Christmas!

Hey everyone, here's some pics from our Christmas season -







Amber and I on the Thanksgiving point Trolley(that goes on a christmas lights tour)












Reindeer!













A Chandelier at Thanksgiving Point



















Putting Up Christmas Lights... Chilly!








We hope everyone else had a great holiday season too!

Halloween!

Here's the pics from this halloween! Amber and I dressed up and handed out candy. I was a french man(take special note of my pencil-mustache) and amber was a medieval princess. I was very tempted to eat the bread I carried around all evening, but I persevered!











Sacrebleu!































Pumpkin Carving!

Fox and I racing at the pumpkin patch. I had a strong start...

To pograph or Not To pograph

Hi Everyone, this is the first post in a while, I(dave) had some downtime tonight, so I thought I'd share what I've been interested in lately: Topography! Topography has been overlooked lately with the development of satellite imagery, like google earth, but the USGS is a cool resource to see how the land is laid out around your area. I like to have a good idea of what's around my area, just in case society crumbles and I have to escape into the wilderness. Most topographic maps show powerlines, buildings, rivers, etc. You can order big topographic maps from a variety of places, or you can download them for free here. On the right menu click "Download TOPO maps free!", and you can look up your area.

Here's a Topographic map of Victorville!















Also, you can get topographic maps of the moon and other planets...weird.

San Diego

Hey Everyone! This post is a little late, but last month we went to San Diego to celebrate our 1 year anniversary. Time flies when you're in love. Marriage rocks! Here's some cool pics of our adventure:






Night view of Coronado from Seaport Village-












Downtown! We took this driving over Coronado Bridge.















At the zoo! Polar bear... mid jump!












A Giant panda cleaning its teeth. The Pandas are on a 12-year lease from china, and this year is the last year. Let's hope the lease gets renewed!










A baby panda sleeping in a tree(about 18 ft up!)















A monstrous orangutan... a crowd of children erupted in fearful screaming as it crawled past the window. It was awesome.




The next day we went to Balboa park, where Citizen Kane was filmed. It has really cool architecture and tons of cool museums. Among these, we toured the museum of man. It had mummies, shruken heads, stelas, and more! Here is a botanical garden we ventured into:











































The view of mission bay, from our hotel room balcony.







Sea World!





Some polar bears devouring gruesome remains(of watermelon).












Dave hiding in an igloo....brrr....












These belugas look rediculously fake, don't they? They appear to be made of rubber. But they're real... :(











Sea Lions during feeding time. To our entertainment, they learned that the sea lion that yells the loudest gets the fish.







It was an awesome vacation... eventually, we came back to utah, where it continued to snow into may. What a nice adjustment from perfect sunny weather to brown, snowy sludge. It's good to be home...

Davekea

Ikea's a great store, and it has really cool stuff. I went there in search of the perfect night stand. I couldn't find one, but I found one that was kinda... close. Originally it was A bathroom seat thing, it looked like something you would sit on in a sauna. I tore apart my old tiny night stand that I also got from Ikea, because I really like glass. Also, I decided to add a couple new features, and now it's way cooler. Take a Look:






The sum of parts

















Cable Management!


















Second Shelf!







Yeah, I know this is kind of a random post, but I'm just excited to have a nightstand I really like-

Holiday Combo

So, we forgot to post about our easter/st. patty's day, so here are the two combined! We had a fun St. Patrick's Day, we celebrated it on Sunday, during Amber's Dad's popular dinners. We also partied it up and did a bunch of ancient irish traditions, such as:





Pin the shamrock on the leprechaun(Dave drew the leprechaun....don't laugh)














Throwing the green thing....(probably a better name for this out there. Amber won this one, by the way).










Dave's first attempt at soda bread. Amber's first time eating it. Yum!







On to Easter..........................






Eggs Galore!




















Us !

Dave's Favorite Sites

Hey Everyone! I was just browsing around the web, and I wanted to share my Favorite Sites with you all. These are sites I frequent often, and are pretty universal. You all should take a look:

1. del.icio.us
This is a social bookmarking site. Basically, you store all your bookmarks online and organize them by categories(called 'tags'). Very useful if you work on multiple computers and you can't remember websites you like. Check out my public bookmarks.

2. slickdeals.net
This is a site that has really really good random deals on all kinds of stuff. In order for someone to add a deal to their site, it has to be legitimate and a very good deal. They also have coupons to look at also.

3. woot.com
This is another deal site, but they only offer one thing to sell a day. It's usually a really good deal on that particular item. It has very funny descriptions on the items they offer. I usually get a kick out of reading them. A new deal is added every night at 1am(eastern).

4. lifehacker.com
A site that has a bunch of useful things to read. That's pretty much the best I can describe it. Useful. Topics range quite a bit.

5. comicalert.com
This is a fun site that I found recently. You can get a customized email or rss feed showing your favorite daily comics. I use rss a lot, so this comes in handy for me. What's on my list:
sherman's lagoon, bizarro, brevity, monty, get fuzzy, red meat...

6. instructables.com
This is a gigantic how-to site. It has all kinds of instructions on how to make/do anything. It also has a pleasant interface. Today I learned how to catch an eel and make an earthbox.

RSS Feeds

Most(if not all) of these sites support support rss, which basically is a way to see to the latest content on a site. It's like receiving a newspaper of your favorite sites, showing the latest posts of the day, etc. I use a program called thunderbird for my email and rss feeds, but there's a bunch of other programs that you can read rss feeds with. It's really easy to set up. Here's a tutorial on how to set them up with thunderbird. And here's a screenshot of my rss feeds I read every day when I first get on my computer:

Shoup

Hey everyone, I can't think of a whole lot to post, but I thought I'd post some pics of Shoup when Amber and I went last summer. I miss it :) I took a LOT of pictures when we went up there, seeing how I only get the chance to visit every couple of years. This is all before the fire, so It's nice to see all the old stuff again. Enjoy-








The inside of the Cabin















Grandpa's Bookshelf

















The Ceiling












The Wall! Please excuse Kelsy.














I forgot about this














The Sky














The Porch












The stairs in the mill



















More stairs....

















And finally, The River

Bamboozled

So, one of my gifts for christmas was a little bamboo plant. Awesome! It's a gift bamboo, serenely dubbed 'Little Champion' because of the stability of the plant despite its height. It was originally a gift store culm of bamboo, which floats in a small pot of water and rocks(no soil or nutrients whatsoever), so I took a piece of it and planted it in my own soil. It is known as 'mini champion'. I don't know how these guys will do in the cold utah winter, but we'll see.