Show off

My Rosie looks particularly lovely today.

She decided to show off a bit and show the flower she got from her sisters-in-law.  They made several for her in different colors and the blue (I'm told its not blue it's turquoise) apparently was the flavor of the day this day and she wanted to try and show how loved we must be because our tree (in the background) was completely full this year and then some.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!!

It was great celebrating Todd's Bday with Family and Friends.

Christmas Catch up

We love Christmas and Rosie loves having our front room decorated.  We were a little later than usual getting it completed this year but it turned out wonderfully.  Rosie's higlight is getting her Nativity out and placed on the table in the middle of the room.

Rosie got a new iPhone for Christmas (as well as her messaging upped from 200 to 1500, but that may have been more for John's heart) and Santa stuffed her stocking with some magazines she likes to read to get ideas for house decorating.

John got some books and other toys and games as well as some shelves for his garage.

John and Rosie were both off work for 2 weeks and got to spend a bunch of time with family (especially great since the Skinners were in town the 2nd week) and more importantly time together.

The Real Meaning of Christmas

My Poor Rosie

My Rosie has the lurgy.  At least that's what she keeps saying.  She was diagnosed with pneumonia the other day and the doctor gave her some medication to take.  I picked it up on my way home and she took it that night.  The next morning she woke up at 4am with this:

It got much worse as the day went on and she missed the Biggs Family Christmas party with the extended family.  That was something she had been looking forward to attending.
She was able to get another doctors appointment and she got a steroid shot to help with the rash/hives and some amoxicillin to take care of the pneumonia.  Hopefully she's better soon.  Needless to say, in her words, she is "soooo ready for 2010 to be over and 2011 to be here.  'Cuz I'm over it!"

Let there be Light(s)

 Well...
I think this of all posts is the one that most people have been waiting for.  Rosie certainly has been since the day she moved in with me and for her birthday this is what she wanted...

Get rid of the flying saucers in our kitchen.  She had already ridded the kitchen and herself of the big on over the table when her dad bought her a chandelier for her birthday a couple years ago.  And this is the after picture now that the 5 little ones are replaced with can lights...

The great thing is Rosie found a guy that does them for $85 a piece.  He even changed the fixture in the one over the sink to match.

Now to sell the old ones and make the change even cheaper.  Now I need to get him back over to solve the riddle of the fan lights.

John's business trip

John made a trip to China and Japan for work and you would never guess the amount of time spent at each correctly based on the pictures taken on the trip. He spent over a week in China and the only pictures that came back were of his hotel room.  Because he was workign in the assembly factory floor no cameras were allowed so he never took it with him and then forgot about it in the rooom safe.

 Interesting story about cameras on the factory floor was that he had his iPhone with him, which has a camera.  The first day he headed out to the floor they hadn't told him about the rule on cameras (as well as Thumb drives and phones) and fortunately he coudn't get in because the grounding straps he took with him didn't work and he had to go through the pass through back out of the floor.  When he took the phone out of his camera the engineer that was responsible for getting him access to the floor got really worried and ended up having to explain that he hadn't yet been out on the floor.  They eventually allowed him to keep his phone.  Now the part where it gets a bit more interesting.  Later in the week, he had forgotten to take his phone out of his pocket and had gone to the floor by himself.  Upon exiting he realized that he had his phone in his pocket.  This realization struck abject terror into his heart and then he remembered that every time he went through the metal detector it would beep because he never took his belt off and then he had to be hand wanded to ensure he didn't take anything from the factory floor.  So, thinking on his feet he decided to hide the phone in his pants right behind his belt buckle so when they hand wanded him they would think the belt had set it off.  He then walked through the metal detector as nonchalantly as possible knowing that he was going to get beeped and then hand wanded and hoping that as before they didn't ask him to pull the belt out to look behind it.
It had to be a one in a million shot going through the metal detector because it was the only time the entire week on the floor and mutliple trips per day that the thing didn't even beep.  Funny enough, that just out of habit he started to walk toward the hand wanding station and the guard waved him away.  Of course, if it had been detected now he would have had to try and explain why it was hidden if he weren't concealing the phone to hide something.
In his defense for lack of pictures, he did have big ideas of posting on our blog from CHina and posting pictures on Facbook while in China.  Great Plan but once there realized that the chinese government blocks all social media and he couldn't get on either of them.
The next stop was Japan and he was not even there for 3 days.  It was very interesting that they had their Christmas decorations up in early November.  It's expected in the USA, even in September, but Japan isn't really a christian country.  John asked one of the supplier representatives that he was visiting if Christmas was big there knowing full well the answer from serving in South Korea on his mission and his reply was, "Christmas not big, but shopping very big."  Sounds a lot like the USA is a bit.

On one of his train rides from place to place he noticed that he would be passing by Mount Fuji.  This is something his dad had always talked about wanting to visit.  So as he passed by, hoping it might be clear enough for a picture, he snapped as many as he could hoping one would be decent and this is the best one he was able to get.

Funny thing is with all the travelling most of the time was spent inside a companies facility or on a train and what he takes away from the trip...how clean the trains are and how they clean them: