LMNOP

Merry Christmas!  Here are some pictures of my family doing our annual gingerbread decorating festivities.  We do it every Thanksgiving, because 364 days is just long enough to forget how difficult it actually is to squeeze that godawful frosting.  This year's teams were:

Team Gingerbread House: Me, my brother, and his girlfriend Sasha.  The behavior you see in the picture is about as helpful as my brother got.  Sasha was the backbone of our frosting effort, while I mainly focused on detail work, drinking wine, and shit-talking with the other team, which was . . .

Team Gingerbread Tree, aka my older sister Kelly.  She was supposed to be joined by her husband Brian and my sister Kate, but Brian suddenly got very busy watching football, and Kate started dramatically coughing and claiming to be sick.  It was all very suspicious.

To see how the creations turned out, check the photo set.  Enjoy your Christmas--I know I will be having a great time ripping open every box in the hopes that it contains a Snuggie or a Whimsical Watch.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving at my parents' house on Thursday.  I put a couple pics up on Flickr.  Here is the Official Dorky Sibling Photo of 2009:

This would have made for an excellent Christmas card photo, save for two details:

1. It looks like my older sister is missing a leg; and
2. Oh yeah, my parents don't send out a picture of us anymore, because they send out a picture of my nephew, because they love him more.  (Not that I am really complaining.  We were getting a little old for it.)

Speaking of the nephew--he is in a phase right now where he has realized that EVERYTHING IS A DRUM, AS LONG AS YOU BANG ON IT WITH SOMETHING.  Which means we get treated to a lot of adorable impromptu concerts, such as this:

We went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival this weekend, mainly to eat fried macaroni and cheese on a stick because we loved it so much last year.  And it did not disappoint.  Many macaronis on many sticks were consumed:

Other highlights included Cassie shooting this tiny crossbow--

--and Emily and Cassie getting awfully close to this man, who was wearing a dead frog around his neck.  It may have been real.  Not sure.  Wouldn't be surprised if it was.

More pictures here.

This would be circa 1989.  Michael in the shorts suit, Kate in the middle, me with the Popeye sash, Kelly in the back looking miserable. And then there's Mom, who at the moment this was snapped was probably realizing that my dad was the smart one to be behind the camera, because in exactly 20 years there might end up being a thing called the Internet, and this might end up on it.

I put my cruise pictures up on Flickr and Facebook.  The Flickr set is here.  There are no captions on Flickr, though, because I am lazy.  However, the Facebook set does have captions, so if you are my Facebook friend, you might prefer to view them there.  In case a picture of me standing in front of a boat somehow isn't self-explanatory enough.

1. This baby stroller:

(source)

2. These pictures of Noah Cyrus (younger sister of Miley):

(source)

3. Zachary Quinto (a.k.a. the new Spock) wearing hipster outfit and John Waters mustache:

(source)

Something tells me I will be having some really weird nightmares tonight.

My nephew turned one yesterday, and we celebrated over the weekend with a party at my sister's house.  In his first year of existence, Caedan has transformed from being similar in size (and activity level) to a Chipotle burrito--

--to a real, honest-to-gosh human with a personality.

Maybe it's because he is the first human baby that I have been able to observe closely over an extended period of time, but even after seeing him every week for the past year I still do not entirely get where all this little person-ness came from.  I am fairly certain there is a significant amount of magic involved.  I mean, there was a time in my very recent memory when this kid did not even understand what his own hand was, and had to be protected from his own fingernails--how did that same kid figure out how to take said hand, pick up a pretend phone, and say, "Hellllllllloooooo" into it?!  If I was still learning at that speed, I could probably cure cancer on my lunch break tomorrow.

Anyway, I put up some birthday pics of the neph here, including shots of the awesome present I got him.  I had Etsy seller CrashCanStudio custom-make him the most awesome stuffed felt electric guitar.

Also up on Flickr: pics from Matt's 26th birthday, and a couple shots of Pancake's dog park outing with his BFF (and obedience classmate) Tucker.

Ben graduated this weekend!  Pics here.

Just uploaded a couple of Thanksgiving pics to Flickr.