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December 28, 2009

The 3rd Child

This year, I decided to take my sister-in-law's lead and start a new Christmas gift tradition for my kids.  Since I've failed miserably at keeping up with any kind of photo albums or scrapbooks for my 2nd and 3rd child, I decided to start making them each a photo book every year at Christmas time.  One that would capture the highlights of the previous year, and be all about them.

It was quite the undertaking, and took me a few late nights at the computer to accomplish.  On the back of each book, I wrote a dedication to each of them and had planned on including a small photo of them and their mommy.  It worked out fine for Jenna's and Kara's books, but when it came time to finish Jack's book there was only one problem ... out of the thousands of photos I had taken from the previous year, I had NOT ONE photo of Jack and I alone together!  Not one!

So, I now present you with what is sure to be the first of many, many photos I intentionally pose for with Jack this year.


No way am I going to let myself be "that mom" that neglects the photographic history of her last-born child!

December 26, 2009

The Best Things About Christmas ...

The best things about Christmas are ....

spending time with the people you love,


giving and receiving special homemade gifts ...

seeing which gifts become the "favorite of the year" ...


and watching their expressions as they unwrap their treasures.
But the best gifts aren't the ones we wrap or unwrap ... they're moments like these, when we're all together ...

December 14, 2009

The Lunch Table

Twenty two years ago a scared little freshman girl walked into the lunchroom on her first day of highschool.  She didn't know anybody in her lunch period, and was forced to walk around, cafeteria tray in hand, and find a table to sit at.  As luck would have it, she found a table of a few freshman girls that happened to have an empty seat.  I don't recall exactly what she said, but she asked if she could join the group for lunch.  She feared the response she would get and knew that it could have been ugly.  She could have chosen a table full of snobs that would shun her and make her feel even more alone.  But that wasn't the case at all.  She chose the right table indeed, and the rest as they say, was history.

She would spend the next four years getting to know those girls and their grade school friends, and becoming a part of their group.  The five of them spent their highschool years together, and maintained their friendship through college.  They were by each other's sides through boyfriends, break-ups, moves, job changes, family crisis, engagements, weddings, pregnancies and births.  They stuck together through moves that put a few of them across the country or, at times, across the ocean.  As the years went on, their get-togethers became fewer, and more time would pass between them, but they never stopped.  And when they would happen, it was like no time had passed at all.

Twenty two years after she took that long walk up to her lunch table, she sat and watched one of her best friends take her own long walk down the aisle.  And she thanked God for that fateful day that she chose the right lunch table to sit at.

Brett's wedding - December 12, 2009
me, Ellen, Michelle, Corinne and Heather