To say I come from a family of photo bugs would be an understatement. Then my brother married into one. We were photo bugs when we used to use this stuff called film, heck we used to buy rolls of film in bulk :). 100 rolls at a time. This whole digital thing has just made the process easier and instant at the same time. So below the fold a few photos I hope you enjoy from the last two days. Merry Christmas everybody!
Oh, one video first you can listen to as you browse the photos. Checking out with my final purchases the other day there was a Jewel CD of children lullabies. I thought (1) I am a huge of fan of Jewel and (2) It was only ten bucks, my niece Katie might enjoy this. Didn't realize I'd be "ripping" a copy for myself.
And as with this song, I had no clue how many stanzas there were to these "classic" lullabies I didn't even knew existed. Now on to the photos and our star, Catherine Lauren Young. My niece.
One of her early presents Friday was a tea party set. She was waiting for my mother and I to arrive and we had one heck of a long tea party. She might have a living bartending in like 19 years cause she sure seems to like to serve folks drinks.
My brother's wife is an amazing host, he married up as my father and I like to tell him. This was just one of three trees.
She apologized to us before dinner the table was so "boring." She just started a new job and didn't have the time to make a place-setting and napkin rings by hand, Martha Steward style, like she usually does.
Katie, in like her second outfit change of the day, ready for dinner and opening presents. Posing for more pics then any young child should have to pose for I might add :).
When it was mentioned it was time to open presents, well we could barely get a picture of her in frame. I took this one and figured it would turn out with a blur behind her.
That evening we were getting a wonderful "White Christmas" and it was time for another outfit change to go play. She had a blast, but my efforts to entice her to make a snow angel by making one myself, which was caught on multiple media types (and will not be shown), was not remotely successful.
Cue this morning ......
My brother, father, and myself are super tech geeks. About 95% of the toys she got where either tech gadgets or dolls. I got her stuff animals and books. This dog that barks songs and rocks, well as you can see it made her very happy. And the books, well the Little People pop-up books were such a hit at one point Katie had to be told to put the book down, there was other stuff for her to open.
Well my dad and I have around 10,000 books between us (about 85% of them his). I think I proudly said:
Dad, I think we got another book-learner in the family.
I don't know exactly why, but my favorite pic of the two days is this of my mom. Maybe cause she rocks, I don't know. I wasn't going for this "profile" of her when I took it, but it sure worked even if that wasn't my intent when I opened it in PhotoShop.
Going to get this framed for her. I bet she won't like it, say you can see the wrinkles in her face. She looks "old." I'll just have to explain that I am the root cause of all of them :)!
Here is what I got my father this year. My folks are kind of well off. They don't live like it, but they do buy what they want, which is usually pretty simple stuff. With that said I take great pride in trying to find gifts they'll like, without asking them what they want. I knocked it out of the park this year IMHO.
My brother has a six month year old Labradoodle. With a two year old and two working parents, he might not get as much attention as a puppy needs. I tried to fix that. I played "fetch" with Murphy for hours in the snow.
He seemed to have a lot of fun, until at one point he kind of seemed to say, "no Más, no Más."
There is of course a reason there is a saying that dogs are man's best friend. Cause I now seem to have one of those. He followed me around 24/7 the rest of the time and often when I sat down, as I did in the above pic, I found a dog in my lap wanting some "lovin." Murphy got all I had to give!