Top 5 reasons Christmas was a success this year

For Linda, it's all about the snuggles, so she has a new down comforter for her bed. As an added bonus, it came in this great box with a lid and a bow tied around it- just like you see on TV
For Sarah the fashion accessory/gadget/communication device de rigor is the Motorola Razr. This sleek cell phone tour de force has it all, and she knows how to use it.
And our budding mucisian can't live without her tunes. Katie got the 4GB iPod Nano. This thing is thiner than your average wallet after Christmas, has a color screen and pegs the cool meter at 11
For the handyman we have a mitre saw. After borrowing one for several weeks for the various home projects, I have proven myself worthy of my very own. I guess that means more home projects.

Our #1 give was our TV, it is amazing. The picture is the best I have ever seen ANYWHERE. We now get the high definition channels and the difference is like music from a CD instead of an AM radio.

A Christmas Card for you

Another year another box of Christmas Cards that wasn't sent. This is a nice picture

<------ but if you would like something more multimedia than this card is for you

It's really from the Christys, sometimes people call us - "Domestic Services Team, Budapest" it's kind of a pet name.

Big screen Christmas

We did it, we finally entered the HDTV world. And we have jumped in with both feet.

This Christmas we have given ourselves a brand new HP 58" DLP HDTV and matching stand.

Here is a link if you want all the geeky details
HP Pavilion MD5880n 58-inch 1080p

Those of you who know me, know how much I love the high tech toys. This is one of those areas that are really interesting. There is a lot going on in the digital display world Now I get to experience it first hand.

Of course we are going to have to upgrade our content. We are looking at trading in our DirectTV satellite systems for digital cable. I will let you know what happens.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

We have tickets for Sunday the 18th! I bet you have heard them even if you never heard of them.

We are really looking forward to the show. We try to do some kind of Christmas "event" every year. Sometimes it's a play or a concert or a production of one kind or another.

This year it is the Trans-Siberian Orchesrta. If you want to find out more about them or hear a sample of their music click on this LINK

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Out with the old . . .

We had just gotten the dining room finished in time for Thanksgiving. After we served dinner, laid on the floor (because we were so stuffed) and kicked out the guests we started work on our living room. 2 days later we were ready to start painting and flooring. There were 729 nails holding down the tack strip, baseboards and door casings.

. . . and in with the new

On Saturday and Sunday, Linda and I worked all day and into the night painting, laying the floor, putting in new baseboard and casing. We were especially happy with our casing choosing the Texas star for our rosettes.

It was A LOT of work but we think the results are great. Now we have to move furniture, replace the old electric outlets and get some new curtains.

Finally !

We went DAYS without our computers while we were remodeling. The living room is the network center of the Christy household. It was awful, Katie and I were going into withdrawal, Sarah was freaking out without her instant messenger, Linda had tons of email just piling up.

So, the first thing we did after we painted the last baseboard was reconnect the networks (wired and wireless), set up the computers and printer and get in a little PC time. We all fell better now.

Dahoo Dore Dahoo Dore

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year with friends and family. Tom fried the turkey, Joan took care of the desert and G-mom handled the cranberry relish. The sweet potaotes were a hit. Hope you enjoyed your day as well.
thechristys.net

Traditions

We have some strange ones . . .
One of them is; every year I try and convince Sarah and Katie to eat a raw cranberry. It all started when Sarah was little and she saw me making cranberry relish. She thought they looked so good! She asked if she could have one . . . I said sure. The face she made was priceless. The next year I put sugar on it and said "here this will be much sweeter than last year . . ." and gave one to Katie too. Then next year I told them I had bought special cranberries, you can guess the rest.

This year we have G-mom and the Walls family coming over for dinner. They will only get the cranberry relish because we already ate all the special cranberries.

This has been my project for the past week. We have been redoing our dinning room. We painted, put up new door casings and baseboards as well as replaced the carpeting with a wood laminate floor. It was a lot of work but we think it was worth it.
thechristys.net

It's Official !

Sarah has been officially accepted into Texas A&M University. It may not have been as dramatic as some because in Texas if you are in the top 10% of your class you will be granted admission to our state schools. And Sarah is in the top 10%.

