Merry Christmas!

As you can tell, I have had some issues getting my "weeks" finished up for the year.  I have also been so busy enjoying December, I have not documented our Christmas month.  This next week will be a catch up week, so stay tuned...

A more appropriate title to this post may have been "The Great Christmas Card Debacle of 2013."  I decided to get creative on this year's card.  I enjoy designing the cards every year, and as all things creative go, I always spend more time that I thought  I would on the project.  Because Drew and Bev recently got Instagram accounts, Instagram is a daily part of our lives.  I decided it would be fun to make the Christmas Card look like an Instagram post.

I also wanted a picture with all of our pets.  Camille met us at our house, as I knew a tripod would not suffice.  I remember hearing how actors hate working with kids and animals.  Well, Camille had four kids and four animals to work with.  After taking 130 shots, this was the only one where the animals (minus the hamster) were looking forward and the kids were smiling.  Jessica was mad at me for getting after her for her posing, so she looked awkward in 125 of the 130 shots.

She gets this pained look on her face, and sports a "smile" but with dead eyes.  I explained that just because she is showing her teeth doesn't make it a smile.  I got the camera and showed her the last several shots, hopefully encouraging some real smiles.

A few shots in, Christian asked if we could bring the fish out for the picture.  Um, not only "no" but "heck no!"

The photo shoot was also complicated by the fact that Tiger did not like sitting near Charlie. She kept growling and trying to run away, hence the strangulation hold Bev has on her.

Poor Freddy just acted confused about what we wanted him to do.

Christian kept trying to get the hamster to look forward.  After about 80 shots, I told him to not worry about the hamster.

Once we got one good shot, I went to work making the card.  I decided to hashtag our names.  The new cat has several names.  His name from the Humane Society was Ollie, but we all just called him Blackie.  We didn't put much thought into it because we were not planning on keeping him.  Well, Blackie has just sort of stuck.  I decided that his name would be Charlie, and that is the name on record with the vet.  Because of the cat's thieving ways, Mike named him Klepto, as in kleptomaniac.  Mike and the kids call him Klepto. I call him Blackie half the time and Charlie half the time.  So, on the Christmas card, I hashtagged Blackie.

With hashtags, you don't use spaces, so I put all together #christhehamster.  Well, after Mike taking some cards to pass out at work, he called and said that people were joking about a couple of my hashtags.  So, I reprinted the cards.  I changed out #blackie for #charlie and I changed out  #christhehamster for #chris the hamster.  That's what I get for trying to be creative...