple of hours early so that Mom and I could play a round of golf.
Mom is a huge golf fan and when I bought my Wii I also got a goofy little golf game with it (if you don't know what a Wii is you need to find out. Realy.) We liked it so much that I bought the Tiger Woods golf game from EA and brought it over with me.
I played as myself and Mom played as Mike Weir (since we're Canadian and he seems to be the only Canadian with any street cred in the PGA).
She whipped my butt all over the course! She understood what a buck-and-a-half is and when to use a wedge and what a seven iron can do. Yikes.
I coached her through the putting, but that's all I had to do. Wowsers.
Then Bernie and I played Big Brain Academy and he beat me at that, so we gave the remote to Chris who really spanked me hard at BBA. Bummer. It was a fun time and a fabulous meal.
(Michelle had a bit of a nasty run-in with my brother Michael who was really displeased with Michelle's nose piercing. Bummer).
Monday was spent working on my Vader costume and visiting with Sherry's Mom (who came down early with Michelle). It was really nice.
Dinner was at Abe and Chantal's place. They are such a cute couple! It was their first major meal and they went WAY overboard. Fabulous.
Excellent weekend - I can't wait to do it again!
It was quite a party! We had about 25 people show up and we had a great time. The music was fun, the conversation was great the Margaritas were a big hit, but the runaway star of the evening was a silly little party game that we played with bead necklaces.
We had decided that this was going to be a no-no party -- any guest that heard another guest use the word 'no' would take one of the bead necklaces from the person using the 'no' word (if they had any) and if you said the word 'no' (and someone noticed) you would have to give up one necklace.
What a lot of fun!
Being the host I didn't play, and I always had on a dozen or so necklaces to give to people as they arrived (and to replace necklaces that were broken during a struggle to keep or take it!). It was supposed to be a zero-sum game - there were only as many necklaces as there were guests and the only way to get new necklaces in the game was for someone new to arrive.
However.
It turns out that after a couple of Margaritas two of our more competitive guests noticed the box of necklaces in the house on the way to the bathroom and since their inhibitions had been suspended (by the Margaritas one would assume) they started to help themselves to contraband necklaces.
I won't mention their names but their initials are 'Stef' and 'Audrey'.
There was an eclectic group of people invited - our family, our friends from outside the church, church friends, Sherry's co-workers and my co-workers. I was a little concerned about the oil-and-water effect, but it worked out really well.
Mom made new friends right away (until she took Stef's beads - that was a little traumatic). Rick seemed to fit into my other group of friends quite nicely - I was concerned that he would leave early. He even locked horns with Bernie for a bit and came away relatively unscathed. Don and Beth found a nice quite place to chat with people and the Fire Pit was a big hit with the slightly 'louder' crowd.
There were a few notable people that I was hoping would come but couldn't make it. That's too bad, but we'll keep doing this and keep inviting them and eventually we'll get to see them again.
The party wound down around 12:30 and the last couple of guests said their goodbyes. I was a little surprised that so few of my neighbors came - they all said they were looking forward to it. And almost none of our co-workers made it to the party - one from my work and one from Sherry's and that was it.
Michelle and a couple of her friends crashed the party for a little bit, but then went off and watched a movie.
It was a really good time.
There are no photos from the party - by the time the camera was noticed it was too dark to focus either automatically or manually. Bummer. Clean up was remarkably easy. Our guests were very considerate about cleaning up after themselves!
The house warming gifts were all wornderful and greatly appreciated. We recieved a number of very nice wines and other assorted cool gifts - our friends are very generous!
Now we start thinking about Alpha.
