Since 1991 our family has had the tradition of making candy and delivering it to our friends on or around Christmas. Another tradition is that each year we take a family photo and send it with or as a Christmas card to all of our friends and family. I know we've done this every year since at least 2002.
This year we did not uphold either of these traditions. I really don't have explanations as to why. I wanted to, but I guess I felt like that desire was not embraced by any other member of my family.
We couldn't all get it together to take a family photo - which seems ridiculous considering what a great photographer Jenifer is. . . but the guys (James and Colby - not Kenneth) had bushy hair and beards in November and in December when we were together, James and Kenneth both needed haircuts.
I probably could have pushed and James would have been fine but Kenny is another story...
The candy making and subsequent delivery are very time consuming projects and while I have plenty of time, I really just did not have the energy to undertake the task by myself. Karli has been my biggest helper with this for the past few years but with her work schedule she didn't get to come home until the 23rd and when she got here we left immediately for Arizona. We probably could have made it when we got back on the night of the 25th but at that point I felt like we'd pretty much missed the boat so why bother.
For us, 2012 was a good year. Most of you probably already know that we are grandparents now, which was probably the most exciting thing that happened to us this past year! Tatum James Howard joined our family on July 11th. He is adorable and loved very much!
Anyway, I wanted to just let everyone know that even though you didn't get a candy delivery or a Christmas card from us this year it doesn't mean that we weren't thinking of you. I hope that you are all healthy and happy and that 2013 will be a great year for you and all of your loved ones!
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Sunday, January 24, 2010
It's Brighter than the Sunshine!
So this is the first official blog entry on my very own blog...yes, I know I handle all of the blog posts for the Bonanza View Young Women's blog but that is simple - it's not about me - it's about the gospel and the young women's program so there are millions of things to share - this blog has been much harder for me. I actually started setting it up almost two years ago. I was inspired by my beautiful daughter's blog and thought it would be fun to try and set one up. I didn't get very far. I guess the creative waves weren't flowing then because I couldn't even come up with a name I liked!
I was called as the Mia Maid advisor in February of 2008 and then few months ago I was released and called as the young women's secretary. As an advisor I heard about SugarDoodle - one of the most wonderful web sites in the world - and it quickly became my go to spot for anything I needed help with for my lessons. I went looking for help with my new calling there too and found tons - I also discovered that Melanie has links to many of her favorite LDS blogs. Looking at these gave me additional movitation towards the blog movement.... but still not enough. Finally in late November after typing the same monthly calendar for December over for the 4th time I decided that I needed to try a different approach. With all of the changes that took place on the ward level I was literally typing new calendars and trying to distribute them to the YW Presidency almost every week. I wanted to create some type of on-line calendar for the young women. I wasn't sure exactly how to do it but after some trial and error my problem was resolved with the creation of the Bonanza View Young Women blog - I also created a google calendar - for the year - and added it right on to the blog. The calendar is always available and if something changes I can edit it in less than two minutes. The responsibility of calendaring is still mine but the responsibility of everyone having that information is totally on them! It's a beautiful thing!
After working on the young women's blog for the last 2 months the "you need to create your own blog" bug has really been after me. I had a few hours to myself this weekend so I decided to give it another try. Of course I don't do anything the easy way. After coming up with a new blog name that seemed more fitting for me (I'll go into that later) I created my own custom blog background in PSE7, then had to learn how to install it correctly in blogger (I need the book HTML for dummies) - this took a while and I finally had to have help from my 16 year old (thank you Karli)! I teach these kids everything about computers except this html thing - I just don't get it! Finally, I set up my custom fonts for the blog. I had done this before (thank you Jenifer for sharing the tutorials on this wonderful website KevinandAmanda.com) so it didn't take quite as long. I created a custom signature for my blog posts which none of us will see until this posts - and I learned how to change the blog title so that it is transparent (yeah)!
Now, I am almost finished writing my very first post and I am feeling somewhat satisfied with my accomplishments for the day! We'll see how this goes... the creative stuff comes easy for me most of the time - the hard part will be expressing myself and letting people get to know me; thus I named my blog Behind Her Mirrored Shades in hopes that it will be a reminder for me to do those things.
I was called as the Mia Maid advisor in February of 2008 and then few months ago I was released and called as the young women's secretary. As an advisor I heard about SugarDoodle - one of the most wonderful web sites in the world - and it quickly became my go to spot for anything I needed help with for my lessons. I went looking for help with my new calling there too and found tons - I also discovered that Melanie has links to many of her favorite LDS blogs. Looking at these gave me additional movitation towards the blog movement.... but still not enough. Finally in late November after typing the same monthly calendar for December over for the 4th time I decided that I needed to try a different approach. With all of the changes that took place on the ward level I was literally typing new calendars and trying to distribute them to the YW Presidency almost every week. I wanted to create some type of on-line calendar for the young women. I wasn't sure exactly how to do it but after some trial and error my problem was resolved with the creation of the Bonanza View Young Women blog - I also created a google calendar - for the year - and added it right on to the blog. The calendar is always available and if something changes I can edit it in less than two minutes. The responsibility of calendaring is still mine but the responsibility of everyone having that information is totally on them! It's a beautiful thing!
After working on the young women's blog for the last 2 months the "you need to create your own blog" bug has really been after me. I had a few hours to myself this weekend so I decided to give it another try. Of course I don't do anything the easy way. After coming up with a new blog name that seemed more fitting for me (I'll go into that later) I created my own custom blog background in PSE7, then had to learn how to install it correctly in blogger (I need the book HTML for dummies) - this took a while and I finally had to have help from my 16 year old (thank you Karli)! I teach these kids everything about computers except this html thing - I just don't get it! Finally, I set up my custom fonts for the blog. I had done this before (thank you Jenifer for sharing the tutorials on this wonderful website KevinandAmanda.com) so it didn't take quite as long. I created a custom signature for my blog posts which none of us will see until this posts - and I learned how to change the blog title so that it is transparent (yeah)!
Now, I am almost finished writing my very first post and I am feeling somewhat satisfied with my accomplishments for the day! We'll see how this goes... the creative stuff comes easy for me most of the time - the hard part will be expressing myself and letting people get to know me; thus I named my blog Behind Her Mirrored Shades in hopes that it will be a reminder for me to do those things.
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