Catching up on Christmas

My Mom telling her grandkids the story of the family crèche.
When she was a little girl in South Dakota, a wounded soldier recuperating from World War II gave her parents this crèche. He had carved it himself, in loving detail, for the Cathedral downtown. The church told him it was too small, so he gave it to my grandparents. It was always in our house growing up.

This is a good time to catch up on Christmas photos because techno-tragedy has struck at our house. Within one month, we lost a) our computer; b) my expensive Photoshop software; and now, as of Sunday, c) my expensive, ten year old camera. a) The motherboard fried in a power surge (I guess surge protector strips are not enough protection?); b) My ancient Photoshop is not compatible with Windows 7 on the new computer and it's too old to upgrade; And c) my camera has a lens retraction error, not usable and not fixable.

It was all very old and kind of strung up like a house of cards, but it took a long time to pay off in the first place, it worked really well and I was used to it. Pretty much the most valuable and most-used things we own next to the house and the car, maybe the stove, and then we lost them all within a month. We replaced the computer. A new camera will have to wait until we pay off the computer, and $700- $800 for Photoshop . . . who knows when or if ever I'll get that again.

So, no new blog photos for awhile. I know I'll figure out a way around this and it will be good to get out of my rut with my comfortable setup. I miss my camera like my right arm, though.

My dad reading with R.

R's cousin, my awesome little nephew and godson. They are both second graders. I wish they lived closer.

Granddad playing basketball with R, my godson and his equally awesome big brother.

Granddad helping R out of a tree. He calls her by my name sometimes and then quickly corrects himself, which I love. It's usually when he's doing something like this, that he probably hasn't done since he did it with me when I was a little girl.