Enjoy!

Ten Pills and You’re Fine by Capitol Steps

Here is the cake.

Gregg opening his gift

Gregg opening, Sandy watching

Gean Ann opening her “treasures”

Let ‘er rip!

Gean Ann wearing her coconut bra

Gean Ann and Gregg cutting the cake

Sandy watching them cut the cake

Kristin, David (hidden), Gary, and Edie

Kristin, David, Gary, Edie’s arms

Kristin and Edie

Gean Ann, Sandy, Gregg, Gayle

Interested in other events associated with January 27?  Click here.

This evening I found another “Australian Style” licorice, this time in the traditional red “flavor”.  I thought it was the same company as before, but apparently this one comes from Minnesota.  So much for authentic Aussie food!  Still, the “Wiley Wallaby” brand licorice is really, really good.  I highly recommend it.  Even if it is from the frozen tundra instead of the Outback.

It’s been a while since I got a new computer (well, a Windows computer that I intend to actually make useful, as opposed to an iMac!) and I forgot how much there is to set up.  Of course right out of the box I was able to browse the web and do basic tasks, but it’ll be a while before I’ve got my e-mail transferred over and all of my development tools installed.

Early returns are quite positive, however.  With a new quad-core processor and a very decent video system (for a laptop), it’s real shiny.

HP laptop

The software upgrade is complete now (it took a while, mostly to backup the older versions of the files from the FTP server).  We’re running the latest WordPress software to drive the blog (as of this writing, version 2.8.6).

The visuals should be a lot cleaner than earlier versions, and I’m certainly open to suggestions about what you do and do not like (colors, fonts, layout, etc.)  In particular the logo graphic at the top is sort of a place-holder for now.

As mentioned before, I hope that this becomes an easy way to maintain a central “family newsletter” style blog — people can post pictures and general info about whatever’s going on at the moment.  So if you need any help getting set up, or posting articles/pictures, etc., just drop me a line and let me know!

One of the difficult things about WordPress is also the immense flexibility it allows in the presentation of information.

The whole look of the site is driven by style sheets, and it can take some time to tweak the defined styles to get just the right effects.  As I’ve been playing around with a unique look for our blog (including the family crest image as a sort of logo for the site) it’s been a challenge to get all of the pieces fitting together correctly.

So, pardon our dust as we work on the layout for the site.  And, if you happen to stop by and see some really crazy stuff (like all of the posts showing up after all of the sidebar items on the right), post a comment and describe what you’re seeing, as well as the specific web browser and computer system that you’re running on at the time.

Thanks!

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However, I recently learned that our web host supports local installs of WordPress blogging software, so I figured this might be an easy first step in building up the family community online.

Hopefully this will become a place where we can all stay up-to-date with each other… posting interesting pictures, describing various events in our lives, etc… sort of a continuous group Christmas Letter…