Friends, Pippi, Video Games and Music Room

Greetings to a New Year 2013.

We stayed in Newcastle for the holidays this year. Amanda and I have been sick with the flu on and off, but surprisingly the kids have not been hit hard by it. Amanda was laid up for a week in bed before Christmas so that dampened her spirits a bit. It's also tough for her to not spend holidays with her big extensive family. But we did the best that we could here. We got a great looking little Christmas tree. I had fun thinking of presents for Amanda and myself.

I got myself a great acoustic guitar amplifier which takes two microphones as input and two guitars. So I've taken over the guest room and we've now set it up as a music room. It's great. We can listen to music and play along with it. We even came up with the makings of a song. It's inspired by the "cowbell Will Farrell" clip that you can see on the internet. The song goes, "When I get up in the morning..... I put my pants on, one leg at a time" then the guitar kicks in with a really heavy blues riff. Love it. We've also played along to St. Germain's Thank you Mum (4 everything that you do). Great rif on that one. Anyhow, when you come to visit you'll find a few musical instruments and some guitars hanging off the walls of your room. Hope you don't mind.

Ok, back to Christmas presents. I got Amanda something I thought that she would like, but she was kind of annoyed that I kept telling her what a cool present I got her way before Christmas. I was excited at having thought of one for the first time (ever). Usually I'll get her something practical and I don't fuss too much about whether it's right because I know she'll exchange it for something else that she wants. But this year I thought I'd nailed it. So Christmas morning she opens up he presents. She opened up the one which was a massager and she thought that could be useful (give how my massaging skills are non-existent). Then she opened the second. I was looking forward to her reaction. As soon as she opened it she asked "Can we return it". Offended, I said, "Amanda let me give you a pointer"... "when someone gives you a present, maybe the first things you say shouldn't be "can we return it?"." So like Maverick in TopGun, I crashed an burned. You're probably wondering what I got her and how it could be so alwful. Well, Amanda loves to read so I thought to reduce book clutter I would get her a Kindle so she can read books on it. The other advantage is that the Kindle has free internet access anywhere in the world. Yep, I thought that would be pretty cool. But Amanda likes reading books the old fashioned way. Well, let's see. The present may grow on her yet. For now at least she's getting better back massages than she used to and she doesn't have to remind her masseuse to stay awake all the time.

The other neat things about Christmas in Newcastle is that we took Julian to a lighthouse on Christmas eve, where we all got stranded. This is a lighthouse that gets isolated from land when the tide comes in. That was a lot of fun. Maya in the meantime joined her friend Izzy for a ballet show.

But my absolute favorite part of the season was taking a whole week off from checking email. That was great. Also, we got Mitch, Emily and their kids Leo and Bea to visit us for a week. That was awesome. The kids each had a buddy to play with and we got to hang out with Mitch and Emily at night talking and playing card games. We even spun some records and had a disco party one night. Mitch rented a car and we all checked out some castles on the coast as well as going to a really neat 2nd hand book store (where I bought records, not books, go figure). The time flew with our visitors and each day was fun packed. I also want to thank Mitch and Emily in reviving my interest in cooking with the slow cooker. There is some history behind this but I'm glad to say my hang ups got hung up. I'm cooking again with it! It will be great to see you guys again soon.

Over the holidays our favorite song was "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas". I'm not sure who sings it but it's a great version. There is a part in the song that goes, "... and mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again.". Well, school has started again and we've gotten a lot of snow this year. Newcastle seems to be dealing better with the snow this year than a few years ago.

We've finished reading the Pirates of the Carribean books with the kids and now I'm reading the Pippi books to the kids. Boy I'd forgotten how wild Pippi is. But I can tell Maya loves having a role model that is free to do what she pleases, is the strongest girl in the world, and is funny. Hey, much like her. Julian finds the stories that Pippi makes up a lot of fun and I think he also likes that a kid can beat the world's strongest man.

Julian got a video game for Christmas and played it a bit with his friend Leo. We're still playing it and I step in when the going gets tough. This morning I'd promised him we would fight the bad guys that were giving him trouble but even together they beat us. It's a kid friendly game, but I thought certainly I could defeat the baddies in this kiddie game. Well, I guess we'll have to work on that. Won't be finishing this game anytime soon.

I'm on my way to Germany for a quick trip. I'll be back on Friday for Maya's 6th birthday party. Happy Birthday Maya. Love, your dad.

Here's hoping for a great year for everyone!