There are a couple more photos on Flickr, but these give you a good idea of what I accomplished. Noticeably missing – pictures of Gretchen and the kids! I did get one of Oskar… Doh! Next time…

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful Winter Break (assuming that applies to you!) Everyone has left the Alyn Family residence and we’re back to school today – just in time for the temperature to get really cold! Over break we visited, ate, laughed, Xavier made some funny faces and we all made some art. We had a really great time!

For those who aren’t aware, the images on Flickr are marked as “Copyright” so people don’t use them in magazines etc, but you can still get the high resolution photos. Click on the photo page on Flickr and then in the top right it says “View all sizes.” For the photo above, it will open the photo in a window with a listing of different available sizes, including “original.” You can open that version and save as you normally would. That’s the highest resolution available. The first photo of the boys above is one we took a few weeks ago using a fancy schmancy 50mm f/1.4 lens I rented.

For Xavier’s 5th birthday he wanted to go to the Kalahari, so we’re here in the Wisconsin Dells for a 3 day mini-vacation. Here’s a photo for everyone of the not quite 5 year old taken yesterday. Oskar has been really interested in the new indoor amusement park they’ve opened and has discovered rock climbing. He spent close to an hour on the wall yesterday. Xavier gave it his best trying to keep up with his big brother…

• Indianapolis Motor Speedway
• Indianapolis Children’s Museum
• Horseback Riding
• Lake Patoka
• Bluespring Caverns
• Morton Arboretum

Just a few random pics…

Today was certainly a full day for everyone in the Alyn household. Erik turned 10 today and Xavier attended Erik’s party as well as Alex’s (from his pre-school). Everything came off as planned and a good time was had by all. To see the rest of the photos, be sure to check out the Flickr set or just see them all after the jump.

We’ve just returned from a wonderful week in Florida with Gretchen’s siblings. Rachel and Kevin generously donated a week at their timeshare in Ft. Lauderdale to celebrate Patty’s 29th birthday. The accomodations were wonderful and a good time was had by all. While we were there, we checked out the Young at Art, The Everglades, the beach near the Ft. Lauderdale fishing pier, Butterfly World and the Museum of Discovery and Science. We also spent some time just hanging out by the pool, playing mini-golf and other activities right at the hotel.

The trip back was an adventure when our connecting flight in Atlanta departed for home without us on it! Delta put us up for the night and we made it home safely Monday morning. See a collection of 60 photos from our adventure.

For those who may not have heard, Erik is spending some time with us while Pammy recovers from a surgery she underwent on the 22nd. She’s recovering nicely and Erik’s doing okay being here with Oskar and Xavier. The Alyn Family spent Christmas in Minnesota this year. We were also fortunate to have a white Christmas again.

Gretchen made the annual gingerbread houses, this year adding stained glass windows. The current thinking for next year is to create one larger house and let everyone collaborate on it. The kids had a great time decorating these houses, and eating candy too. Oskar’s friend Aounghus came up and decorated one as well. Xavier decided after a while that he was done working on his, so Egg took over and did some decorating where he felt the house was untouched. You can see a collection of the photos here that include the finished houses.

Christmas morning, the bigger boys were up at 4am to start in on their stockings. After eating most of a chocolate treat they were sent back to bed. Of course they had a hard time sleeping after that. Xavier finally kicked everything off at around 6:30am and our day began. Everyone had a great time opening presents and Xavier finished around dinner time while the other two were done much earlier. More pictures from Christmas day are online here. This year, Xavier received his own Pikachu plush toy like Oskar’s which Xavier immediately turned around and gave to Oskar. Gretchen and I were awestruck at his unselfish action towards his brother. The remainder of the day was filled with Bakugan, Legos, Radio controlled things and art supplies.

The day after Christmas seemed like a good time to get out of the house and so we headed to the Science Museum of Minnesota. The traveling exhibit of CSI is scheduled to leave on January 4 and so Gretchen smartly got us there. We watched the Mysteries of the Great Lakes IMAX and had lunch too. Egg was pretty excited to see the Seismophone and the CSI exhibit as evidenced by the photos he took. Photos from our day are here. We all solved case #3 successfully and enjoyed exploring the dinosaur, weather, light and myriad of other great exhibits the museum has.

Hope everyone else had a Merry Christmas too!

Egg is heading to Virginia next week to assist NWF with a server migration, helping NWF phase out the equipment he originally deployed over 5 years ago now.

Alyn Family in Petroglyph

Since the trip is a working vacation for me, I wasn’t able to head to the Zoo with the family today but I think they had a good time. Here’s a couple of photos to tide you over until I upload a bunch to Flickr.

Balloon Glow

Sunset over Albuquerque