Christmas is near

Christmas is just around the corner and we are really looking forward to seeing family and spending our first Christmas with Ethan (and as a married couple). Kinda funny how in the craziness that raising a baby brings we totally forgot that although it is Ethan's first Christmas it is also our's a Mr and Mrs! On top of the coming holiday I had to have hernia surgery pretty much putting me out of commission for a few weeks leaving all the heavy lifting, literally, of baby raising to Fatima.. During my more lucid periods I have seen how awesome she is and has really reinforced all the butterfly feelings that I feel for her since the day we met!

We are the funniest parents sometimes because we go through a period of time with the best intentions to do things "right" and then totally forget some of the obvious things that we should have done.. We took Ethan to the mall to get a picture with Santa and when it was all said and done realized that we should have all been in the picture and then used it as our family Christmas pic. Oh well, it turned out pretty good without us!

He has to be the cutest boy on this planet! 

Over the past few months we have noticed that he has a buffer of time from when he first sees someone new before he begins to all out cry. So, with that in mind we had a plan to get the best Santa picture. One of use would talk to the photographer and let them know that as soon as he is in Santa;s lap that they should snap the picture as quick as they could. Plan worked and the picture turned out great!

I also purchased a new video camera this month so I can capture better quality video of Ethan and our adventures in raising him. I got the Kodak Playsport Zx3, which is pretty cool because not only can it fir in your pocket with no problem creating more opportunity for use but it also shoots 1080p video at 30fps and 720p at both 30 and 60fps (for fast moving situations)! On top of those specs it can shoot 5 megapixel stills and is water proof to 3 meters. Needless to say that cute face of Ethan's will be shown in full HD resolution! Here is a sampling of the camera (and Ethan) in action!

Plenty more video where that came from and plenty more to be taken. Mater of fact, I have been thinking about the best way to put that video footage together into something that is a bit more manageable. I started to use Picasa for picture and video management and so far it has help with that a lot. Unfortunately, my last camera has left me with a lot of low def footage and video files in the wrong format so I have had to convert them to a more cross platform useable format and has taken some of the joy out of playing around with putting together some sort of video montage. Maybe I will try and do a few milestone videos of Ethan; like birth, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, etc.. Any other ideas would be great!