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Last weekend kicked off a string of holidays . . . Valentine’s Day, Presidents Day, Fat Tuesday, Jonathan’s 31st Birthday, Ash Wednesday.  I pretty much missed them all.

Mackenzie was sick for a week straight.  It was a viral infection — the kind you just have to wait out.  Every morning Kimberlie and I would compare work agendas to see who could call in that day.  As for my birthday, we still haven’t picked up a birthday cake.  We didn’t even make it to Baskin Robbins until five days later.   My plan to eat all 31 flavors since I became 31 sort of failed too — the Warner Robins Baskin Robbins only had 24 flavors!  I guess birthdays are suppose to suck after you turn 30 anyway.

Oh well, Mackenzie is back to school today and we are both back at work.  I hate routines until something happens to throw off the familar routine.  Then I long for them to return.

2010 isn’t shaping up to be a very good year.  I’ll take 2007 or 2009 back in a heartbeat!

Here are some of my accomplishments and favorite memories for 2009:

I completed my first half-marathon and marathon, as well as sliced 4 minutes off of my best 5K time.

We visited Walt Disney World SEVEN times in 2009, compared to once in 2008.  (You won’t see this on next year’s list!)  We celebrated both my 30th birthday and Tristan’s 6th birthday in the most magical place on earth.

I visited for the first time: Colorado, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

I began working on another masters degree.

I fell in love . . . with my new iPhone. Ha!

I cut two years worth of hair off.

Tristan learned to ride his bicycle without training wheels, and then later got a new bike.

My kids got to see their first Georgia snowfall, and then later  got to play in six feet of real snow for the first time.  I had never even seen that much snow before!

I went on field trips with both Tristan and Mackenzie.  So much fun!

I volunteered at Tristan’s school — my alma mater — Heard Elementary school.

We went roller skating.  It was Tristan and Mackenzie’s first time ever and my first time in 20 years!

I saw the space shuttle launch at night from the beach — although it was from 200 miles away and not quite as I originally planned.

I’m finally learning how to make money online. My blog made $2019.94 (compared to $78.41 in 2008).  Guess I’m getting a 1099 this year.  If I could sustain those percentage gains, I wouldn’t have to work anymore!  (Of course, if I were a professional blogger I would actually have to blog more.)

I ran 497 miles in 2009 (compared to 343 in 2008).  That’s pathetic, but I’ve been dealing with pain injury pretty much all year.  I’m even wearing a brace on my left foot as I type this — trying to recover enough to run next week’s 5K, half-marathon, and marathon.

Of course, there are many things that I’ve left out.  You can read my blog to find some of them, but there have also been (many) times where I’ve been too busy or lazy to blog about it: such as our Six Flags Trip or Discover Macon, etc.

2009 was overall one of the best years and it was much much better than 2008.  Let’s hope that 2010 is even better. Happy New Year!

Once again this year, I’m not making “resolutions”.  I do have several goals for the new year.

Fitness Related:

Run a half-marathon in less than 2 hours. (Let’s hope this happens on January 9!)

Reduce my 5K PR to 22 minutes.

Run 1000 miles in 2010.

Restart and actually complete hundredpushups.com.

Commit to and begin training to run (not run/walk) an entire marathon.

Drop my weight down to 160.

Eat out no more than once per week.

Finance Related:

Eat out no more than once per week (this falls under both).

Be completely debt free by 2011.

Work/School Related:

Take two masters degree classes each semester and stay on top of them.

Stop passing up greener pastures.

Home Related:

Spend more time teaching my kids things.

Get rid of more junk.

Computer Related:

Tweet more.

Blog more.

Facebook less.

I think that’s enough for now. I’ll try to revisit this post every few months to see how I’m doing.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we attended part of the taping for the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade.  I also included a few of the 500 pictures I snapped and one of the videos I shot.  Here is a tilt-shift video, created by Disney of the Christmas parade.

As you can see, tilt-shift is a cool technology.  I consider it analogous to HDR photography, but even cooler.  Here are links to two other tilt-shift videos with short explanations by Disney if you are interested in the technology:

Magic Kingdom Tilt-shift
Epcot Tilt-shift
Tilt-shift Explanation

Here are some screen shots from the video, so that you can see where to find us in the parade.  It airs tomorrow, Christmas Day, at 10:00 AM on your local ABC channel.

As a hobbyist photographer, I always want the best picture – especially when my child is performing.  We learned a hard lesson at the preschool open house last year: Don’t get there on time . . . get there very early!  So this year, we did.

Here is a question for the reader(s): Suppose you arrived somewhere an hour early to get a good seat.  You rushed home from work, rushed to change clothes, and had to entertain two small children for that entire hour.  All of that just so you could (hopefully) take some decent photos of your three-year-old child singing carols.  After sitting for 45 minutes (and trying to entertain those two small kids), the room is about 90 percent full.  There are several seats in the back and one seat next to you. A man with a cane sits in the empty seat next to you.  His overweight wife then asks you to give up your seat so that she could sit next to her “handicapped husband”.  What do you do?

