UPDATE!: The Marathon’s over and the guys caught all 493 Pokémon and raised over $18,000 for Ally’s House charity! That’s over $3000 more than their target! Amazing work, guys.

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The guys over at TheSpeedGamers.com are attempting to raise $15,000 for Ally’s House, a charity which helps kids with cancer and their families, by catching every Pokémon in the Nintendo Gameboy and DS games within 72 hours. This is no simple feat, I know, as it literally took me several weeks of playing and trading Pokémon with friends back in the 90s to capture the then-complete Pokédex of 151. Today, there are 493 Pocket Monsters to be caught, spread out over several games. What a cool way to raise money for a good cause while playing an awesome game, right?

As I write this, they’ve been playing for 33 hours, have raised a little over $7000 and caught 227 Pokémon and counting. If you’d like to help TheSpeedGamers make their goal and/or see the live feed of their progress, head on over to TheSpeedGamers.com before the marathon ends. Pika!

Here’s this year’s Schuetze Family Christmas Card! I finished it early enough this year to have it printed and shipped to my mom, so she could send it out to friends and family on time. In past years I’ve printed it at Kinko’s, last minute, so of course the cards didn’t turn out as nice. This year I went with Vistaprint.com since they were having a sale at the time. They did a good job except for a rather rough slice at the bottom of some of the cards. Otherwise the color, score and print quality were all great!

Hope all you readers and your friends and families have a Happy Holiday this year, celebrating whatever makes you happy!

Past cards:
• 2007
• 2008