Merry Christmas from the Gurno Family!

So I finally got around to downloading the movies we have of Ben from our digital camera. Normally this gets done often, but the camera is on it's last legs and doesn't sync properly.

Anyways, that's neither here nor there. What is here is a bunch of Benjamin clips for you to watch.

Linnea attended an after-school dance class and for their last class they decided to put on a small recital for the parents.

Behold! Click here to view the gallery or click here to see the slideshow.

The longtime readers of Gurno.com will recall the story of the Nose-less Hobo Snowman from last year. (Quick recap: derelict snowman wakes neighborhood, neighbors think it belongs to me, I threaten to kill snowman with hammer; heart warming tale, soon to be a kids' book.) Anyways, a good friend of mine is apparently opposed to hammer-based Snowman-icide and offered to give the snowman a home last year. I dropped it off before moving out of town, but neglected to update the story because I’m lazy and you can just quit thinking it because there, I said it.

Flash forward to this year and I get these nice pictures via email:

• Picture 1
• Picture 2

...showing the snowman very much alive and occupying a prominent, happy position in his new home. (At least until he breaks his proletariat chains again and goes on a drunken scrape up and down the neighborhood, waking everyone.)

I was going to award my good friend Tim Freeland a “Humanitarian of the Year” award for saving the snowman’s life, but then I realized that snowmen aren’t human and anyways the plaque looks really good on my wall. So next time y’all stop over, ask to see my new award. It’s really shiny. Yay, me!

So the radio has been on a local station, which runs the syndicated Delilah radio show every evening. Delilah is a cheery, if totally bland host who focuses on nothing but the positive aspects of ‘love’ and ‘positivity’ and ‘hope’ and she features upliftingly bland stories that fill you with hope for positive love and bleeearghchch. She is Queene Xanaxe of the Aire, which isn’t a horrible thing to be except that something has always bothered me when I have heard the show, yet I could never put my finger on it.

I finally figured it out.

It's not that I'm not sentimental, nor that I don't like Christmas.  Rather, it's more of the opposite - I enjoy Christmas too much.  I refuse to let it be sullied by eager beaver retailers who roll out the 'Festive Non-Demoninational Holiday' displays alongside the "End of Summer" clearance racks.  ("Aw, man - Forty percent off 'Miller Lite "More Taste League" hot-chick-in-a-referee-outfit' shirts?  I'll take three!  And that inflatable baby Jesus in a manger too, please.")

As a result, I wind up engaged in a 'finger in ear' style pose for most of October and November.  This is all well and good for avoiding singing 'Jingle Bells' while in shorts, but it does not work for getting the Family Christmas Card out on time.  These things need to be addressed early or your cards will be displaced by 52 lbs of unsolicited catalogs and won't arrive until mid-January.  ("Look, the Gurnos have sent out their annual Chinese New Year cards!  What ethnicity are they?  I can never tell.")

If you like pictures of people picking apples, have I got a deal for you!

Every year we take a family trip to a local orchard to retrieve a couple dozen apples, preferably Haralsons. Because we moved, we wound up going to a different orchard this year and they had suffered a mid-season hail storm, so the pickings were thin. We still made out ok.

• Click here to view the gallery
• Click here to view a slideshow of the pictures

So yesterday was Flu Shot day.  It wasn't meant to be F.S. day, it's just the day that they could get us in the soonest.

In retrospect, I probably should have chosen the next day and spent some time prepping L.

I was waiting in the driveway for her after she got off the bus.  

"Let's get going", I said.  

"Where?"

"We're going to get our flu shots."  I tried to sound positive and light.

Her face immediately clouded.  "No.  I don't want a flu shot."

Hey, how long ago was that?  What did you say, "two months"?  How is  that possible?  :)

Well, it happens I suppose.  Better late than never, or something like that...

• Click here to visit the State Fair 2008 gallery
• Click here to see the slideshow

If you missed all the fun, you can read all about Benjamin's birth at this link: http://gurnobaby.tumblr.com.

We now continue with our regularly scheduled life. :)