I thought this was pretty cool - the NBC news affiliate in Milwaukee interviewed my big brother about the day he met President Ford in 1975. The link is to the article and there is a link on the article to the video.

Edited to add - even cooler, one of my photos made it onto the Explore interesting photos from the last 7 days page!!  Woowoo!

I don’t know who even pays it any attention, but I finally got around to doing some spring cleaning on my sidebar. One of the things I did was added my most recent pictures from Flickr, where I have been keeping a sort of portfolio.

One of my recent aspirations was to have a photo appear in Explore - of the lots and lots and lotsandlotsandlots of pictures posted to Flickr every day, 500 are chosen each day as the most interesting - just today I found that two of my photos have appeared in Explore!!

Here are the pictures that have appeared:

The funny thing is that the top picture was ranked considerably higher than the bottom and that is one of my not-so-favorite pictures.

I’m stoked!

I can’t say how nice it is to be home with my family for Christmas. It was nice getting home when I did because it gave me the chance to settle back in before all the commotion of Christmas.

We had a great dinner; I was going for a Thanksgiving feast since I wasn’t here for Thanksgiving and although the food in Baghdad was really, really good, there was one thing missing from the menu - green bean casserole. Who has Thanksgiving without green bean casserole, really?! So I made all the stuff, super garlicky mashed potatoes, stuffing with apples and cranberries, homemade cranberry sauce, a gorgeous turkey that B made…and just when I putting the stuffing in the oven, I realized I forgot to buy the green beans. I had the soup, the onions, the cheese, but no green beans. Oh well! We went across the street to our neighbors’ Christmas party and they had green bean casserole there so at least I got my fix.
The kids were verrrry happy this year, with tons and tons of presents, each and everyone of them something they truly loved. And me, well, I got the best present of anyone, ever - I got the Canon 5D. Which means YAY, I’ll be taking even more pictures!!

My very first digital camera was a gift from my brother, Dan - a Polaroid PDC 700, a 0.8 megapixel boxy point and shoot. From there I went up to the 10D and then I bought the PowerShot S3 IS so I would have a more manageable camera for my deployment (my 10D and lenses would have been out of the question because of the amount of space and the need to take such care, plus the sand and dust that would have inevitably gotten in the camera. I took lots and lots and lots of pictures with it as well as lots and lots of videos and it was well worth buying for the purpose it was intended for. But now that I’m home, I’ve been looking forward to taking pictures with my “real” camera again…and then to get the 5D, the camera I’ve been lusting over since before its release, well, this is the perfect camera for me and I can’t imagine wanting for any other camera.

And without further ado, the pictures - and videos - from Christmas.

VIDEO (External link to YouTube):
The kids opening presents on Christmas Eve

Here are the “after” pictures from Anja’s 10″ donation to Locks of Love…

(click to enlarge)

This morning when I was brushing her hair, she said, “Mamma, I kind of miss my big hair.” But she insists she still likes it more short!

2 nights ago at bedtime, Anja told me she didn’t want long hair anymore. It was a hassle for her, always in her face, and I think she was just tired of it.

Yesterday in the car, I heard a radio ad for a charity drive for Locks of Love. The only problem was whether or not her hair was the requisite 10″ length to donate. So today we all went to the drive and measured her hair and the 10″ was no problem. She was very excited to be getting her hair cut (I can already hear my dad’s voice echoing in my head, “What about ISAK’S hair?!”) but I don’t think she expected it to be quite so short!

Annnnnd….here’s the video of the final cut.

Yesterday was a very long day of travelling, we were up in Kuwait at 4am and got home - HOME - in Spain 20 hours later.

I cannot describe how awesome it is to be reunited with your family.

Or how awesome it is to be able to go to the bathroom at 3:30am and not have to leave your house.

Today has been fantastic, warm blueberry muffins and coffee for breakfast, shopping for nothing at all, going through allllll of my clothes…I get to wear cute clothes again!

It’s lunchtime now, one of those things I didn’t appreciate so much before, and then decorate the Christmas tree, the movies later, the playground after that, and then…whatever.  Who cares!  I’m home!!

We just got back from a monumental moment in our deployment - the day we finally got the M16 off our backs.  Finally!!  No more weapon, no more body armor, no more 80 pound helmet to knock myself in between the eyes with.  Not that I ever did that, no, but I imagine it must really hurt for a long time if you did that, even more than if you hit your head so hard you got whiplash from the shelf on the bus, not like I did that either. 

It really is such a huge relief to have turned in all of our gear.  All that’s left is my personal belongings, including the extra seabag worth of stuff I just bought at the bazaar they have here.  Why oh why must they put sparkly things in the sunlight right outside of the coffee place? 

One step closer to being home - only one more day of outprocessing and then we’re more or less home free!