A year of promise and hope

Although our Michigan football team didn’t hold up any promises or offer even a glimmer of hope that we could win today, I am still certain that 2007 is going to be a great year!

We had the full Pasadena/Rose Bowl New Year’s experience today. Last night at midnight we wandered downtown and gaped at all of the crazy, poor people camping out on the street for the parade this morning. I mean, sleeping bags in the gutter, on the asphalt – staking out their spot for a glimpse of the floats and bands. It was insane. I have been to a lot of New Year’s Eve celebrations in a lot of big cities, and have never experienced anything like that. I forgot my camera, so I don’t have any pictures, but trust me it was c-r-a-z-y!

After a stop off at a pub for a New Year’s drink and the walk back, it was pretty close to 2am by the time we went to bed. Three short hours later, I woke up thinking that my neighbors were being extremely rude and loud (like we can talk, I’m sure they hate us and our screaming girlies!) and realized it was the PA system for the parade. The parade runs right down our street, literally through our front yard. So not only was it a little inconvenient to have the street closed for portions of yesterday and today, but apparently the parade provides a free “wake-up call” as well. At any rate, we can’t complain, they did give us free bleacher tickets for the parade, and it was worth every little hassle!

The parade was amazing, the girls were so very excited about it all. Emma loved the bands, Addie loved the horses, and they both loved the floats. They were pretty stunning! So that was a great way to start off the year. I’ll try to post pictures tomorrow, between the parade and game today, Jamie and I took 525 pictures between the two of us. So, yeah, I’ll have to do a little paring down and editing of some of them!

The game, well, that did not have as good of results – but it was fun just to get to go to a Rose Bowl game, and hopefully when/if we make it next year we’ll have better luck.

So the first day of January 2007 was pretty good, all-in-all.

Two little sidenotes, for any of you following the J. and his job interviewing that we haven’t talked to in the past week, J. is officially leaving Playboy in a few weeks and will be taking the job of…wait for it…it’s a good one…

CTO of Digital Media for the NFL.

Yes, the NFL, as in National Football League. How crazy is that?? It is an amazing opportunity for him, and I am certain he is going to rise up to the challenge and be absolutely great at the job. He is the first CTO of the NFL, ever! I am so very proud of him, I can’t even describe it. Like I said though, I am certain that this is going to be a great year.

The other sidenote has to do with the new year, in a round about way, I guess. For those of our friends and family who are used to getting a Emma/Addie calendar for Christmas – they are on their way. It hasn’t been lost in the mail. It is just stuck on my hard drive, unable to print and collate themselves, apparently. So, I am working on them feverishly and hopefully I’ll have a stack of them to bring to Michigan when we leave (ack!) this Friday. Can that be right, in 4 short days??

Already the year is flying by…I hope you all had a very safe and fun first day of January. Wishing you lots of love and happiness in the New Year.

Christmas Cheer In the Mail…

I think it is safe to post our Christmas card now – most people have received it in the mail. And if you haven’t, but you were expecting to get one, well, um…it must still be on the way, or lost in the mail.

So the outtakes are posted on the flickr account, but I was trying to get a fun picture of the girls in front of either the Rose Bowl House or the actual Stadium, to commerate Michigan’s trip to the Rose Bowl on the 1st of January.

As you can imagine, it was a bit more difficult to get 2 girls, looking at the camera with sweet angelic faces, their pretty dresses all spread out nicely with no underwear sticking out, all of their hair lying down clipped back with bows. All right, it was more than difficult – it was IMPOSSIBLE.

So this is the picture we went with this year. An action shot, but I actually decided that I really love this picture. If nothing else you can see just pure joy on their faces as they chase each other. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

2006 Christmas Card

And yes – this really was on the Rose Bowl “front yard” – I did not Photoshop it in (but thanks for thinking my Photoshop skills are good enough to do that!). No Photoshopping occurred on the actual photo this year – only the Christmas embellishments were added.