This year, I’m participating in the Flickr “365 days” project, where you take a picture every day of the year.

This is a challenge for me, because I often go for long stretches without taking pictures. However, I don’t LIKE not taking pictures, and sometimes all I need is a kick in the pants to get my camera out.

I am not inspired every day but I’m trying to change that and to eke some creativity out of myself every day anyway. I’m sure I’ll have a lot of the same stuff - namely Anja, who I could do a full 365 days of and still have plenty of extras - but I’m trying to get out of the house more to take more pictures.

Today’s picture, though, is classic Anja. This is what I was greeted with upon walking in the door, and fortunately my camera was at arm’s reach on my way to see if she really was wearing what I thought she was.

(She was.)

So I was thinking for his birthday about buying him this to complement his striking green eyes.

I thought about this one, but with his personality, I don’t know, I just thought blue would be more appropriate.

Today is Three Kings day in Spain, and I’m not sure exactly what it means, but I know it’s something religious, and therefore I am not surprised that I’m not sure exactly what it means. But what it meant to us was a kick ass parade where we got pelted with hard candy and ran around town to meet up with the parade route in all different places.

Two major differences I noticed between parades here and in the US? One, here, the people on the floats actually seem to have fun and not just sit there grudgingly waving their hand; two, here, the people get in real fistfights over stuffed animals.

KICK ASS.

The pictures are, as usual, up at Flickr.

Everyone seems to want me to post about my holidays, but there really was nothing to post about.  I’d been very excited about Christmas this year as I’d bought some really fun presents for the kids (mostly games and books).  I’d gotten my holiday shopping done early, the presents were all wrapped with lots of time before Christmas, the house was decorated beautifully, the tree was up and caked with lights, tinsel and ornaments, and I was feeling so festive.

Until a few days before Christmas when the excitement must have finally caught up with Anja, and she made me want to rip my own fingernails out.  I called my mom, crying, to get through one night and had to stop myself from calling every night in tears because I was so frustrated with her.  By the time Christmas actually came, I couldn’t wait for it to be over which just made me feel crappy.  Christmas was supposed to be fun, and instead I was snapping at anyone who looked at me, and in the end I really felt awful about the whole thing - which was made even worse by how excited I had been feeling before.

At any rate, the kids loved their presents.  Anja, predictably, already broke the “Guess Who?” game, but they really did love everything they got.  Thank you so much to all the family who sent stuff from afar - we mailed some presents to one country and are sending the rest to the other side of the family on ParentAir, when Mom and Dad return from their trip here.

We’re very excited about Mom & Dad/Nana & Grandpa visiting.  We have gotten so few visitors here and while I can’t speak for the whole family, I know I feel very isolated and lonely being so far away.

But on a less forlorn note,  we had a good time last night.  We went out for the first time in Rota on new years.  It’s hard to believe this is our third new year’s here!  We came to Rota on Dec. 27, 2005 and didn’t go out our first year since we’d only been here a couple of days.  Last year, I’d just gotten back from Iraq and didn’t really want to do anything except be at home.  But this year we had a babysitter and went out with a couple of friends and got to experience the new year Rota style.

We always get lost - misdirected? - any time we go out into Rota.  Granted, it’s not too difficult to find your way anywhere and you can usually get un-lost in just a few minutes, but we always seem to be 5 minutes too late for everything here…missed parades, missed festivals, because we got lost trying to find where we were going.  Last night was no exception.  I’d hoped that since nothing in Spain is ever prompt, maybe they’d celebrate the new year at 5 after midnight because we ended up far from where we were supposed to be with just about 5 minutes to spare.  My friend and I ended up running at full speed to get there in time and fortunately made it just as the church bells started ringing in the new year.

We didn’t bring grapes with us, which is something they do here, at least in Rota.  They eat 12 grapes for each of the 12 chimes, so you have about 15 seconds to eat a giant mouthful of grapes.  Perhaps next year we’ll pack a bag, but this year we missed out on that…but we still had a good time.  I posted some pictures on my flickr account if you care to see.

Happy new years to all of our friends and families, we hope the upcoming  year brings much happiness, health and prosperity to each and every one of you.