Winding down the family Christmas time together
Posted By RichC on December 27, 2015
Katelyn and Drew headed back home to Wayzata, MN this Sunday morning after monitoring the wave of nasty weather pushing north later today. 
It looks as if they will be in the clear by the time they get to Chicago; the ice, snow and rain should be south of Wisconsin and Minnesota … at least for most of the afternoon. Let hope the traffic keeps moving.
After sending them off with full coffee cups, I took a few moments this morning to play with Brenda‘s new Apple Watch while she snoozed a few more minutes before work. I think she is going to like this gadget, at least as a “watch” … but maybe as a text reading accessory too? Time will tell if she ends up using other apps as she is not as “techy” as Katelyn.
As a whole, we couldn’t have asked for a better time together as a family. Even though the time flew by, it really was perfect. Gift giving, eating, snacking, a movie, Knockerball, board games (this year, Dominion) and even a visit from Drew’s brother Tyler and his wife Jodi on Saturday. The older I get, the more I realize how challenging coordinating schedules becomes for each family unit when it comes to time off work and coordinating schedules and travel to see each parent and sibling. When it was “our job” as a young family to be the ones negotiating the time and schedules to visit our families, it seemed easier … although it probably wasn’t?
I’m looking forward to playing with a few of “my” new presents … it almost feels like I’ve gone full circle and am back to toys as gifts again?
😊
First, it was a gift from my friend Jeff … a Raspberry Pi … something he and I have been talking about “playing” with this past year. He’s been experimenting with them and the smaller Adreno “chips” sort of as a work project (sensors for store displays and marketing purposes). I’m a little more intrigued with them as a way to add some home automation and security … 
although want to see just how powerful they might be as a tiny low powered Dropbox-like cloud storage or SSD home-based web server. It will be fun. Thank you Jeff … both for the gift and your friendship for nearly 40 years.
Of course, the micro-quad rotors (Taylor got one too) from Drew and Katelyn were a big hit. We had immediate fun flying them in our high-ceilinged family room, although Taylor was brave enough to take his outside to see how high it would go.
Brenda thankfully updated me with some new underwear and my “style conscious” son bought me a very nice pair of Clark’s low boot-shoes (Taylor likes the brand). Besides underwear and shoes, my wish list was completed with not just one pair of thinner work “shop gloves” … but 2 pairs of Mechanix Wear gloves from K & D. Ah, gloves that I can actually hold something small with! Finally a Roku Stick for my home office TV … anxious to try it later today as I’m hoping that with the Time Warner app that I’ll be able to stream most of the same channels we receive on cable over the Internet feed?
What a great Christmas!
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