RayRay - 12 Days of Christmas

This is a video that me and my friends had been working on since thanksgiving. I did a lot of the keying and masking of the shots (learning a program called aftereffects.) Keying is taking the background out of a shot. This was shot on a green screen, so it was a matter of taking the green out and then messing with the saturation until the figure is completely isolated. Masking is when you have to cut the figure out frame by frame to omit something from the background you can't key out (incredibly tedious.) I spent 6 hours masking out the section above RayRay's arm in one scene while Glynnis and her friends were over trying to make the deadline of Christmas.

My Mom before doing a penguin dive... don't hate me Mom, I'm sorry but I had to post that picture, it's just so funny.

Ice skating... it was really cold outside and the wind had picked up. We all have matching Angel's sweaters now... the boys too... my Dad got season tickets to the Angel's games.

Grandma was doing really well when we were there. She was really sharp and quite talkative, when we first saw her she talked with us for a good hour and a half. My Dad told her about the new Japanese museum that was being built, and when we brought her home she remembered it and really wanted to go see the changes in town. When we brought her to the house Grandpa was really excited to see her, it was sad because he just kept saying, "Mom, I've missed you terribly." Then he kept giving her kisses and trying to cuddle with her. Sad, after 60years they're separated at the end... he even woke up in a stupor saying where's Mom, we need to go get her, she's up in the mountains. He actually said Karen, but we knew what he meant. But he understands that she needs to be there, he just misses her. By the end of our visit Grandma was pooped, but she held up pretty well.

Hope you all enjoyed your Christmas' and Happy New Year!

California Christmas 2008

Grandpa at Sushi Maru. 

Neither of the dogs like grandpa very much. He likes to whomp them on the head and squish them. He named Sweet pea "Puchi Wuchi" and remembered her when we were leaving saying "there is Puchi Wuchi." I wish I had the mind to take pictures when Grandma was going through old picture albums. She seemed to really enjoy it, and remembered quite a bit. Next time I go up in San Jose I'm going to bring my scanner. There are some really beautiful black and white photographs in those albums... though oddly none of my mom as a baby. >:( 
Grandma playing with one of the remote control cars.

The day after Christmas it was 35 degrees outside and my mom had to scrape ice off the windshield! I'm sure this is nothing to those of you back east, but it's been cold by California standards. Grandpa keeps the house at a nice 90 degrees or so. I don't think I slept with a blanket the whole time I was at the house. My camera battery died on Christmas Eve, so I don't have any photos of Janet's house or ice skating downtown.. maybe my sister will fill in the those gaps with her pictures. 

It was a VERY quiet christmas at the house without all of you. I think it's been the quietest christmas in three years or so. I hope you all had a great holiday!!! 

P.S. - My sister got her picture taken at skyline on christmas eve, so hopefully those group photos will come soon. Those photo guys got a LOT of business from us. They created a similar set-up (with christmas trees instead of poinsettias) and had pictures taken and printed on site. I guess the idea caught on. 

 

Christmas Doggies 2008

Blogger must post your pictures in the opposite order of how you select them. Hmmm... These pictures were taken between Christmas Eve at home in Anaheim, through Christmas up in San Jose. We took so many pictures of Sweet Pea and Tinkerbell with "Elizabeth II" that they both gave up and laid down. 

I guess we all like to see our pets in Santa suits.  

Christmas

Hey all. I have 925 cranes.

Spent 3 days in Milwaukee for Christmas with Gabe, Tiff, Lindsay and Kasumi and foster dog Blackie. So much snow that you can't see the first floor of their house from the other side of the cul de sac.

Pandora thought she could get out of her Santa outfit by walking backwards but it didn't work.

Dave's Mom bought Lindsay a brown wool sweater for Christmas. It happened to be the exact same sweater that I was wearing in green on Christmas Day, we both like out sweaters.

Auntie Karen

Now that Christmas is still warm in your minds, wouldn't it be great to post some pictures and memories on the blog?! My Mom, Kelly and I are still at the house, and will be returning to Southern California on Sunday (where I'll be dumping tons of pictures of dogs in santa costumes onto your hungry little eyeballs.) Today we tried to partake in some after-christmas shopping at Valley Faire, but it was pretty packed. Later we saw Valkyrie at the Winchester 23. Grandpa snored and farted throughout the movie. No surprise there.

