Chrismas Eve

So we made it through our fist family christmas at home. It started with preparations for Santa. The first one was new for me, putting out some food for the reindeer (think oatmeal with glitter in it). The reindeer food serves two purposes, it reflects the moonlight so the reindeer can find
the house and then of course as a snack while the reindeer wait for Santa to leave the presents. Here's a movie of my son putting out his reindeer food:

Second was the more traditional milk and cookies. We baked the cookies that night, so they would be fresh for Santa. Actually they were more like brownies, but I'm sure Santa was okay with that. Though there was some debate over whether Santa leaves all his presents by the fireplace or if he just does the stockings by the fireplace and then puts any presents he brings under the tree. In this case he ended up leaving all the presents by the fireplace, but that's probably because the stockings were overflowing and he just decided to leave everything together.
Christmas day was good. I'll put movies from that up later, I shot it on the video camera, rather than the little digital one. I makes me want to save up and get a camera that records to solid state media so I could just dump straight to a hard drive. Oh well, maybe next year sometime if production work keeps up at the current level I'll be able to get something together.

Finally, skipping ahead to today. We took an unexpected trip to an ice skating rink. We had to rent skates, I don't think I've been in ice skates in 15 years. But it went much better than I had expected. With the exception of the two times I tried to use a heel brake, like on rollerblades, I was fine. And my son was walking in the skate almost immediately after getting them on. And was able to skate with the use of the stability bar (as seen in the picture) and me holding onto one of his belt loops. We were out on the ice for about 20 minutes before we had to clear out for the Zamboni. After that my son wasn't interested in going back out on the ice, but "Maybe later". We'll see, if his interest increases we'll see about getting our own skates. My only concern is his skating aptitude and his previous interest in hockey sticks. Cross your fingers for no hockey.

December

Well, Turkey Day was great. It's really a Wed-Sunday thing, with trips to Toga and Connecticut.
I won the weight loss contest with my brothers. Yay! Now we'll see if exercise and sensable eating will keep me at this weight.

Last Wed, before we left for Thanksgiving my son and I went to see the local mall Santa. He's a great Santa. He comes up from North Carolina to work as Santa for a month and my son has seen him every year, the the photo studio where I get most of my video work runs the photo/Santa village at the mall. Well, this is the first year that my son was willing to sit with Santa and tell him what he wants for christmas, he even had a question for Santa, "Where are the reindeer?" Anyway here's the picture of the Santa visit:


So the rest of month is a bit hectic. Some deadlines, christmas prep and it's about time to start setting up a training for crown tourney in May. And I'm hoping I can fit in some time to enter a couple of video contests this month. Finally I need to get my focus back to short films now that the video contests have gotten me moving again. So, I think I'll shoot for end of the year to have my short film from North Carolina ready and out for festival submission, at least one feature script far enough along that I could get and editor to help me polish it up and another serious short film project ready to shoot in January or February.
So that's three goals, we'll see how I do.