Talents and Skills

Last night, as we watched Vh1's "The (White) Rapper Show" I decided that the world is losing it's talent. No one has special skills anymore, we are all sucked into watching (terrible) TV shows instead of exploring our creative side. I do not want it to seem like I was inspired by the 'rappers' on the show to expand my talents... in fact, it boggled my mind that these horrible excuses as rappers were found to be the 'best' in the country. Not one of them wrote anything quick, witty, clever or insightful, let alone knew how to deliver what they did have. As Matt and I wasted 60 minutes of brain synapses, my mind wandered to what else we could be doing. I decided we need 'hobbies'.... something to do with ourselves besides sitting in front of the idiot box losing our minds.
The rest of society is doing the same thing.. very few people I know have hobbies that keep their hands/minds busy. Emma paints, a few friends at school do 'crafts' (but they are OT students, so they know all about 'meaningful activities') and our friend Dan writes short stories, but other than that, I don't know what other people do.
Matt and I are going to turn over a new leaf and start doing something. Whittling, clarinet playing, knitting, model building, who knows. We need to find an activity and embrace it! I think about how my Grandma weaves rugs and place mats - what if no one keeps it up and one day there is no one left to teach others how to do it?
We are open to suggestions... feel free to leave a couple of ideas for us to explore!

Paintings

After having these copies of my Aunt Geri's paintings for over a year, lived in this apartment for over 6 months and had them framed about 6 weeks ago, we finally got them hung up! Wahoo!
Now, we just have to find a place for Emma's painting and put the rest of the photos we got developed in order (all 1,871 of them) and we will be all set. Matt is busy at work putting the photos in order as I upload these. We just had a close call with the camera... it kept saying "unrecognized file format" - we thought it was time to say good-bye after the massive amount of use we got out of it the past 2 years. Lucky for us, the memory card was the problem and it seems to be working just fine now. Keep your fingers crossed!

Monster Truck Rally

Saturday night we went to a Monster Truck Rally at the Pepsi Center! Matt got the tickets for free from work, so why not? Emma and some of her friends heard we were going and actually BOUGHT tickets (crazy kids). It was a generally good time, however we were a little disappointed by the lack of mullets present. There were some good cowboy outfits though. And a fire-breathing 'dragon' that was pretty impressive.

19!

Last Thursday was Seth's 19th birthday. Yes, my baby brother is now old enough to gamble in Canada (which is definitely the biggest perk). Because of the snow we couldn't go out and get him lots of little candles, so he just got one fatty instead. Don't you love Seth's sweet outfit while opening Sarah's gifts? You are not mistaken, that is underwear on his shoulder and pj bottoms on his head. The card is from the pets (cat-rat-dog) and the handwriting shows just how much having a thumb helps.