MichaelandChrissy.com

Happy New Year to all of our friends and family!  Let us know your New Year’s resolutions so that we can make fun of you for skipping out on them in a month!  I’ve resolved to lose that last ten pounds and to resume learning Japanese, so wish me luck.  Chrissy has resolved not to resolve anymore.

I stopped going out on New Year’s Eve years ago, once I figured out that I didn’t like the bar scene.  Chrissy is the same way, so we’ve spent several of the last ten or so years sleeping through the countdown (only to be woken up by small arms fire just after midnight).  Sure signs of getting old…

We decided to stay up for the New Year tonight though.  Felice is going to hang out with us.  I finally got my Sony Blu-Ray player set up and working with the surround sound so that we can watch movies while we wait.  We’ve got “The Happening“, which I’ve wanted to see for a while, and “Eagle Eye” in HD.

We’ve got a few bottles of wine, including a bottle of Inniskillin Ice Wine (2006) to uncork at midnight, and a chocolate cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.  Chrissy also made several dozen of her chocolate-chip cookies (so much for losing that ten pounds).  It should be a fun night!

Even though we had already been to Chicago once this week, we were told that tonight would be the warmest it was going to be for a long time.  So, what better night to walk around the Lincoln Park Zoo and look at Christmas lights?  Every year, Lincoln Park Zoo has a “Zoo Lights” display from late November until early January.  Every tree in the zoo is covered in Christmas lights, there are lighted animal shapes, and there’s a computerized light display that dances to music.

We went at night, so it was cold but not awful, maybe around 40 degrees.  The weatherman said that it would be dipping into the 20′s for the rest of the week though, making this the last night that we could comfortably go.  Chrissy didn’t know that Lincoln Park Zoo is only about a half an hour drive in good traffic.  The lights were amazing.  I’ve seen trees with Christmas lights in them, but I’ve never seen trees this coated with lighting.  Entire trees, down to the smallest limbs, were lit up in multiple colors.

There was other stuff going on as well.  We got dinner at the Park Place Café and watched a guy with a chainsaw carve an ice sculpture outside.  And because we were at a zoo, we also saw animals.  Sleeping animals, mostly.  The apes, monkeys, tigers, lions, and penguins were all asleep.  We did see one giraffe, a snake, and a few mice that were awake though.  I joked to Chrissy that we were at the “Sleeping Habits of Various Animals” exhibit.  We had a good time though.  We’ll have to go back when it’s warmer to see all the animals again.

We had planned to take the kids to Navy Pier for the day, starting with the Chicago Children’s Museum and then heading towards the end of the pier for the Winter Wonder Fest.  We spent about two hours at the Children’s Museum, and there was a lot for Aiden to see and do.  He really enjoyed the interactive exhibits, especially the Waterways and Treehouse Trails.  There was also a kid-sized supermarket attached to a huge pretend kitchen that we had to drag him away from.  Once it past noon, we went to lunch at McDonald’s.

McDonald’s was a madhouse.  They really need ropes or something to designate lines, as there was just a sea of people in front of the registers.  I soon discovered that the line that I was in was not a line at all, and ended up cutting in front of some people to get to the register that was only a foot away.  I felt bad for doing it, but I was already aggravated because some guy jut his elbow in front of me to keep me from cutting in his line (while I thought he was cutting in front of me in my line that wasn’t a line).

Chrissy had similar problems looking for a table.  I know that Navy Pier has ample outdoor seating, but it was about ten degrees outside that day.  So the inadequate indoor seating was full and Chrissy had to wait with the boys for a table to open up.  The first table that she had scoped out was stolen by some lady who just walked past her and plopped her kid down.  Chrissy then waited for another table, and was lucky to get it before anyone else stole it.  I got back from my line ordeal just as she had sat down.

After lunch, we decided to call it a day.  We’ve been to the Winter Wonderfest a couple of times already, and thought it might not be targeted towards toddlers and babies.  There are plenty of inflatable attractions and a skating rink, so maybe we’ll come back when the kids are a little older.  We tried some inflatables at the last Popcorn Festival, and Aiden didn’t like it so much (he likes giant slides though).  It was nap time for Aiden, so it was a good time to get in the car and drive home.  Both Aiden and Gavin slept the whole way.

