Assault of the anaphylaxis attacker!

Well, OK, Lil' Genghis' costume wasn't too terribly terrifying, but, dang, her mom dresses her good, huh?

She was much more mobile for this year's round of trick-or-treating -- even managed to escape our clutches a few times and go tearing down a prospective boyfriend's driveway before we recaptured her. A good time was had by all. =)

mom had the bright idea of taking pictures at around 4:30 p.m. (16:30), when there was still a good bit of light left. It was, well, a bright idea. Here are some of our favorite still photos, followed by a couple videos as our busy little bee buzzes by:


DSCF2639 from album 081031-Halloween bumblebee abelinha

So happy -- and this was even before she had gotten her first candy, a pack of plain M&Ms, from our friendly neighbors.


DSCF2628 from album 081031-Halloween bumblebee abelinha

Trying on the outfit. At this point, she didn't like the hat ooooone little bit.


DSCF2633 from album 081031-Halloween bumblebee abelinha

Wait, who's that?


DSCF2634 from album 081031-Halloween bumblebee abelinha

dad?

DSCF2635 from album 081031-Halloween bumblebee abelinha
CHARGE!
Look at how fast her little feet are moving. =) Let's throw in a video now to demonstrate her trick-or-treating skills:



DSCF2643 from album 081031-Halloween bumblebee abelinha
Here, she's loving the season and the nice pumpkin at Aunt Jan and Aunt Linda's house.


DSCF2647 from album 081031-Halloween bumblebee abelinha
Carefully down the steps with mom's help, our intrepid adventurer comes away with her M&Ms.

DSCF2650 from album 081031-Halloween bumblebee abelinha

Here Lil' Genghis is mounted on her Морь. But what does she look like dismounted, ready for hand-to-hand combat collecting?



DSCF2660 from album 081031-Halloween bumblebee abelinha
Her arm looks a little ghostly, huh? (This is sorta a trick photo -- flash and long exposure). Let's try another one. It's tough to get Halloween photos right ...


DSCF2663 from album 081031-Halloween bumblebee abelinha
mom certainly has the dark and mysterious look going in this picture, huh?

If anyone wants any surplus candy, shaped like human body parts, individually wrapped and dispensed from a coffin-like box, please come get some. Please.

Fastest birds in the South!

An aside or two here: Uncle Joe and Aunt Cady apparently became the fastest parrots in the South the other day.

Actually, as Joe is doing the writing ... and we remember how well he rights, write? ... it's not quite clear if Cady was wearing the parrot outfit. Uncle Joe also neglected to mention one of the basics of journalism -- who-what-when-where-why-how -- such that we can only assume he was trying to flee an angry Chick-Fil-A manager.

As bad as the writing is, it's worth taking, er, a gander over there. Uncle Joe set a course record for the fastest-running parrot (5K, or as Brazilians say, quilos, in 25:05). Meanwhile, Aunt Cady came in first place in her division despite some challenges unrelated to being married to Uncle Joe. Congratulations to them both!

Down on the farm

Cousin J.D., Uncle Josh, Aunt Rebecca and Aunt Leeanne joined us at a place called Winslow Farm for the youngster's first major outtings among livestock, exotic fowl and loads of crap. A good time was had by all, except the washing machine and a few sticks.

Extra commentary with most of the photos, and some fun videos.

Annnyway, we really did have lotsa fun. Let's see some results:

DSCF2529 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD


DSCF2531 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

"Why is there a goat on a building?" you may find yourself asking. Well, you don't see many mountains for the goat to climb, do you? Silly city slickers soliciting satire salaciously.



DSCF2535 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

Peahen? Peacock? Either way, (s)he's a beauty, eh?


DSCF2542 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

You have to look for a while at this photo to figure out what it is. It's worth the effort.


DSCF2561 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

Cousin J.D. and Lil' Genghis were so excited they tried breaking through a gate.


DSCF2566 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

Some day, some nice girl's going to fall in love with those eyes. Maybe not Lil' Genghis though -- he kept pushing her. It's the girl that's supposed to play hard-to-get, lad.


DSCF2575 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

Aww.


DSCF2579 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

Through whose eyes do we judge ourselves? Many of Winslow Farm's residents have been abused or neglected by people.


