BilikFamily.com

Album - Michelle generously gave me some time to work on a photo album today. So as not to totally lock myself away, I did them using the laptop so that I could help out in the kitchen and family room when needed. Unfortunately, Timothy kept putting the desktop (where the files for the pictures actually reside) to sleep. It's hard to load and save pictures when the file server keeps suspending. The Christmas gift pictures are broken up into two days - Christmas eve morning and Christmas day morning. I didn't take many during the opening on Christmas day but instead focused on helping Timothy and cleaning up wrapping paper. I also put the Christmas card photo in that same web directory even though it's not in the album.

Michael - It was a pretty uneventful day today. A bit of shopping; Claire had a friend over; we played some Mario Party 6. The most unusual item of the day is that Michael put a hole in our blue fitness/stability ball. That ball is always fun for the kids. Chris, TJ, and Cassidy enjoyed it when they visited last summer. The blowout happened while we were finishing dinner. Michael was dismissed early and went into the family room. Evidently he leaned on the ball while pressing it up against the tempered glass of the running wood stove. Within seconds the ball started to sizzle. The air pressure inside took advantage of the weakness and poof! I'm pretty sure the same would happen if the ball was pressed up against a baking oven. Michael immediately realized he had ruined the ball and ran himself into the bedroom for a little timeout. I actually felt a bit sad for the lil' guy. We immediately turned off the stove but knew it would be a couple hours before I would be able to scrape the window clean with a straight edge.