Hope to see some of your fun family memories!
:) Sierra

Friday at Mayo Clinic

I am in the lounge on the third floor at the hospital in Rochester affiliated with Mayo. Joan was transferred by ambulance on Wednesday - blood and kidney infection. She had her kidney drain tube changed today and now is having shaking chills. We are spending the afternoon and evening here.

We had a blizzard last weekend with double digits below zero temps and "black ice" making the roads slippery (so cold that the exhaust from cars freezes on the highways). Tonight more snow coming in - like 6-8 inches. Don't you wish you were here.

Email Subscription added

I wasn't sure if you were getting updates via email when the blog was being updated, so I added a FeedBurner Email Subscription button that should email you any time there is an update to the blog. This way you don't have to randomly check up on the blog to see if there have been updates and you can input whatever email address you check most often. 

UPDATED: I updated the Feedburner link. I don't think it was working before. I either had the wrong feed link, or didn't put the post feed on the blog (or because Google just took over feedburner, maybe there was some downtime.) I'm  not sure. Email subscriptions should be working now.

HOLIDAY FUN!

In celebration of the holidays and the fact that this stupid semester is finally over, I made THESE little animation things! Dunno if you've seen these things, they're pretty fun.
The website would only let me upload five pictures though, soooo:

This one has Grandma in it, along with the siblings when they were kids!
http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/Mh0c6PWmzKd9jBn9#/owner/Mh0c6PWmzKd9jBn9

Pretty fitting huh!?

This one has Grandpa in it, but no Grandma:
http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/9t60HDQwyuy2yqtA#/owner/9t60HDQwyuy2yqtA

AND THEN these are the grandkids! Same deal, can only upload five pics, SO:

This one has Kelly, but no Chelsey:
http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/oOpZPfE15QuEiQeu#/owner/oOpZPfE15QuEiQeu

And finally, this has Chelsey, but no Kelly:
http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/CBmreQipWOoSlePi#/owner/CBmreQipWOoSlePi

I wanted to do one with Gabe, Tiff, and the baby, but I lost the URL for that photo website they sent out a while ago, thus I have no digital pics of them D:
Anyways, hope you enjoyed those!

Love, Glynnis :D

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Sorry to miss everyone at Thanksgiving... sounds like you all had a good time. Hopefully I'll get a chance to see the baby soon... but judging by pictures she's INCREDIBLY cute! (quapa is the new term I've heard being used, hapa for half, so quapa for a quarter asian) Anyways, hope you all enjoy your Christmas holiday.Smiles,
Kelly

"Admin Privileges"

Oh good, it looks like some of you have figured out how to sign up for blogger. I'm not sure if you have to have a gmail account or not. I have granted "admin privileges" to everyone who has responded. I believe this means you can now make your own posts. 

Kristyn left a comment about Grandpa on the first post that I think should be on the blog, so I'm bumping it up:

Latest update on g-pa. According to Katsumi, Nobuko came to the house one day to find all four burners on full blast and grandpa asleep in his bed. This is more for the aunts I guess. We discussed finding a male live in nurse. It would be a waste to have someone move in just for this, but if anyone has any advice as to how to be able to still cook (for me and nobuko and katsumi) but have the stove so that g-pa cannot turn it on. (project for dave?)

just a note of concern. I set up a smoke detector that works in the kitchen (checked, teh one there is broken even with a new battery so put another in there)

My dad hasn't responded to the invite yet. He checks his email at work, so blogger might be a blocked site for him. Actually none of the Aunties/Uncles have responded.

The beginning

Hey everyone! I created this blog so that we could share stories and post pictures from family events (or any event you would like to share.) I just got it started, so I'm going to have to figure out how to authorize other members to post, but it should be pretty easy. Hopefully some of you got some good shots from Thanksgiving, one of us HAD to... so please share. 

Now, I better not be the only one posting! Glynnis and her friends are coming over this weekend, so hopefully I'll have some nice and embarrassing pictures of them sleeping on my living room floor to post on monday morning. j/k ;)

Update: I sent out "invite" emails to most of you from the only list I have. If I have forgotten anyone.. please forward me their email address' and we can get them in the loop. I don't want anyone to feel left out!