• Life

    Is Black Friday Still Relevant?

    28 Nov ’09 /

    We’re all familiar with it’s history.  Up before (and I mean way before) the butt crack of dawn to wait in line at one of the countless stores offering “doorbuster deals.”  Throngs of people fighting and stampeding just to get one of a limited supply of popular, heavily discounted item.  But is going to such lengths really worth it?  I am on the side that says no. First, given the economic situation, my understanding is that retailers are very aggressive this year in terms of pricing such that “Pre-Black Friday” deals have begun to pop up.  Further, for those of you that don’t know, there is a myriad of sources…

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  • Tech

    The King of All Media?

    15 May ’09 /

    An HTPC Solution In our home, DVDs suffer the cruelest of fates. Some are left abandoned only to fend on their own without a case. Some are placed in an awkward, uncomfortable position in another movie’s case. Little Mermaid, meet Showgirls (just kidding, I don’t own that movie). And some are subjected to the primitive, overzealous hands of two toddlers that compares only to King Kong’s grip on Fay Wray. What can save our DVD collection from such a sad end? Enter the home media center. For those of you that have a PC and Windows Vista Home Premium, media center functionality is already built in with Windows Media Center…

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  • Life

    We’ve Moved!

    10 Jun ’07 /

    Well – sort of. Our new site, aspirasfamily.com, is up and running and we will be retiring this blog. No updates will be made going forward but it will remain for archival and backup purposes. aspirasfamily.com is currently a photoblog where you will periodically see pictures of our family life. Text entries will mostly be snippets but the way pictures are displayed, in my opinion, are much more pleasing to the eye. In the upper right corner you will see a link to our weblog which will contain all of our prior entries from our blogger blog and future entries. The formatting is a little off for the old posts…

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  • Family

    Our Children’s Celebrations

    29 May ’07 /

    Wow! It was a full weekend with Holden’s Baptism on Saturday and Elliott’s 2nd Birthday party on Sunday. Good thing we had Monday to recover! 😉 We were fortunate to have the whole Anspach/Aspiras family in town for the festivities along with several other family and friends. Holden was baptized by Father Arthur Yabes at St. Cyprian Catholic Church in Sunnyvale. We enjoyed a beautiful reception at Coyote Creek Golf Club hosted by Lolo and Lola Aspiras. Elliott had a Western themed party complete with pink cowboy boots and a rocking horse (instead of a real pony!) She had all her little friends come and celebrate with pigs in a…

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  • Photography

    Happy Mother’s Day Weekend

    12 May ’07 /

    Here’s to all Mothers out there, whether they’re new, experienced, or expectant, Happy Mother’s Day! If ever one needs a shining example of a Mother’s love, see the below link to a Pulitzer prize winning pictorial by Renee C. Byer of the Sacramento Bee. I won’t spoil it by describing it to you. You’ll just have to see it for yourself. http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2007/feature-photography/works/

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  • Photography

    Tiny Dancer

    7 May ’07 /

    This weekend started out with Elle and her two buddies Charlotte and Logan going to lunch at Happy Dog Pizza with the Mommies and Baby Holden, of course. Believe it or not, despite having three toddlers and an infant, we had a nice, leisurely lunch. We then hit Home Goods and survived that, too! Saturday we drove up to El Dorado Hills (Sacramento area) with the Corona’s for Sam Al-Esawi’s big 30th soiree complete with fabulous Persian food and a gorgeous belly dancer. Elle loved the belly dancer and was dancing for the whole hour with her. We enjoyed good music, good food and good friends. Sunday we joined the…

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