Soot Sprite!
It has lots of fun options.
Red filter!
Yellow filter!
Smile detector!
Low light!
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| our tree is, like, totally glowing, man... |
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| dog : squirrel! :: Soot Sprite : bird! |
I'm still trying to figure out how to tell it where exactly to focus.
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| missed! |
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| i am lordz of da junglez |
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We had a lovely Christmas Day. Most importantly, Grandma is here for a week, woot woot! It's really nice having her with us. The little guys in particular love having the extra attention. Both Mr. Pickles and I were sick during the third week of Advent, so the last week before Christmas was jam-packed with busyness.
All the kids (with the exception of Dominic) bought presents for each other. Now that Andy is 6, he is earning an allowance (which basically means now we pay him for stuff he was already doing), so he had money to spend on his siblings too. It was fun taking the kids shopping. They were all dying of suspense a couple days before Christmas -- Jojo said he wasn't just excited about getting presents, he couldn't wait to see how everyone was going to react to the things he bought for them. It was gratifying hearing him say that. I told him that was a sign he was growing up -- when you get just as much joy from giving presents as you do receiving them. And on Christmas morning there were lots of cries of "Awesome!!! Thank you, [insert sibling]!!"
As you can imagine, the living room was quite the sight after the unwrapping frenzy. Fortunately I hadn't charged my camera yet so there is no evidence of the carnage.
For Christmas Mass, we had to split up this year. Miriam sang at Midnight Mass with the choir -- she got her cold out of the way a couple weeks ago so she was actually able to sing by Christmas time (unlike LAST year). I drew the short straw of taking her, since Mr. Pickles doesn't do late nights easily. He had the easier job (snort) of taking alllll the kids to the Vigil Mass. Thankfully Dominic slept through the whole thing, so he wasn't any trouble -- just a leadweight. Miriam and I stayed home and enjoyed the absolutely silent hou-ZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Midnight Mass was lovely, as it always is. The church was beautiful and the choir was glorious. I'm sure the people around me thought I had the plague, though, since I coughed my way through the whole thing. (Stupid neverending cold.) And yes, I only just smiled and nodded during the Sign of Peace. No one seemed to want to insist upon shaking hands -- can't imagine why not.
Miriam and I got to bed around 2 am, then were woken up around 7 by the rhinos stampeding up and down the stairs and stage-whispering to each other to be quiet. After the unwrapping frenzy Miriam had to sing again for the 10 am Mass, so Mr. Pickles (in his jammies of course) dropped her off at church again. Ah, the trials and sacrifices of the artist! I think that if Miriam had been sick for Christmas again, the choir director would probably have personally strangled her, since for several of the hymns Miriam was the only voice singing the descants. But, she was just fine, her voice recovered in time, the director didn't have to murder her, and she and everyone else sounded just lovely.
Aside from our Christmas Feast, the rest of the day was spent lounging in our jammies, eating pulla, and playing with our toys. A good relaxing day.