Also because of her test scores in the SAT she is also granted academic admissions.

She has sent in her housing deposit and is College Station bound.

We are very proud of Sarah and think she will make a great "Aggie".

ALL STATE !!!

We are so PROUD of Katie. She placed 5th in the whole state of Texas for Orchestra Bass! And she is only a sophmore.
thechristys.net

The cast

Here we have a Texas cowpoke, her sister Cruella DeVille and her boyfriend Batman. They are watching a commercial I thought about when I saw Drew (Batman). It's the Snickers commercial of several years ago . . . I am Batman!

Do you remember it? http://www.advertisementave.com/tv/ad.asp?u_player=mediaplayer&adid=30

One of my top 5 commercials of all time

Halloween night

Halloween night - it was a little rainy but we still had kids come by. Our own kids went to costume parties. This was our pumpkin this year, it was a last minute effort.
thechristys.net

The Bench of work

One of the things I have been doing with my time is building another workbench. It's not Norm Abrahms quality but it's pretty solid and it matches the origional one next to it.
thechristys.net

Defeat

Those poor Astros. Swept in 4 games. From the thrill of victory to the agony of the feet in a little over a week.

At least I think they made a good showing. I know, they didn't win one game but they were in all of them and probably should have won two of them.

This was the first time the World Series was played in Texas but it won't be the last.

Tardy

Yes, I admit it, I have been tardy with my posts. Plenty of excuses but not many good ones. Here is my best one . . . .

It's fall! the weather has been so great I have been doing a lot of things instead of sitting at my computer updating my blog.

thats all I got.

ASTROS WIN !!!

Root root root for the home team! Houston finally made it to the World Series. They have never been their before. Whoohoo. I am not a big baseball fan but everyone is a fan when the home team in on a winning streak. Our Texans football team have been real stinkers this year but the Astros have come to our rescue.

I am sure Chicago will get all the attention in the national media although I wouldn't be surprised if the Red Sox and the Yankees still get more press even though they are no longer in it.

We will celebrate our moment in the spotlight - Barbecue for EVERYONE!

Halloween is my favorite time of year

The fall is the best! The best time to be outside, it has the best holidays and is the best time to be a sports fan.

Every year we look forward to the annual visit from the GhostDogs. We keep a small bucket of kibble and bits by the front door just for this occasion.

A little R and R

As you may have noticed, we have not posted anything lately, that's because we were vacationing in North Carolina. We had decided to just take a few days and kick around in the Durham NC area. We stayed across the street from the main Duke campus at the millennium House Hotel. We did a little hiking, driving around and a lot of eating. We had some rain so one day we headed off to Charlotte to one of our favorite BBQ restaurants - Sonnys.

All in all we had a very nice time. Sometimes its good to get away and do practically nothing.

Homecoming

The girls were stepping out this weekend. Sarah and her gang of about 40 kids went downtown to the Aquarium restaurant for dinner, then to the dance, back to the house on the picture to get changed, out for a late night snack at IHOP, and over to a friends house for an all night party with sleep-over.

Katie took a more sedate route, her friends met at our house where they proceeded to the Woodlands for some tooling around the stores, taking in some Rock and Roll impersonators then moving to the Pope Room at Buca di Beppo for some mega Italian food. Then off to another friends house to round out the night.

half of these kids in these pictures have been our friends and neighbors since they were in kindergarten

The Hummer

The After-Prom group (that's a whole other story) is selling raffle tickets for a Hummer. Someone had to go to the dealership and pick up a vehicle to take to the homecoming football game for display. You guessed it, yours truly got the job. I was BMOC for a day.

These babies will cure most of your complexes if you have any. Maybe with the exception of "guilt"

Mums

If you don't live in Texas, you don't know Mums. This is another case were everything is bigger in Texas. These are worn for Homecoming by the girls

These will make you the envy of your friends

These things are "built" by Mum experts, it is a cottage industry. Although the details are hidden from dads it is rumored that these masterpieces can set you back in the 3 figures range.

The size and level of detail are how these are measured. Every one is custom and usually has little details that say something about it's wearer. Notice the Bass Katie's bear is playing. That is a genuine Fender Bass once played by Peter Tork of the Monkeys.

