Happy New Year!

Happy 2008 everyone!

Dave and I had a great New Year's party this year at our house--we had about 20 people over with lots of food, game-playing, chatting, and fun. This picture is of us when the ball dropped on the telly. The little guy is Alex, our friends Mari and Matt's new baby boy. He's only 6 weeks old but he's quite the party boy already. Their family spent Christmas with us, too, as Mari's parents were in town.

The first of 3 major rain/wind storms has just torn it's way through Davis. Last night I received a "hazardous weather advisory" email from campus warning researchers to monitor their outdoor experiments over the weekend and to secure anything loose. Edward and I spent some time running around the yards at home laying all the lumber down on the ground instead of leaning against the house and shed. We also dismounted our clothes line/tree thing and brought that inside the garage. Boy, am I glad we did all that! The wind was ferocious around dawn and continued in major gusts until about 12:30pm. There are branches all over the streets and in our yard from our neighbor's spruce tree. I ran over to her house this morning and suggested that she move her car into the street since there was a broken branch hanging right over her car.

We've also not had any power since sometime in the middle of the night. I'm thankful that we were able to install our new gas range over the holidays--just in time for this storm--so that we can still cook a hot meal and make coffee.