Here's a few photos from Christmas 2011. The kids woke up at 2am this morning and came into our bedroom wanting to open presents. I remember doing this to my mom when I was a kid, so I guess it's revenge.
We got them each a kid's camera this year, and it seems that is turning out to be their favorite gift. Anything to keep them away from my expensive camera.
As it gets closer to Christmas, Sara and Kyle seem to get more and more excited, and they're extremely energetic. I find myself yelling at them all the time for doing things I always used to do when I was a kid: touching and knocking ornaments off the Christmas tree, stealing (and eating) candy canes from the tree, trying to locate (and open) the Christmas presents, etc. I guess I should just expect that kids will be kids, and behavior doesn't change from generation to generation. Even when I used to teach kids in Taiwan, it would surprise me sometimes how their behavior reminded me of my own childhood.
In Taiwan, though, they don't celebrate Christmas, so my wife Christy doesn't quite "feel the Christmas magic" like everyone else in the house. She grew up the child of poor Taiwanese farmers, and according to her, the only thing she ever knew about Christmas was that "people sent cards to each other." Oh well, maybe after she's been living here for 10 years, she'll start to feel "the magic!"
Just took the kids to see "The Muppets" recently and found it to be pretty disappointing. Rather than fill the movie with funny skits (like the first Muppet movie), this one seemed to dwell too much on the fact that the Muppets were old and outdated. Apparently even Frank Oz (the voice of many of the muppets) didn't even like this story, and refused to lend his voice to the project. I can see why.
So...another GOP candidate bites the dust. Pizza man Herman Cain has dropped out. Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann's campaigns are all but dead. So who is left? Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, and possibly Ron Paul (a longshot). Newt Gingrich seems to be in the lead right now, which is a shock to just about everyone (Democrats in particular).
If scandalous affairs killed Herman Cain's chances at the nomination, one only needs to look at Gingrich's history and see that Cain's got nothing on ol' Newt. Newt is the guy who cheated on his wife while she was in the hospital with cancer. Yeah, John Edwards did the same thing, but that pretty much killed his chances at the presidency. Normally, this kind of behavior doesn't occur until after they become president, so I'd have to take a guess here and say that Newt won't make it through the primaries.
So that leaves us with Mitt Romney, who will likely be the candidate. I used to think he was the most "tolerable" of the Republican nominees, but now I have second thoughts. He's the typical politician who says what people want to hear, no matter if it contradicts previous statements or not. The guy flip-flops on everything. I now think that Jon Huntsman is the only guy who doesn't seem to pander to the right-wing extremists. What does it say when Huntsman is the only candidate that will actually admit that global warming is a real problem? But...that kind of thinking won't get him very far, since he seems to be dead last in this race.
Here's a video that pretty much sums up the problem with the current GOP:
