Christmas Past....

Being that it is Christmas Eve, I was getting a little nostalgic about Christmases Past. When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I got a new big girl bike and a doll named Ashley. I know the pictures are hard to see, but this first one, I have a loving look on my face as I open up Ashley's box.

The second picture you can see me holding up Ashley, and you can also see how huge that bike is. I definitely had to grow into it. But it lasted me through my teenage years.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Fun times...

This weekend we went to Georgetown for their Victorian Christmas. Apparently we didn't get the email letting us know that it was way too cold to travel to Georgetown and the place would be dead! There were no singers outside and there were only 2 vendors out selling the usual overpriced handmade jewelry and art. Oh well.... we enjoyed our time at the Rose Street B&B.


The week before last I managed to complete a puzzle. It was a 2000 piece and it took me just under 4 days to complete. It would have taken less except not all of the pieces could fit on the coffee table and I had to use two tv trays to hold the extra pieces. Also, if you look closely, you can see that the puzzle itself is about 1 inch wider than the table. I engineered some clear tape to form an extra ledge for the overhang:

It's a Kitty Kat Khristmas!

Here are pictures of our cats opening their presents from their Aunt Amy:

Mittsee:
Tiger loves the glitter ball! Can't you see the wild look in his eyes?


O'Malley can't decide which one to play with:


Tiger is getting ready to pounce on an unsuspecting Mittsee.... there's that wild look again:

After a hard day of play:

Success!

Unbelievably good news!!!! Daniel successfully recovered my website data off of our corrupted hard drive! I don't know how he did it, but I know that it took many, many hours of diligence and also involved putting the hard drive in the freezer, and subjecting it to the heat of a hair dryer! The man is a genius! I'm so happy right now I can't even express it in words! Thank you Daniel!!!!

Stuff....

Wow! It's been over a week since my last blog! I'm slacking off.....

Actually I'm not. Every day this last week I've tried to think of something interesting that happened that I could blog about.... and frankly I got nothing. So.... now that a week has passed, I've got a bunch of little pathetic stories to share. Doesn't that sound like fun?

The other day in Ace Hardware a woman was blocking my path with her cart. (I had a cart of my own). So I politely said, "Excuse me" with a big smile on my face so that she would know that I'm not angry, I just need to pass by. She looked up at me and gave me a look of death and slowly moved her cart aside. Then I responded with, "Thank you" and another smile. She continued to glare at me and then went back to her shopping. Never said a word, never smiled. What is wrong with people is what I'd like to know?! So many times lately I have encountered rude people in the stores or rude, wreckless drivers. It really dampens my spirit!

This week my sister, Amy, sent Christmas kitty toys for my cats. How nice is that? Every year, we buy 17 gifts for our 17 nieces and nephews, and this is the first time anyone has every thought to buy our kids something. I called all the cats to me and opened up their stocking to unleash the toys upon them. They knew immediately that I was giving them cat toys. How do they know that? Are they scented with kitty perfume or something? Anyways, they loved them. They were all playing with the toys for the next couple of hours; and the next morning, I found the detached pom poms from one of the toys downstairs. Thanks Aunt Amy!

Daniel is still hopeful that our crashed hard drive with all of my new website work can still be recovered. He is asking for one more weekend to work on it. I know that he can perform small miracles, but I'm not crossing my fingers on this one. I predict that after this weekend, I will start work rebuilding my website once more. I'm not sure how much time I put into the rebuild, but I would predict it's somewhere around 50 hours. At least we're not traveling this weekend and I will have lots of time to work on rebuilding it.

So there... see.... not too exciting this week.

Christmas Travel

Normally every year at Christmas time Daniel and I make a whirlwind, cross country, 3 or 4 leg trip to Texas and Pennsylvania to visit both of our families. While we love seeing our families at this time, especially all our little nieces and nephews, it really is an expensive endeavor. Plus we have to leave our cats which makes us worried, and makes us feel like we're burdening our neighbor who comes and checks on them.

SO.... this year we have decided to spend Christmas in Colorado.... our home. Doesn't that sound nice?

I said to Daniel the other day, "So, we're just going to stay here and do nothing?"

And he responded with, "Oh, we're not going to do nothing! We're going to go spend a couple days in a lodge in the mountains, and we're going to go iceskating, and snowshoeing, and we're going to read books in front of a fireplace, and we're going to bake cookies....."

"Oh."

Wow! How exciting! And to think that despite living in Colorado for over five years, I have never once gotten to look at the Rocky Mountains on Christmas morning! I'm very much looking forward to the experience this year!

It's Christmas at the Clymers!

Deck the halls......

I know... 3 stockings? There are five of us. Well, there were three options.... that was it.... so I got all 3. (and no repeats)


Our kitchen table... simple, but cost efficient!
And finally the lights outside. It looks like a small task, but it was no such thing. That tree is almost as tall as the house and it was quite an undertaking getting the lights up that high. Also, it looks MUCH more beautiful and brilliant in person.

