(Yes, I know this is a little late, but better late than never)

For Christmas this year, we decided to spend it with Cindy’s family, and since Nicole needed to work at the hospital around the holidays, we all got invited down to Georgia for the Holidays. Because of some stuff at work and not finishing packing on time, we did not go down until Saturday (Christmas Eve). It turns out that we lucked out since the traffic was bad the night before but it was really good when we went down.

When we got down there, Cindy’s parents were already down there with her Grandmother, they got in on Friday night. A little while after we got there, Nicole’s parents made it into town. Needless to say, it was a packed house, but what better way to spend the holidays than with a lot of family around. Nicole’s father made a great dinner that night.

When Sunday rolled around, the gate around the tree had to be expanded to make room for all the stuff under the tree. Needless to say, there were more than a few toys for Kayla, including this cute little door that made different noises as she opened and closed various things. We sat around watching her play with it for quite a while, you will see a few pictures of that in the photo gallery here.

The unwrapping commenced later in the day. Everyone got something that they wanted, but there was too much to go into details here. We had a little bit of time before Christmas dinner was ready, thanks to Nicole. It was a great dinner, more than enough food to go around.

The following days, we spent some time helping Craig with some tasks around the house, including hanging new cabinets in the Laundry room and getting a new faucet for the kitchen sink. By the time that Tuesday came around, it was time for Cindy and I to leave. Cindy needed to get back for work, they decided that they needed to run some of her propellent over the week between Christmas and New Years. On the way home, we also stopped to see Cindy’s other grandparents.

All and all, we both had a great time over the extended weekend, getting to see a lot of family. You can see some of the pictures here.

-Matt and Cindy

So the question on the table is what do you get when you mix Soda with Mentos (the fun candy). The answer is in the image on the left, a large erruption, atleast when you have the soda in the bottle still, because that helps to contain the reaction. Basically the Aribic Gum in the Mentos (which is also in other candies like Twizzlers) causes all the cabon dioxide in the soda to come out, very quickly. The result is a lot of gas trying to escape, and when it is in a bottle, there is no palce to go thus the entergetic reaction.

After seeing some video of this on the internet, I decided that I wanted t osee for myself and we took an opertunity at work to have a little fun. What gets Chemical Engineers more excited than watching a reaction like this? Talking about some of the other fun activities they have done to get a “bang”.

Take a look at the full sized image here

-Matt

PS - Sorry about not posting recently, this past month has just been busy. I have all sorts of pictures, stories and then some which I hope to add soon…

As you might be able to guess, Cindy and I are both big into photography! We have been shooting with our Nikon D100 for a while now, I have had it for about 2 years. Nikon has released a few new camera models since then, the D70, D50, and D2x but the first two were a little lower than what I wanted and the last one was just too expensive. Finally in the begining of November, Nikon announced the release of a new camera, the D200. This is what I had been waiting for…

Cindy was sweet and went ahead and pre-ordered one for me, which is good since new ones are still hard to come by. So a few days after the official release date od December 15th, I finally got mine! Ohh, this is a great camera. It is a little bigger and heavier than the D100, but that weight helps make it feel a little more solid.

I could go on for pages and pages talking about the differences and the great new features of the D200, but it has been done soo many other places on the internet that I am not going to bother. Needless to say, more pictures taken from here on out will be with the D200. We are still kepeing the D100, because as we grow our photography business, it is always good to have a backup, and also it is nice to be able to have us both taking pictures at the same time. We are really starting to get a good camera outfit, nad hopefully it will help us to persue our hobby even more!

-Matt