DSCF2593 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

Grandpa John always wanted a California Condor. This is likely to be the closest our family will ever get.


DSCF2597 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

This little guy was doing his best to hide, but kitty porn is just sooooo pervasive in our society.


DSCF2602 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

They look cute together when they're not pushing each other or trying to break down gates, don't they?


DSCF2604 from album 081026-Winslow Farm with JD

dad
loves
this
photo.

Lest you folks think we've given too much coverage to the farm's 71 cats, we do have a story on why dogs are cooler.


And then, as you've come to expect, we've got some videos, including one that could make Uncle Rodrigo sick.

Tech upgrades, new Lil' Genghis products

Kind folks,

Behind the scenes we've made some extra changes to our Lil' Genghis photo galleries.

We had to upgrade the hardware that all this stuff runs behind, get a new router.

We updated the Gallery2 photo gallery software itself. But this improved upgrade also let us:

• Fix the download-shopping-cart-as-a-ZIP thing. I don't know when that broke. Whoops. You can download individual files or entire albums by adding 'em to your cart, then telling it to Add to Zipfile. It can take maybe 20 seconds to process 50 photos -- give it a little time and it'll come through for you, and remember if there's videos in the mix it'll take it a while longer. Once you have the files on your computer, you can put 'em on a CD or take 'em online anywhere you'd like.
  
• Through the software, you can print the pictures through Shutterfly, same as before. That's strictly between you and Shutterfly -- we're not involved.
  
• Europeans can print pictures now through FotoKasten, a German outfit that may offer more convenience to Lil' Genghis fans in Europe. Someone does make a purportedly small profit off these prints -- the guys that created the photo gallery software itself.
  
• Last, and potentially most interesting, we've enabled access to SnapGalaxy. This doesn't give us an easy way to not make a profit; we're trying to find out if we can make sure we won't be held liable for -your- prints if -they- raise their prices. We may jack up the prices somewhat to make a profit so we don't make a loss, if that makes any sense. SnapGalaxy may have the most potential as far as being able to ship internationally and has a -really- wide variety of products ... but we'd not like to owe money for your guys' products, and we don't want to make a profit from you. Anyway, once we figure out the pricing, you, too, can have your very own photo cremation urn. Wait, what?
  
• We can also add PhotoWorks and Digibug support, if anyone cares.

Anyway, explore a bit. Any suggestions are gratefully welcomed.


dad

Pumpkin with pumpkins

Just a year ago, Lil' Genghis hit her first pumpkin patch, having a hard time sitting up for a while, not being able to control her body temperature, generally not doing much moving.

What
a
difference
one
year
makes.

Wow.


DSCF2481 from album 081018-Pumpkin patch, bouncy house


DSCF2484 from album 081018-Pumpkin patch, bouncy house


DSCF2502 from album 081018-Pumpkin patch, bouncy house


DSCF2513 from album 081018-Pumpkin patch, bouncy house



And then there was the bouncy house!


DSCF2516 from album 081018-Pumpkin patch, bouncy house


Oh, boy.

Where Genghis came from

National Geographic is starting to crunch a bunch of DNA to figure out where ancestors came from. This one uses maternal DNA. The more people who submit, the more accurate the analysis can become. It's not the worst Christmas present, even if it's not something cool like an artillery fuse.

Check this out:

Genographic Results Suzana v2 - Upload a Document to Scribd

More updates

Lotta birthdays!
Today, Thursday, is Uncle Joe's birthday. And Friday is Aunt Sharon's as well. We earlier posted about five other birthdays, and apologize for missing some. Wow.

All of the photos from Brazil are now online, about 800 of 'em. A few videos in a smaller MP4 format are there as well, and we're uploading some to YouTube at this very moment. We'll try to post some highlights in the coming days, but feel free, of course, to wander a bit.

Behind the scenes, we upgraded some of the software the photo gallery runs on, and will upgrade more by this weekend. Please let us know if you guys have any problems.

On an unrelated note, we added a map over on the right side -->>>
that purports to show where our visitors come from. We can see a few problems -- supposedly one visitor comes from the Atlantic Ocean near Africa, and that Uncle Rodrigo maybe isn't checking up on his goddaughter. We don't have any control over the map or track you in anyway; this gadget just picks up your address on the Internet, but doesn't send us anything. Anyway, it is kinda neat ...