One Christmas, when I was probably eight years old, my parents thought it would be funny to put one of my younger brother's presents in a tampon box. He was four at the time. They handed him the box and exchanged a look I didn't get at first."Here you go, Travis," said my mother. "...  read more

There is nothing better than the smile of a child at Christmas.  Mandy and I tried to capture the perfect shot of Stella to include in this year's Christmas cards.  New baby and old camera makes this task much harder than it might sound.  Here are a collection of shots we took over...  read more

When I was young, I had an insatiable curiosity about how things worked.  I would study things for days, take them apart, and examine the "guts."  Electronics were especially prone to suffer my curiosity.One such instance occurred in 1980.  Star Wars: The Empire Strikes B...  read more

neither of us have played or really been interested in video games for years. well, except for my DDR obsession. anyway, we were excited about the wii because it requires physical interaction, and is great for parties and such. it seems a lot more social. plus, guitar hero! we decided to get e...  read more

every year for the past few years, we've adopted families from the aliveness project and bought and wrapped gifts for them. we're supposed to spend $35/person, so everybody pitches in that amount and we adopt one person per participant. the aliveness project supplies us with sheets telling us ...  read more

for as long as i can remember, we've gone to my grandma's house in upper michigan for christmas. it was a nice tradition, but the weather was always terrible, and the house was always filled with kids. i think we were all glad to be able to stay here for the holidays this year. my mom got me t...  read more

We're driving to Pennsylvania from Michigan on the turnpike for our Christmas break. Coming up to the tollbooth at the Ohio/Pennsylvania line, suddenly we lose power to our transmission. With the pedal to the metal, we make no progress -- we are mere feet away. The gate goes down behind us ...  read more

matt and i had to have our christmas early, so he could go home to south dakota with his parents. it was so much fun. i got a descendents hoodie, dillinger 4 cd, naughty underthings, state of hockey flag (LOVE IT), and a pretzel ornament. yay! i gave him a uniwatch membership, red and black check...  read more

matt, cindi, and i went to the late quiz at keegan's, because it was trip-drawing night. we didn't win a trip to boston, but we did win the quiz, and got free drinks out of the deal.score!

I have been dressing up as Santa since I was 17 years old. This is not new. What makes this year the coolest is having Christopher with me.  As we work together handing out small gifts to kids his own age, I know he sees what I see.There are kids who have almost nothing that are capable of s...  read more