Christmas 2011

2011 has come and gone. But not without the gift of the Christmas Holidays together with the family. Its easy to think we all deserve this time rather than being thankful for it. Personally, I am very happy I have the opportunity to spend the week between Christmas and New Years without needing to be in the office. Likewise, the school my kid is in shuts down. So we are all together. It gives us time to decorate, shop (mostly on Amazon), eat, dysfunction with the extended families, and other traditional holiday events. We are still planning the Year in Review - I'll update the page here when that happens. For now, here are some photos of our December Holiday.

First a bit of the decorations. This was year one of automation controlled lights. Here are some of the inside lights. They go on a little after sunset, unless the magic switch is pushed. Note the clean floors.

Some more decorations, this time in the converted dining room, now the reading/sitting room. No electronics allowed in here (even though the lamp in the corner goes on at night). We still have the dining room table hanging light in place, but since its over a table, few heads are injured. See the ball plant with lights? They go on at the same time as the other inside lightes. The outside lights go on when Daisy annouces them.

The Christmas Tree for 2011. In the same room as normal, but this year, its the combo Dining Room-Conservatory (in "Clue Speak"). Nicely wrapped boxes came from someone other than me. But I did recycle some packaging into wrapping, ribbon and bows. Nice carbonfootprintreductionsmanship if I do say so myself!

After all the packaging wrap was sent to its tri-cycling home, on to eating, the second most favorite activity of the holidays. Here is a pan of milk and white stuff that the Giant Crab girl (Daughter) is brewing up. Meanwhile, I toil with gravy or something similar in a skillet.

This is the Christmas bunch all gathered at our Matriarchal member's home. Pretty much all smiles. It was pretty fun, except when I got yelled at.

So, following all the fun with the extended family, we went back to Holiday Activities. Here you see the new home of Porta-Shed, designed and built to shelter firewood, which made the trek from garage to driveway to back door. To the right is a little bit of the patio on the right.

Another traditional Holiday Activity is to cut and split some wood, gather it up and take it somewhere closer to the house. Here, Junior Girl examines a cedar "cookie" which was practice cut with the Rebuilt Husqvarna 51. You'll see that saw as well as the new Husqvarna 346XP Wood Light Saber on the back of the G-Cart.

Another exciting Winter Festivity, especially on the colder days is the addition to the Home Automation and Tech Integration environment. This little custom jewel is a 70V audio distribution loom, which ties the striped conductors as one leg and the solids as the other. They will feed 25V or 70V audio via patch cables into the house wiring to various speakers placed around the house, giving Daisy a voice.

A pretty funny Holiday card from daughter boy. This one was to my wife. That daughter boy - he's a smart one, cause he knew if he addressed to me, I would be insulted! Anyway, we had three or four hours of gleeful holiday laughs out of this one.

Merry Holidays and a my wishes for a lowstress and enjoyable Year of 2012 for everyone!