We’ll definitely be going back to the Children’s Museum.  We only spent a short amount of time in each area because we wanted to see as much of the place as possible before moving on to the Wonderfest (even though we didn’t).  We were talking about buying a membership on the way home.  It would pay for itself in just a few visits, and I could see us going once a month or so.  We saw a lot of other families entering through the “member’s” entrance, so apparently other people have the same idea.  Might be worth it.

Chrissy and I both graduated from Indiana University, so we love IU-branded stuff.  We try to pick up new IU ornaments for our Christmas tree every year.  We’ve been collecting them since 2002, when Chrissy graduated, so there are quite a few on our tree.  Here are some of the ones that we currently have on display.

We can usually catch a couple of them a year at Hallmark.  We hit two or three local Hallmark stores every year on the day after Christmas, since all of the holiday items are usually marked half off.  I usually miss out on a few ornaments that I want because we wait so long, but the savings is worth it!

I decided to play through “Mass Effect” a second time when the new downloadable content, “Bring Down The Sky”, was released by Bioware.  Gavin was born shortly after that, so I wasn’t able to continue the game past the intro.  Now that Gavin is a four months old and sleeping more, I’ve gotten a chance to play Mass Effect again.  The expansion pack was an interesting diversion, since the majority of the game was pretty much the same as the first time that I played it, with the exception of a few alignment-based choices that only affected the ending of the game.

I planned to play as a “Paragon” (good guy) this time, since I was despicably evil the first time that I finished the game.  There are some deep decisions to make at the end of the main storyline, like which of your party members, Ashley or Kaiden, to sacrifice while you pull your team out from the planet Vermire (so as not to be toasted by the nuke that they just planted in Saren’s base).  I left Kaiden behind to die last time, but my female lead has a thing for him, so I chose Ashley to die this time, despite the fact that I had her in my party the entire game.

The last moral dilemma of the game is whether to save the Galactic Council members from certain death during the final battle with Sovereign at the Citadel.  I ordered the Alliance fleet to rescue their flagship from the Geth armada.  This got me the “good” ending, in which the Council, now more appreciative of humans, agrees to create a new seat on their governing body for the Alliance.  I nominated my mentor, Captain Anderson, since he’s a good man.  The “evil” ending was less satisfying: after allowing the Geth to destroy the Council members, I only served to help the smarmy Ambassador Udina into power (slightly akin to promoting Senator Palpatine into Supreme Chancellor-hood).

Making the virtuous decisions during the game this time helped to change things up a bit, even though it was hard to stomach sometimes.  I was just a little too virtuous for my tastes.  I often had the same feeling about playing as a Renegade, though (except for the opposite reason).  I didn’t want to go the neutral route, even though the conversation trees allow for that.  I’m not sure if there is a “neutral” ending, but it’s probably boring if it exists.  I’m happy enough with the two that I’ve already seen.  I guess that I’m done with Mass Effect until Bioware releases more downloadable content!

We did send out a Christmas letter this year, but I wanted to post it to the web site anyway.  Who knows, maybe somebody who isn’t on our holiday mailing list would like to know what we were up to this year?  If you’re not on our Christmas card list, and would like to be, please let me know!  The “online version” is now enhanced with links back to blog posts that give more details.  Click “Continue Reading” to read the 2008 Christmas Letter.

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I love to watch anime while feeding Gavin at night.  It’s the perfect time for a guilty pleasure.  With an exhausted Chrissy asleep by 8 PM, it was usually just me and Gavin up at ten, midnight, and later for feedings.  He would need a bottle roughly every two or three hours.  What else can you do while feeding the baby but watch TV?  I had a lot of anime coming through my Netflix queue, and I would intermittently watch an hour or two a night while taking care of Gavin.

Netflix has a really good selection of anime.  I watched the entire multi-disc series of Black Lagoon (12 eps), RoD The TV (26 eps), Hellsing (13 eps), Haibane-Renmei (13 eps), and Noir (26 eps) during Gavin’s first few months.  I sometimes watched whole movies, including Vexille, Blue Gender, and MD Geist.  There’s also some good anime on cable nowadays.  I’ve been watching weekly episodes of Hellgirl, Gunslinger Girl and Gundam 00 on my DVR lately.  I really enjoy anime, but I don’t think I’ll get to watch as much anymore.