Now I certainly have ranted before on this issue.  I hate it when handicapped people attempt to exploit their disability to gain something.  I politely suggested that they sit together in the back, however, the thoughts going through my mind were much more colorful.  Throughout the entire evening, the man kept making remarks to his wife about how sorry he was that she didn’t have a seat and how inconsiderate people can be.  I bit my tongue . . . so hard.  I haven’t had a reason to show anyone at Mackenzie’s preschool the ugly side of Jonathan and I certainly didn’t want to do it at the Christmas Open House.

Should handicapped people have reserved seating at the front when there are clearly no visual or hearing disabilities?  Parking is one thing, but seating is another.  Like you, I may have left my “What Would Jesus Do” bracelet back in the nineties, but I would have given up my seat to a blind or deaf person.  I will not, however, give up my seat to someone attempting to exploit their perceived handicap.  Notice I say “perceived”, because I doubt that toting around a cane makes you handicapped.

So that’s what Jonathan did.  What would you do?

Last night, Mackenzie’s preschool had an open house.  There were finger foods and the kids sang three songs.  Mackenzie actually sang this year!  Unfortunately, my video camera battery was dead, so no video today.

Mackenzie singing

Mackenzie with two friends: Rosie and Ryan

Mackenzie and her teacher Mrs. Beverly

Something did take place last night, that makes me want to rant, but I’ll create a new post for that.

No family blog is complete without a photo of the kids with Santa, so here we go.

I’m not exactly sure how the birth of Christ translates into Santa or Black Friday Sales or the Jonas Brothers or messy cookie-making kids, but it sure is fun, so we’ll take it!

Today was Christmas Cookie Day at Tristan’s kindergarten.  Kimberlie and I, along with other parents helped about 120 kindergarteners make cookies.  Just imagine the biggest possible mess and multiply it by 100.  Kimberlie was covered in flour and had to return home and change before going to work.  I was a little more careful, since I had the fancy camera and all.

Enjoy the pictures.

Mackenzie went on her first field trip yesterday to see Santa at “The Fish Store”, better known as Bass Pro Shops.  Due to a light day at work, I was able to flex my lunch break around and meet them there.  Of course, I took the law school’s 50D with me.  When folks see you show up with a camera like that, you end up becoming the offical photographer.  I did photos of all of the children individually with Santa and class photos with Santa . . . all on a lunch break!

I created a photoshop template of a 5 x 7  Christmas card and included for each child their individual print, class print, and school name, teacher name, and date. I also did 8 x 10 class prints for the teachers.  Sam’s printed them for about 40 cents each and I just donated them to the preschool.  In hindsight, I should have printed photo packages to sell to parents at next week’s Christmas Open House.  Preschool parents will pay anything for Christmas photos.  Oh well, I’ll get them next year!

Below are a few of Mackenzie:

Stay tuned . . . Tristan’s kindergarten class is making Christmas cookies tomorrow and the D50 will be there to capture the action!

For the second time in my life, I was able to take part in the taping of a very popular Christmas special.  In 2007, Kimberlie and I were a part of “Oprah’s Favorite Things” and were showered with overpriced merchandise by a television diva.  Other than that, there is only one other holiday television special that I would love to be a part of, and somehow I managed to pull it off this year.

This past weekend, we were invited to be part of the taping of the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade.  Basically, they entice you to come be a part of the crowd with free entry into the Magic Kingdom for the day.  We were unable to make the Kris Allen (American Idol) taping on Thursday or the Celine Dion taping on Friday due to work and school schedules, so we decided to go down for the Jonas Brothers on Saturday. 

The Jonas Brothers sang a three minute song called Summertime Anthem, but it took us four hours to shoot the performance.  The director made them sing it no less than 10 times.  Part of that was teaching the 5000 member audience to break out into a flash-mob style dance routine towards the end of the song.  It was awesome!  By shear luck, we ended up at the very front of the stage!

The parade taping was another grueling six hours, because performers had to perform over and over and over for the perfect camera angles.  Steve Rushton (singer) and the Santa Buddies (dogs from a new Disney Christmas movie) were there and all of it was hosted by Kelly Ripa.  No Regis this year due to surgery!  And by shear accident, we ended up on center street, where the performers performed.

Of course I shot over 500 pictures and 3 videos.  Here is a small sample:

Check out the video to see how close we were to the action!

Be sure to watch the parade Christmas morning on ABC.  There is no possible way that they can show the parade without including some very good shots of us.  You should definitely watch for the shot of  Tristan and me dancing (above) during the “Move it, Shake it, Celebrate it” portion of the parade.