Sorry for the interruption but I was out of town for most of the holiday (we left the 26th for Chicago, but thats a whole post on its own!). I did however, want to brag about some of the Christmas Gifts that blessed our house this season though.

Amy’s big gift this year is to have the Master Bath and Bedroom repainted. When we bought the house from her parents, we inherited the DEEP red color of the bath and bed room. Its a dark red (think maroon) that is hard to match colors with. Now we’re going for a lighter, beachier look and are painting them Beachnut (its a lowes color). The master bath is done (Amy found some Votive candle holders at a store in Nashville), next on to the bedroom!

Grace had a very Hannah Montanna Christmas. She got a Hannah Montanna Guitar Game (like Guitar Hero) that plugs in to the tv, a Hannah Costume, and doll. Its pretty cool and she likes pretending to be a rockstar. Maybe someday. I like playing her game (since I haven’t bought Guitar HEro World Tour yet) and she’s getting better at it.

Mose got a Trampoline. One of her favorite things to do is jump. We’d wake on Saturday mornings to the heavy thud of emma jumping up and down in our door way. Now she can do it all she wants and it doesn’t make the house shake. Its pretty cool and Grace and Emma take turns on it. Amy wanted to try it out, but its for people under 80 pounds (and neither of us meet that requirement!

The girls also got some tinkertoys, and some other little odds and ends that they like to play with, but the coolest by far is my Ultimate Wall-E Robot.

We saw the movie in the theaters and we’re big fans (mose loves him). We had seen the Ultimate Wall-e at the Disney Store but we weren’t going to get him because of the price tag. Needless to say, Santa found him on Sale and he was wrapped and under the tree for me on Christmas morning. He has fun dancing, chasing the dogs around and just exploring on his own. If you haven’t seen one yet, I’ll work on some video and see if I can get anything posted. Its pretty cool though and the way he can respond to voice commands or find his own way around the room is fairly smooth.

Was there one gift that you prized more than the others??

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3.2

Amy likes to send E-Cards. She likes e-vites, e-mail and e-cards. The current slew of e-cards though, tend to be one demensional and rather silly looking when looked at in any manner (at least the ones from some of the bigger e-card sites) and almost all of them require some kind of subscription for the good stuff.

Well, I finally found a site that might be worth joining just to send E-Cards. JacquieLawson.com’s unique and artistic E-Cards are one of a kind digital master pieces (some have called them mini movies) that really do convey some nice feelings in a digital format. She got her start seven years ago with a cool card she called “Christmas Cottage” (which you can still send via her site) and has been designing ever since. Some of her stuff is really cool (Grace would like the one in this post with the Fairy) and some is unbelievable. The best part? Its only $10 a year for a subscription to her site which allows you to send amazing e-cards to anyone you want.

Its an easy way to send out Christmas cards to those people who don’t necesairly deserve a stamp (if you send a e-card to 15 people your subscription has paid for itself!). Definately going to pass this one along to the boss.

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2.5

First Dumbledore was gay, now there’s a final chapter in the HP era that only 7 lucky souls will ever lay hands on. According to an article at CNN.com Rowling has penned “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” the book in the last installment of HP that contains the secrets of the Deathly Hallows and other kids tales (which were closely related to fairy tales). Unfortunately for all of us, only seven copies are being printed and bound in brown morocco leather and mounted with silver and semiprecious stones. One of the copies will be auctioned off for charity.

Anyone want to donate the cost of the book (estimated to start at $62,000)??

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2.5

nanawhatie? Nanashi-Inc is the domain of Joana, a cool college student in the great state of New Mexico (I’d move to Taos if I could figure out what I would do for a living there…). Her Blog has become a new stop on my reading route for the average day for a couple of reasons (I like to return views). Mainly I like the look, feel and content of her site. Its fun to hear about the trials of life at NMSU and her writing style is a fun and light read as well.

Her current site layout, while geared towards Breast Awareness month (and I FIRMLY believe we should all be more aware of breasts) is a nicely styled dark theme with a pretty cool header graphic. The fact that she has some about info on her main page is a plus as well (and something I should add to mine…). In all, I would highly recommend a visit to NAnashi Inc. if for no other reason than to try and decipher what the heck a nanashi is.

