Christmas 2009, the Recap

I finally managed to go through all of the Christmas pictures taken at various family gatherings over the past few days.

I didn’t take nearly as many people photos as I should have. I realized that after having captured some particularly delightful (to me) kid pics at my mother-in-law’s Christmas gathering.

The beautiful children pictured below belong to Mike’s nephew, Curtis, and his wife, Candice.

First Adriana…

Do yourself a favor and look at it large (click on the image). She just has the most beautiful blue eyes and this angelic face that just melts your heart. Unfortunately, she spent most of the party napping. But this one perfect shot makes it okay. One time soon, we’ll have to arrange a special photo session for this little cherub.

She has a brother, too, which you probably would have figured out for yourself.

Mason also has big blue eyes and a little cherubic face that just screams, “Take my picture!” I couldn’t decide which shot of him I liked best, so here’s another. In color…

The little guy on the left is Mike’s great nephew, Ryan. He is Chris and Steve’s little boy.

Ryan is not the sit-still-and-pose type. Actually, he doesn’t sit still. (Don’t worry, Chris and Kathy, I deleted the crazy pics of him.) But look at this boy’s skin. Have you ever see such creamy, flawless skin?

He is sitting with his paternal grandmother. Her name is Kathy, which is really quite funny. Why funny? Well, my name is Kathy, and I am married to a guy named Mike. Ryan’s maternal grandparents, my sister- and brother-in-law, are named Kathy and Mike. So this is Kathy #3 in our family.

The above images are from the day after Christmas. The day before Christmas, aka Christmas Eve, was at our house. For whatever reason, I didn’t take many pictures at all. Most of the ones captured by my camera were taken by my daughter, Amy.

I did capture this shot of Joey, our youngest grandchild, digging the very yummy, homemade trail mix, gifted to us by June and her family (Mike’s cousins) in Willow, Alaska. I practically had to pry the bowl away from him.

I did slide it away from him at one point (he wasn’t paying attention). But he politely grabbed the bowl with two hands and pulled it right back. Notice how he’s holding on tightly with the right hand?

Here’s Brianna with the Shrinky Dinks Hubby and I gave her. I used to LOVE Shrinky Dinks, and I think it’s super cool that she likes them, too.

This is the only full-face shot of Gaige captured all evening. He’s trying to make Meg say “cheese” I think.

Here’s Joey in his cute Santa apron. He knows how to say “cheese” for sure.

I got zero pictures of Amy and TJ. None. What a bummer. I was going to remedy that at our post-Christmas gathering, but the whole family was sick and had to stay home.

I did take a few shots of the parents on Christmas day. Here’s my Mom…

And my Dad…

… who can now grow upside-down tomatoes without being called a redneck.

And here’s Mike’s mom. My mother-in-law. We camouflaged her candy in this box full of packing peanuts, trying to trick her into believing we forgot to get the one gift she looks forward to most every year. She dug, and dug, looking quite perplexed. Then, as soon as she hit the box, she said, “Oh, is this my candy?”

That totally cracked us both up. She LOVES that candy and knows we would have enough sense to warn her in advance if we weren’t able to procure some.

And that’s it for the highlights. I told you I didn’t take many pics. If you want to see the rest, you’ll have to go to my FLICKR site.

All in all, it was a nice Christmas. Even if Shannon is halfway around the world.

I’ll try to get more shots next time. I promise.

I did take a few cool pics yesterday…

This is K, who was sleeping beside me, on her back, on my chair.

This one shot I took while testing my new 2x teleconverter lens. Doesn’t this image just scream COLD?

A teleconverter increases the focal length of a lens. So, if you have a 300 mm zoom like me and use a teleconverter, you effectively can have a 600 mm zoom.

That’s how I got this close-up shot of the moon.

You will not achieve the same quality you would get with a true 600 mm zoom lens, but it costs ten times less than the cheapest 600 mm zoom. The more-expensive 600 mm zoom lenses cost many thousands of dollars. For one lens.

That’s it for now. I hope to get more people pictures later in the week. Stay tuned!

