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Took a nice trip up to Tahoe for a snowboarding weekend.  Marcia was gracious enough to let us use the cabin, so we all had a nicely affordable place to stay.  

We had a bit of a conversation trying to figure out who was going to get chains, if anyone had 4WD, etc. when Mike and Mary offered to let us use the truck to get everything up there (sweet!).  The truck worked out perfectly and had plenty of room to hold all of our stuff as well as all the people we were carpooling with.  I believe that I broke the brakes though.  Well, they need to be replaced.  I think.  I don’t know.

Du, John, and Zack had never snowboarded before so Dave, Phil, and I took them out to Heavenly on Saturday and showed them the ropes.  Not bad, they all had it down by the end of the day.  Just three of us went to Sierra at Tahoe on Sunday.  We finished and made it back in time to watch the Super Bowl.

Much Rock Band and Wii gaming was done, as well as alcohol consumption.  What a great weekend!

Thanks for taking the pic, Du.

Mike and Mary treated us all to a nice relaxing weekend at the Carmel Valley Lodge, the same place that we had a nice weekend a couple years ago.  Its out in Carmel Valley (obviously) and is close to a nice tiny downtown area, a lot of restaurants, and even more wineries.  Monterey County has some great wineries (not as great as Paso though!) and this place seems like a good place to start.  Just like last time we were there, it was raining pretty good but that didn’t deter us from having a great time.  Although we didn’t make it to any tasting rooms, I definitely did not miss out on “tasting” some good wine and some good beer.

We also got to celebrate Dave’s birthday, which is on Tuesday.  The big Three-Oh.  You’re gettin’ old, Dave!  I mean.. Happy Birthday, Dave!

I’m trying to keep up with the frequency of the preggie pics, but i’m finding it hard to stay on target…  I did get a few on Wednesday before the night was over. 

It might be easier if we had a little more room to work with but our rooms are so tiny (and i’ll admit, i’ve got a severe lack of right-brained creativity) that everything feels so smushed.  Maybe we’ll head outside for the next set.

I got my Nintendo DS Lite yesterday, yay!  It’s pretty neat and with the R4DS in combination with a microSD card – it will hold everything I need to play.  So far i’m really diggin’ the split screen action – we’ll see how attached I get to it!

So one of the gifts that I received this past Christmas was a gently used Wii from Gene.  I went out to Game Stop and got Rayman Raving Rabbids (its the original one so its on sale) and this game is a lot of fun!

Its got 70 or so mini-games in it – they’re not horribly long and all of them involve using both the Wii remote as well as the nunchuck together.  My favorite mini game so far is the one where four “rabbids” go into four outhouses on the beach and you hear them grunting, filling the pond with some brown trout so to speak.  Your job is to keep the doors shut as they slowly open; if they open all the way the rabbids get mad and hit you with a toilet plunger.

There’s a lot of other ones, and they come in groups of five.  You’re stuck in this coliseum and you have four tunnel choices – each one takes you to a different mini game.  Once you beat the four, the main gate opens and you get to play a first person shooter against hordes of angry bunnies armed with your trusty toilet plunger gun.  This is totally the highlight, and storming the beach resort at night, or roaming the O.K. Corral with your plunger gun is more exciting than you’d think.

I’d definitely recommend this to anyone with a Wii.  And if you decide you don’t like it… sucks for you!

Hi.  This is Jen.  She’s pregnant. 

So we got most of the baby room ready, the crib is on order… man that baby stuff is expensive!  Who’d have thought?  Painting the room was such a treat… and we did it all with ONE gallon of paint.  That’s right – we made it last AND we have a little left over. 

No, I won’t paint your room for you.

Here’s Jen doing some touch-ups:

A very mellow New Year’s this year.  Hangin out at home, relaxing – Jen fell asleep early because she has a little alien inside of her sucking her energy… 2008 was a great year and here’s to hoping 2009 is even better!