Last Few Thoughts on Christmas

I sure loved having these guys for Christmas! If they hadn't come it just would've seemed like a typical day here at home with Mom since Chandra had to work for several hours.

I got this Santa headband from my secret Santa and I gave it to Sarah since she loves headbands. I wasn't expecting her to seriously wear it for very long, but she wore it for two days straight!

The girls did some artwork one morning. I was especially impressed with Elizabeth's picture.

Sharon lives in a small town and is about 90 minutes away from decent shopping, so she decided to take advantage of being close to good shopping while she was here and went out shopping a few times. She went grocery shopping with Mom on New Year's Eve and they both came back with a pair of red shoes which they promptly debuted that evening at our party.

On New Year's Day Sharon, Chandra and I went to the mall. We had lots of fun shopping and being silly. We took these pictures in the outdoor section at JCPenney. I'm always cold, so when we came across these fur stoles I had to try one on (and Channie, too). I didn't buy it, though. I settled for a scarf.

 

A trip to the mall wouldn't be complete without going to New York & Company – one of my favorite stores. When we walked in we saw this beautiful, seafoam cardigan on display. Sharon and I were both drawn to it like magnets and I knew I had to get it. Seafoam green is my favorite color, after all! Sharon really wanted to get it, too, but she didn't want to pay full price for it. Heather to the rescue! Since I have a store credit card I get coupons all the time and I had a coupon for $70 off a $150 purchase. I used the coupon two days later when it became valid and got a great deal. I love getting a bargain! (The sweater looks extra blue in the first picture, but it actually is more green like in the second.)

I also got a bracelet and some earrings to go with my new sweater. I can't wait to wear it all in a few weeks!

Seafoam green must be a hot color right now because we kept seeing it everywhere while we were at the mall.  On mannequins, on people and in just about every store we went to. It's such a beautiful color! 

In December I had Linda and Kellie over to help me make some Christmas crafts I found an Pinterest–paper evergreen trees and candy sleds that I gave to the kids in my Sunday School class. 

Dodging a Bullet

I love having Sharon's family visit, but it seems like at least one of her kids is always sick when they visit. (She assures me that they really don't get sick all that often, but coincidently, they always seem to be sick when we see each other.)

Sharon's daughter, Elizabeth, was feeling poorly the day they are arrived, and then the next day she was definitely sick with the flu. I could tell she didn't feel well just by looking at her. That evening my muscles started to feel a little achy and I was really worried that I was getting sick. The germs started getting passed around and three of Sharon's other kids got sick, plus Sharon's husband and my mom. My sister Laura's daughter also got sick (which was confirmed as influenza A when they took her to the doctor).

Those that got sick got terrible coughs and there was a constant soundtrack of coughing playing the entire visit. I figured it was just a matter of time before before I picked up what everyone else had, but fortunately I was blessed and managed to the one of the lucky few who stayed healthy. All I can say is that I'm so glad that I got a flu shot this year!

My Highlights of 2012 Slideshow

Making my annual family slideshow for 2012 monopolized tons of my time in December. This was my fourth year making a family sideshow, and each year my slideshows have gotten bigger and better. I'm glad my skills have improved, but that means it takes even longer to put my slideshows together. I'm not exactly sure how many total hours I spent working on my slideshow, but I estimate that I devoted anyway between 50 and 75 hours perfecting it.

I usually get my slideshow done before Christmas, but this year it took extra long. I'm not quite sure why it took me so much longer this year, but I finally finished it. I decided that New Year's Eve would be the perfect time for my slideshow "premier" since several of my family members were around. Unfortunately, three of my sisters and their families weren't around for the holidays since they live so far away, but I sent them DVDs of the sideshow so that they can watch it with their families. Anyway, I think my slideshow was a hit with everyone that watched it because everyone seemed to like it. The slideshow really was quite a "show" as it was 30 minutes long. Hopefully no one thought it was too long. I find it really difficult to keep it short when I have so many great pictures to work with, especially when each picture means so much to me. I get really attached to the pictures because I adore the people in them and I love the stories behind each picture.

I had somewhere between 2000 and 2500 pictures to sift through as I was trying to decide which pictures made the cut. (I have a large family and most of my sisters take lots of pictures, so that's why I had so many pictures to choose from.) Narrowing down the pictures takes quite a bit of time, but that's okay. I like options and I rather have to sift through hundreds and hundreds of nice pictures instead of having to settle for mediocre pictures because that's all I have.

I uploaded my sideshow to YouTube to make it easy to share with my family and friends.  Sometimes when I watch videos on YouTube they can be sluggish/shaky in spots, so hopefully if you watch it it will respond appropriately and run smoothly. (I had to split the slideshow into two parts to make uploading it to YouTube easier since it's so long.) If you watch it, please let me know if you think!

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLR3QellodA

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpa7halj2NI

Once There Was a Snowman

My sister Sharon and her family were hoping for a white Christmas this past year, and so was I. I adore snow and there's just something about it that makes Christmas even more special. Sadly, we had a green Christmas this year, but we did get a little bit of snow a few days later. It wasn't much–less than 2 inches–but it was fun to watch it fall and it made everything very pretty. The kids were so excited about it and they went outside to play as soon as they saw it start to snow.

The next morning Sharon's husband went outside to clear the snow off their van and move it because Sharon, Chandra and I were going to the movies to see Les Misérables. The kids went outside and had a blast playing in the snow. When we came home from the movie there was a snowman in the front yard. The kids wanted to have it facing the house, so they strategically placed it in front of the big window in my bedroom. We nicknamed the frosty voyeur "Peeping Tom" since he was only a few feet away from the house and looked right into my window.

I was surprised that the snow stuck around for so long for as little as there was. It was fun to watch the deterioration of the snowman as he melted. The snowman stuck around for 13 days which I think is pretty amazing since we've been having such temperatures.

At church the kids sing a song called Once There Was a Snowman and it's a perfect one to sing in this situation:

"Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman,
once there was a snowman, tall, tall, tall.
In the sun he melted, melted, melted,
in the sun he melted, small, small, small."

These are pictures of the snowman the day he was built, complete with charcoal eyes/buttons, a lei crown (it slipped off on one side), a newspaper hat and a carrot nose..

The snowman started melting not too long after it was built, and my mom documented the snowman's demise every step of the way by taking daily pictures of it with her iPad (and sometimes even photographing it more than once a day depending on how it was melting).

This is the snowman five days after being created. His carrot nose started out so nice and straight, but by this point it was starting to  droop.

After a few more days the snowman had lost both of his eyes, his buttons and his nose.

Here's my mom standing by the snowman who had gotten much shorter and thinner after eight days. "I'm melting!"

Another picture of Mom posing with the snowman. Later that day the snowman lost his head.

Here's a picture the headless snowman and the few lumps which is all that remained of his head.

The sun was much more direct on the snowman's left side, so it melted more quickly than the snowman's right side. About 60 seconds after my mom took the picture on the left, the snowman's middle [what was left of it] toppled to the ground. Mom had just walked inside, so she missed it, but I caught it out of the corner of my eye.

After a mild night where we got a lot of rain there wasn't much left the snowman (picture on the left). The next morning my mom took the picture on the right. All that was left of the snowman was a tiny fistful of snow in the upper left corner of the picture.

After 13 days all that was left of the snowman was the hat, the [rotten] carrot nose, the tree branch arms, charcoal buttons/eyes and the lei.

As Frosty says, "I'll be back again someday."  I sure hope so! ;)