The Giggle Monster

Daddy brought out the Tickle Monster, which caused the sudden appearance of the Giggle Monster.

Joyeux Noël

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family! 

Santa arrived with a sleigh and a half full of gifts and crammed them under the tree and all around the room (the postman came too and left a bunch of envelopes in the tree).  Somehow all the adults woke up before the kids for probably the last year.  After opening the stockings hung by the chimney with care, we grabbed something to drink and dove into the presents.

The gifts were piled high for everyone (you’ll notice Kate’s stack takes up half the room).

Candice got the joy of opening her presents and Jacob’s presents.  Jacob of course, got to wear a bow, play with all the boxes and wrapping paper.  They are far more exciting than the actual presents.

As a reminder of Kate’s first Christmas, we got another picture of Kate in the aftermath of the present tornado.

The traditional puzzle was out again this year.  I went with a 500 piece puzzle this year (after the 1500 piece last year).  It was a lot simpler and everyone got involved.  We actually completed it Christmas day.

The Giffins working on the puzzle. 

Kate placing the last piece of the Christmas Panorama puzzle.

The best present of all was a Jacob-in-the-Box.

Happy Anniversary mon amour

As has been the case since Kate was born, our anniversary happens some random weekend within a few months after the actual date.  This year I spent some of my time off at home with Jacob planning and plotting my gift to my wife.  I’ve had it done for awhile, but needed an additional set of hands to help hang all the picture frames.  So Christmas Eve I had my sister-in-law help and finally got to give my wife her anniversary present.

Apparently they don’t have red roses on Christmas Eve anywhere, so I went with white.

There is a picture frame from each of our trips in the past 7 years and most of them even have a picture of us in them!  Paris, Dublin, New Orleans, Bordeaux, Nice, Monaco, London, Victoria B.C., Boston, and Mexico.

Candice and the Kids

Candice always says that there aren’t that many pictures of her with the kids…so here is a new one!

Kate’s First Holiday Pageant

We found out earlier this week that Kate’s school was doing a Holiday Pageant, and that all of the children would be singing Christmas carols.  This happened to coincide with Tricia’s birthday party that had been planned for a few weeks.  So Daddy got to take Kate to the Pageant and brought Grammie and Bapa along for the fun.

We had been talking about buying a new video camera for a little while.  Our previous camera was a MiniDV camera, and we really wanted something that made it easier to make DVDs or post videos.  The combination of Pageant + Christmas + Mommy not being able to go forced the purchase and we overnighted it so I would have it in time.  I’m still working on my video skills, and the dozens of people in the aisles really didn’t help matters at all.  Below you can watch the kids singing Jingle Bells.

O’ Tannenbaum

We spent Sunday evening bringing out the ornaments and decorating the tree.  We got a smaller tree than we normally do, so we had to pick and choose which ornaments made the cut this year.  As always our little helper has to be involved, and she was very excited about it!

Our little angel puts the star on top of the tree.

Ready and waiting for Santa, and there are even some presents under there (and a Grinch to steal them)

Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Run

It has been a busy, busy weekend.  After the tree extravaganza yesterday, Kate went to her friend Juliana’s birthday party.  Then this morning was the Jingle Bell Run and the rest of the day has been and will be spent decorating the tree.  When do we actually get laundry done? 

Here are Kate, Auntie Tricia, Gma Roo, and Mom at 7am this morning all prepped and ready for the Jingle Bell Run.

Upon our return home, the only thing Kate could talk about was getting the Christmas tree in the house and decorated.  So she helped Daddy get the tree into the stand and the lights on.

While Jake watched on from the comfort of his exersaucer, chew toys at the ready.

As we speak Kate is organizing ornaments and pestering requesting that we decorate the tree.  The final work of art will be posted upon completion. 

Break on Through to the Other Side

The little man has been quite fussy lately, and part of the problem is he’s been teething.  Well, the first two (bottom middle teeth) have broken through.  It’s a bit hard to tell from the photo (he does like to cover his teeth with his tongue when you have the camera out), but hey…it’s a photo of Jacob, how can I go wrong!

Mmm…deforestation

Today we continued our annual tradition of heading out and contributing to the deforestation of America by purchasing a Christmas Tree with my family.  The last couple years we’ve gone to the Red-Wood Christmas tree farm and picked up a pre-cut tree.  This year we decided to try and cut our own.

We spent some time wandering through the huge lot, but couldn’t find a Noble Fir of decent size.

Here is Kate slogging through the mud, trying to find us the perfect tree.

After a bit of wandering we decided to give up on the cut-your-own-tree and head back up and check out the pre-cut trees.  Here is Bapa getting a little Jacob time.

Candice and I found a tree pretty quick and got it all cleaned up and in the truck.  Then it was time to help out Grammie and Bapa pick a tree.  As you can see Jacob is doing his best to help them pick the right tree.

Peter moves on to a new challenge

On December 20^th, 1999 I got an early Christmas present when I was offered a full-time position at Microsoft working for the Dev Div Setup QA team.  Since then, I’ve gone through 5 managers, 7 different offices, shipped 4 versions of Visual Studio and 5 versions of the .NET Framework.  It has been an amazing experience to watch this team grow from a small team who owned Setup, to a large team making a huge impact on all aspects of Deployment for Visual Studio.

After 8 years working on Visual Studio, I have accepted a new position within Microsoft driving the QA effort for the Multi-Media experience for Smartphone in Windows Mobile 7.  I’m really excited for the new opportunity and helping to shape a technology that I’m passionate about.