There is sad news about our old PowerShot A70. This reliable and capable camera has outlived its useful life. I've had it 3 years and it was my first digital camera. I will always remember it fondly.

You can watch it dying as I transition from recording Shannon's winter swimming pool...

To Aaron playing breakout on the Veggietales web site...

To this sad recording of our SuperBowl XLI picnic.

The good news is, of course, that this was the perfect excuse to justify my prescription to PC Magazine and use its recommendation for the best compact camera around. We bought the Canon PowerShot SD600 "Digital Elph" camera at Circuit City for $230. It is cheaper and smaller than the A70, has twice the megapixels, uses a rechargeable lithium ion battery instead of expensive AA's and has a larger LCD screen. I paid about $40 to get 128 MB of memory for the A70 and paid only $20 for a full GB today. The times they sure are changing.

I didn't get the battery charged in time to take pictures of the kids. But I did go down and record the work we did in the basement today. The kids like to play down there, so we covered the concrete with carpet.

Also, my sister gave us a wonderful puppet theater, but it was underused because the kids kept knocking it over. Answer: install it under the stairs with oak plywood and 1X3 supports.