Christmas 2008

Dodge Handing Me a Gift
Originally uploaded by Jamie Howell

We had a very nice Christmas this year with my family at Mom's house. Mom made a delicious turkey dinner and after opening gifts we watched a couple movies while Mom made empanadas for a snack.

Dodge's parents sent us some very nice gifts. The cookie racks were very much needed and I have a new recipe I want to try in the dutch oven.

Photos from Christmas have been posted to my Flickr account! Take a look!

Pooping Toy Collection

Here is a photo of my growing "Pooping Toy" collection. Technically only 2 of these items are mine. Dodge is the proud owner of the reindeer and polar bear but he's really ok we me keeping our poop in a group at my desk at work.

It started three years ago when I got Matt's gift in the work gift exchange. A pooping santa and some other little gag gifts. Lovely. It was last year's Christmas that I got the pooping snowman from Matt to add to my collection. Very funny joke, Matt. How did you know I needed more pooping toys?

Also last year my sister, Christy, had purchased a pooping reindeer for Dodge. She was unaware of my other toys which made it even funnier. Our family is cursed to collect pooping items!

This year our work decided to skip the gift exchange. Matt was relieved because he didn't think he could find any more pooping toys for me. However, Christy did not disappoint us by finding Dodge a Poo-lar Bear. I'm keeping it in the packaging. I don't want to ruin it's value by playing with it.

I've brought all the pooing toys to work so they can all hang out happily on my toy shelf together. The santa and snowman candies are long gone but today I realized the reindeer still has some poop left in him. The brown jelly beans look very old and nasty (fossilized poo?) so I don't think I'll be tempted into eating it.

Baby Girl!

Baby Girl!
Originally uploaded by Jamie Howell

The second ultrasound was yesterday. Everything checked out well. Baby is very happy and healthy and everything looked very normal. Some things the sonographer couldn't check and so I will have to come in again next month for another look.

The little one wasn't exactly cooperative while we were trying to determine the gender. Their little legs were crossed and trying to block our view. The tech did say she believes it to be a little girl!

We're all very excited. Now we can focus on baby girl names. We will hold out on buying girl baby items until next month's ultrasound when we can verify the gender for certain.

Fun Gift!

We went to Ed and Misty's on Saturday and we had a little gift exchange. I got an origami calendar! Pretty neat, huh! Pictures of some of the folks (mostly people's adorable kids) can be found in my Flickr. It was nice to see Nathan and Kim all the way from Poland! Before he complains; yes I was happy to see you too, Alan.

I brought my new calendar to work because I thought Matt might enjoy doing the origami, too. He's out sick today but it starts in January anyway so it's no rush.

Since I did bring it to work and we're not here January 1st, I did the first origami to try it out. Check out my sweet dove! Yeah, I'm pretty much an origami master now.

My Kindle's Broked!

Dodge got me a Kindle for Christmas this year and yes I've already opened it. To be fair, he opened his first (I had bought him one, too). I only wanted mine after seeing him use his for a few days. I was trying to hold out for Christmas!

It's a really neat book reader. I purchased some books and can read any of them on the go without having to haul novels around with me. It's pretty spiffy!

The problem is that ever since registering it on Amazon, it has not connected back to Whispernet, the wireless connection through Sprint the device has. That means I can't browse the Amazon store or wirelessly purchase any other books with the device. I can buy ebooks online and transfer them to the kindle with a USB cable so I'm not completely unable to get books. However, part of the coolness of the book is being able to browse and get books on the fly without your computer.

I spent some time on the phone this morning with Amazon Kindle Support. The good news is that the guy on the phone really didn't know what to do with me. Makes it feel like this isn't a wide spread problem with the device. He had me try resetting it and verifying the registration of the device. He checked the signal for the Whispernet service in both my home and work locations and says that shouldn't be any problem. He tried for me to get the diagnostics from the kindle but the command he gave me brought up a blank page.

So we're going to have to exchange my kindle for a new one because the wireless device in this one is just plain broke. The bad news is that Amazon is completely sold out of kindles. He said they show the next shipment to arrive in March. March! Gah!

Since I can use the kindle still to read my books he said to just keep it for now and he'll hold off sending me the shipping lables until they have some in stock to swap with me. That way I can continue to use my kindle instead of just watching Dodge use his for 3 months.