Happy New Years Eve!

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Originally uploaded by bartraeke

From Erin, Elmo, half of Ninja, and the Queen's left hand and knee.

Some More Erin...

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Originally uploaded by bartraeke

To tide you over for the New Year. I did shoot, edit, and save the first video blog, so remember to set your calendars for the 2nd.

The Teaser Trailer For the Change that Will...Change...Things.

Ladies. Gentlemen. Small children of indiscriminate age.

BEHOLD!

Okay, Seriously, I Hate Doing This Again:

But I'm wondering how many people still pay attention to me since my hiatus. Which I swear I had good reasons for.

Because I'm really hoping some of the new content will really be enjoyable, and maybe even increase the faithful few to a faithful few more.

So, tomorrow, there will be a little teaser of the "flagship" feature of the relaunch. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Have your enemies tell their friends and enemies. Post bulletin boards at church or temple. Just spread the word.

Merry Christmas!

And to all a good night...or whatever!

Christmas Eve Humpday Haiku:

Relaunch is nigh.

So new presents for you, well

the ones that remain

Holiday Traditions (A Guest Blog)

The following is a guest blog, courtesy of CelticBuffy over at Serving up Life... Being that it is Christmas Eve, I felt it a fairly appropo.

If anybody else wants to get in on the guesting action before the New Year, let me know!

There are very few traditions that my family follows for Christmas. We bounce around from year to year, depending upon work schedules, and whose turn it is to have the children. There is, however, one thing that remains constant in our family from year to year, whether we are all together or miles apart. What, you ask, is this prevailing tradition? It is our Christmas Vacation.

No, not that kind of vacation, although I certainly wish it was! :) I'm talking National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Hanging with the Griswold's. Enjoying the fact that someones Christmas is way more messed up than ours. Every year my sister(of the heart, in-law), my (second) parents, and my kids and I watch poor Clark try to pull together the ultimate family Christmas. More often than not we are all watching in our own homes, far apart from each other, but we always watch it. It is our one Christmas constant.

I recently realized how many Christmas movies there are that we like to watch during the month of December. So I decided to make a list of our top Christmas movies. In no particular order they are:

~Fred Claus

~Die Hard (because a little Bruce Willis always makes the holiday brighter)

~The Muppet Christmas Carol

~ Gremlins (I'm saving this until the kids get a little older)

~The Family Stone

~The Santa Clause ( and Santa Clause 2 and 3)

~The Nightmare Before Christmas

~Holiday Inn

~Elf

~Home Alone

~White Christmas

~Polar Express

~Scrooged

~Miracle on 24th Street (the original)

~A Christmas Story

~Bad Santas (on my need to see list)

Don't even get me started on the Christmas specials and cartoons that need to be watched to ensure maximum holiday spirit! Of course there is one notable film missing from this list. Jimmy Steward in "It's a Wonderful Life" is a great Christmas movie. Unfortunately during the holiday season of 1985 (I think) my cousin, uncle, and I made it our mission to watch it every single time it was on TV. Since my grandparents had a dish (no not DishNetwork, this was one of those freakily huge satellite dishes cemented into the yard since you couldn't get cable in the boonies those days) with oodles of channels I think me managed to watch that movie over 50 times in the two weeks of vacation. As you might imagine, I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it since then.

I leave you with the immortal words of Clark Griswold and hope you have a much more sane Christmas than he did!

"Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny f***ing Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white a** down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of a****les this side of the nuthouse."


Happy Holidays!

Inching Step by Step

Still looking for guest blogging...don't miss your window folks!

Guest posting anyone?

Anybody interested in doing some guest posting before the 2nd? Go ahead and send me a post to bartraeke@gmail.com and how you want to be credited, and I'll do it.

The Countdown with Pictures Continues.

In the Meantime

I'll give you guys some more Erin photos (especially for David McMahon who asked me last night "when's the baby due?" Yeah, thanks David. ;) ) Don't forget that I have asked for help.

Here's Erin with her bunny fufu.

Need Some Help

Okay guys and gals, one of the things I want to do requires a cartoon representation of myself. I have someone working on that for me, but that's not it.

Is there anything you guys want to see more of? Less of? Anything I don't do that you'd like to see? Suggestions welcome, though I will obviously heed them at my own discretion.

Let me know via supa dupa comments.

HEAR YE, HEAR YE!

I am hereby announcing my return.

Set your calendars. Full force on January 2nd. I might have a pithy update here or there, but that's when I'll be back.

Perhaps with a new twists. Maybe a new look. I still don't know about that, still contemplating.

So...

Who misses me?

I promise I'll be back soon, though I'm unsure of an exact timetable. I swear it isn't Erin, that's simply coincidence, but I've hit another stagnant writers block again. I seem to get them once a year for a couple months, don't I? I'll have to have a strategy for that once my creativity comes back to me.

In the meantime, feel free to tell me how much you missed me, or not.