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Monthly Archives: December 2008

Place of Honor

Anyone who has children knows that the place of honor in the home is the refrigerator. This is where the important notes, the good report cards, and the special artwork and photos go. It’s like a personal home art gallery.

At Christmas time, the photocards get a place of honor on our fridge. Here is a snapshot of this year’s gallery.

Typically, I’ve got all the Christmas stuff packed away by now, but we have some of the Bissell Clan coming down this week for more holiday celebrating. So I’ve left the tree and decorations up a bit longer this year.

Happy New Year!

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Family and Friends | cindy | | 2 Comments |   Happy New Year Photocards refrigerator

Chirstmas

Below are a few Christmas Photos. There are more on Flickr.

Here is Eric opening a gift. I love watching him open presents. This is very hard work for him, but he is very determined and will keep at it until he gets it open. Like many young children, he used to just like ripping the paper, but now he wants to see what’s inside, a big developmental step! Progress is good.

Eric opening a gift

 

Aaron enjoyed helping Anthony open his gifts. Aaron is so good with his brothers and you can tell that Anthony just adores Aaron and all the attention he gets from him.

Anthony & Aaron

 

This year, the only thing Aaron wanted for Christmas was “GarageBand”. GarageBand is a music creation and editing program that comes free with Macs, but is not available for PCs. I did a bit of research and found some similar programs for PCs, but nothing as good as GarageBand, so we ended up getting Aaron a Mac Mini. This is the least expansive Mac you can buy, but already I’m impressed. We’ve never had a Mac before and they are definitely cool.

Aaron

 

Sue, John and Brian came down Christmas day. They were so happy that they finally got their power back at 11pm Christmas Eve! Sue said it was the best Christmas gift she has ever received. We also all got a chance to say hello to Nick who spent the holiday with a friend in Germany. It was pretty cool to see him and hear him on the computer via Skype. Nana cooked us a nice turkey dinner. Rich had to work, but he enjoyed the dinner before heading off to work.

Christmas has no religious significance for me. I’m not sure which I dislike more, the fables or the consumerism that surrounds this holiday. To me Christmas is all about family and the spirit of giving. So in that way, this was a nice Christmas.

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Family and Friends | cindy | | Leave a comment |   christmas

Happy Holidays

Bissell boys holiday photo

 

Here is our traditional holiday photo of the boys. It came out nice this year. I used a green screen with a background I found on the web.

We will be staying home for Christmas. Santa will be coming tonight, because Rich has to work tomorrow. We will tell Eric that Santa does our house first;-)

My sister and family will be coming down tomorrow. Sadly, they are still without power! This is day 13 for them, which is totally unacceptable. The electric company (Unitil) that supplies the city of Fitchburg is in big trouble due to their poor response to this major power outage, as well as generally poor maintenance to their lines, which made the outage much worse than it should have been.

Happy Holidays to all!

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Family and Friends | cindy | | 2 Comments |   bissell christmas Unitil

Some days are diamonds…

…some days are stone.

Eric has been behaving pretty well lately, so we decided to try taking him to “High School Musical 2”, which was playing at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, MA. He loves music, so this is something we thought he might like.

The show time was 7:30pm and the drive is about an hour and 20 minutes, so we left the house at 5:30 to give us plenty of time. The Mass Pike was fine, but when we got to route 95/128, it was bumper-to-bumper traffic from the Pike all the way to the North Shore. Some of the traffic was rush hour, but I think the worst of it was crazy people heading for the malls along route 128 for some last minute Christmas shopping. We didn’t get to the theatre until 8:20pm and after almost 3 hours in the van, Eric was not in a very good mood. But we also had Aaron and a friend with us, so at least we made it to the 2nd half of the show.

I had never been to this theatre before. The setup was really nice, with a stage in the center and seats all around. There were no bad seats in the house. Here’s a photo I took with my camera phone.

North Short Music Theartre

 

Oh and the traffic…

traffic

 

We came in during intermission, but as soon as the first song started, Eric started screaming and I had to take him out. We sat in the lobby until the show was over around 9:30, then stopped for a quick bite to eat and got home around 11:30pm. By the time I got the boys to bed it was after midnight on a school night. Not good.

Although things did not go very well this time, we really liked the theatre and the “Phantom of the Opera” will be there in the spring, so we might go back to see that. I might sound like a glutton for punishment, but it has always been my opinion, that the only way to get Eric used to certain activities is the keep exposing him to them. And I do think he is getting better, but times like these can be discouraging. I look around and see all the families with young children having a fine time without any of this stress and uncertainty and I’m a bit jealous. Oh well, here’s hoping for a diamond next time…

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Eric | cindy | | 2 Comments |   High School Musical North Shore Music Theatre

Snowy Weekend

It literally snowed all weekend, we got about a foot of snow. It looks like the roads are fairly clear this morning and the boys all have school (at least as of 5:30am). I got the twins outside yesterday for a bit of winter fun. Below are a couple of photos.

My poor sister and family are still without power! Today is day 11 for them. I can’t imagine. Brian is home from college and not having fun gathering water, chopping wood and shoveling snow. The weather looks pretty good for today and hopefully the crews will get out and restore their power. About 12% of their town is still without power. I don’t ever remember folks being without power for so long here in New England; just crazy!

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Family and Friends | cindy | | Leave a comment |   Snow twins