We Were Robbed!

It is true. Late in December, we were robbed. A couple of thieves who were hitting random places in town, took a chance and stole stuff out of our van as we were unloading it from our Christmas trip.

No big deal, really. They took some DVD's and our camera.

However, the police caught them with our goods and many other peoples' things.

This explains why I haven't posted many pictures lately.

We asked for our stuff back, but the police need it for evidence.

We may have to buy a new camera.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody! We had a great, albeit, stressful year. You won't see new pictures up on the blog for awhile because a few days after Christmas, someone broke into our van and stole some things out of it, including our camera, which had pictures from since Thanksgiving on it. The crazy thing is that all our things were recovered, but are currently being held by the police as evidence.

That sums up our year in a nutshell: Get hit with something negative and unexpected, but then roll with the punches and have it work out in the end. Here's to a better year in 2010!

The kids in the Christmas Parade...

Carl and Katie participated in the Christmas Parade this year. Here are some pics:

Pictures of Elvis

Our little skink is alive and kicking, and growing back his tail:

Gingerbread Houses For You And Me

A fun part of the Festival of Trees:

Festival of Trees

This has become a ritual for us...to visit Springfield and takes lots of pictures at the Festival of Trees:

While we are there, we always take a Christmas-y picture:

Trip On Thanksgiving....

No, this is not advice, it is what we did after surviving black Friday sales. We loaded up the kids and went up north to Springfield.

The dogs were more excited at first!

The Lobster Trap...

Carl had to do an assignment for his English Reading class. He had to read an article about a lobster man, called "The Lobster Trap." He did well on the reading comp assignment, and afterwards, got bored and started doodling zombies on the cover. After he was done, I realized the caption was even better for the story now that zombies were involved.

After Carl saw what I saw, and what you will see below, he began to rewrite the story, starting with the same opening paragraphs. When he is done, I will present both stories next to each other. I hope you enjoy the opening sequence of "The Lobster Trap."

A New Pet....

In the course of this summer, two skinks have made it into our house. The first one ended up as Lucky chow, but Lara caught the second one after it had lost its tail. It just so happens that Carl can complete a Boy Scout requirement by raising a reptile, so we readied up an aquarium and now have a skink in the living room. Lara dubbed him Elvis.

This marks the first time that I have not named one of our pets. I feel kind of weird about that. Since it is a blue-tailed skink, I'm thinking blue-tailed calls to mind blue suede, hence Elvis, but when I brought that up to Lara, she said, no, she just liked Elvis. So, I'm gonna call him Elvis, the skink of rock and roll.

Since I don't have a good picture of Elvis, here is an idea of what he looks like:



And here is our cage set-up for him:


Let's hope Elvis lives a little bit longer that Matilda, our Praying Mantis from last year!

Halloween Pictures

Here is the progression of the day, from carving pumpkins to walking the neighborhood, to watching a full moon rise. We had a great night.