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So the movie Inception is not only good, but it’s perfect for jokes involving multiple layers of things. This morning I was in a conference call and we were sharing screens with one another. At one point my screen showed his screen, which was showing my screen, and we were off to the races.

Here’s the craziness that ensued:

If I hadn’t switched to a different window, it might’ve caused a rip in the fabric of space-time or something. Whew!

I’ve been sending Christmas cards to family and friends since 1995, and the scale of the effort continues to grow each year. This year’s list of recipients is just shy of 350, which of course means a lot of printing and envelopes and postage. It’s quite a production, and one which has consumed the past few weekends.

For many years, I would put together elaborate newsletters and photo collages and that sort of thing. One fateful year– 2009, to be exact– I was doing my usual work on our card, and came up with the design we’d send to the printing company.

That looks pretty good, right? Well, when I was taking the pictures, I mentioned that we should all make a goofy pose. We did, and I tested it on the card layout:

The kids absolutely loved it. They thought it would be so funny to send this as our annual card. So, okay, I did. I was (pleasantly) surprised at the number of people who mentioned how much they enjoyed our irreverence.

Thus, the tradition was born. The next year I wondered what we could add to our funny faces. The answer: head over to Target and have everyone pick out a hat to wear. We stood in the store, trying on hats, and eventually asked a customer to take our picture. That was an interesting conversation.

A year later, I thought we should stand in a circle looking down at a camera on the floor. (I admit, it wasn’t one of my most creative moments.)

In 2012 I decided we should take a serious family portrait– the kind of thing you’d buy at Olan Mills or some other professional studio. But I wanted to add something completely unexpected. After a bit of thought, it came to me. Wigs. This drew rave comments from a lot of friends, and remains one of my favorite cards. It’s mostly because of the way Zack looks.

My office has a lot of huge glass walls, and I figured we’d see what it looks like to mash our faces against glass and take a picture. The result wasn’t quite as funny as it seemed in my mind, and I ended up doing a lot of work to remove glare from the photo.

2014 was the year our Christmas cards went from an amusing anecdote amongst friends to the stuff of legend. For whatever reason, people loved the “Jurassic Park” idea. Even now, years later, I have friends who tell me how their kids talk about that card. I know people who still have this card on their refrigerator. Yes, really.

Inspired by the previous idea of combining our family with popular media, I decided to capitalize on the hysteria surrounding the newest Star Wars movie. As it turns out, it’s much more difficult than I expected to combine our faces with a movie poster. In addition, Alex was serving his mission in Peru so I couldn’t get a photo of him specifically for the pose I needed. That said, it turned out pretty good.

In 2016, I wanted to do something that combined our card with a web site. What sort of thing might have a multimedia tie-in? Music, of course! But we’re not a musical family at all (with the notable exception of Kyra and her flute), so whatever music we included would probably be bad. Well, why not make it really bad, then? The answer was obvious: kazoos. I opted for a serious take on a kazoo orchestra, and we all dressed up and tried to look serious. In truth, this “photo shoot” had me laughing so hard I was crying at points. We have some hilarious outtakes. And I built a web site, complete with audio clips and biographies of the orchestra members. Even Alex, still off in Peru, was mentioned as an absentee member. The site allowed people to comment, which was fun. This project definitely took longer than any previous card, but it was a blast.

This year I had a complete dearth of creativity. Thanksgiving had come and gone, and still I didn’t know what to do, but with some input from the team (well, Alex), it came together. It’s not my finest work, but I hope it’ll be a hit.

I’m not sure what to make of this…

Monopoly is one of those games that really brings people together. I mean, it’s tedious and ruthless and the entire point of the game is to bankrupt your friends and family.

Today Dirk learned– apparently for the first time– about the “auction” rule. If the player who lands on a property doesn’t want to buy it, the property goes up for auction to all of the remaining players. Of course that’s pretty important, but most people (including Dirk) don’t know about it.

I told him this:

To which he responded:

In general, games like this remind me of a classic Calvin and Hobbes cartoon:

I actually have a printed copy of that comic tucked inside one of our board games, and I pull it out as a reminder to the kids when we play.

