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??

• @mcangeli got a Twitter Grade of 51/100 from @grader. See: http://twitter.grader.com/mcangeli #

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Well, we’re rounding the final bend in the 2008 presidential race (finally) and the race is getting closer and closer. With four days to go, I’m beyond ready for this cycle to be over. This race has gone on forever it seems and I’m willing to bet that its going to start up again just as soon as January 20th rolls around no matter who is elected.

I wanted to add a couple more articles worth reading and then call it quits. I will do a short post on Tuesday about my election experience (as I am waiting to vote) but otherwise this is the last one from me this year on the election. I ask that before you vote you look seriously at both candidates. Both where they say they stand on the issues and where they have stood in the past. Its important to vote, its your privilage and civic duty, but its also important to make an informed decision.

First, I want you to read an article from Wendy Button. Wendy has worked as a speechwriter for several political campaigns on the Democratic side and has finally decided that The Democrats have belittled the working class and women this political season. I’m glad someone else noticed it. For all the talk they do about supporting the working class, they sure seemed to make an awful lot of fun of Joe. Didn’t they?

Also, Charles Krauthammer takes an even more indepth look at why McCain is a better choice. He lays it out pretty clearly.

All I ask is you think for yourself before you vote and you don’t believe the hype about either candidate.

It doesn’t get much better then this. Adobe Air has allowed some developers to do some pretty cool things with code lately and I have to think, that from a blogger’s standpoint, Moderator by Daniel Dura is the best thing since, well, wordpress.

Moderator is a pretty cool wordpress plugin that adds the ability to approve, spam or delete comments right from your desktop. Its like digital signage on your desktop of your blog. Doesn’t get much better then that does it? The kicker, AIR is a multiplatform (mac, linux, windows) tool so anyone on the big three can make use of this easy plugin.

Installation was a snap, simply unzip the moderator files to your wp plugins folder and activate it in your admin section. Go to the moderator section under the settings and install the code (if you haven’t installed AIR it will do that for you at the same time). Start it up, put in your info and you’re off and running.

So far I haven’t had any comments *ahem* on the site to make use of it, but I hope to shortly… *ahem*. If you use it, let me know what you think.