Happy Birthday, Brianna!

Our oldest grandchild, Brianna, turns 9 today. Nine! It just doesn’t seem possible…

It is fun to watch kids grow and see them mature. Especially when you can watch from afar as grandparents! When Mom and Dad get to deal with all the unpleasantness of parenthood and we just get to enjoy all of the fun stuff.

Brianna is a very smart, bubbly, funny, vibrant child. And she’s a fantastic big sister. It has always tickled me to see how she watches out for Gaige, even when he is being a PIA little brother. And she is great playing with Joey, too. I know she’s been a big help to Amy.

It wasn’t all that long ago that she was only 5, younger than Gaige is now, and we were getting ready for Amy’s wedding.


Not that I want to dwell on her being 5, but just look how cute she looks in this picture…

It’s always fun looking through pics to post on days like today. I inevitably stumble across shots like this one.

I admit, it’s not a great picture. But it’s one of those candid, slice-of-life shots that captures the essence of Brianna. She has a very expressive face and the picture just makes me smile.

Here she is with me doing a word search puzzle. She was beyond excited to know I like word search puzzles, too.

I like this picture, too.

She was only 6 in this shot. It wasn’t long after Joey was born.

I have tons of other pics, but I need to finish this post. Because I am pretty sure Amy, Brianna’s Mom, is thinking I forgot about her birthday post. I didn’t, of course, I’ve just been having too much fun sifting through all of the old pictures.

So…

Happy Birthday, Brianna!

Horrible Timing

Yesterday was my mother-in-law’s birthday. I did not forget it was her birthday. I totally meant to post a picture of her yesterday and announce her big day. But it was one of those crazy-busy days at work. I think I set a record for consecutive and cumulative minutes spent on the telephone.

Anyway, sorry for posting this late, Mom!

Happy Birthday!

I did remember to call at least.

For all of you out there thinking, “Uh, oh. You pissed your mother-in-law off! Your life is ruined…” She’s not like that. She knows I love her. And I did call, but couldn’t talk to her because her girlfriends had her out and about for the day.

Aside from work, there really wasn’t much excitement around here. But there was no time for excitement because of work. And for those of you thinking I really don’t work all that much because I work from home, or thinking you want an easy job like mine… it ain’t all that easy. And sometimes I work many more hours than I would if I were in a office.

I did manage to get a few cute dog pics though.

Meg sleeps like this all of the time. Belle, not so much. So it really tickles me when I catch her because I just think she’s the cutest little dog in the world.

I saw a lot of this yesterday. I often wonder if, during teleconferences, anyone thinks, “Hmmm. Was that the sound of a camera taking pictures? Who would take pictures during a phone call?”

Meg and Belle promptly ate their rawhides in the family room last night, as usual. K took hers to my office and saved it for later. So, later, while I continued working and K ate her chewy, Belle was jealous.

And now, for my favorite shot of the day…

… our three dogs. L-R, Belle, Meg and K (I think of her as Special K because she’s so sweet AND her coloring, especially her feet, makes me think of a Hershey’s Special candy bar).

Today MIGHT be more exciting. Maybe I’ll have better pics tomorrow. Based on my schedule for the day, don’t hold your breath.

Surprise Visit

Hubby had off work last week, so he left for the WV place the day after Halloween. I had hoped to join him midweek, but was pretty busy at work. Now, we do have Internet access and I can work from there. But I knew with Hubby and the girls there, I’d be a bit distracted. And with a big proposal due today, I couldn’t afford that. So I went up Friday night.

I arrived a bit after 9:00 PM to a happy surprise…

Amy and the grandkids had conspired with Hubby to surprise me with a visit. Which in itself was cool, because I don’t get surprised very often.

We’ve tried for a long time to get Amy to bring the kids for a visit, but they are very busy with sports and stuff pretty much year-round. So I was delighted to have them there. They brought Klondike, our granddog, too, which made things extra interesting, in a good way. (TJ, Amy’s Hubby, is away on a brief Army-duty trip.)

I’ll tell you more about the visit later. Of course, I have lots more pictures to share.

