such an obvious match

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Originally uploaded by gregandchristine.

For me, the best part about eating at Red Robin is that they have a big thing of seasoning salt on the table. I saw these and had to try them. Best. Chips. Ever. -- for about the first three chips. After that the saltiness becomes overwhelming and they start to taste like canned chicken soup. There is no way I could finish even a snack bag of these, and even as a lover of seasoning salt I can't really recommend them. Colin however, likes to lick the salt off of them and put them back in the bowl. This week I have had both one of the sweetest and saltiest things on the planet.

mama rock! mama rock!

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Originally uploaded by gregandchristine.

... is what Colin says when he says Christine playing Guitar hero. When she first picked up the guitar he tried to take the controller from her saying: "no mama... daddy rock, daddy rock!" He felt his position very strongly. Now that he realizes that Christine is better at it than I am he asks for mama to rock instead of me.

mmm... maple

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Originally uploaded by gregandchristine.

One of my favorite "Friend's" moments is when Ross and Chandler go to Vermont and Ross gets whacked out of his mind on maple candy. I also buy real maple syrup and when I get doughnuts, I usually grab a maple one. Knowing this, Christine got me some maple candy for Christmas. Now I know what Ross' deal was. This stuff is great. Maybe one of the sweetest things on the planet. The ingredients are sugar and maple syrup. I have been eating the little ones one at a time to make them last, and I think that big one might just kill me.

Merry Christmas everybody!

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Originally uploaded by gregandchristine.

Santa's sleigh crash landed in our living room. Colin went into shock this morning and had a huge grin plastered across his face. He made quite the haul, but as in holidays past he wanted to stop after he opened the first toy and just sit and play. The Santa Pez dispenser caused a pretty big derailment in the unwrapping, and he stopped to sit with Grandpa and read the Thomas book he bought him. Santa brought him a table for his trains which will surely only further his obsession. Our house is now basically a giant amusement park for Colin. Christine is spending the rest of Christmas with her other family, and I am having a totally rockin xmas.

I hope you all had a great Christmas, we miss you all and we are thinking of you.

happy couple

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Originally uploaded by gregandchristine.

Congratulations to my sister and my new brother–n-law Tom. The main purpose our trip to San Diego last week was for my sister’s wedding (Disneyland was just the very rich icing on the cake). It was a real nice wedding; outdoors in December is something you can only get away with in San Diego. Tom and Amy were friends in jr. high so I have known him for a number of years. They are a real good match for each other, and I hope wish them the best. Congrats again, and welcome to the family Tom!

strange dreams (cont.)

The other night I had one of my regular very involved, long and kind of boring dreams. This one was basically like being in a LOST knock off…stuck on an island, medial testing, mystery, blah blah blah. Only one of my old bosses was in charge of the medical testing and there was a lot of sitting around and waiting for the next test. The strange thing about this dream is that there was a character in the dream that I couldn’t place. Usually my dreams are filled with people from my life, or people from TV. This time there was a woman named Noria in my dream, and in the morning I clearly remembered her name. I don’t have any recollection of ever hearing that word before. Turns out a noria is a device similar to a vertical water wheel used to raise water up into an aqueduct…. Well alrighty.

It is also a name, and a search turned up a few people on the web with the name, but none of them looked anything like the character in my dream. Obviously not ground breaking news, but I thought I would share my vocab word of the week with you.

two years

Two years ago today we were sleeping in a strange new apartment in Lacey, Washington. Our exit from Santa Cruz had been stressful and overwhelming -- we couldn't fit everything in the truck, and we left the apartment a total mess. We had an army of helpful RAs I was abandoning loading our truck, and we still didn't finish until the early morning. We arrived in wet, cold, dark Lacey to a fairly cool reception, and the only help we got was from a guy who wasn't even supposed to be there (a student's boyfriend who had been banned for breaking the archaic curfew). Lacey never quite felt like home, and we never quite got settled in the six months we were there...

Anyway... two years later and we are more or less settled in Portland (where we were pretty sure we belonged in the first place). Everything is on track and we are all doing good. There are a lot of people we still miss from Santa Cruz, and we haven't been the best at keeping in touch. SC was home for us for a long time, and in many ways we grew up there and it was Colin's first home as well. Portland is starting to feel like home, but it will be a while before it replaces good old Santa Cruz.

dizzyland

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Originally uploaded by gregandchristine.

We took Colin to Disneyland on Thursday for the first time, and he was suitably overwhelmed by the magic. Being that most everything involves vehicles that move on tracks... Colin was in heaven. He also loved all the boats. He was pretty excited on It's a Small World and a little scared on Pirates. Speaking of small worlds... we also ran into Mitch and Jen there and hung out for a while. We made the rounds and hit all the high points Colin was tall enough for. He just barely made the minimum for the Matterhorn which scared the bejezus out of him. He still wanted to go on the gadget coater in toon town so we didn't totally ruin him on coasters. When it came down to it though, he would have been just as happy riding the train around the park the whole day and shouting "ALL ABOARD" at every stop (and a couple times in between). He skipped his nap and ran full speed (fueled by cotton candy and overstimulation) the whole day and passed out before we got out of the parking lot.

that's my boy

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Originally uploaded by gregandchristine.

This weekend we returned to the Holiday Ale Festival. Colin Lars and I went Friday afternoon but it was crazy busy and there was no way I could let Colin run around , so we had a couple samples and decided to come back today with Christine. Last year we went around noon on Saturday and the place was dead, I was one of maybe 15 people drinking... this year it is sunny and about 15 degrees warmer so the place was already jammed. We tried all the rare beers we could take and skipped all the widely available ones. There wer a few one-off beers made for the festival that were pretty impressive. HOTD Jim was particularly good. Colin chugged a few glasses of rootbeer and was runnin gaorund like a lunitic and giving a lot of hugs.... I fear for his college years.