Yikes, darn holidays. Officially I am blaming Jennifer's birthday cake. The weight gain has absolutely nothing to do with my eating habits for the last two weeks. Certainly not going to the gym for a week and a half has had no impact what so ever.

The holidays were very nice. We spent some time with family in Springfield. Everyone had a wonderful time. The kids got to play with all of their cousins and got to eat a lot of sweets and treats. We took Cecilia to her very fist movie theater movie, "Mr Magorium's wonder Emporium". She didn't want to stay through the whole thing, but enjoyed the experience. Especially the popcorn.

We had some friends visit from florida. Cecilia and Owen were able to play with Athena and Noah which they both enjoyed. We also went to the children's Discovery Museum twice!.

Owen really had a great time there. On previous trips I think he was still a bit too little to really enjoy it. This past week however I think he could have put in a full 12 hour shift there. In fact Sunday night he told me he wanted to go back and stay "all night!" He was really interesting to watch there. He is very methodical in the way he does things. He would not let me take him to another floor until he had a chance to explore the current one thoroughly. He especially seemed to enjoy the trains and tractors. Painting was also a lot of fun, although I think spraying the water and using the squegee was more of the draw there. I also found out that he can write all the letters in his name, almost in the correct order too!

Cecilia experienced the museum as only she could as well. We kind of tag teamed with the kids while we were there so I would go from the calm of Owen who just needed to know I was there to the maelstrom that is the Bean. She seems to be able to take in quite a bit of information all at once and likes to jump around and do a little bit of it all, all the time, always, without ending... ever. I don't know if all the stuff overwhelms her quickly or if she just gets bored once she has the full picture of what the exhibit is. Although once there is a goal involved with something she seems to really dig in. The farm exhibits did this for her on the second day. She liked taking the "soybeans" from the fields and sending them into the silo and then on to the farms and plants and stores. I think she also liked to run around and collect the green foam balls and put them in the bucket too. She also really impressed me with the way she was able to climb around in the jungle gym thing. She even made it all the way to the top. There were a couple time she called to me to make sure I was still there but would quickly get back into the climbing and exploring part of it. It was interesting to see as that type of thing usually gets her a little nervous.

I was able to see a few decent movies as well "No Country for Old Men","Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium" and "I am Legend." All were good although No Country was definitely the best. The Coen brothers really make good movies. This one also had the benefit of possibly the most disturbing psychopath I think cinema has ever seen. I will definitely have to see it again. Mr Magorim was an excellent movie for Cecilia. It was interesting to me because for a kids movie it really touched on some "deep" topics; death, love, friendship, growing up, etc. I also like that it didn't involve any sort of villain. I think that gets done a bit much with kids entertainment. I should actually try to write a better review of it than that... maybe in a later post. I am Legend was good for a "blockbuster" action flick. Will Smith can deliver a good performance and the story was pretty good. The CGI was abit over done for me, parts of the movie were too much like a video game for my tastes. I don't care for CGI for CGI's sake in movies and I am Legend really fell into that trap.

Well I should prolly try to do some work today