Month: December 2008

All I can say is, if you told me last New’s Year’s Eve what would actually happen in 2008, I would have thought you had quite the over active imagination.

I am jobless (but well cared for-thanks, honey!) and live 300 miles away from the only place I’ve ever known.  We thought our family would have grown by now and and I never could have guess the low back pain that was to come.  One constant though, Tony and Matthew.  As you all know they are awesome.  I could also not forget the rest of our sweet family, including my sister and her family, Tony’s family (they’ve always been so good to me) and our good friends Ben, Paula, Jackson, Dee, Geoff & Elizabeth, and Deb and my friends at the paper and I am sure I forgot someone. This time of year is always a good time to count your blessings.  I feel happy to have so many to count.

Happy New Year–2009 will be different.  That’s for sure.

Merry Christmas to all our family and friends.  We can’t wait to see you all tomorrow.  As much as we love living in Austin now, we love to see those near and dear to us.

It is sunny and 72 degrees here today and we are spending the day watching old movies, playing games, cooking, and eating.  I even managed to fit in a workout.  Tony is finishing wrapping my gifts even as we speak.  It has been a great day and I hope you all are having a great one, too.

Also, four years ago today I was having 4 to 5 contractions and hour but had been that way for five days and didn’t think anything of it.  When Tony and I decided to finally go to bed at 2 a.m., little did we know in less than one hour we would be off to the hospital to have our baby boy on Christmas Day.  The absolute best Christmas gift in the world.  Matthew is truly a gift that keeps on giving.  My little family makes me feel blessed everyday.

Hope you all have the merriest, most peaceful, joyous Christmas of your lives because… it goes by way too fast.

We went to the Zilker Tree Park Lighting Sunday, enjoying kettle corn, pretzels and hot cocoa.  Matthew really liked the children’s choir and the count down to turning on the tree.  The tree is 155 feet tall and has 3,300 lights.  Everyone stands under it as they flip the switch.

We noticed that for the most part people here in Austin enjoy their city and are very happy to live here.  That is always very comforting to witness since we moved from the only place we’ve ever lived just two and a half months ago.  So far, it’s really going well.

Yesterday Matthew started having trouble with the Nintendo Wii.  The signal wasn’t registering from his remote on the left side of the screen.  I tried the 2nd remote and the same thing happened.  I could not figure it out and was worried that we had some how broken the thing and turned it off until Tony got home.

He seemed to be sure that it was our sensor bar and that we needed a new one.  Matthew and I headed off to the store around noon today to get replacement.   Surprisingly, Matthew didn’t seem to mind much that he couldn’t play.  I was relieved and we played lots of other things-it was great!

Anyway, we returned with the replacement sensor bar and it still wouldn’t work.  We tried running the update and no success there either.  We cleaned the bar and the remotes and did everything we could think of except standing on our heads.  It is after all, just a game.

Tony went to the Nintendo website and on the first support page for the remotes mentioned that things that create magnetic fields, cell phones or even sunlight could interfere with your remote signals.  Well, we just couldn’t figure it out.  Then it dawned on Tony (You knew it wouldn’t be me who figured this out, didn’t you?):  The Christmas tree we just put up day before yesterday is to the left of the entertainment center.  We turned off the Christmas lights and wow;  it worked perfectly.

So, for future reference, don’t put you lighted Christmas displays right next to your Wii or at least turn them off before you play.