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Christmas, It Will Be

The Ellis Family Christmas Tree™
It’s getting to be that time of year again. That time of year when we are all a little easier to get along with, a little friendlier, and a little more generous.

It also happens to be the time of year when some of us are just a little more likely to go on a murderous rampage at any given moment, due to the fact that for some reason, it also happens to be the time of year when most of the population seems to lose any last vestiges of common sense that they may have been clinging to since the post-Thanksgiving shopping season began*.

Claire's Ornament
David's Ornament
Isabella's Ornament
On a lighter note: Kristina and the kids got our Christmas tree put up the other day, and got it pretty well loaded down with ornaments. Over the years my Grandmother has been making ornaments for each of our kids, so I of course took photos of them in their natural habitat.

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It’s become our tradition that Kristina and the kids decorate the interior of the house including tree, ornaments, and Christmas cards, while it falls to me to decorate the outside, consisting almost entirely of roof lights and whatever else we may throw out there. I’ll be doing that job in the coming week, weather permitting.

 

* Note to self: For the next month, stay as far away from Walmart as humanly possible, so as to avoid an otherwise imminent murderous rampage.

Thanksgiving, It Was

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Yes, I know, we’re well past Thanksgiving by now.

Not that I’m obsessive-compulsive or anything, but if a big event isn’t documented here, then it just didn’t happen. Just think: What if some advanced alien race finds this website sometime in the far, distant future, long after we’ve all succumbed to global warming global cooling old age? What evidence will there be that we even celebrated Thanksgiving? None. Then the aliens will assume that we were a bunch of good-for-nothing, thankless layabouts with nothing better to do than documenting children as they grow up.

That simply won’t do, so here we go.

First we went to my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving Dinner proper, and really had a good time. Everyone was in good spirits, and I took lots of pictures. We gorged ourselves on turkey, stuffing, gravy, green beans, salad, rolls, cranberry sauce, olives (green and black), sweet pickles, and carrots. Then we had dessert, consisting of pecan pie, pumpkin cheesecake, and coffee.

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Afterwards, we trucked across the street to Mom’s house for more formal photographs, and I had my first commissioned portrait session, using the new camera and mom’s tripod, with no flashes or strobes. The images turned out a bit soft, as many of them were on the order of one-second exposures, and few people can stay perfectly still for a full second while a camera records them. But I think they turned out pretty good considering the circumstances, and I learned a lot of new things to do differently next time.

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A couple of days later we went to the Bowley homestead and had Thanksgiving with the Carr descendants. I didn’t get as many photos there, as it was a much less formal event where we all just ate and relaxed and hung out.

Photos are in the photo album, which is a good place for them to be, I think.

 

Definition of Nerd:

…taking online IQ tests on a Saturday night.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Free IQ Test Score
Free-IQTest.net - IQ Score

Flag Duty

Isabella was one of several kids at school that recently got chosen to raise and lower the flags before and after school each day. She attended a quick little training session one day, and finally got to do her job last week.

I just had to get her to school about ten minutes early each day, and make sure she didn’t let the flag touch the ground. The boy that was helping her didn’t seem to think it was so important though, so I had to tell him that if he let the flag touch the ground we’d have to set him on fire as well as the flag. That seemed to do the trick.

I’m pretty sure he knew I was kidding. Most likely, anyway.

Deck the Halls, Already

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Isabella played her Christmas recital today*. She played Deck the Halls pretty much flawlessly.

Since I’m not a very good dad and generally no good in other areas as well, I failed to catch the first few notes of her performance in the video. I was watching really closely for some sort of visual cue like a nod from her teacher or something that would signal that she was about to begin, but there was none. I think Isabella and her teacher must have worked out some sort of secret signal only perceivable by them in the hopes of foiling any would-be videographer’s hopes of recording her performance in its entirety.

So anyway. Below is what I got video-wise, and there are photos as well.

Afterwards we went to Olive Garden with Mom and Sam, as is our wont and tradition following a recital.

* Yeah, it’s the latter half of November, which these days makes it a little late for a Christmas recital, but what can you do?

Claire’s First Bath

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It’s about time.

Claire’s little umbilical stump evidently realized it was no longer needed or even wanted anymore, and so finally threw in the towel and took off for greener pastures.  The benefits here are two-fold: For Claire, it means she no longer has a vestigial piece of dried body part hanging around anymore (which is surely always a good thing).  For us, it means we can finally give her her first real bath in an appropriately sized tub.

That’s Knot Funny

Sometimes kids are funny. They can so intensely focus on what we big people might consider the most trivial of things, while at the same time forgetting to pay attention to what might be considered slightly more important. Things like, oh I don’t know, putting your hands out in front of you so as to avoid smashing your face into the ceramic tile floor, for example.

I only bring it up because tonight David did just that. I watched him do it. He ran into the kitchen to pick up some playing cards he had scattered around, began a crouching maneuver upon arriving at the site of the strewn cards, and was doing quite well. However, he failed to stop the crouching maneuver after the appropriate amount of crouchness had been achieved, and proceed to plant himself face first in the middle of the kitchen floor.

So right now he looks like Rocky after the first good hit from Apollo Creed.

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I think my new f/1.8 lens really captures the true essence of a head injury.

The First 100

Canon EOS 40D 10.1 Megapixel with 28-135mm IS USM lens.
Yesterday we got one of these bad boys for the taking of better photos of Kids One through Three and anything else that we may want to record for posterity.

Since then I’ve taken well over two hundred photos. I now present to you, for no good reason, The First 100 Keepers.

 

David’s Third Birthday

David's 3rd BirthdayIt’s official. According to David anyway. He’s now a Big Boy.

We had a bunch of family and friends over for a short time of birthday festivities including balloons, cake and ice cream, and of course a veritable flood of presents ranging from this set gears and cranks for smartifyin’ himself with, to a big ole honkin’ Tonka firetruck with a wicked cool extension ladder.

The party didn’t start until 7:00 in order to allow people to get off work and have dinner and whatnot before coming over. And since it was a school night, most everyone had to leave by around 8:30, so it was indeed un soiree vitesse.

After everyone left and shortly before bedtime, David and I built this super-cool firetruck carwash complete with spinning brushes and water sprayers.

Gratuitous Kid Pics

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I’ve put up some more recent photos of Claire…just because…

Just because.

There are more in her photo album.