Today is a big day for the Hais family, that’s Kim’s family if you didn’t already know. They are adopting a six year old boy named Nick. I may have mentioned his name on here before and he is definitely been in quite a few pictures on the site. Anyway, they have been his foster family for about the past year, and today the adoption will be official. This will be the fourth child that the Hais’ have adopted and will be Kim’s sixth sibling.

Hopefully everyone had a nice Christmas break, I know I did. We made the 600 mile drive from Kansas City to Cincinnati for the last time, so that we could celebrate with our families. The next 600 mile drive we make will be on Monday, January 1st, when we head out to Denver. Keep your fingers crossed that the weather will be good for our trip. The snow in Denver is already causing a few problems with finalizing a contract on the house I posted earlier.

In addition to all of the gadgets, clothes, etc. that I received as gifts for Christmas, I also added a championship to the list. I made it to the final game in both of my fantasy football leagues and actually came away the winner in one. It might have been the lowest scoring game of the season, but I prevailed 77-62. I think I could have won the other league too, if I didn’t make some dumb decisions with my lineup. Oh well, I cannot complain with one first place finish and one second place finish. If I only could be happy with the Bengals performance…

Following the lead of Kottke and some other higher profile bloggers, I have put together my list of cities that I visited in 2006. In order to qualify for the list I had to spend at least one night in the city, so afternoon day trips did not count. I went back through the travel category to compile the list, so I don’t think I missed anything…

• Kansas City, MO *
• New York, NY
• Killington, VT
• Omaha, NE
• Cincinnati, OH *
• Loveland, OH *
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Park City, UT
• Greensboro, NC
• Minneapolis, MN
• St. Paul, MN
• Lawrence, KS
• Cleveland, OH
• Seattle, WA
• Vantage, WA
• Denver, CO
• Branson, MO

* Visited more than once.

In the little free time that we have, we’ve been trying to catch up on our recorded TV shows before we loose them all in the move. Last night we made it through just about all of the remaining episodes of Survivor: Cook Islands. The only thing left is the second half of the reunion show, which I’m not sure we’ll watch all of. I’m sure we have some other recordings that should take a higher priority.

Anyway, I was a little surprised by the outcome of the finale. I always figured that Yul had a good shot at winning, but I wasn’t sure if he would get the most votes from the jury after some of his actions. This was especially true when it came down to the final three. At that point I thought that Ozzy would win for sure. If the jury wasn’t able to ask questions to each of the final three, I still think that Ozzy would have won. But after watching Yul win everyone over at the last tribal council, I wasn’t too surprised by the results.

I bet you thought I wasn’t going to come through this year, but I’m proud to announce NOW That’s What Ed Calls Music 2006! As I did last year, I am offering a BitTorrent download for all the geeks out there (this includes you this year, Phil). Click here to get started downloading the torrent file.

For those of you who still don’t know how to use BitTorrent downloads, the compilation is available for download here on edpaffjr.com. I also have a couple of friends who are hosting the zip file temporarily and should provide for quicker downloads. You can access those downloads here and here. And as always, I will be carrying copies around with me very soon. I hope to have a small batch ready by tonight. Happy Holidays!

After last nights game I find myself in the championship game of both of my fantasy football leagues. With it came a Bengals loss that I was obviously not as thrilled about. I would much rather have Carson Palmer put up some big numbers which would likely have given me a loss in one league and sent me to the third place game. It would all be worth it to see the Bengals one game ahead of Denver, Jacksonville, and the Jets, whom are now all tied at 8-6. Next weeks game with Denver is now a must win!

One of my favorite music venues in the country, Deer Creek Music Center aka Verizon Wireless Music Center, could soon be no more. According to The Indianapolis Star, “The owner of Verizon Wireless Music Center in Noblesville has put the 203-acre property up for sale…The area around the music center has become one of the Indianapolis area’s hottest sites for new commercial development and Live Nation wants to take advantage of rising property values in the area.” We can only hope that another entertainment business buys the property to keep it as is.

I’ve seen seven total shows at Deer Creek, all of which were headlined by the Dave Matthews Band. The last show I saw there was in 2004, but I still have many very fond memories of the concerts and the time spent camping in the nearby lots. I probably would still be seeing shows there if I were living in Cincinnati. It is definitely near the top of my list of outdoor amphitheaters, and blows both Sandstone (Verizon Wireless KC) and Riverbend away. Fortunately for me, Red Rocks should soon help fill the void that could soon be left by Live Nation.

As I mentioned over a month ago, we bought season passes for snowboarding in the mountains during one of our house hunting trips. At that time I didn’t have any equipment and I joked that I would just roll down the slopes instead. Well I have some good news, I will no longer have to consider barrel rolls since I bought a snowboard on eBay and it finally showed up the other day. The board I bought is barely used Salomon Forecast including bindings. I’m still in need of some boots, but that should be easy enough and I may get those from eBay as well. Oh yeah, it included a travel bag as well, which will come in handy for at least one trip this winter, our trip to Maine in January.

We attended yet another BBBS party at the Beaumont Club last night, this time it was the annual Holiday Party. The food was the same as last year, tacos and/or fajitas from Chili’s and hot dogs. They also did a talent show once again and had a little dancing, but not nearly as much as the last time. I hope Dominique and Bianca enjoyed it, although maybe not as much as last year. For us, it was good seeing both of them again. We’ve been so busy lately that we haven’t been seeing them every week like we used to. I imagine that we’ll try to get together next week for one last time before we move to Denver. If only they could figure out email we could easily keep in touch. I guess we can try and teach them once again.

Keep your fingers crossed for us, as we are putting our offer on the house today.

We had some luck on our last house hunting trip in Denver this past weekend. We didn’t find as many potential places as I was hoping, but I think we found one that would work perfectly for us. As long as the inspections and everything else goes through okay, we should be moving into this house sometime after the new year.

A few of my favorite things about the inside are the exposed brick in various rooms, the completely updated kitchen, and the fact that there are three bedrooms. Yes, one of them will become a guest bedroom for all the visitors we are expecting. This leaves the other one to become an office for me to work out of. Even the rabbit can have his own room out back in the sunroom.

The location of the house is perfect. Some might consider the busy street that it’s on to be a downside, but it shouldn’t affect us as our parking spots are all accessed through an alley in the back. This is very typical of most neighborhoods in downtown Denver, at least from what I saw. The nearby streets provide very easy access both onto and off of I-25. The house sits about one mile west of Washington Park and only a couple of blocks from a Light Rail station.

Originally I didn’t want to post this until it was a done deal, but I couldn’t wait any longer…