Our multi-ethnic family

I saw this fun link on the Walworths' blog that takes your picture, decides which celebrity you most resemble, then morphs your face into theirs. Sounded pretty fun...Darcy and Madeleine were Reese Witherspoon, Nena - Lindsay Lohan, and Jeremy - Bill Gates....pretty good matchups, I thought. Then there's our family. Here's who they thought we most resembled (no joke):

Carey - Lacey Chabert (who?)
Ellie - Rebecca Romijn (Dutch model actress)
Clark - Ai Otsuka (a female Japanese pop-singer)
Spencer - Usher (African American rap/R&B singer)

Our family is bound by neither ethnicity, nationality, race or gender...apparently.

For the financial Geek

WARNING!!! Boring financial blog Only read if you care about stocks.
OK so I like looking at stocks. I don't really have money to buy stocks but I like to learn and play.
One if not the hardest thing about picking stocks is determining valuation. (how cheap or expensive is a particular stock).

Looking at the ratio of a company's market capitalization (total value of all the company's stock) to its book value (total value of a company's assets) is a good starting point for determining the proper price of a stock. The price determination is more valuable when you also include the total liabilities of a company in the comparison.
I calculated the ratio of the market capitalization to the book value minus the total liabilities for several car companies (compare).
Prices are from 11/4/07

	HMC	TM	NSANY	VLKAY	DAI	GM	F
market cap	67	180	47	29	111	21	18
Assets	105	285	108	194	270	186	278
assets/cap	1.57	1.58	2.30	6.69	2.43	8.86	15.44
liabilities	66	182	78	156	221	191	282
Compare	1.72	1.75	1.57	0.76	2.27	-4.20	-4.50

The results are interesting. It looks like the lowest number (that is not a negative number) would be the best stock value (the cheapest).
First off both GM and Ford have more liabilities than assets would lead me to not buy their stock (how can their stock be worth anything??).
It may be important to look at the companies in there respective regions.
Out of the 3 Japanese companies it looks like Nissan has the cheaper stock
Out of the 3 US companies Daimler Chrysler with less liabilities than assets is the clear winner.
Volkswagen being a European company is kinda by itself and the clear winner out of all of them. Even after subtracting for liabilities the companies assets are 1.3 times the market capitalization. Meaning that if the company ended today and sold off all its assets and paid its debtors first, the stock owners would still make a 30% profit.
I may be selling my TM stock to by VLKAY soon.
I know there are problems with this method as with all valuation methods but it seems like a good starting point.
What do you think? Criticisms and suggestions welcome. I'm still learning.

Halloween Party!

Some pictures of the Halloween party with our fun friends. They had a great time bobbing for apples, jumping in the "hay" (pine straw) and eating Spencer's delicious homemade caramel apples and white chocolate "ghosts" strawberries. Oh, and I knew I was too busy with hostessing duties when 45 minutes into the party, I noticed Ellie had forgotten to put on half of her costume-the bloomers and shoes. Of, course this was after all the pictures were taken :-) Oh, and isn't Julie creative with her belly? Penelope Jane was born 6 days later!