year in review...

another year has come and gone. as is my tradition, below is a high-level recap of the events that were documented at thirdthoughts.

january
2 - owen turns 3
9 - allison and i celebrate anniversary #13
23 - brian and kelly bring home danny flynn

february
10 - i finally get high-speed internet at home

march
9 - my birthday
12 - family mini-vacation to wisconsin dells

april
21 - linksys finally approves my rebate submissions (slow month)

may
6 - alaina turns 9
13 - twins game with the whole family
22 - we purchase new washing machine
28 - i redesign photo albums on this site using zen photo
31 - alaina's piano recital

june
2 - noelle turns 7
12 - the girls dance recital

july
4 - eagan independence day parade
7 - i get my "new" car
21- 20th high school class reunion
31 - we acquire "marcy" the guinea pig for 3rd round draft pick and player to be named later

august
4 - st. anthony village fest parade
16 - family vacation to boston
31 - annual pilgrammage to minnesota state fair

september
19 - i make the somewhat controversial decision to upgrade my home gym equipment

october
1 - annual golf outing with the guys
7 - girls bike marathon
28 - cardinals win world series

november
1 - i paint my bathroom
7 - i rant about "i voted" sticker

december
14 - allisons birthday
20 - girls advent program
23 - snowtubing at elm creek park reserve

by all accounts it was a very good year for the price household. we are looking forward to the new year and the many new opportunities and challenges it will no doubt bring. we have been very blessed!

here's to a very happy 2007!

christmas wrap...

a short post...Christmas day has come and gone but the holiday festivities continue on. we had a great Christmas and spent the day with family on both sides. click here for the photos. i will post again soon.

merry christmas!

we enjoyed a couple of hours of snow tubing yesterday at the elm creek park reserve winter recreation area at three rivers park in maple grove. click here to see the video documentation of one of my spectacular runs.
the christmas festivities are in high gear.
merry christmas to all of you, from all of me.

one of my most favorite christmas stories...
"My Christmas Miracle" by Taylor Caldwell

silent night...

i, like many others, sometimes struggle to get into the spirit of the season what with the hustle and bustle of work, financial stress, and daily life. the holiday music, cards from friends, christmas decorations, and time spent in quiet refelection of what the season means to you sometimes helps. it all clicked for me last thursday, during my daughters advent program at school. it's the standard christmas program, the same story told every year by a million kids in a million school programs, but it really hit home for me this year. i'm sure the video itself may not mean that much to you, but the story rings true, and for me, it encapsulates the entire christmas season into a few moments.
click here to view a 1:05 minute windows media clip.

a flurry of activity...

it's been a wild ride these last few days, barely time to take a deep breath and regroup before the next onslaught. started out thursday which was allie's birthday and also the advent program at st. charles. alaina made us proud with her portrayal of mary, a role which was light on the spoken word (not one), and heavy in the character\visual sense, i.e., rapid hand movement explanations, pretending to ride a boy dressed as a mule, pretending to chat it up with the village maidens, barefoot and robed all the while. the highlight was when they brought out the "baby Jesus" which was an actual newborn baby. seeing my 9 yr old daughter holding a newborn, portraying her own child, produced a wide range of unexplainable feelings. needless to say, we were proud of her, and noelle did a great job too, singing with her class as part of the program. next up was celebrating allie's birthday. we went to dinner at our favorite pseudo-american\mexicana restaurante and then back to the house for cake and presents.
saturday was our annual "sno-ball" christmas party at the st. paul hotel. thanks to grandma & grandpa for letting the kids sleepover and letting us stay out later than 11pm.
sunday was the kids program at church and a visit from the big-guy (see above photo).
thankfully, i have today off from work and can re-boot before the rest of the hectic week begins.
for a few more recent pics check here.
more soon

Happy Birthday Allie!

you're still my best friend!

the most wonderful time of the year?

now that Christmas is only two weeks out the holiday stress is probably starting to creep in. it's amazing really when you think about it. the shopping, the planning & organizing, not to mention the fact that if you have a job you still have the daily stress of that. some people i know get depressed about not having any snow...like you can control that? anyway, i'm fairly certain my Christmas shopping is done, as we made some honest efforts to downsize the gift-giving part this year. the lights are on the house, we have our christmas cards ready to write & send (a fairly large task that is not yet complete), christmas tree purchased and resting in the back yard until we have time to actually plant it in the living room, so things are happening. next week relatives will arrive from out of town which will no doubt add to the business. here's a quick look at this week, thursday is allie's birthday, plus my kids advent service at school (which alaina has the part of "Mary"), followed by celebrating allies' birthday on friday and our annual Christmas party on saturday, not to mention the fact that things at work are in a year-end frenzy. i know i'm not alone in this but i think the key is too focus on the moment and enjoy it and not insist on perfection. a hallmark Christmas season is just not gonna happen. i found a few tips that is supposed to help ease the holiday stress. maybe there's something there we all could use?

floating holiday...

i took my company up on it's 11th hour offer of one additional PTO day (to be used by the end of this year) as a reward for all of my hard work and accomplishments over this past year. coincidentally, it seems that all of the other employees were rewarded this way as well. as i already have some time scheduled off between christmas and new years, the opportunities to use this last day are diminishing. i have elected to take tomorrow (friday) off to hopefully finish up the little christmas shopping i have to do, along with buying allie's birthday present, which happens to be next week. other than that i plan to be completely unproductive. we'll see.

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.
- Mary Wilson Little

Christmas hits and mixes...

now that thanksgiving is history and your Christmas online shopping has no doubt began, you can shamelessy dust off those Christmas records and get your holiday groove on. me? i'm a sucker for the classics. bing, dean martin, nat king cole, that's where it's at for me. imho there is no such thing as good "new" Christmas music, with the possible exception of some stuff from the contemporary Christian genre. however, my latest kick has been re-discovering the classic hits which have been re-mixed to sound more modern, funky and electronic. there are three essential cd's (with a couple of dupes) that are "must-haves" if you like this brand of music. you are not likely to find these at your local target or walmart but they are accessible on-line at places like amazon, or i threw together an imix that you can see here (if you have itunes installed). listen to samples or download the whole thing for a mere $35.64 (i do NOT get a cut :-(

no itunes? you can get the amazon scoop here:

christmas remixed
christmas remixed vol 2
merry mixmas

you can also stream the entire merry mixmas album here

more soon...