"We interrupt your program to bring you..."

...Our Family Photo for 2009.

The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant.
Psalm 25:14
Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
Psalm 12:7

So, I finally got our family picture scheduled (a month and a half late), and now we've gotten the pictures back from the lab. This means that all I have to do, is sort out which picture goes to which recipient, and I'll have finished one more project. It might take a while this time and it won't be due to my distractedness. Our scanner is broken - in fact, I had to 'fix' this picture so I could post it without a bold, black line skewering our heads.

When Sir gets the other scanner hooked up and working, we'll be able to scan a good copy. Then we can print out and send decent sized pictures to the long line of family members and friends who would have been stuck with a teeny tiny miniature size picture. And a mini with five people in it is absolutely ridiculous! Yeah, this package had 16 - SIXTEEN minis and only 8 wallets. Once upon a time you'd get 21 wallets and 4 token miniatures, but I shouldn't complain, the package deal this time was only $5.00 - who knows, they change the package size and price around every month, so maybe next time will be better when it comes to quantity.

Nomads* in the Desert

Ok, I've been gone long enough. I started this post three weeks ago, and it's been finished except for grammatical editing for the last week and a half. So, I'm going to buckle down and get something finished. And hopefully the battle of the fevers around here won't interrupt me more than is manageable.

As I said in a earlier post, we left Roxford Cottage Tuesday morning(Dec 30^th) after breakfast we headed for our next destination - Desert Hot Springs. We stopped once on the way to get maps and sat in half an hour of walking speed traffic (due to an accident ahead of us), but we made it to Great Grandpa & Grandma's abode in the desert by 1pm.

They had waited lunch for us, and it was all ready for us to eat as soon as we got there. We had slices of roast beef, deviled eggs, potato salad, coleslaw, yam salad, fresh sliced tomatoes and raw baby carrots. And to top it off, Grandma and Grandpa even set up little tables which was just perfect in our little people's opinion. There were even cookies for desert and a hummingbird feeder that got lots of visitors for us to watch while we ate!

Grandpa observed PC gobble down his lunchmeat and then wisely used additional slices of meat as gifts to win PC's affection. Not surprisingly, it worked and PC went from being the kid that had to be dragged out of the car when we got there, to being the kid suggesting we just go on without him since he'd be more than happy to have us leave him there to stay with Grandpa & Grandma!

After lunch Grandma brought out a surprise to send along with us. She made each of us a knitted hat to take home to the snow. I must admit, standing there in 70+° temperatures as she handed them out, it was a little hard to appreciate them fully, but were we ever glad to have them when we got back to Canada! After the kids delightedly modeled their hats for a few minutes, I took the hats and it wasn't long before my munchkins found the dirt at the end of the patio. They spent a good deal of time enjoying the feel and smell of cool, dry dirt while I took some pictures.

Hats


Emma & PC



Little People and Dirt


Dolly



More Dirt

Part of the novelty of visiting Great Grandpa and Grandma, was their house which was a motor home RV. The kids quickly tagged it a 'car-house' and PC was in love at first sight. He and Emma took every opportunity they could, to get inside the 'car-house' and they were none too pleased when we finally shut the door with them on the outside so that we could visit with Grandpa and Grandma without wondering what they might be dismantling inside! I did get some fun pictures of the kid enjoying the 'car-house'.

Then before we left, we took some pictures of the kids with Grandpa and Grandma, and around 4pm, we headed on our way to the San Jacinto Valley.

Grandpa with Emma and Grandma with Dolly.


Group shots with kids are definitely challenging!


Our Nomads

*Dictionary: nomad (nō'măd)
"People who have no fixed home and move according to the seasons from place to place."