Bah humbug!

What's with Christmas bringing out the worst in people? Several experiences this week have revealed to me some very bad attitudes in people. Despite the fact that I have been uber nice and polite, people were rude right back. What's with that? It sure does dishearten me to the ideal that if you do a good deed, or pass along a smile, that it will be well received and returned. Not true. Very unfortunately.

Christmas time....

Being that Christmas is just around the corner, I found myself reliving some Christmas memories of my dad the other day. Throughout my teens, Amy and I would always buy him a Christmas gift together. Every year, he would always request the same items: socks, blank VHS tapes, t-shirts, and underwear. Every year we would pry and push and tell him that surely there was something else he wanted or something else we could get him, and he would always adamantly insist that that was all he wanted or needed and he would be perfectly happy if that's what he got. Every year this conversation would take place until just before Christmas when we would finally succumb into buying him some combination of those items. And every year he would open up his gifts and be absolutely elated at having received some blank VHS tapes and some new plain black socks. Pure joy would spread across his face as if we had given him the one and only item he had been wanting all year long.

Looking back now as an adult, I try to figure out that whole situation. Sometimes I think that maybe there was something else he wanted but he didn't want to burden us with trying to find it or buy it. But then other times I think that he really did just live a very simplistic life and didn't desire a lot of things or possessions. Or maybe it was a combination of both.

In our later teen years, Amy and I started getting a little more creative and helped my dad branch out with his wardrobe. We introduced him to colored t-shirts instead of the plain white ones and showed him how to pair the colored blue tee with a plaid blue short sleeve, button down shirt from Wal-Mart. He loved it! He started buying up every plaid shirt at Wal-Mart and every possible color tee from Fruit of the Loom. We also introduced suspenders to him and that became a signature piece in his wardrobe the last few years of his life as well.

If he were alive today, I think he would probably still be wearing that same style of clothes. Of course, I'd probably buy him some Colorado or Denver tees for his wardrobe as well.

So what did my dad get us for Christmas every year? Until we became very picky teenagers, he would always buy us a personal gift that he picked himself such as a movie or a stuffed animal, or a new outfit. I remember one year he gave me a pink platypus stuffed animal. A pink platypus! Why a pink platypus and not a regular teddy bear? I think it's because he knew I was a little eccentric and I didn't like having what everyone else had. So he bought me a pink platypus! I have no idea where he got it. And I highly doubt that without the internet I would be able to go out and find one myself. But it was little subtle things like that that make me remember just how much he loved me and my siblings.

So many things to write about....

So it's been a few days since my last post. A lot has happened since then so here's a synopsis of recent adventures in my life:

Thanksgiving was spent with the fam. It was a good time.... I especially enjoyed getting to see my little three and a half month old niece, Abigail.

I also had numerous photo shoots with numerous family members. I attempted to have a designated photo shoot day and time; however, it didn't really work out that way. Next year I'm going to be more assertive. Yeah,.... next year..... sure....

On the drive home from Texas we hit a "winter squall" in New Mexico. If you don't know what that is.... it's basically a blizzard but shorter in duration and usually in a very small area.... like Highway 64..... like two-way road... undivided highway. We seriously thought we were going to die. We were forced to drive 20 mph and at times could barely see the car directly in front of us. We had to concentrate together to see the road. Numerous cars were in ditches and the jeep in front of us even did a 180 into the oncoming traffic lane. Luckily there was not any traffic at that particular moment. There was also a moment when there was a large SUV in the ditch on our side of the road. It was obvious he had skidded over from the oncoming traffic lane... and it was obvious that it had happened probably within minutes if not seconds of us driving through his skid marks. We were really glad when we made it through that little storm.....

However, we later hit horrible traffic on I-25 in Colorado Springs. If you heard on the news that it was a parking lot.... they weren't exaggerating. We spent over an hour just trying to make it through a PORTION of Colorado Springs before we decided to get off and wind up some back roads. We figured that 30 mph on snowpacked roads was better than the 5mph and stopping/waiting that we were doing on I-25. Overall, the trip took us 13.5 hours (normally it's 9 hours).

Monday morning I hit the ground running with an outdoor photo shoot in the snow.

Monday night I tried to download all my Thanksgiving Holiday pictures of my family members only to find that my memory card had spontaneously been corrupted and no images could be found on the card. Before having a heart attack, I installed a data recovery program and after several attempts, was able to rescue the images. Phew!

Tuesday I met with a genetic counselor and am in the process of getting tested for the Breast Cancer Gene which runs in my family. If I'm positive, it means my chances of developing breast cancer in my life is between 50-85%. Hmm.... I'm hoping it will be negative. I'll have another post about that whole visit tomorrow!

And today I was summoned for jury duty! Yah! Seriously..... I think it might be fun. It's in January and hey.... my business is always slow during that time so what else am I going to do?! Look out criminals! I'm coming for you!