Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I hope your Christmas holiday season has been as enjoyable as ours around the Valca homestead.

I have purposefully worked to not spend much time on the computers this year.  I think this decision has been a good thing from me and the girls.

With the exception of picking out digital family pictures and bulk post-process formatting them for transfer to the digital photo-frames we got most of the family, I think total hours logged on-line has been under an hour this past week.

Amazing.

That’s not to say we have been completely devoid of tech in our holiday time.

Little bro decided we needed to adopt a homeless Sony Bravia 46” flat-screen HDTV.  We happily accepted it even though it hasn’t been housetrained  yet.  Although truth be told, he actually gave it to Alvis’s hamster.  Lucky rat.

It was quickly put to work displaying multi-hour long jam sessions of Guitar Hero with the two axes we got as well.  Family time has never been so intense!  When we went over to Lavie’s uncle’s place for the extended-family get-together, a Wii version of GH was also set up and kids of all ages (grandparents to the mini-me’s) took turns all afternoon and night long on it.  It really is funny how this game appeals to everyone!  I’m still trying to graduate from the “Easy” level.

We go back to work this week (except for the 1st) and then one last round of family holiday visits and then back to the comfort of our family routines.  So please expect the posts to pick up again by the end of next weekend.

Hope everyone is well and best wishes for the new year to you and all your loved ones.

Cheers!

--Claus V.