26 man-hours and 30 pounds of ingredients later we're finished with our 2008 Christmas production run.  Nicole and I did the chocolate making while Angela played an important role by taking the kids out to the farm.  Last year I figured out that making four trays of molded chocolates takes little more time than making two trays so I expanded my collection of molds so that I have four of everything.  Unfortunately two of my favourite shapes, the pyramid and geodesic-style dome, were back ordered so I'll have them for Easter. 

A few photos in the gallery and a complete description of this year's sweets with a photo in the full blog entry.

Wow! Two blog entries in one day!

This weekend I spent 13 hours organizing my digital photos using Adobe's fantastic Lightroom 2 software.  6700 photos catalogued and tagged so far.  Over the next few months I'll be uploading the good shots from the archive to the website.  One way to look at them is using the new Photo Calendar module (located beneath the Photo Gallery) to view photos by the date on which they were taken.  As I publish more photos you'll be able to enter the Way Back Machine and see everything all the way back to the ultrasound taken the day before I was born.

Speaking of which, my next major project is scanning in all the film negatives, slides, and prints.  I've been digging around the Internet for reviews but the professionals don't seem to like anything under $1000 which is way out of my price range.  I'm looking at the Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner for $500 from Costco.  Does anyone have any experience doing this?

This morning before school the kids were playing the board game Candyland.  They got it for their birthday and have requested we play it several times the past few days.  Then in school my mom and I chaperoned a field trip to the local Silver Springs fire station.  Three firemen did a great job of keeping the preschoolers attention.  The boys were eager to try every piece of equipment on offer: oxygen mask (with flowing oxygen), respirator, suit, hose and nozzle, lights, etc.  They wanted to slide down the pole too but the city's insurance company says that is a no-no.

Board games and cool school field trips.  Two more milestones on the road to when they can play board games and XBox with me.  And, though I prefer not to dwell on it, two more milestones to when they can beat me at board games and XBox.

Some pictures from the field trip are in the Recent Pictures album in the Photo Gallery.

 This year Angela came up with the idea of hosting a Rock Band Halloween Party where everyone was invited to come dressed up as their in-game avatar.  Everyone looked great and it was obvious that much time was invested into making their costumes.  Angela went so far as to dye her hair permanently red.  We had two copies of Rock Band 2 - one on Mike's XBox 360 downstairs and another on Kevin's PS3 upstairs - so nobody had to stand around for very long and people could play until their wrists hurt.  Check out some photos from the event in our Gallery. One photo I wish I had is a shot of the TV showing us completing Metallica's Battery wit

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 I realized a few months ago while organizing my external drives the extent of my uncatalogued collection of photos and videos.  Thousands of photos and tens of gigabytes of standard and high definition video all sitting unused, undisplayed, and collecting the digital equivalentof a thick layer of dust.  Our Rock Band Halloween party (more on this in a minute) and the kids' upcoming fourth birthday both mean more photos and more video.