Saddled up and ready to go

There are rules on Mums. Sarah is a senor so hers is white, it also must be the biggest. The rest of the school wears the school colors green and gold.

You can't tell from this picture but Sarah's mum actually lights up. Embedded in her artwork are no less than 6 AA batteries.

Special carbon fiber white ropes have been developed to hold the mums up.

These are actual photos

20 YEARS !!!

Today is our anniversary, we have been married for 20 years today. That does not count the 8 years we were together before going to the church

Don Adams

My old friend Maxwell Smart died yesterday, he was 82. I remember watching Get Smart every week when it came out. 99 wasn't bad either. His most famous line . . ." missed it by that much".

He also did the voices of several cartoon characters.

I see him going through all those doors opening just as he gets there (except for the last one), this time he makes it through the last one.

No school

. . . Monday and Tuesday. They are trying to stagger the return off of the people who evacuated and many still don't have power. So the kids are off a total for 4 days for this storm. They are talking about not having to make these days up. We will see. Most stores should be open today although most gas stations are still closed.

Even luckier than we thought

As it turns out, the power loss is much bigger than initially thought. Most of our friends (other than the ones that live in our neighborhood do not have power. In fact at least half of our subdivision does not have power. We really caught a break this time.

Just lots of leaves, pine needles and small branches
thechristys.net

Unscathed

The worst has past. In general Houston got off easy. We have the usual power outages downed trees and broken windows but nothing major. We are officially in the cleanup phase. In a couple of minutes I will post an "after" photo of our house.

12:00 AM and all is well

So far we have only gotten a little rain and some big gusts of wind but nothing serious. As you can see we still have power (and internet)

For those of you not familiar with Houston, this is where we are "hunkerd down"
thechristys.net

Looks like we are going to escape the brunt of the hurricane. We will still get rain and high winds but probably not hurricane winds . . .
thechristys.net

This was taken a few hours ago. It's been kind of a nice day today. We have gone on several walks and ran into many of our neighbors. Our neighborhood is about 35 yrs old so we have some big trees. Most of the time they are a real asset
thechristys.net

Thanks for thinking of us

We have heard from most of our family members living outside of Texas checking to see if we are OK and where we are. The phones have been problamatic because everyone else is checking with their families. Thanks for the concern and the kind thoughts (as well as the offers to invade your space)

Its a big one
thechristys.net

Waiting for Rita

We are at home waiting for Rita to attack. We have taken all the usual precaucions. Since we are about 18 miles NW of downtown houston we were not asked to evacuate and we should be safe from the storm surge and most likely flooding. We are mostly worried about falling trees, flying debre and loss of power. Wish us luck, we will let you know what happens . . .

Something new to try

This is something interesting. It's an application that runs on your desktop. The main attraction is to be able to search all your stuff just like you use goggle to search the web. The results look the same. There is the added benefit of a window that opens kind of like an instant message application (AIM) that offers little windows into photos, news, email and stuff like that. I know, we have all seen them before, and this may not be for you but this one is a little different. The whole is more than the sum of it's parts on this one. It's in beta, still a little buggy but it's really fast at finding stuff in emails and songs in your jumble of MP3s. Just thought you would like to know.

Does this look like fun or what?

This is a site that builds high performance amphibious sports cars this one is only $155K

It happens to the best of us

For some parts of the world winter is about to start

FrankenCOW! cows on parade
thechristys.net

It's really fall now . . .

There are football games (high school, college and pro), homecoming is coming up, I saw some leaves that changed color when I was in Oregon and I saw pumpkins in the grocery store for the first time this past weekend.

This is my favorite time of the year. So much to look forward to. For whatever reason, we get the home improvement bug during the fall. There is no lack of potential projects. We made a minor change in our bathroom that we really like. Quite simple, we replaced out shower curtain rod with a "crescent shaped" rod that looks really nice and gives us extra room in the shower. . . . Its the simple things.

The destruction was amazing even 25 years later you could see how far the blast knocked down huge trees
thechristys.net

It was quite impressive, steam was always coming out of the top forming little clouds
thechristys.net