Thanks, Monopoly!

The other evening we were at the King Soopers grocery store, and Zaque noticed one of those little motorized carts sitting in the parking lot. I assume it was abandoned by the senior citizen who used it to drive groceries to a car. Zaque– always looking for opportunities to serve, hah!– asked if it would be okay for him to drive it back into the store.

Here he is, parking it in the cart storage area at the store entrance.

The funny thing was how slowly that thing moved. I realize you don’t necessarily want older people tearing around the store and screeching around corners in high-powered carts, but at the speed this thing moves, it would take most of the day to shop for groceries…

It’s the time of year when I create our annual Christmas cards, and I’m suffering from serious creativity block. In past years, I would often have an idea months in advance, and it was just a matter of making it come together. This year, though, I’m coming up blank.

I had a funny idea about having us riding animals, or having Bob Ross paint a family portrait, but when I sat down to work on the concepts, it just didn’t flow. Laralee suggested a Justice League theme, since that’s the blockbuster movie that just came out (and Wonder Woman is her favorite movie of all time).

So I found a movie poster…

… and combined it with a few photos from our album for an initial concept…

But… no.

Back to the drawing board.

The other day Jason asked me if I had any old computers. As a CTO, he handles all of the computer hardware for his company, and about once a year he takes all the stuff that’s outdated or broken or otherwise unused and donates it to a local elementary school. There, the kids have a day where they basically tear open all of these old computers and electronics, learning about how they work and reveling in just how cool computer guts can be.

So, yeah, I told him, I happened to have some old computers in the basement. Even after purging a bunch of decades-old stuff that was mostly broken, there were still all sorts of things: network switches, KVM’s, firewalls, print servers, CD-ROM drives, and so on.

However, all of this stuff still worked… and most of it isn’t even that old. On the other hand, it’s not stuff I’m ever going to use again. When I have a gigabit switch on my home network, why would I need a 10/100 switch? And who uses full-size CD-ROM drives these days? Why do I need four print servers when I use CUPS? Et cetera.

So, I loaded all of this stuff into the trunk and gave it to Jason. I hope the kids have a great time ripping it apart!

After fifteen years, we’d grown tired of the builder-grade Formica countertops in our kitchen. They were showing their age, cracking along the seams, and just generally in need of replacement.

We knew we wanted Corian, so we shopped around at a few places in Longmont and decided on the color and finishes. A few weeks later, the demolition guys showed up and tore out the old stuff.

The next day, a different team came in to install the molded Corian. There were some issues with our existing tile backsplash, but in the end, the new countertops look really nice.

Hopefully these will last another fifteen years (although it’s unlikely we’ll still be here then)…

While Alex was on his mission, he was encouraged to keep a journal, recording his experiences daily. Most missionaries want to do that so they can look back in later years and remember the things they did and the people they met. Well, apparently Alex stalled out roughly a year into his mission, and didn’t continue writing in his journal. Now back home, he decided it would be really cool to have all of that, so he’s catching up by looking through his appointment book.

Apparently his appointment book contains daily notes and commentary about visits he made, people he taught, and activities with his companion. He says it’ll remind him of what to write.

It’ll be interesting to see if he catches up on a year of journaling in the next month or so before he heads off to college…

In the days following Halloween, I dropped by Walmart to buy a couple of bags of cheap candy. Over the years I’ve learned that candy is a powerful motivator for teenagers in the early morning, so I incorporate it into my seminary lessons from time to time.

Today I cracked open a big bag of assorted chocolate candies: 240 pieces of Twix, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, and Snickers. Of those four, I love three. Snickers just aren’t that good, and I tend to avoid them.

Imagine my chagrin when I poured out a few candy bars for my first taste, and saw this:

Since Snickers should be one-fourth of the total volume of candy in the bag, I would expect a commensurate ratio when I dumped eleven little bars from the bag. Nope. Ten of eleven are Snickers.

This doesn’t bode well for how the rest of the bag is going to go…