Singing Performance at the Preschool Christmas Party

Can you find Julia? The annual Footsteps Preschool Christmas party was a lot of fun, and the singing preformance was the highlight. Julia did a fabulous job!

Wunderlich Park Outing

Happy December 27th! Which is Andrea's birthday, by the way. Happy Birthday Andrea!

I'm determined to get some photos organized and uploaded this weekend, and in one of my false starts I came across this one from an outing a few weeks back. Made me smile, hope it does for you too.

Merry Christmas!

This photo was taken by Julia, who is turning into a prolific, if imperfect, photogapher. We took the kids up to Jay's place yesterday to visit and admire all of the Christmas decorations. Julia took a picture of each and every decoration throughout the entire place... and that's a LOT of pictures! We had a great time visiting Jay and meeting her friends.



Merry Christmas to all!

Julia's style of picture taking

Julia has been exploring a new hobby... photography. She just loves taking pictures of things with my digital camera. She needs a little practice still, as demonstrated by this photo of Mommy dressed up to go to the Intuit holiday party. She's short, so getting adult heads in the picture is proving quite a challenge!

Obama logo design

Because of my job I have a particular interest in branding, positioning, and logo design, and I've been very impressed by the Obama campaign. The "change" positioning has been extremely consistent and clear, and they've created a system of visual assets that is used extremely well throughout the campaign. This video gives an inside peek at what went into the logo design. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Craig!

The kids love to help blow out the candles. From left: Andrew, Julia (hidden behind Andrew), Nathan, Maggie, Craig, Hannah.

Parrots Tell the Truth - Intuit QuickBooks Ad

Check out my ad!

Andrew lookin' cute

Jeff bought the family a new toy. A digital piano! He's working on becoming a legendary jazz pianest in his spare time, and the kids are learning the ins and outs of pianos. Here's Andrew looking very mischevious!

And here is Andrew after a bath in his elephant towel, watching my Nano ipod onto which I downloaded some toddler entertainment. I can't believe I've already introduced my 2 year old to the ipod... there is something wrong with that, but I'll admit there are times that I really appreciate being able to capture and hold his attention for a few minutes with some easy entertainment. You can download audible books for kids, as well as PBS TV shows for free!

Happy Birthday To Me

Well, my pictures are finally off the camera and onto my computer. Last month I had a birthday, and couldn't have been happier than to celebrate it with my family. My mom threw me a party, and you can see me here in this picture blowing out the candles with Hannah, my neice, on my lap, and Andrew and Julia by my side. Happy Belated Birthday to me!

Happy Halloween

Boy did this cowboy have trouble lasooing Red Ranger and Cinderella for a picture!

The kids were flying high last night. I've never seen them so wound up! They had a marvelous time. We started out at a party in the nearby Willows neighborhood. Boy do they know how to party. The Willows has so many young families, and so much spirit. It's a great community (Andrea and Craig, take note!)

We did a bit of trick or treating in that neighborhood after the party, and then headed back to our neighborhood for more trick or treating with the neighbors. We have a spirited neighborhood too! I was impressed by the number of houses that really went all out with their Halloween display. We heard scary music, saw ghostly cemetaries complete with dry ice fog, saw caged skeletons banging their bars, an erie giant eye blinking from a window, a full-out haunted house in a neighbor's garage, and many more fun and spirited Halloween fun.

The aftermath is always a little less fun than the night, however. Andrew woke up crying with nightmares, and Julia is cranky in the extreme this morning. We've had fights over candy, some illegal candy eating before breakfast, etc.

On a nostalgic note, I wanted to honor the Halloween service of the bag shown below. Julia carried this bag trick or treating on her very first Halloween at one year old. It's survived all the Halloweens since, and Andrew carried it last night. It started ripping halfway through the night, and finally broke completely open late last night back at home. I don't think it'll make it to next year! But it served us well.

Happy Halloween everybody!

Halloween is coming!

Julia and Andrew are getting ready for Halloween and the excitement is building!

A few days ago Julia debated being a cowgirl (cute!) but ended up deciding she wanted to be Cinderella. At least I caught a picture of the cowgirl!

And here is Andrew in the pumpkin patch, a recent Tiny Treks outing that he went on with Wendy. I love this picture, what a great patch! Andrew looks so tiny. He's still just a little guy. Sometimes I forget that.

Happy Halloween!

Attended the Pacific International Quilt Festival

Yes, this is a quilt! I saw soooo mannnnny incredible quilts today at the Pacific International Quilt Festival in San Jose. I was awed and wowed. Many thanks to Cheri for suggesting that I tag along with her! More details on my quilting blog...

