Some New Things

What's one of the worst things a grandmother can possibly have?

One is a camera and the other -probably an internet connection and especially a blog!

Tonight, I'm going to entertain you with a few "Grandma" moments here --just a couple pictures taken of my grandkids mainly -with maybe a few thrown in of the kids, just for good measure. However, because my kids were very photogenic when they were youngsters, they don't seem to have quite as much picture appeal of late -or at least not compared to the grandkids right now.

The above picture here is, of course, my littlest sweetheart - Kurtis! And, if you look closely at this picture, you should be able to see the lovely mass of curls he has there. That was how he looked this past Saturday. But after tonight's bath, he looks considerable different because his Mommy cut off his curls! Those beautiful little curls are now history but, if his hair grows half as quickly as did his Uncle Clate's I'm sure they'll be back again sometime in the future.

Here's Kurtis now - without the curls - and believe me, trying to get a shot of him where you could see a bit of his cute little face and also see the absence of the curls was no easy feat for me! He's definitely a "mover and a groover" and just keeps bouncing all over the place.

You can see -I think - the curls are missing. This was about the best shot I was able to manage of him where you could see him, the little bit of a side view of where the curls used to be and that isn't just a blur from his dancing around while I was trying to take some shots of him. Mandy was amazed that as much as he does tend to bounce and squirm around, she was able to get the curls snipped of and do it fairly evenly too.


This is Christmas Eve - at the beginning of the "gift exchange" - note, the room is fairly orderly. The boy in the front is my older grandson, Alex, who is 10 -my now "big" little prince. Then there is Maya and Robert, who is my older daughter's fiance. In other pictures taken that afternoon -yes, we did our big dinner then gift exchange in the middle of the afternoon Christmas Eve because Alex had to leave just before 4 p.m. to meet his Dad to spend the rest of the day and Christmas Day with his Dad and his paternal grandparents.

This is my older daughter, Carrie - mother of Alex - leaning on the doorway between the living room and dining room on Christmas Eve as she watches the kids doing their "thing" -getting presents, opening presents, trying not to act like little animals too in the process. And this year, I have to commend all of the kids because they really did a great job in the polite and neatness department! Not that they didn't have a lot of trash and ripped up wrapping paper abounding, but it was relatively neat. A big improvement!

This is my son - what can be seen of him here anyway. Keep in mind, I am far from a professional at taking pictures and really even more of a novice with this lovely new camera I gave myself as well. My son got me a book on Photography for Christmas though -mainly because his roommate got him a nice little digital camera for Christmas and he figures we can learn "together" about taking pictures. Well, one can hope, can't we?

Here, the action was picking up a little steam - that's Robert handing out gifts to Sierra, Shane and Alex. Sierra and Shane are the two middle stepgrandchildren who live about six miles from here with their maternal grandmother. They will be moving sometime in January to Tennessee (sorry, don't know where in Tennessee as no town has ever been mentioned. So this will definitely curb the amount of visits with them here.)

On the right here is Kate - the 16-year-old in this household. She got a nifty little Kodak digital camera for her birthday which was on the 13th of December and has even figured out how to photograph mini-videos with her camera - something the instructions say I can do with mine but so far, I haven't tackled that job. She's on vacation this week - spending the entire week - until next Tuesday - in Clearfield with her mother.

This is Mandy with Maya and Kurtis on Christmas Morning as they opened their "Santa" gifts. The gifts received the day before were from "person to person" -if that makes sense. Christmas Morning, the gifts under the tree then were just for Maya and Kurtis and these were left by "Santa" during the middle of the night sometime. All of this is a variation of what Christmas was like here when I was a kid. There would always be seven children present, plus my grandparents, my Mom, two of her brothers and their wives -so at least 14 people and once in a while, my Mom's younger sister and her husband would come home for Christmas too. One year, 1961, all of my aunts and uncle were here but four of my cousins were already married then so they were not present. That year, there were 21 of us packed into this living room! This year, there were six children and seven adults for a total of 13 people in the room. Somehow though, when my aunts and uncles and their children were here, it seemed like so many more people present than it does with just my children, grandchildren and me - wonder why that is?

This is Maya on Christmas morning with Kurtis' combination motorcycle/rocker. It's cute in that you can leave the rocker base on it or take it off and the kids can ride it under their own "foot"power. Maya insisted that she had to wear her helmet though before she could sit on it and "ride" it - such a safety conscious little girl that she is.
Of course, she also doesn't want to concede that this motorcycle is actually her little brother's toy as everything - regardless of what it is, who it is intended for -as soon as it enters this house, it is now Maya's personal property you know! I think she finally decided though that this was better suited for Kurtis when the rocker part was off and she tried to ride it but found her knees were dragging on the floor! And, of course, that is the lovely Nina, the explorer cat here who has to check everything out too!


Here's Maya, after all the gifts opened -looks pretty tired there too, don't 'cha think?

And here, from me to you, from all my family here too, here's hoping everyone had a beautiful, joyous and blessed Christmas and that we all will enjoy the happiest of New Year's to come in 2008.