I know I said I would update on Christmas, and I really have a lot of good photos to share, but frankly I find this whole blogging business a bit of a pain.

Plus, for some reason, Blogger doesn't act like it's supposed to. It posts photos all huge and in weird proportions so everything's freakishly stretched a la funhouse mirror, so I have to go in and play with the HTML, which is frankly more work than I want to do. If I wanted to write HTML, I would just put up a website instead of using Blogger.

It used work. I don't know what happened. Something changed in my computer's settings, or with my browser, maybe. I don't know, but it's gone from a mild pain in the butt to a huge one.
I just messed with it for a half an hour before getting frustrated and abandoning the project.


So, for Christmas, Clara got a beautiful new laptop, an Asus G50, which is, at this moment, a really nice, screaming fast gaming machine with killer graphics. It's definitely the nicest computer in the house, by a lot.
She also got some cute kitty face shoes like the ones I used to wear 10 years ago, and some Dexter DVDs and books, as well as a Neil Gaiman book, all of which she's already read, as of this date.
She got Dance Dance Revolution and Wii Fit for the Wii, and she really likes them both and uses them every day, which is really nice to see.
Clara was definitely the big scorer this year. That computer is sweet.
Too bad she was horribly sick on Christmas with a raging fever. She lost her voice and was pale and weak and basically slept for about a week, waking up only to cough and sneeze and throw up and shiver. Decidedly unlovely, it was. Poor thing.
What's odd is she never, ever gets sick. She has a really amazing immune system (thanks in part, I'm sure, to not having been vaccinated, and having been fed a pretty darn good whole foods diet all her life) and stays well when everyone around her is deathly ill, but this time she didn't escape.
I actually had just started her on some supplements to get rid of some issues she is having, and I think she may have been doing some detoxing from that.
Whatever it was, it was the pits for her.

Gideon got an 8' trampoline which I haven't even put together yet because it requires 3 able bodied grown people to do it, and I haven't yet been able to assemble that particular group.
It may not fit very well in our yard, either, as it turns out. I didn't measure before buying. Heh.
I also got him a really, really cool retro-looking trike which he was very hot to get put together, but not so hot to ride once it was. We're working on that.
He also got a little basketball goal, the Perfect Petz puppy he'd asked for months earlier, an iDog he'd been whining for for at least a year, some books, DVDs, a cool wooden spelling toy, and various other doodads.
Not to mention the Spike the Dinosaur he was quick to tell my mom he wanted when she asked back in October, and which he was very, very happy to receive.

If I can bring myself to post pictures later, I will. It's worth recording all the neat stuff the kids got for Christmas. They're pretty lucky kids.

I got some pretty crazy stuff, too. I got a Green Star juicer I'd been pining for, and an Aerogarden which I was mere moments away from buying for myself. I love them both. And Clara got me my favorite gift that anyone has ever given me, something I have wanted but couldn't justify buying all these years, since she was a newborn - a video camera. It's a little Flip camera and I love it SO MUCH.

They're good kids.
I'm blessed.

You know, I wish they would listen to me, though. A week ago, I told Clara to clear all the stuff off her dresser and move the mirror that was leaning on top of it because it was going to fall and break soon. OK, she said.
She didn't, though, and just now, as I was typing out my thoughts about how wonderful my kids are, it fell... and broke... into a million pieces, many of which are now firmly embedded in my foot from when I jumped up to see what was going on.
Of course, Clara acts like it's the mirror's fault. Like the mirror attacked her. Like she had no way of knowing it would happen.
And I'm the one with glass in my foot.