Sometime this past summer, our well loved 10.1 MP camera which we purchased when Allyssa was a few weeks old, decided to go missing.  We apparently hadn’t used it in a while, and at some point it went missing.  Well, it was not found in the packing, cleaning, or moving from Karen’s.  Shane has found the camera case, but not the camera so I am under the firm opinion that it’s gone MIA.

So one of the things I wanted this Christmas was a new one.  We talked about getting one to use in a new web venture more on that when we get it up and running.  While both Shane and I would love to be able to purchase a Digital SLR it’s really not within our price range currently.  Instead I started with a price range of what we could afford, and started researching online.  I was really looking at a refurbished Kodak M580 (in purple naturally) it had some good reviews, and all the bad reviews seemed to center mainly around it freezing some of the time, but Kodak put out a firmware upgrade that fixed that–which several reviews mentioned fixed the problem as well.  And the ones that didn’t, were complaining that you while it had on camera selection of where you wanted to upload your photos, ie FB, Flickr, YouTube, etc you had to connect to the computer (and internet) to upload them.  Idiots, naturally you have to have some sort of network connection to upload your pictures.  I see no reason for them to build WiFi into a camera–even if they have built it into a SD card sd (they call it eye-fi).

When I was ready to purchase they didn’t have any refurbished ones remaining at the price I was looking at, so I widened my search a bit.  In the end I found that the Panasonic DMC-FH20 had better reviews both with users and professional reviews.  Both cameras are 14 MP with 8X optical (wide angle) zooms.  But since the Pansonic had better reviews, and they’re within $5 online, I decided that is the one I wanted.

Well I ordered it last night, and now am impatiently awaiting it’s arrival to actually play with it.  I must say, that I did go to play with a FH22 at Best Buy  since the only real difference is that the 22 has a touchscreen whereas the 20 does not.  In the store the FH22 took some nice sharp pictures of little girl (aka Allyssa) with zoom etc.  If it weren’t for the fact the store only carried black and didn’t have any up front (might have had some in the back but I didn’t wait to find out),  I might have come home with one last night.

Naturally with the camera MIA that means it’s SD card is as well.  So when I ordered the camera I also found a good buy on SDHD cards.  I ended up finding a 8GB Class 6 card.  If like me you didn’t know the difference in classes apparently the higher the class the faster it writes/records.  We had been to Office Max prior and they had a Kodak 4GB Class 4 card on sale for $12.99 and this was faster and twice the size for the same price.  Definitely received the better end of the deal ordering it with the camera and free shipping.

Now I am very impatiently awaiting the arrival of my package which is scheduled somewhere between January 6 and January 10th.  As soon as I have it I’ll put it good use, and I perhaps I’ll even remember to post some here….

I can tell I haven’t checked our website in a while, when I look at page and find the last update was in May, and now it’s already New Year’s Eve.

Apparently we’ve been too busy with the day-to-day living of life to take the time to update this blog.  Or too busy with the changes to write about them, and then when things settle down it would slip our minds.  Who knows, all I know is that lots have changed in the last 7 months.

One of the first changes from the last blogs, was that Shane is not working for his former employer.  There was a parting of the ways due mainly to a misunderstanding.  Apparently the boss thought that as Shane’s employer he should be in control of when and IF Shane should have free time.  Our family plans didn’t apparently mean much to his idea of deadlines and launch dates, even when notified well in advance, or when it was the weekend.

With that change it became more difficult to complete the trailer in a timely fashion like we hoped.  One of the things that really needed completing before we could work on the interior was the roof.  Well, CraigsList helped us out there with finding the right sized trusses and a wonderful price  for them to redo the roof.  Unfortunately there was several rather heavy rain storms before we had a chance to start on the roof, and with other hold-ups as well we weren’t able to complete the roof soon enough.  What do I mean about not being able to complete it soon enough, well simply that things took too long and the interior became very heavily mold infested.  Too much so, for us to feel safe to complete the trailer or move in.  Therefore the project was abandoned.

In September we moved out of Karen’s.  Instead we moved in with Shane’s brother, Scott, and his wife, Charity.  So now we are living in Arcadia, WI.  We had thought/hoped that with Ashley Furniture and Golden Plump here in town, there might be job opportunities locally.  Unfortunately we are the wrong ages and have the wrong skill-sets for those employers apparently.

December 13, my cousin, Brandi Lynn Allen, was fatally injured in a car accident.  It’s hard to believe that such a bright young woman of only 19 is no longer with us.  She will be missed by many.

Allyssa made out well with Santa this year.  She received some Thomas the Tank things, TinkerBell items, a couple of dolls, and a few other things as well.  It took her about 30 minutes, I believe to open all her gifts and she enjoyed every minute of it, and then became busy playing with her new gifts.

Unfortunately the 26th we seemed to have a bit of a flu bug around the house.  Allyssa seemed to have it first, during the late night of the 23rd, but Shane and I seemed to have a bit of it on the 26th.