It's that time again...

How about a picture post? I'm too lazy to make all the separate posts that would catch you up on everything, so here you go.

This is my three year old daughter. She was apparently looking for something in her play oven during quiet time, and decided to take a snooze. I'm pretty sure this wasn't intentional, although she has taken plenty of naps under her bed intentionally, so who knows?

Ok, I know what this looks like, but it's not what you think. My daughter likes to hide and surprise people when they come into a room - she will stay hidden under a blanket or something while we say, "I wonder where she is... is she under the bed? Nope!" Well, one time we tried looking in her drawers, which apparently gave her the idea of hiding in her drawer. I walked in to find her like this, she said "Daddy, I'm hiding. Tell me when Mommy is coming."

My daughter has a book about a flying house - see the book in the background. So one day she asked me to make her one out of legos. I think it came out pretty well - right down to the balloons on the wings. Of course she stuffed the pilot in upside down, but the house is only an inch deep, so there's not a lot of leg room in there. Plus it's easier to get out that way to access the refrigerators she put on the wing.

Ah the snow... Seattle received one of the best dousings of snow I've ever seen. My daughter wanted to catch some snowflakes on her tongue... not the easiest task in the world.

I had the bright idea of leaving the car outside one day so the snow built up in the wheel wells could melt off before I parked it in the garage, so it wouldn't flood my garage. Yeah. I didn't plan to get more snow that night, so by the time I pulled it in, the wheel buildup was gone, but the car was covered. Brilliant!

Of course we had to play in the snow. I let her go down the slide once with all the snow on it. After that, I was asked to shovel snow onto the slide for every trip down. I shoveled about half the backyard and redistributed the snow to the bottom of the slide.

The first batch of snow was too dry to stick together very well, so this was our first attempt at a snowman. It's about 6 inches tall. My daughter wanted it to have hair.

Well, the snow continued, and finally it was packable. This was much better. She complained that he didn't have a mouth, but I told her it was cold so he was keeping it tightly closed. That seemed to satisfy her.

Our snowman turned out better than this one at a friend's house. I think I need to spend some time with this friend to teach him some snowman making technique.

Ahh Christmas cookies. Obviously (hopefully) you've realized these were decorated by my daughter. Given the snow over Christmas, she now associates the two. It snowed again yesterday, and she ran to the window delighted, "Is it Christmas again?"

I'm going a little out of order here. This is at the Christmas tree farm - we went with our small group from church. No three year old is without her snack of course, you might also notice the candy cane clutched in my daughter's left hand.

Here's a few random shots of our newest daughter. :D

Our daughter is becoming quite the doctor, making sure that all members of the family are in good health. Not sure what she's doing with those medical scissors at this point, but at least she's not using the forceps.

Ok, those don't look particularly interesting... this is an American Gladiator night that I recently took part in. Translation: A bunch of 30-something guys make the mistake of inviting a few teenagers to a 2+ hour intense sporting event. The top photo is of a bunch of barricades set up behind which a competitor ducks while having baseballs shot at him from a pitching machine. The goal? Throw a Nerf football into a tiny net mounted up in the top of the bleachers without getting beaned.

The second photo is getting setup for team dodgeball. That was fun. We swung across the gym on a rope attempting to stick a landing on top of a pile of wrestling mats, played lacrosse, basketball, and tried to ride unicycles. No, there are not any more pictures available to the public.

One of my favorite kinds of bread to make - sesame semolina. I've started making bread more frequently again, I'm planning on trying some new recipes.

And finally, today I acquired my newest toy. This new lens is hopefully destined to become my favorite all-purpose lens. It's got image stabilization gyros so it can counteract camera shake and allow you to shoot better pictures in low light conditions. It's super sweet :D My wife got it for me for my birthday. Thanks!

Well, that ends the update for now. Hope you enjoyed being brought up to speed on the last month of my life.

-The Krunchy Krab