Where is your Christmas card?

I know. It's Sunday. It's Christmas eve. You are sitting there, wondering, 'where is my card from Trish and Timmy?' You haven't wondered? I'm hurt ;)

The only response I can offer? Last year's card wiped me out! How to top that has left me with no ideas, totally drained of creativity. And so, as I head off to work in a few minutes (yes, on Christmas EVE) I decided to do what any self-respecting photographer would do.

I took some Christmas photos, and you can choose your OWN card!
They all come with the best of Christmas wishes, with thoughts of joyful laughter, with the spirit of peace and love, and the hopes for a happy healthy holiday season and a bright new year!
MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY NEW YEAR

Peace and Love, Trish, Timmy, kids and kitties

Has Hamish been good?



















This honeycomb ornament belonged to my grandma Elaine



















An icy, snowy sled













Miss Tatiana was a good girl, Santa



















Our Tree



















Christmas Cards recieved



















Ornaments on display

TACKY LIGHTS AND OTHER CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS

Tacky Christmas lights? Not at this house! But here in the Richmond area, it is apparently a point of pride to help Dominion Power have a very Merry Christmas, and so there is a huge to-do about out-door decorating. Click on the link below and take the slide show tour of our bright neighbors.














And I'm not kidding, folks. There are bus tours of this stuff!!! Myself, well, this is the inside, and the outside of our humble abode.

http://media.gatewayva.com/photos/rtd/special/holidayguide2006/tackylights/banneradslideshow/slideshow_content.html
Ok, so that was silly, and fun, too, don't you agree? As long as I didn't have to be on the roof's of some of those houses, more power to ya, I say. Of course, I would hope that I had good blinds on my bedroom windows! No fears, because none of our neighbors has gotten THAT elaborate yet!


Last year, just about everyone with a computer saw this little movie, and heard the music of Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/21/christmas-lights-gone-wild/

You will possibly need to follow a link to Christmas lights gone wild. It's worth it.
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On to other Christmas thoughts. There is Christmas music in the air. EVERYWHERE! I am sure you all humm to yourself where ever you are to the sounds of Little Drummer Boy, or Grandma Got Runover By a Reindeer.

For the last few years, this Christmas song, definitely an alternative selection, has topped my Christmas music list.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra is a musical treat and a light show. The music is not all harps and bells; it's much more like an orchestral heavy-metal. I like it.

The lyrics to this song, however, outshine the music by far. Read them, and think on them. This is a song for believers, cynics, grinches and atheists.


OLD CITY BAR --Trans-Siberian Orchestra

In an old city bar
That is never too far
From the places that gather
The dreams that have been

In the safety of night
With its old neon light
It beckons to strangers
And they always come in

And the snow it was falling
The neon was calling
The music was low
And the night Christmas Eve

And here was the danger
That even with strangers
Inside of this night
It's easier to believe

Then the door opened wide
And a child came inside
That no one in the bar
Had seen there before

And he asked did we know
That outside in the snow
That someone was lost
Standing outside our door

Then the bartender gazed
Through the smoke and the haze
Through the window and ice
To a corner streetlight

Where standing alone
By a broken pay phone
Was a girl the child said
Could no longer get home

And the snow it was falling
The neon was calling
The bartender turned
And said, not that I care
But how would you know this?

The child said I've noticed
If one could be home
They'd be all ready there

Then the bartender came out from behind the bar
And in all of his life he was never that far

And he did something else that he thought no one saw
When he took all the cash from the register drawer

Then he followed the child to the girl cross the street
And we watched from the bar as they started to speak
Then he called for a cab and he said J.F.K.

Put the girl in the cab and the cab drove away
And we saw in his hand That the cash was all gone
From the light that she had wished upon

If you want to arrange it
This world you can change it
If we could somehow make this Christmas thing last

By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
And to know who needs help
You need only just ask

Then he looked for the child
But the child wasn't there
Just the wind and the snow
Waltzing dreams through the air

So he walked back inside
Somehow different I think
For the rest of the night
No one paid for a drink

And the cynics will say
That some neighborhood kid
Wandered in on some bums
In the world where they hid

But they weren't there
So they couldn't see

By an old neon star
On that, night, Christmas Eve

When the snow it was falling
The neon was calling
And in case you should wonder
In case you should care

Why we're on our own
Never went home
On that night of all nights
We were already there

Then all at once inside that night
He saw it all so clear
The answer that he sought so long
Had always been so near

It's every gift that someone gives
Expecting nothing back
It's every kindness that we do
Each simple little act


Visit them...http://www.trans-siberian.com/