We have run into a huge problem with our camcorder. It has not been recording consistently. I was going through the tapes when I was down in Gunnison this last week so I could record them to our laptop using my parents camcorder. I realized that one tape was missing half of it and another tape was missing about a third. Most of the other tapes were missing at least 10 minutes. The tapes are only 60 minutes long. I was sick when I realized how much we don't have that I thought we did have recorded. I don't have the second half of Richard's birthday party, because we had to switch tapes in between. I then don't have anything until Halloween. So, we've lost all of Audrey's birthday and other things. We don't have anything of Audrey until we went to Houston last June and then only bits and pieces until Richard's birthday. We don't have Christmas of last year or the year before that. So, I spent a lot of time going through my Mom's tapes to fill in the gaps. It became a much larger project than I thought it was going to be. So, this last weekend, we took advantage of the day after Thanksgiving sales and bought a new camcorder. We bought a hard drive camcorder. We got it for a couple of hundred off, which was nice. Scott heard that we should avoid a camcorder with tapes, because it has too many moving parts and is more likely to break. He heard it from a guy he home teaches, who does video work for the church and so is probably pretty reliable. Plus, Consumer Reports ranked it the "best buy" and so we felt good about buying it. We've already recorded quite a bit and are glad it's actually recording when we think it is. I still need to go through more of my Mom's tapes to replace things we've lost.

While in Gunnison Richard and his cousins made sugar cookies. It took some effort convincing him that it would indeed be fun. However, once he realized that, he seemed to have a good time.

We had Scott's parents here for the last few days, which was enjoyable.

Scott won't be able to get his thesis done in time to not pay tuition next semester. Alas, so close.... He's going in tomorrow to get the measurements on the cylinder he needs to do and so hopefully that should be his last time in the chamber. He needs to send the probe back to the manufacturer at the end of the month, so he has to get it done.

We put up our Christmas tree. Richard was very excited. He's seen decorations up in all the stores and so was thrilled to help put things up in our house. We just bought a fake tree, because that was the cheapest option. It's only 6 feet, but we didn't pay much and so that's the way it is.