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.

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.")

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

It's been a crazy weather week - well, it's been an entire month of 70°F to snow to 65°F to sleet. On Sunday it started off sunny and followed that up with gigantic flakes of snow. Really, really huge ones.

Linnea, Ginger, and I went outside to do a little Spring frolicking. (How do you spell "frolicking"?)

So the Northfield Hiliners held a one day dance class fund raiser here in town. It was pretty simple - drop your kid off at 1, pick them up at 4:30, and go to a little performance that night. It was win-win for everyone - the Hiliners picked up a few bucks and L got to rub shoulders with some ultra-cool teenagers.

I brought my camera to the performance, but the Ol' Grey Kodak ain't what she used to be. It's not focusing all that well any more, so the video is iffy. Sorry...

Linnea has been home with a fever for the last two days.  She may have been good enough to soldier through a school day today, but we kept her home due to one of those 'ounce of prevention, pound of cure' insights that you get as a parent.  Insights like these are always earned the hard way, of course.

Anyways, this meant that we got to hang out at home today.   At 10:00, I tuned the TV into "The Price Is Right" which is now hosted by Drew Carey.  I've only seen Drew in flashes here and there since he took over and he was always very stiff.  It was a bit painful.  Things were much, much better this time around as Drew seems to have gotten comfortable with his role and with the big pair of shoes he's had to fill.  I digress...

It's still a fun show and I found Linnea's comments as she tried to play along as interesting.  She's only six and really hasn't dealt with money outside of normal six year old things; a dollar here and a dollar there do not prepare one to estimate the value of a New Zealand wool floor rug.  The maximum price that she could imagine things costing was $200:

TV: [Shows a gigantic floor rug - people start bidding $1000+]

Linnea: I say $200.

Me: $200?  It's a pretty big rug.  (It was, it was much taller than the Barker Beauty beside it.)

Linnea: [struggles]  It's... I still say two hundred.

Me: It's probably closer to $2000. 

Drew: ...and the actual retail price is... $2058!

Me: [mentally high fives self.]

And later...

TV: [Shows a generic looking collection of cooking pans.   People start bidding $400-$500.]

Linnea: $200!

Me: There's a lot of pans there.  Maybe a little more?

Linnea: Like... many... hundred... ?

Me: Let's say $400.

Linnea: Ok.

TV: [Maximum bid is around $550.  I start thinking 'TV prices' and think I should have bid $600 or so.]

Drew: ...and the actual retail price is... Holy cow!  $2340!

Me: Holy cow!

Drew's inexperience has turned into an endearing aspect of the new game.  Bob was so cool that nothing fazed him - a bunch of tin pots for $23xx wouldn't have gotten a raised eyebrow out of him.  Drew is still pretty real, so wildly expensive obvious crap still elicits the same reaction that the rest of us have.  He also commented on 'strategy' whenever someone bid $1 more than someone else.

So we watched the whole show and Linnea continued to bid $200 on everything that was larger than a box of cereal.  She was also very impressed when someone won a car - I suppose those are very concrete things to her.  The girl on TV totally lost her shit over the (blindly lucky) break.  Linnea commented "She's really happy."   She also giggled when some college kid took the opportunity of winning a minibike (and a wine rack *snort*) to kiss each one of the models up there.  He won the game and made a beeline past the junk to plant a kiss on each of the Beauties.  Good on him - he can admire that wine rack later while his frat buddies are hollowing it out as a portable keg stand.

Of course, staying at home with a six year old who's got a raging case of cabin fever isn't all grins and California Emissions.  We butted heads a few times as I demanded that she stay on the couch, even though I knew that her fever was totally gone and she probably felt better than I did.  Yadda yadda growth bonding whatever.  I just hope that her bugs don't make the leap to me.

Pretty please - I've got a lot of work backed up and Daddy needs the money.  We're house hunting and those babies cost, like, two hundred or something.

Right, so love me, love my lack of blog updates, right? Right.

Moving on...

Every year I create a little family-only year in review. It's generally just a slide show of pictures that we took and set to music. I don't usually post it online as it's pretty personal and, frankly, probably boring as hell to anyone who isn't kin.

...but this year I really enjoyed the Spring section. It featured the State Hockey tournament, Linnea running around with a school-made jetpack on and my mother's retirement party. (Summer comes along as part of the deal, but that's just how it was broken up when creating it.)

Linnea turned six... well, a long time ago. She's a New Year's Baby after all. Normally I get the pictures up immediately for the rest of the family to see. But this year I blew it big time. I didn't record the Chuck E. Cheese people singing Happy Birthday. Oh, I pointed the camera at them while it was happening, but it wasn't until it was 92% over when I realized that it wasn't recording. I turned it on hurriedly, but I only caught the last few notes of the song and Linnea's back as she blew out the candles. After that I got some lousy shots of the kids playing around in the video area. After that chaos ensued and I got no pictures nor audio.

A complete bust, recording-wise. So here's ten minutes of un-edited video of what I do have. If you don't like video of five and six year olds goofing around, this video is not for you.

My sister insisted that I get this up today.

More inside...