Christmas Lights 2009

, originally uploaded by laughograms.

And for our final Christmas post, a brief walk around our neighborhood in Monrovia, showing off our Christmas lights and some of our neighbors'. Starring Jack, of course!

Christmas Day 2009

On the phone with Nanny and Pop, originally uploaded by laughograms.

A wonderful holiday season is behind us, and now you can share in the chaotic joy of Christmas Day at the Sheehan house. Come with us down memory lane to the days when Jack had hair!

Pvt. Pyle

One way to deal with a hair-twirling habit that's resulted in a bald
spot is to make sure there is no hair to twirl . . .

The aftermath . . .

But of what? Stay tuned, true believer . . .

Official Sheehan Family Christmas Photo

In case you missed out on our Christmas card . . . here are pictures of us with Santa at Disneyland -- our "official" family portrait, Jack by himself with Santa and a shot taken during his extensive listing of every last item he desired for Christmas, complete with demonstrations and sound effects. Poor Santa.

Chaos Reigns

Jack enjoying Pop's reading of Mike Mulligan

Christmas Tree Trip, 2009

Christmas Tree Trip, 2009, originally uploaded by laughograms.

Just testing the Flickr-to-blog posting capability, which was broken earlier today.

Christmas Tree Trip, 2009

As we do every year, we hit a Starbucks prior to our tree-selection trip last week. As usual Jack struck a series of nutty poses, all of which are catalogued here for your enjoyment. Pictures of the house and tree all decorated for the holidays will be up over the weekend.

Nice quick shots

, originally uploaded by laughograms.

I posted a pic below that I took of Jack on a night when I was testing out some old lenses on my new Nikon D40 a couple of months ago. I like them so much I put a few of them on Flickr. They are some of my favorite pictures of Jack and you can enjoy them by clicking here.

Disney Holiday Party 2009

Disney Holiday Party 2009 (9), originally uploaded by laughograms.

Last night we went to the Disneyland Family Holiday Party and had a great time. Got a lot of good shots along with a lot of blown ones 'cuz I can't seem to focus my only fast (and non-autofocus) lens in low light. But there are some really good ones all the same. Check them out by clicking the photo above!

Breakfast with Santa

Went to a breakfast with Santa this morning. Santa was, as usual, perplexed by Jack's enthusiastic and highly detailed recitation of his list (see last year's visit for a similar reaction). Click the photo above for more pics. We'll be visiting Santa again at Disneyland next week. Later, we're picking up our tree!

Flickr update

, originally uploaded by laughograms.

Hey everyone, I updated my Flickr photos with a collection from last night's Christmas parade. Had some lens difficulties -- curse you old lenses, manual focus and shallow depth of field, curse you all to hell!!! -- but there are a few keepers in the mix. Enjoy.

Jack's Godzilla Update

Jack, if you don't know, loves Godzilla. You name the era or style (except the American Godzilla), including the cartoon from the late 70's. He is always thinking up new adventures for Godzilla complete with music and theme song, so here is an update on his latest Godzilla pitches.

Note to Maggie and Kwaku

So if you're checking back here any time soon -- do drop a line with your contact info -- we would have loved to see you guys too but we had no way of reaching you.

laughograms(at)gmail.com

A visit to the mysterious East

Times Capsule, originally uploaded by laughograms.

Hello all! We just got back from a long and fabulous trip to the East Coast to visit family in Albany, NY. On the way back (we flew out of New York) we stopped at the Museum of Natural History and all around, we had a great time. And I photographed it all with my zippy new Nikon D40!

In the future, I am going to post all my photos to my pages at Flickr.com.

Go to my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackjack/

I am grouping, organizing and tagging them as I go, so you'll be able to search for certain things or just find them using the collections and sets I'm adding.

When I post new Jack-related photos I will pick one to post here and include a link to my Flickr page. The reason I'm not posting them on the blog itself is simple -- there are way too many, and I don't have the space available on Picasa (Google's picture-hosting service). On Flickr I can post them at full resolution and if you want any of them they are downloadable and printable, or you can order prints directly right on the page.

I hope you enjoy them, and please feel free to browse around what's now hundreds and hundreds of photos with many more to come. Feel free to comment or critique, I'm working hard at improving my photography skills!

Cleared for launch!

Just a quick one

We are soon going to visit family but I came across this shot I grabbed while experimenting with lenses for my new camera and I just thought it was so awesome I had to share it. Loads of updates will be on the way after the Halloween weekend.

Hot Wheels update

Jack slept with his new Hot Wheels car -- it came with the shark set -- last night. He awoke at 5:30 or so when Genevieve was leaving for work and she was soothing him back to sleep. With his little eyes scrunched up he grumpily dug in his bedclothes for a bit until his hands emerged clutching his Hot Wheels car. Grasping it to his chest, he laid back on his pillow and went right back to sleep.

Jack woke this morning and came toddling into my office as usual, rubbing his eyes and clutching his car. He climbed into my lap for the traditional wake-up hugs and then sat up and told me his car had a new name, "Flamefire." And apparently its engine can pop up and has guns that shot flames and it can transform and stand up and so on and so on. "Awesome!" I said.

"Breakfast time!" I said. He held up his five fingers. "OK. I'm going to play with my Hot Wheels shark for this many minutes."

"OK, buddy." And so he did.

Hot Wheels

Jack filled up his Transformers sticker chart today!
Which means he gets a trip to the toy store to get a big toy. The chart is huge so this only comes around a couple of times a year. Jack has wanted the Hot Wheels Shark Bite Bay set forever. Every trip to the toy store there has been a stop at the Hot Wheels aisle to press its little button and hear the rude taunts of the shark whose pointy teeth await all Hot Wheels foolish enough to venture near.

Well he finally got it today and apart from a brief PB&J break he has been playing with it ever since. That was 11:30. It is past 7 now.

Jack's Hot Wheels mania is very familiar to me. As a kid in the 1960's Hot Wheels were an absolute obsession. We did not have talking sharks and some of the other crazy stuff they have today, but they still make all the classic stuff I remember well. I am looking forward to years of Hot Wheels fun with Jack.