Lost Birthdays

As the new year for the calendar comes around I appropriately have an idea for a post regarding birthdays aka a new year for individuals. Up until this morning I had maintained a separate calendar on Google Calendar for birthdays. Each birthday would get an annually repeating event which "never" ended (luckily I didn't have to stop repeating for anybody). The system worked pretty well for me except I never really checked it to see when a birthday was happening so it was relatively useless, of course that is a different issue.

Well today I was chatting with my good friend @alexredsox and he told me his birthday was in a few weeks. I quickly set off to add it to my calendar, but while I was off doing this he recommended I try a different approach. He is well aware of my love for gmail and most things Google, so he proposed a much better solution to the birthday situation. So if you too use Gmail and Google Calendar just do the following:
1. Go to your contacts in gmail.
2. Update the birthday field for your contacts (if you haven't already)
3. Go to Google Calendar
4. In the upper right go to Settings > Calendar Settings
5. In the Calendar Settings navigate to the Calendar tab
6. Click the Browse Interesting Calendars >> link on the right hand side of the "Other Calendars" section.
7. Once in "Interesting Calendars" go to the "More" tab
8. On the more tab subscribe to the "Contacts' birthdays and events" calendar. (This will add a new calendar to your Google Calendar that will show an event based on the birthdays in your contacts.)

Now for the advanced users here is how to add the Google Calendar widget to your Gmail
1. Go to Gmail
2. Navigate to Settings
3. Select the Labs tag
4. Enable Labs if you haven't already (I suppose if you are advanced this is probably enabled already)
5. Enable the "Google Calendar gadget"

Now every morning when you log in to Gmail for the first time you can quickly see any birthdays for the day. All without having a Facebook account.

Another year another Christmas

Well we made it through another Christmas. The house is nearly settled in with all of the new goods. We didn't get to do our tradition of taking the tree and decorations down today, but will probably have a chance to do it tomorrow.

Now we are snowed in with the Boxing Day blizzard sitting next to the fire with full bellies from eating the last of our Crumbs cupcakes. The office is closed tomorrow so if we have power I will be working from home. Nice. Here are the photos.

Christmas 2010

Christmas Eve

It has been a long, crazy and wonderful day up in the 'Mac. I think I ate more food today then I did in three days while dieting, I guess that is what New Year's resolutions are all about.

So here are the photos from today:

Christmas Eve 2010

Christmas is Almost Here

Christmas is almost here and we are thick in the middle of holiday spirit. An Elf on the Shelf, advent calendars galore, Christmas cards, a little tree with a VW topper, pine needles shedding all over the floor, enough cookies to quickly erase the last four months of dieting and a never ending supply of clementines.

All is in order for Camden's first Christmas and what appears to be the first Christmas where Kaleb will actually get fired up as we come downstairs in the morning. We finally got our first snow today even if it is barely covering the grass it still covers the grass.

Kaleb had his holiday performance at preschool and as per usual didn't really participate, maybe they should have made him the Christmas tree in the Nutcracker rather than a soldier and Russian dancer. It is not like he is a shy kid. Who knows, maybe it is because he wakes up every morning at 4am and get sick every other week. He was quite a little firecracker last night when we were driving home, I was given a taste of the sarcasm and harassment to come. "Daddy what did you say?" "Daddy why did we go this way?" "Daddy why is that guy beeping at you did you get in his way?" "Why are you driving the car Georgie? (in a ridiculous accent that Gilbert Gottfried uses in an impersonation of Vaudeville star George Jessel. Here is Gilberts Impression) This kid is too friggin much.

Well here are some photos from the past few weeks leading up to Christmas.

December Photos

Santa Parades Photos

Sorry there are a lot of photos in this album, but I didn't split it into separate events yet. We went to a couple Santa parades this weekend and also got our Christmas tree. One of my favorite pictures is when Kaleb sees Santa in the parade and has such joy on his face. Its kind of bittersweet knowing that the joy is based on fiction, but I guess that is what growing up is all about.

Santa Parades

Thanksgiving in CT

We went to Thanksgiving in Connecticut and here are some photos I took.

Thanksgiving 2010