My iFamily had an iChristmas!

iPad2, photographed using my iPhone

Yes, it's late to be posting about holiday gifts. But I've been busy. And distracted. Specifically, I've been setting up and playing with my new iPad2 and new iPhone. And setting up two older iPads for other family members who happily got them as hand-me-downs. As if that weren't enough, I've been installing and playing with my new versions of Photoshop (for photo editing) and Dreamweaver (for creating web pages).

It's exhausting, I tell you.

Okay, it's mostly fun. Yes, I'm the person who thought the iPad was a ridiculous idea, who was heard to say, "Who needs a lesser version of a laptop?"

That was before I knew about apps, and before I realized that an iPad can slip into my large purse, whereas my laptop needed its own case and about broke my shoulder. The iPad 2 is lighter and faster, and it has built-in cameras for Skyping or FaceTiming.

iPhone, taken using iPad

Which brings me to my new iPhone. Again, I never thought I'd want one, but now that I have it I love it. In the past, I didn't use my mobile phone much, and frankly I've barely learned how to make or accept a call because the rest of it is so much fun. I've loaded lots of apps, and I've tried out the camera, which is far superior to that in the iPad. I will love carrying this around, using some of the same apps I use on iPad and finding lots of new ways to use it, too.

iPod, taken using iPhone

I also have an iPod Touch, the first of the iDevices I acquired. Frankly, I used it as an mp3 player and never explored all the ways it could serve me using the internet. One reason: it didn't have a phone. If you have to carry a phone, you're perhaps not going to bother also carrying an iPod. Now that I can load applications to one, two, or all three of these gadgets, I might find that I use the iPod more as well. But mostly it has taken the place of our old 100-disc CD changer, which bit the dust sometime during the last year. Since Peter loaded all the music to electronic files, we don't need to replace the bulky changer. Ain't life grand?

One of these days I might talk about a few of my favorite applications. But before I do, let me ask: Do you have an iDevice or something similar? If so, what are your favorite apps?

--Nancy

Roosting under the tree

A couple of days ago, the kids were looking at our Christmas tree, spotting ornaments that have become familiar to them and ornaments that bear their own faces from years past.

That got Augie looking deep into the tree, admiring the way he could see lights far inside. And that led to the four of us plus Mali the cat lying under the tree for a view from underneath. Augie kept saying, "Color and light." It looked like this:

When their dad arrived to pick them up from our play date, we looked like this (and then he got under there, too):

We had talked about the fact that we usually stand the tree in a snowbank in the back yard and let birds roost in it while they wait to use the feeders. So Augie decided we were roosting under the tree.

Augie wondered why we had so many lights..."numberless," he called them. Yes, he knew that "numberless" means "too many to count." But then Pa said he knew exactly how many there were. Eight strings of 50 each makes 400. So they agreed that only the ornaments were numberless.

We'll have our tree for another week. Then, if we get more snow or figure out another way to stand the tree in the yard, it will serve as a roosting place for a few months. And then it will be spring!

Dancing our way through Christmas

Our grandkids love to dance. ViMae will tell you she wants to be a ballerina, and she can show you her best moves and her several tutus. She wanted to take classes, but around here you have to be four to enroll. So in the meantime, she twirls and spins and practices raising her leg to there. Augie joins in by grabbing her arm and swinging her around until one or both fall down. Then they laugh and do it again.

This fall Peter and I took them both to some free noontime presentations by the St. Paul City Ballet. The sessions graduated from barre exercises to snippets of a ballet-in-progress, and finally fully costumed excerpts from the company's holiday production. The Enchanted Toy Shop borrows some music from The Nutcracker; Augie recognized it as being from Disney's Fantasia. They love the Nutcracker Suite portion of Fantasia, and Augie can hear two notes of music and tell you exactly what it corresponds to--for example, the dancing mushrooms, the turnips, or his favorite, "the flowers that fall down over a waterfall."

We explained that the music was first written for a ballet, and the kids said they'd like to see it. Cue another great opportunity. A local dance school was presenting a 20-minute version of Act 2 of The Nutcracker at Rosedale Mall on Wednesday evenings before Christmas. We met the kids and their parents for dinner and then found the performance just as it began. The kids made a beeline for chairs up front and watched every step. This was no virtuoso performance, but it was up close and lively, and the kids thoroughly enjoyed it.

A few days later, we watched parts of two new DVDs--Act 2 of the Nutcracker followed by the corresponding segment of Fantasia. They loved both, and they danced around the den the whole time we were watching.

On Christmas morning at their house, The Nutcracker was playing as they opened gifts, and again they danced. Look at that picture of Augie, wearing his elf hat and red pajamas, dancing like the "action elf" he claims to be.

It will be some time before they are old enough to sit through a full-length performance, but a Christmas Nutcracker is definitely in their futures.

We wish you a...

...Merry Christmas! And if Christmas isn't your holiday, have a wonderful weekend!

We'll be with the grandkids and their parents, seeing Christmas through the excitement of children. And that is the best gift we could ask for.

I began Christmas Eve day as I always do: listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College in Cambridge, England. Every year it opens with the pure soprano voice of a young boy singing "Once in Royal David's City," and every year I get chills the instant I hear it. Somewhere deep inside me lives the girl who loved midnight Mass and whose greatest musical performance thrill was playing the organ for the parish men's choir for two years. (Remember, beating Bob Dylan in a talent contest wasn't especially significant until several years later when he became uber-famous.)

The Festival is broadcast around the world by American Public Media and the BBC; you can learn more about it on the APM web site and listen to it until December 31 on the BBC site.

May you, too, encounter something during this holiday that stirs fond memories and deep satisfaction within. And just for good measure, a couple of bonus pix: