Our Christmas Card

I forgot to post this earlier, but here is our Christmas card for this year. We actually took the photos ourselves at home, then we uploaded them to Belly Bean Designs. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Beltran family!

2007 Year In Review

2007 was a great year for us because that's when Lucas arrived! He has been the highlight of our year and we can't ever imagine any other year before he came. Anyway, here are some highlights of 2007:

Best book: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Runner up: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Best movie: The Bourne Ultimatum
Runner up: Transformers

Best video game: BioShock
Runner up: Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess

Best techie purchase: Olevia 37" LCD HDTV
Runner up: Xbox 360 HD-DVD player

Best deal of the year: The Heavenly Bed for free (we have not been charged since September, the bed is $1,495 retail)
Runner up: Olevia 37" HDTV at Black Friday for $535 shipped, saving $275 over regular price

Best finance deal of the year: Made $1,500 this year on cash back and rewards from credit card usage and FatWallet
Runner up: Made about $1,200 this year from eBay and craigslist reselling stuff and knick-knacks around the house (old clothes, used shoes, various electronics, video games, etc)

We didn't travel much this year, but hopefully in 2008 we'll have travel-related highlights.

Lucas' First Christmas

We celebrated Lucas' first Christmas with family! He received a lot of nice clothes and toys. Mom and Dad contributed extra to his 529 plan so it can grow. We also got him a Tickle Me Elmo, but he won't be able to play with that until later. All in all, it was a very fun first Christmas for Lucas!

Call Of Duty 4

I've been on a videogame binge lately! Latest game that I'm playing is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. This is my first time playing the Call of Duty series and I must say I am extremely impressed. This game is the most photorealistic game I've ever played, period. While the single player campaign is relatively short, it draws you in. And, the multiplayer mode is robust and very fun to play, since it involves a lot more strategy and tactics than other FPS games with multiplayer. Pick up this game if you have an Xbox 360.

Lucas and Santa

Here's Lucas' first pictures with Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus!

GRAW 2

Picked up Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 from the bargain bin at GameStop the other day. It's actually a decent follow-up to the original. You play as Captain Scott Mitchell and you have a team of three elite soldiers at your command, as well as vehicular support. It's got great graphics and a realistic game play. Not bad for a $16 game.

Eight Months Old

Lucas is eight months old today! Key milestones: he now has two bottom teeth! He also is rolling around a lot (but not yet crawling). His legs are getting stronger as he's wanting to stand up longer. He's also eating a lot more as he's growing through a growth spurt. This month he'll celebrate his first Christmas!

Here's a clip of Lucas rolling round and round on our living room floor.

Olevia 237T 37" LCD HDTV

Our one Black Friday purchase was an unplanned one, but I just couldn't pass it up the deal. We purchased an Olevia 37" LCD HDTV from Target.com on the day before Black Friday for $535 out the door and have been very happy with it so far. It's a 1366x768 Sharp-made panel, but the picture is so vibrant at 720p/1080i that I can wait until 1080p and 120 Hz/LED backlighting become more common and standard feature sets in the future (and therefore drop in price).

The set has two HDMI inputs, two component video inputs, a VGA input, and two S-video/RCA inputs. It also has built in NTSC/ATSC/QAM tuners with a 1600:1 dynamic contrast ratio and 8 ms response time. HD through the Comcast HD-DVR connected via HDMI looks great, as well as the Xbox 360 and HD-DVD connected via VGA. The primary reason that I used the VGA cable for the Xbox 360 is that the VGA upscales regular DVDs to 1080i and the HD-DVD player can output at full 1080p resolution (although this TV will downconvert to 1080i, but for the future I'm set). The second reason is that the VGA connection enables native resolution playback of content at 1366x768. Assassin's Creed looks amazing on this TV. The Wii over the component connection looks awesome as well, not to mention the widescreen aspect helps too.

As an amateur videophile, I'm pretty happy with the features on this set. I've even calibrated it using the Vikuiti LCD TV calibration DVD. The only thing that is annoying is the remote control - I can't make it work with the HD DVR so I have to fiddle with two or three separate remotes! Maybe a universal remote may solve this problem. Another issue is that standard definition television does not look nearly as good as the Sony.

So, what happens to our Sony CRT TV? The TV is so massive (168 lbs.) but I love the TV since the HD and SD picture on it is still superior in my opinion. But alas, we don't have space in our house so we have placed it on sale online. The great thing about the LCD TV is that I can carry it myself as it weighs only 50 lbs. For the price that we got it for, it can't be beat!