not The Vermont Life

Zoo-ing

Who goes to Hogle Zoo on Christmas Eve? We do! So does the other red-headed Janelle who went to my high school and spells her name differently, she was at the giraffe house.

Where else will you see a giant egg while standing on a crocodile?

Nowhere!

That lion's head drinking fountain is still there, still not working.

Dean and Scott got a cushy ride.

Mike, the World's Greatest Uncle, led a gaggle of five children around in the snow (Megan not pictured).

Dean would like you to meet the biggest tortoise Scott has ever seen.

Baby giraffe! Snacking on a Christmas tree!

We took a snack break, too.

Hey look! Those long-lost parents and the other sibling showed up! Thank goodness we had a never-ending supply of Grandma's gingerbread cookies to sustain us.

But we needed one more snack before we left the zoo:

Salt N' Vinegar Crick-Ettes. For real. I wish I'd taken a picture of the nutrition label.

Kinecting

We got an XBox Kinect for Christmas, a motion sensor gaming system that allowed me to take pictures of people in strange positions. Like this:

And this:

That's Mike and Robin having an excessively competitive game of volleyball.

Robin also played boxing with Scott:

Then we realized that Scott would always win.

You might notice that Mike and Robin (and, to a lesser degree, Scott) are looking very clean and shiny. We had just come from a family photo session that was slightly traumatizing for Dean and thus slightly traumatizing for us all. Luckily, we passed a cupcake store on the way home.

Dean shared.

Here are our 4 good photos. Well, 3 standardized-beauty good ones, plus 1 awesome picture of Dean crying and reaching for his mommy.

Now we don't need any more professional photos for a decade.

I'm going to throw in the rest of the wacky Kinect photos here, because it's a theme! After this picture of Scott's black eye.

Not too bad, actually.

Cousins by marriage Ian and Rowan were good partners piloting a raft down a river.

They had quite an audience.

Grandma Myrna tried to defeat the boxing champion.

Yarrow and Rowan had a sibling death match.

Tim tried to fight fair.

Cousin Tanya played volleyball surrounded by younglings.

Finally, here are some of the spectators kicking back.

If you look closely, you'll see Grandpa Van sitting in the corner, and Scott having an upside down moment.

Rowan and Dean show the best way to enjoy Kinect. I probably had to help Dean finish that ice cream.

Christmas 2010: The Video

I still have random pictures that I could post, but I found a peppy enough song so I took some spare time and made a hyperactive video from all of our Utah vacation. It was my first time using special effects so your brain will overload, but it will be over in less than two minutes.

Disclaimer: while the song urges you to "burn it down," I'm certain that it is in a figurative, dance-floor kind of way, not in a literal, house-burning kind of way.