The problem is that Gavin is almost sleeping through the night.  Now that the night-time feedings are dwindling, I have a lot less time for anime.  Once I went back to work after paternal leave, Chrissy took over weekday nightly feedings.  That left me with nights between 8 PM and midnight, and weekends.  Viewings were further curtailed as Gavin has required fewer bottles (and slept longer) in the last few weeks, but it’ll be a lot harder to find downtime for cartoons soon.  I suppose that I could just wake up at 2 AM to watch anime (without the feeding part), but I really like sleep too…

I found out last weekend night that my Dad had suffered a heart attack on Saturday.  Not a chest-grabber, just a recurring pain that made him want to visit the hospital.  I was kind of shaken up about it; I don’t see my Dad nearly as often as I would like to, but I hoped that he was all right.  He was recovering nicely by the time I found out about his episode, so I made plans to visit him the next day.  Babies are not allowed in the ICU, so Chrissy would have to stay home with Aiden and Gavin.

I got to the hospital to see my Dad just before he was discharged on Sunday.  He was doing better, with no permanent damage, just some new medications and an order from his doctor to eat better and exercise more.  Both of our doctors say that we need to eat more healthy and exercise (I will get back on the bike, really).  It’s always nice to catch up with my Dad.  We swapped health concerns and talked about our family health history.

It turns out that my Dad’s Dad died of a stroke when I was only two years old.  That would have made my Dad about twenty at the time, a year older than I was when my Mom died of cancer.  So I’ve got all sorts of genetic markers pointing toward a death-inducing illness.  I’m sure that I’ll survive a bit longer if I follow my doctor’s advice, but I’ll have to keep in touch more closely with my Dad in the future so that we can update each other on our healthy lifestyle improvements.

Chrissy turned thirty on Thursday, December 4th.  It’s a big milestone in a person’s life, to be sure, but we couldn’t celebrate then because she had a Master’s class that night.  So, we decided to mark the occasion with a trip to Chicago on the following weekend.  I had gotten her a new Canon Powershot A2000 camera for her birthday, and we wanted to put it to good use during our visit.

On Saturday afternoon, Chrissy and I drove out to Chicago for our reservations at the “Chicago Chop House“, a highly rated steak house.  Our waiter, Glen, was very knowledgeable about the food and wine.  We settled on a bottle of German Riesling, which was very tasty.  The food was fantastic: I had a “Cowboy Cut” Prime Rib, seared and seasoned with Cajun spices, and Chrissy had the hand-prepared “Surf and Turf”.

We thoroughly enjoyed the food, and we are one of those weird couples that feed each other during the meal.  I always end up wishing that I had what she ordered.  We finished up with dessert: Chrissy had a hot fudge sundae and I had a huge slice of “Chocolate Triple Play” cake.  It was a great meal, but easily the most expensive one that Chrissy and I have ever had.

After dinner, I had planned on going to the Hancock Building to have a few drinks at their lounge on the 96th floor.  We also had the option to attend a symphony on the University of Chicago campus that night.  However, Chrissy was full and happy, and anxious to get home to our kids.  So we cut our Chicago outing satisfyingly short.  Even without after-dinner plans, we had a great time and enjoyed each others company.

Chrissy likes to have professional pictures taken of the boys every three months or so.  We’ve been to a lot of places for photos, but I think that we have settled on the studio in our local Wal-Mart.   The photographers there always manage to make Aiden smile and they’re very accommodating with our requests.  Also, they are willing to sell us all the images on a CD with copyright permissions.

Chrissy had a number of poses in mind for this year (and a change of clothes for both of the boys), so we hit each one in turn.  Our photographer was very helpful, and took care of everything that Chrissy wanted.  We went with a split theme of Christmas and “Indiana University” (we seem to collect IU-branded clothes) this time.  The pictures turned out fantastic, and many of them will go out with this year’s Christmas cards.