Please Note:

In an effort to help out the bandwidth-challenged visitors, I have changed the blog to only show the last 5 posts. So if I happen to post more than 5 pics since your last visit (which is the case now because I just posted 6 new pics), you will have to go to the Previous Posts or Archive to view them. Just an FYI, really. I could also change the blog to Archive weekly instead of monthly... so let me know if that would help out any of you bandwidth-challenged viewers and I'll do it... otherwise I'm just gonna leave it the way it is.

Close-up of Grandma at her Xmas gathering in River Falls. I was showing her my high-tech phone and how it can take pictures. I don't think she knew I was taking her picture, which is probably the only reason I was able to. :)

Blurry Coreena holding my present. If you look closely, you should be able to make out some AWESOME Spongebob wrapping paper. Unfortunately the wrapping paper was ripped to shreds in my excited gift-opening fury.

Angela making a funny face at Gma's Xmas 2004. Here is her black matching outfit (as mentioned below). She also had cute pig tails, but I'm not sure if you can really make them out in the pic.

Close-up of Alissa. I wanted to be zoomed out a bit, but she started walking towards me, so I had to just quick take the pic.

Alissa at Gma's Xmas 2004. Angela and Alissa had matching outfits. Angela's was black (as seen above) and Alissa's was red (as seen here). They both were adorable.

Steve and Angela at Gma's Xmas 2004. I think Steve is reading Angela's brand new Dinosaur book to her.

Hopefully you can make out a green dragon. If you look real close, you can see a ball of flame being blown out of its mouth via some sort of torch. Now some of you may be wondering why in heck they would have a dragon in with the other X-mas light displays. To find the answer, you must look way back into our history to the days of the dark ages. See the dark ages were a time where civilization reverted to backwards ways of thinking, abondoning reasoning for superstition. During this period, it was widely believed that dragons and magic existed. Now most of these people were not Christians, so when the Catholic Church started taking over the world (well western Europe at least) they tried to thwart these pagan beliefs (such as dragons) and holidays. As stated in some random website I found, "The Catholic Church wanted to eclipse the festivities of a rival pagan religion that threatened Christianity's existence." So the Pope at the time chose to celebrate Christ's birth on Dec 25th - a date that has more "real" meaning to dark ages beliefs than to Christian religion. So as you can see, having a dragon in the display makes perfect sense. This concludes our history lesson... and yes this will be on the test.