McCain: Women's Health (in quotes) is just a loophole?

I must have been multi-tasking too much during the debate because I don't remember seeing McCain say this bit last night. But watching this just floors me. Look at his tone and body language when he says Women's "health" (using his fingers to put quotes around health). What does he mean? Sounds like he doesn't care about women's health. I'm sure that's not true, but boy does this come off wrong... Yeiks.

Test post of a blackberry photo thru email

Sent from my Blackberry

Pajaro Dunes Weekend

Can't beat the beach as a great setting for pictures. We spent a couple of nights at Pajaro Dunes the last weekend in September, and here are a few of my favorite pics. With the exception of the two dead elephant seals rotting on the beach right in front of our rented house (nature happens!), the weekend was a ton of fun with games taking the starring role for entertainment. Among the favorites for kids: Monster (Grandpa, are you recovered yet?), Preschool, Trains, Dress Up, and Chase; and for the adults: Carcassone, Ticket To Ride, Lost Cities. Great times!

A hot chocolate morning

Fall is here! One chilly morning we decided to wrap up and drink hot chocolate on the back deck.

Julia's first day of school

I finally downloaded pictures from my camera, and found this one of Julia that I took on her first day of school in September. She looks like such a big girl! She is a Butterfly now at her preschool, Footsteps.

Girls Weekend in Florida

My longtime girlfriends from graduate school gather once a year, this time in Florida. We had a great time!

Vacation update

Hello, We're on vacation this week, but we have a computer with us, and a camera... so, thought I'd say hello via the blog. We started out in Oxnard, where we stayed at a hotel at the beach. It had a great pool, which the kids LOVED. And we had our bikes with us, (Jeff just bought one, with a seat on the back for Andrew), so we had a great time biking along the beach as a family. Julia loves to ride her bike!

With the Holman grandchildren all in one place (Brad and Kim and Kira were at the beach too), it was an opportunity not to be missed. Here are Nana and Grumps with Kira, Julia and Andrew, sitting on a great driftwood log Nana and Grumps found.

And we took the opportunity to get a rare picture of the four of us together. I have so few pictures of the whole family, since one or the other of us is always behind the camera.

We are in Big Bear now, but I haven't downloaded pictures from here yet. We've been having a great time exploring, climbing rocks, biking, boating, board gaming, and napping. Today we're going to try the ski lift which should be a fun new experience for the kids.

So long from here!

Intuit QuickBooks Jingle Generator

I'm very excited about this cool new marketing program my team launched late last week. Check out the video on YouTube. You can also follow Tommy Silk on Twitter (www.twitter.com/tommysilk), or be his friend on Facebook or MySpace. Be sure to create a jingle for your favorite small business and pass it along!

Julia and GG

We spent the morning at the beach yesterday for Julia's 4th birthday party. We had a fanstastic time, got great turnout, and even saw a pod of WHALES go by! There are tons of amazing pictures of all the fun. So many that I'm going to have to share them via shutterfly, or load a slideshow or something. But I'll put a few up here on the blog too, starting with this one of Julia and Jay. We were very glad GG was able to join us at the beach. And I must say she looked fabulous in her red sweater. Here's the birthday girl (complete with princess tiara) and her beautiful Great Grandmother on a driftwood log at the beach:

Happy 4th Birthday to Julia!

Julia is FOUR!

Today was such a fun day. It started with the opening of just one gift in the morning from Nana and Grumps, this darling ballet outfit complete with tiara. She LOVES it and wore it all day long.



This evening after Jeff and I got home from work, we gave her the "big gift", a brand new big girl bike. Here she is giving it a whirl around the driveway. Excited hardly describes it.

Here is the birthday girl with her cake. She put the candles in herself, with a little help from Andrew who added a 5th candle (one to grow on?!) The cake, per her request, was chocolate with pink icing and strawberries on top.

Andrew really enjoyed the cake too.

Today was just the beginning of a series of birthday related events. Tomorrow Benne and Grandpa come over to celebrate and, and then on Saturday we are meeting a bunch of Julia's friends at the beach for a Cinderalla Birthday Beach Bash. Turning four is the best!

Me and Maggie

 

Here she is, my new neice Maggie! Tiny and cute as a button. She was 4 days old in this picture (last Saturday.) So special to be able to hold a baby so young. Welcome to the family little Maggie!

New pictures of the kids

I've been posting everything but pictures of the kids these days, an unusual run for me. So, back to the roots of this blog. Here are some cute pictures Jeff took of the kids recently.