Holidays 2006

I've finally uploaded all the photos from my 234MB worth of memory sticks. Lots of photos to sort through. My photo utility has somehow disappeared from my computer, so I have to upload them all manually, which is a huge drag. So far, not too happy with the Dell. Yeah, they have great customer service, but unfortunately that's because they need to. Argh.

So, where to begin? Craft night at Grandma's, I guess.

Grandma is one of eight children. Between her generation and the next one down (mine, obviously), the Gassman family managed to produce five, yes FIVE boys in the year 1997. My R is the oldest. Anyway, Grandma has hosted a winter craft night for all of her nieces over the last several years, and last year she decided the boys were getting old enough to have one too. So this is the second year we headed up to Maine two weeks before Christmas for craft night. This is only four of the six boys invited. One completely forgot and showed up an hour late when Grandma called to remind him, and one never showed up at all. No phone call, nothing. Grandma felt pretty bad, and next year plans to have everyone RSVP. The boys all had a great time and are herewith pretending to eat the snakes they all painted. They made lots of cool things to give to people as gifts.

Here is E holding his first cousin M. E fell so in love with that little boy and kept asking me why we can't have any more babies. "I want a girl baby." M would get fussy, so I'd take him from E and within a few moments I'd get "Mom if you want me to hold him again, I will". It was so much fun to watch my baby interact with my brother's.



The boys had a great time with Grandma when she arrived for Christmas. She came a few days early and arrived with lots of goodies. One of their favorites was the gingerbread Christmas tree. She also brought a house, but they all agreed the tree was easier and more enjoyable to make.


Here's the Halloween tissue box cover I made for my mother (Grandma) for Christmas. I made covers for Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I'm not much of a seamstress, but I was pretty pleased with how each of them turned out. I actually had a cardboard tissue cover from a craft store and took it apart to make a pattern. Then I had to tape the cardboard back together because the fabric covers had to go over it to give them form. I wished I had another cardboard cover to make a set for myself. Honestly, even if I find one now, the moment has passed. It was a lot of work for someone who had only made curtains with straight lines on her sewing machine up until this point.

I have to admit I did a really bad job taking photos of Christmas this year. I remembered to charge up the video camera, but found in the morning there was no tape. And I hardly took any stills. I was just too busy being there and enjoying what was going on I guess. It was a fun day.

Nagy Papa had gone up to Maine to spend Christmas with my siblings, so we had dinner and celebrated with him a few days afterward. It was very enjoyable.

Last weekend we headed down to New York to celebrate with B's family. Here is a photo of all the nephews:
My husband B is one of three boys and each of them had two boys. My mother-in-law is not thrilled, but she is getting used to it. N is going through a long stage of not wanting to be photographed. He's not a very happy boy, unfortunately. I hope the Joy Berry books I gave his mom help him out a bit. I really do. My heart goes out to him every time he is being yelled at from across the room.

That's about it for Christmas. I'm sure all the fun stuff the boys got will show up here in the coming weeks. My resolution for this year is to blog more often. It helps me focus on the great stuff we have going on. So stay tuned!

By the way, if anyone out there is using the new blogger dashboard, please let me know what you think. I'm always so scared to fool around with what's working just fine.