Heidi and Ben

Outside In - John and Ron

But no pics of her!

I should have brought my camera.

We wish you a Merry Christmas!
We wish you a Hoppin’ Hanukkah!
We wish you a Kickin’ Kwanzaa!
We wish you a Sassy Saturnalia!
We wish you a Yummy Yule!
(and a Happy New Year!)

May you experience the magic.

Ben is very happy to be able to track Santa through NORAD and Google Earth. Of course, magical beings don’t allow themselves to be captured on film and can only really be tracked by their energy signature, so the photo isn’t really of Santa. I think he was a little disappointed about that, but it’s the same with every representation of Santa. Santa is there, but also not there.

As with all such beings, he shines through all those that have the spirit in their hearts.

Don't you love these glasses?

Finally, a grin!

Can we go see where Santa is now? C'mon!

Here is our beautiful clone soldier boy:

Clone Trooper

Strike a Pose

“Mommy, I know a singer who is really, really good and I think you would like him. Can we look up Drake Bell on the internet? He’s on Drake and Josh, and he sings along with Miranda Cosgrove on the ‘Leave It All To Me song for I Carly.”

Evidently “Drake and Josh” is a show on Nickelodeon. I’m so out of touch – it’s already in reruns.

“He’s a really good guitar player and singer, and some of the songs are almost as good as Green Day.” (Ben’s favorite song is still American Idiot.)

So we looked him up, and found his website: Drake Bell. On the upper-right were links to two songs.

Guess what? Ben was right. I like him. He has sort of a Beatles (and derivatives like Jellyfish) sound – the harmonies that I love.

I’m going to iTunes to sample the songs, maybe even pick up a couple.

Thanks, sweetie.

Our son’s “Google doodle” made the cut and he is one of only six finalists at his elementary school to have the opportunity to enter the big Google contest.

The contest theme is “What if…”. The kids had a template of the Google logo, and then designed their own drawings around it.

At Google we believe in thinking big, and dreaming big, and we can’t think of anything more important than encouraging students to do the same. So we hope you’ll gather those art supplies and some 8.5×11 paper and encourage your kids to enrich us all with their creative visions of our world, as it is and as it might be.

The thing that has Ben most excited is the possibility that his drawing would be showing on the Google home page for a whole day. He didn’t make any big deal about being one of the six winners from his whole school. I love that kid so much.

His drawing has an underwater theme, with fishes in two of the letters.

There are other prizes for the winners, to wit:

The National Winner will win a $10,000 college scholarship to be used at the school of their choice; a trip to the Googleplex on May 21, 2008; a $25,000 grant towards the establishment/improvement of a computer lab for their current school; a laptop computer; and a t-shirt with their Google Doodle printed on it. Their doodle also will be displayed on the www.google.com home page for one day. The National Finalists who did not become the National Winner will win a laptop computer, a trip to the Googleplex on May 21, 2008 and a t-shirt with their Google Doodle printed on it. The 36 Regional Winners who did not become National Finalists will win a trip to the Googleplex on May 21, 2008 and a t-shirt with their Google Doodle printed on it. The 460 State Finalists who did not become Regional Winners will each receive a Doodle 4 Google certificate.

A trip to the Googleplex?!? Me! Me! I wanna go!