We're leaving for our annual trip to visit the family in Florida tomorrow. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, and we have a trip to Disney's Animal Kingdom. I only had one brief visit there with J. when he was 2 years old. The kids and I are really looking forward to riding the new Expedition Everest roller coaster. A full report on the trip will be posted, of course, when we get back.

We couldn't get out of town without one minor disaster, though. Our Sony digital camera decided to stop working - taking a picture would only result in some wavy multi-colored lines on the screen. To be fair, we have had the camera for a while, but this was a pretty inopportune time for it to die.

So, after some lightning fast research on the Web, I dashed out to Best Buy three days before Christmas and bought a new Canon Powershot A540 6 megapixel camera with a 4x optical zoom. It got generally good reviews online and, most importantly, met the under $200 test I was shooting for. I also picked up a 1GB SD memory card, since the included 16MB card would only hold about 5 pictures. What is it about camera companies including ridiculously small memory cards with cameras anyways? I only paid $25 for the 1GB card; would it have killed them to put in a 256 or 512MB card that would hold a reasonable number of shots?

So, we're pretty much all set to go. I may get in a brief report from down south. Everyone enjoy your holiday (or your long weekend if you're not observing Christmas).