Holidays 2007

We spent Christmas at Sarah's parents in upstate NY. We cut a christmas tree at her grandfather's Christmas tree farm, (my first live tree!) and decked it out with lights & ornaments. It looked great with all the presents underneath it.

On Christmas day, we exchanged presents - one of the neatest presents was from Sarah's nieces & nephew - a webkinz. Specifically this stuffed toy, made by Ganz. You get a code with it - and when you log into webkinz.com, you "adopt" the pet (which has it's own online persona/avatar as well. And you have to "feed" it, and as you play various games, you "earn" kinzcash, which you can use to buy your pet various furnishings in their rooms - like food, clothes, electronics, etc. It's really quite addictive. I've talked to one parent who plays the game rather obsessively, earning kinzcash so her kids get to deck out their pets online... The real kicker is the subscription is only good for a year, so the parents have to renew each year or the kid loses access to webkinz world. What a great marketing idea at Ganz. I wish I had thought of this!

Sarah & I installed running boards on her Dad's truck the day after Christmas - his Christmas present from Sarah & her sisters. Looks pretty good - Kirby the dog certainly seems to approve.

PS: Bathroom remodel is coming along. New fan arrived, as well as new lights. We are waiting for an electrician to redo the wiring, but we did mount the mirror this weekend. It's coming along. We have the popcorn ceiling scheduled for removal, which will be a royal PITA as we have to pack everything in the living room & two bedrooms into the garage. Also need to finish painting the porch (waiting for weather to improve, although with the recent storms (worst in 2 years) it might be a while. Surprisingly, though - no fallen fences/trees, etc in our neighborhood. I had gotten used to our fences falling over almost every winter, but I guess we had enough support posts replaced with pressure treated lumber that things held up OK this year! Woo hoo!