Christmas!!!

Oh boy!!! Santa brought presents for the puppies too!!










Turbo really wanted a filled pancake pan. My belly really wanted to eat filled pancakes. It's a win-win!









I got a really cool Fenix L0D flashlight. 5 modes, up to 80 lumens on one AAA. Sweet. I love flashlights.









There was a puppy under the tree, but he was just getting a drink. :-)










The girl loves boots!











Two pretty ladies.










Chaz made a really tasty standing rib roast for dinner. It was perfect.






















Auntie and little pieces playing outside.










Then Auntie gave her a bath....











And let her play with the blinds, something she's not supposed to do! She is a very permissive Auntie. ;->







Then it was present time!

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas eve at Bill & Ellen's with the family. Ellen found some super hot horseradish for Pat & I. Like heaven(on fire) in a bottle. Mmmmm.

Chillaxin

That's how I roll.

Christmas Lights!

We started putting up our lights right after Halloween. I think the neighbors believe us to be crazy but I don't care. I love Christmas lights!!!

Bill's B-day Party

It was Bill's birthday party today. The whole family went over for a delicious meal and to spend some quality time together.

Bill solemnly passed on the wisdom of his years as we all listened attentively. ;->






Then Drew shared with us the definition of a "Dutch Oven".










The food was really tasty. Pork & chicken tacos with beans, rice, salsa, guacamole & such.










Katie & Lily had one too many virgin margaritas though!




I did get a really embarrassing video of Drew dancing but he attacked and deleted all the vids except this one. Bummer.

Last Disneyland of the Year

We went to Disneyland for the last trip of the year. We rode a bunch of our favorite rides including Mr. Toad which is really fun when it is cold outside since it is so hot in "nowhere in particular" at the end of the ride.







The park was packed! Near capacity I'd say.





There is a really cool Jedi Training show in Tomorrowland. I would have killed to get to do this when I was 9 years old! The kids from the audience get dressed up like Jedi and get training from a Jedi Master. Some Stormtroopers crash the party and then suddenly Darth Vader shows up! The kids all get to fight Darth Vader one-on-one before sending him packing. How awesome is that!!





I'd been looking forward to having a tasty bowl of chowder all week. The French Market came through and delivered the goods.









The Haunted Mansion will soon go back to its normal theme and Jack and Zero will wait in Halloweentown until next year.









Sleeping Beauty Castle looks fantastic with all the lights on.











At the end of the day we rode the monorail out and said goodbye to 2008 at the park.

Senior Deacon's Work

We raised a new Master Mason tonight at the lodge. While I have been in many 3rd degrees this was my first time doing all of the Senior Deacon's work, open, obligate, second section & close. It was a lot to learn and took me a few months but it was fun and gave me greater insight into some of the more esoteric portions of the 3rd degree ritual. I was shocked at how quickly and effortlessly it seemed to flow after all that practice and memorization. Of course the best part is that we now have yet another good brother among us!

Drew's B-day

Today was Andrew's 14th birthday party. The Magee's had a birthday breakfast party for him. Mimosas and bacon is a hell of a great way to start the day.








One present was particularly difficult to open.











The real star of the party was the new puppy though. Everybody wanted to hold him but he seemed to really like Katie.








Bill & Ellen though their present wasn't going to be there on time so they wrote Drew a long note on the length of an entire roll of paper towels!





On the way home we stopped at Total Wine, a new store in the Market Place. They had a huge selection of beer, wine & spirits. Way more than BevMo.








Sweet vinous Valhalla.

It's been awhile...

I haven't posted much of late. Joe seems to be doing all the blogging. I kind of lost interest after the loss of the baby. But now I feel better about life and I am ready to share again.

Zoo News

A lot has been going on. We got 2 Emperor Tamarins, 2 Cotton Top Tamarins, 2 Titi Monkeys, 2 Owl Monkeys and a Black and White Ruffed Lemur recently. The Tamarins and the lemur are out of quarantine. The monkeys had their exit physical on Thursday and if all is well, they are released from quarantine on Sunday. We also have a new Bald Eagle that is being quarantined off grounds because we ran out of space! I also found out Thursday that they are finally going to start on the new Terra Las Pampas exhibit. They hope to be finished by early 2010. It's going to be a long year with all that construction.
Our Binturong, Bindi Sue, is going to be in a coffee table book about animals who paint. That is really exciting. It seems our little zoo is moving up in the world! Things are busy with the holidays and with some staff shortage, but all in all, it's a very exciting time to be working at the zoo.

