By Jason
Ann and I split our New Years Eve between Eastern and Pacific timezones with the power of Skype. We headed over to Ahan and Julie’s place for the in-person appearance and videoconferenced in to JJs party in Ohio. It worked out pretty well, though by midnight our time we were pretty exhausted. Parenthood is not conducive to late nights.
We ended up spending a lot more time with Ahan and Julie than we had originally planned, due to this:
A leaky pipe had caused water to gush through the fire spinkler on the celing, creating water damage and some mold. Contractors fixed the pipe but the hole is still there – we decided to play it safe and keep Athena away from the mold. Ahan and Julie just moved back into their place after a big flood, so we got off relatively easy – we had much less water and are not financially responsible for getting it fixed.
Speaking of Athena, here are a whole ton of ridiculously cute Christmas photos.
Smiling in her Christmas dress:
More smiles… the light from our window is very cool, so the photos don’t always have the best color, but she loves looking out the window so it’s a good spot to hold her and keep up the good mood.
Here I am with Athena, this was actaully at the end of one of our shoots and she was on the verge of melt down.
Ann with Athena. She was fascinated with the Christmas lights.
Family photo:
You can really see the lights reflected in her eyes:
Athena in her candystriped Xmas PJs:
Mid-yawn:
I’ve been posting larger photos directly in the blog lately, let me know if you’re having problems seeing them in your email or feed reader or anything. As always you can click on them to see larger versions and we have more photos at Flickr. There’s a not-so-good photo of me on the Google Webmaster Central blog too.
One thing I don’t have for you, which I was really excited to share, is a video of Athena legitimately smiling at her mobile. We know it’s not just gas because it’s reproducable – all we have to do is put her in the crib abd turn it on and we get smiles and happiness. Unfortunately I’m having trouble getting the video off the camera – I’ll probably write a gripy post about Canon products on my blog.
As a side note I recently ran across this account of a bike trip across the eastern U.S. in 1944. They rode through parts of Ohio that I know pretty well including Cleveland and Delaware, and it’s a fascinating look at an interesting point in U.S. history. I’m going to have to see if I can get some of Grandma’s journals and maybe transcribe them similarly. I’m also thinking about revisiting some of the trips Ann and I have taken before we started this blog – years from now someone might look at some of our stories the way I look at that WWII-era bike trip now.