Welcome to 2006

Happy New Year to you all! May the coming year be filled with good health, good fortune, and good friends. I'm back from my holiday vacation, and ready to rock-n-roll. 2006 is shaping up to be an exciting year -- more on that soon.

During the winter holidays, we usually head down to Los Angeles to visit with family and friends. This year, we decided to drive -- which worked out great, thanks to our portable media players. Gabe (almost 7) spent most of the drive playing DVDs on Scott's PowerBook (that's him in the photo, watching Shrek 3D with the crazy glasses). Scott and I passed the time by listening to an audiobook version of "The Narnia Chronicles" on our sleek new iPod Nano. Having these devices along made a huge difference in our enjoyment of the trip. Sometimes, technology JUST WORKS - and oh what happy times those are!

As always, games were the highlight of our holiday festivities. We played endless rounds of Scrabble with our families, and delighted our nephews by gifting them with copies of We Love Katamari. We also recieved two games that we're especially enjoying: the tabletop game Yahtzee, and a dual-controller version of Guitar Hero. Happily, I can play both games with my son - who of course proceeded to whup my tuchas. That boy is a born gamer. I dunno where he gets it :-)