As for me, I have discovered reading...again. I realized that I needed to quit reading books of "substance" in my opinion and just read what I enjoy. So I picked up the Twilight series and got hooked. I've always been fascinated with anything that has to do with Vampires. I also got hooked on the HBO series Tru Blood. Now I'm going to read the series of books the show is based on.
Joe and I are enjoying our "time off" so to speak. It's been nice not living in two week increments and constantly wondering if things are going well on the pregnancy front. My body seems to be slowly getting back to normal, so I figure we will be at it again sometime after the first of the year. I really hope in spite of the crappy economy and all the other stuff that is making life difficult, that 2009 is a better year for us. I think we deserve it.

Sweet Technology

A few years ago it became possible to remove clutter and unfortunately placed people from your images. This "cleaning up" of your pictures was an hours long task in Photoshop involving many advanced skills. While I learned to do it, it was far too labor intensive for anything but your most spectacular shots of world wonders that just happened to have tourists in front of them. It was something you'd never do for a throw away shot at Disneyland. Before Photoshop you just had to hang around for hours hoping to get a clear shot. All if this is behind us now. I've been goofing around with Adobe's new "Scene Cleaner" technology and I am just blow away. The pace of improvement in imaging science is unbelievable. What seemed like magic 5 years ago is now possible in under two minutes with all most no skill at all.

These two images are the same. The first is the original, the second the cleaned version. This took me about 2 minutes from start to finish. Amazing.

Disneyland!

We both took today off to go to the happiest place on earth with Jenny & JT. I don't think we will ever get tired of going to Disneyland. It just gets more fun every time we go.










We both have so many memories from when we were kids and from all the times we've been here together.

Christmas time is probably the best time to be in the park.






We've started a new tradition of getting there at opening then wandering down Main Street to the Blue Ribbon Bakery, where they have all manner of wonderful baked goods, getting something special for breakfast and then sitting in the window of the Gibson Girl and watching the people go by.






Jenny & JT met up with us soon after opening.











I was totally stoked to see that they have re-opened Sleeping Beauty Castle!

It was closed shortly after Sept. 11th and the word was that it would never be open to the public again. :-( That has proven to be completely wrong! This was clearly someone's labor of love as Disney has really given the walk through all the love and care it needed. It is better than ever before. While the wonderful old illustrated books remain, the dioramas have been totally redone. They now feature multi-layer projected animation, state of the art sound and have been greatly enlarged. It is really heartwarming to see this little piece of our childhood come back out of the dark with all its dusty memories intact.


After riding both sides of the Matterhorn back-to-back we headed over to Small World.




















Once again we got to eat in the best place in all of Disneyland, the Blue Bayou.


JT wants to open a restaurant some day with many of the thematic elements from here. I hope he does as I bet it would be fantastic with great food.




The marine layer rolled in deep and fast like a cold wool blanket. Bizarrely, they went ahead with the fireworks anyway. It was a surreal experience as you could not see any of the main fireworks, just the low ones. This gave it the look of a war, bright flashes and booms echoing through the fog giving warning of terrible battles you couldn't see.

The castle looked fantastic though.





And finally, too quickly, the day came to its happy end.

Brisket Part II

Pat called around 11:30 and said the brisket was at 185 degrees, just what we were aiming for. It had a nice mahogany color with a good crust.









It was falling apart as we started carving it. We separated the flat from the point and sliced it across the grain. You can see the nice smoke ring that developed. We shredded the point and sprinkled a little of the rub on it. There was enough to fill two pans with tasty cow.







Some beans from Lisa, cheese potatoes from Amy and a cold brew from the fridge made for one delicious meal.









Everybody seemed happy with how the brisket turned out.










Turbo showed up after along day at the zoo and settled in for some BBQ too.