Our Christmas Card

By now, many of our readers have probably received a picture like this in the mail. It was our Christmas card, and we think it's really swell. Our friend Aaron, a talented photographer, took it along with a slew of other shots. We weren't expecting him to bring a bunch of professional equipment, big stand flashes and umbrellas and such, but that's what he did. We felt sort of like celebrities at a low-rent photo shoot, as Aaron picked off a bunch of shots and cars slowed to a roll and stared as they passed. Despite my eyes being slightly squinty due to the sun, Rhianwen thought the one above was cute enough to send out to family and friends.

This one, though, is my favorite shot from the day:

Oh, it is just so amazing... maybe some of you will get it in the mail soon enough...

A Day at the Getty Villa

The day after Christmas, the Benners decided to expose themselves to culture. Thankfully this city is filled to the brim with free (or often cheap) museums with world class art. Like the Getty Villa, for instance! Here's some photos from our trip to perhaps the most gorgeous museum on earth.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

We'll be going to more museums this week, so expect more posts like this.

A Very Benner Christmas

Usually we spend Christmas day rushing around to the houses of various families. A couple hours here, a couple there, onto the next place and by the end of the day we're pretty exhausted. So despite being so far away from our families and friends this year, we were looking forward to celebrating with just us this year. So with our tiny little tree decorated and our lights up around the apartment, we settled in for a good night's sleep on Christmas eve.

The next morning we woke up, read some scripture, sang some Christmas hymns (we're not going on tour anytime soon), ate breakfast and admired our little Christmas scene:

Then we opened up all the presents, and this is what our scene turned into:

With all those great gifts, we were happy, and this is what we turned into:

That night, we had our friends Chapman and Becca over for Christmas dinner since, like us, they do not have family in LA. Becca's husband Ryan was originally going to come as well, but he had to fly to Seattle for his Grandmother's funeral at the last minute (Becca had to work and was flying there the following day).

So we cooked London broil with a Gorgonzola cream sauce and mashed potatoes with caramelized shallots. Chapman brought prosciutto-wrapped asparagus and Christmas cookies, and Becca came right from work with a fantastic bottle of wine, a spicy Syrah that complimented the meal perfectly. We all proceeded to eat, drink and be merry, and then we retired to the couch where we took this photo:

Eventually everyone left, and Rhi and I collapsed onto the bed in a food-related coma. It was a good Christmas.

Cookie Factory!

The Benner household became a cookie factory a week before Christmas. For the first time, we made more than one batch of cookies at a time. In fact, we made little goodie bags for 15 of Rhi's coworkers. It was a little overwhelming but thankfully Benner was there to help. The fun part was decorating the bags with varying holiday tags. Aren't they pretty?

+10 To Our Quality of Life

Yes. Thanks to one of our dear friends, we now have a TiVo. No more commercials. No more having to be tied down to a specific time or channel, or choosing one show over another. We have joined the 21st century. Thank you God, for science.

The only problem is that I unpacked everything and was about to set it up when I took my first look at the instructions (I typically don't read those things). Apparently, I have to have our cable company come out and install a cable decoder card in the TiVo, so that we can get rid of our cable box.

Which means we have to wait until 9am tomorrow morning to get our TiVo goodness going. Oh, joy deferred, why must you be so painful?