Christmas Morning

It was a wonderful holiday. I got lots of great presents. Since we had Christmas in California this year, I thought I'd try to give you something of the flavor of the gift-opening festivities.

Opening presents:


A crab puppet:


You can see the slideshow here.

Snow!

I was very lucky when I went to wilkes-Barre this holiday season. It snowed! In fact, there was one terrific morning where there was a whole bunch of freshly fallen snow. We made two snowbears. (I don't like snowmen since they're human--only snow animals).



We also had snowball fights.







Here are some orderable photo highlights:

Snowy scenes
Snowball fights

Putting on Ornaments

Today, we put some of the ornaments on the Christmas tree. Since I'm very strong, I helped Daddy cary some of the boxes out of the garage and into the house. Then, I put up some ornaments. It was very exciting to pick out the ones I like. The balls are really shiny, and I like these a lot.



I also picked out a number of others as favorites, including the Christmas shrimp and a very pretty trumpet.



I don't really like the nutcracker ornament, but Daddy and Mommy do, so it's on the tree.



We left the high parts of the tree for Mommy to do since she's taller than we are.

Daddy note: These "improbable" Christmas photos were taken using a tripod and a really long exposure time (30 seconds) with no ambient light. The long exposure creates the twinkles in the lights---it's not a Photoshop trick. In fact, there images are straight from the camera. Click on the image to view, download, or order prints of the big size.

O Christmas Tree

Well, we finally got a Christmas tree today. Its been super busy with my birthday party and other things, so the Christmas tree got pushed back. Because of the lateness of the season and the rains, we ended up getting an artificial tree this year. Mommy was ambivalent about this, but I like the "machinery" of the tree. It looks quite nice. Both Daddy and Mommy commented that artificial trees look a lot less artificial than they did when they were kids.



This evening we put the tree up, tomorrow we add the ornaments. I worked on the bottom branches.



Hooray for Christmas.

Christmas Cards

After Mommy finished with the gift wrap processing, she's turned to the next big Christmas job, writing the Christmas cards. While in past years, she signed the cards for me, with my new writing skills, I'm signing my own name to all the cards. There are lots of them, but I'm pretty quick at signing. I hope you like the cards.

Birthday Celebration

Yesterday, I had an early birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. I invited all my classmates from kindergarten as well as some old friends as well. I had 12 people at my party, and everyone had a great time.



The theme of the party was my favorite sport--baseball. We even had a really cool Oakland A's cake, and I dressed as an A's player. Best of all, I got some very cool presents including a pair of nerf micro-dart guns that Daddy really likes. What a good day.

Early Birthday

After we went on the light-up train at Sunol, we stoppped off at Chevys, my favorite restaurant. Mommy had a birthday coupon from there, so we celebrated my birthday early.



I got the big sombrero, ice cream, and everything. Daddy only had his camera-phone, so we only have silly pictures

Tired

Trick or treating is very tiring. My legs were really sore this morning, and I was generally really tired today. I went to bed early. Daddy took a couple of pictures (above) of story time. One of the stories was called Mouse Paint. I got out the mouse finger puppets that go with this. I had the red one and Mommy had the blue one. You can see the blue guy (he's a bit blurry) in one of the shots. Daddy says that the cool feature of these shots is that they were done in the natural (dim) light of the house--no flash at all. Both of these photos are downloadable. Links here:

First photo

Second photo

Happy Halloween

Halloween is one of the best holidays. You get to dress up. You get to visit lots of people. You get candy. What's not to like? This year I dressed up as the Shadow Ranger. While most of the Power Rangers are teenagers who have been trained by the Sensei to have powerful crime fighting skills, the Shadow Ranger is a dog-like creature named Anubis "Doggie" Cruger. He retired from being a ranger but then came out of retirement to save the world from the evil General Benaag. In the picture above, I'm with my friend, Christopher, who is dressed up as Vernon Davis, a player on the 49ers.

Daddy did a photo shoot of me showing off my many crime fighting moves. Check it out here.

Birthdays galore

This weekend I had a busy social calendar---two birthdays in two days. The first, for Sophia Luccio, was a garden party. I got to plant a marigold in a pot and put some nasturtium seeds in one of those seed grower thingies that expand when placed in water. I also managed to find an earthworm in her yard. I showed all the guests the worm while we were eating cake. Later, the worm got to visit Sophia's clubhouse inside her house. Apparently, that was a bit much for the worm and for her Mom. Once we found the worm, we put it back outside in the yard.

Another Month, Another Birthday Party

On Sunday,I had a birthday party with my school and play friends. It was at a place called Picture Perfect Party. There was a great play area with a big inflatable slide, lots of dress up clothes, some vehicles, and tons of other stuff to do. While all of us were playing there was a lady from the place who took a bunch of pictures of us, some of them really cute.

Next, there was a box with a bunch of candy in it. Below the box were a whole bunch of ribbons, one of which opened the bottom of the box to let the candy pour out. I got a whole bunch of candy in the scrum under the box.

We also had yummy chocolate cake in the Cars theme, and I got lots of presents. It was a great party. To see the picture highlights, click here.

Christmas Evening 2006

Daddy took a bunch of pictures during Christmas dinner this past Christmas. Since he cannot bring himself to shoot photos with flash indoors in poor light, he used Nainnie's camera. Here are some highlights. Most of them are even better than the picture to the right.