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2.5

Thirteen ways to say hello!! In no particular order… Swahili – Jambo Lingala – Mbote Hawaiian – Aloha Local Hawaiian Pidgin – ‘Sup braddah! Icelandic – Góðan dag (formal), Hæ (informal) Urdu – Adaab Hacker/1337 – |-|3||0 or |-|1 Luxembourgish – Moïen (MOY-en) Surfer – ‘tsup? South African English – Hoezit (Howzit) (Informal Greeting) Pig Latin - Eyhay (informal), Ellohay (formal), Hatsway puay? (Whats up?) Canada - Hello Oshikwanyama – Wa uhala po, Meme? (to woman) / Wa uhala po, Tate? (to man) (response: ee) Nawa tuu? (response: ee) (formal) Ongaipi? (how is it? - informal) Be the first person to tell me where that last one is spoken and I’ll paypal you $5! My source for this post was WikiHow a good source for how tos! Links to other Thursday Thirteens are in the comments! (leave your link in comments, I’m a dofollower!)

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2.5

I’ve written before about Alzhimers and the affect it can have on people and families and I even encouraged you to join in the fight against it by walking. Now I want to urge you to get screened for AZ early. The earlier the better.

‘But mcangeli, how do I know I need to be screened?” you might ask. Well, there are several good indicators. If you can answer yes to more than one or two of the questions below, it might not hurt to have your memory checked.

• Am I becoming more forgetful?
• Do I have trouble concentrating?
• Do I have difficulty performing familiar tasks?
• Do I have trouble recalling words or names in conversation?
• Do I sometimes forget where I am?
• Have family or friends told me that I am repeating questions or saying the same thing over and over again?
• Am I misplacing things more often?
• Have I become lost when walking or driving in a familiar neighborhood?
• Have my family or friends noticed changes in my mood, behavior, personality, or desire to do things?

Chances are, if you’re like me (and you have one or more young ones running around) a couple of those are daily occurances (we once misplaced amy’s car keys for a whole weekend because Emma took them and hid them behind a doll). This post isn’t for you. However, if you get lost driving to work, repeat things over and over in conversation or you forget names and faces of people you know maybe its a good time to be checked.

November 13th is National Memory Screening Day. Go get checked. Remember though, just because your check shows signs of dementia, you may not have Alzheimer’s or anything close to it. It might just be a bad day. Get checked early, and get checked often, especially if someone in your family has suffered from AZ.

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2.5

w00t. I’ve finally found a plugin to list the top contributors the way they need to be done. The cool thing is that it also resets the count monthly (though that and a number of other options can be changed by editing the config section in the PHP code). Show Top Commentators by Jeffrey Strain works well and it was a simple matter of dropping the script in to the plugin folder and activating it. Once done, I placed the code in my side bar and it was off and running. How sweet it is!

One of the nice things is that he also has a list of modified scripts on the page that are set up for running as a widget (something I stay away from here). If you’re looking for a good way to list your top contributors each month, check his plugin out!

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2.5

My in-laws were in town last week for a number of reasons. The two biggest being a) we needed a babysitter all week since daycare was closed for Vacay, and b) they wanted to come down and get their stuff out of our basement. Two things we desperately needed (now if anyone else wants to come claim the rest of the crap in our basement, let me know, I’m sure a deal could be worked out). One thing I know about them is that I have to have plenty of creamer, sugar and coffee ready for when they roll in to town. The java is going as soon as we wake up in the morning and it doesn’t stop until everyone is asleep at night. Amy and I aren’t huge coffee drinkers, but we do like the occasional cup. John and Susan though, have coffee running through their veins.

Which led me to find the perfect gift for them, a Coffee of the Month Club subscription. For less than $100 I can sign them up for three months worth of gourmet coffee to be delivered directly to their door. A different blend every month. In what they’d spend on gourmet coffee in that time anyways, it works out to about even and I get them something I know they’ll both enjoy (or at least use on a regular basis). Makes it very easy to choose and the coffee is good too. The cool thing is that if there’s a blend the like, they can order it direct from the club at a discounted price as well.

I think this Christmas just “perked” up for the in-laws, don’t you??

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2.5

In the first ever DoG comment contest, the winner by a narrow margin (both of the leaders had posts made after midnight est so I had to subtract those…) with an astounding 62 comments is Sabriena!! Congratulations Sabriena and since I feel bad about the hard work Joana put in to the contest (58 posts in about 3 days…) I’m going to review Joana’s blog as well.

The fun doesn’t stop there though, while Sabriena received a $30 amazon gift card for commenting the short time I had this open, I’m upping the ante again. The person with the most number of worthy comments (again, subject to my approval) will receive a $50 amazon gift card on December 1st! visit the blog every day (or subscribe to the RSS feed), comment on the posts daily and you might have a chance of beating Sabriena or Joana for the gift card!!

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2.5