Sunday morning, I was supposed to leave to go get K, our new dog. But Saturday night, her foster Mom noticed something not-quite-right with her poo. Sunday morning, she confirmed what she’d feared… K has worms.

To keep Meg and Belle from also getting worms, we decided it would be best to wait until after they clear up before moving K in. We are really, really anxious for her to join the family, but want to be smart. Foster Mom Jenn hopes to get her to the vet today for a treatment. Hopefully they’ll be able to tell her when K can safely move in.

It was a very happy (and busy!) but disappointing weekend. We really did have a fun visit. I promise to fill you in as soon as I can. But that dang proposal is still due today. So I need to get to work.

Sharing Our Cabin with Friends

Foliage in our little corner of WV is pretty much at peak this weekend. Unfortunately, it’s cold, wet and overcast. But still beautiful. And we had company to share it with, which was really quite nice.

Mike and Kathy Weissner, Hubby’s sister- and brother-in-law joined us for a day in the mountains. We’d hoped to drive around doing some leaf peeping, but the weather didn’t cooperate. So we just sat around visiting, drove to Capon Bridge for a meal at our favorite restaurant in West Virginia (El Puente Mexican Restaurant) and walked around our place enjoying the scenery.

I did take a few pics, like the nice one of them above, but not many. The sun’s coming out so I may take more later. However, I was looking at my Flickr and stumbled across this image from last year, which I really like.

It’s one of the group featured in this Flickr slideshow.

Here we all are, just prior to their departure. Pictured l-r above: Me, Hubby, Mike and Kathy.

I’m not sure how we’ll entertain ourselves the rest of the day. It’s certainly a good day for a nap. Hmmm…

Grandparents’ Weekend

This past weekend at the WV place was really quite eventful. We filled all of the bedrooms for the first time ever. We got to take the parents on a train ride, spend time with Joey (our youngest grandson) and talk to and see Shannon from Barcelona using Skype.

I shared Saturday’s train ride pictures with you the other day. So now you get to see what Sunday brought.

Fall! When I got out of bed on Sunday morning, it was 39 degrees. That’s only 7 degrees above freezing.

Sorry, I won’t bore you with my nature photos yet again. After all, we did have 6 people in the house at one time. But I couldn’t resist sharing these two. They look better if you click on each pic for a larger view.

Here’s my Dad having breakfast with Joey, our entertainment for the weekend. When Hubby pointed out to Amy that she was shipping her son off to spend an entire weekend with FIVE grandparents, she almost changed her mind. I mean, if 2 grandparents can spoil a kid in a weekend, what would 5 do?

We took turns passing him from one lap to the other.

Even my Mom (aka Mawsie) got in on some Joey loving.

He’s really a personable, well-behaved, happy little fellow.

And with people like me around, he’s gotten really good at saying, “cheese.”

It was too cold to go play outside, so we brought out the zero gravity lounger. It kept him busy for at least an hour.

He and I were taking turns reclining then locking the chair in place so Joey could unlock it and have the chair back shoot forward. Meg had to get in on the act, too.

Joey thought the chair was the most fun ever. Everyone else just liked listening to Joey giggle.

He was sort of excited and sort of scared to sit on my big motorcycle.

See what I mean about him always looking happy?

Here Joey and Pop are goofing off as the parents get ready to leave.

Then it was time for lunch. Take a closer look at Joey…

… doing his best to sit like Pop.

He’s at that mimicking phase, which is cute until someone slips and says something like, “dumbass.” Lucky for us, that one wore off quickly.

He’s also at that “I wanna help” stage, which is cute, too. But it means it takes ten times longer to get anything done. Which is okay, unless you’re supposed to be someplace at a certain time.

Finally, we were ready to leave. He’s even a good car passenger.

Mom Murphy, sorry I didn’t get a picture with Joey on your lap!

Other than that, we all had a fabulous weekend. This weekend is going to be fun, too. We’ve got more company coming. More on that next week.

I can’t close without sharing at least one picture of Belle. Just a quick one…

I keep saying she’s fast. She really can fly.