i am so thankful that i am going to chicago for thanksgiving and i am not planning or shopping for a big thanksgiving week right now. instead i am enjoying a snippet of time to focus on something i love. christmas cards. even though i am a fan of reducing mailbox clutter and not spending a crazy 41 cents on stamps, i just love christmas cards. they herald the season for me. their arrival and the sweet pictures of families i haven’t seen for a long time make me ready for christmas. i am not sure why. i line them up on my bar or on a makeshift clothesline and i just enjoy seeing them. and because i really want to keep hearing from these people who live far away from me, i also love to send christmas cards. i love knowing that someone i hardly talk to is still somehow connected to me, even if it is only in this very small little way. an acknowledgement of the life we have shared together. the christmas card connection is often sort of perceived as shallow, but there are many people i have known in my life with whom i don’t even have a christmas card connection so it is still special to me.

because i am slightly obsessive, i have had to make some small rules for myself regarding christmas cards, the first of which is that i don’t have to send one out every year. some years it just isn’t meant to be. for any number of possible reasons. no one wants to take a picture. i have nothing to say. i don’t like any of the people i am sending them to because i am in a bad mood. i am not in the spirit. whatever. if i need to pass on the card guilt free, i can. this is especially true for me if i sent one out the previous year. also, because christmas is sort of crazy, i like to get my card done early or just let it go. if it’s not going out near the first of december, chances are it is going to be a new year’s card, which i am not above doing. but i like to have time to address them and enjoy the whole process instead of stressing and feeling like…i have to get these cards out!! so usually if i don’t have a picture by thanksgiving, it isn’t happening.

and that is where i am super grateful (as others) for my sweet sister-in-law, whitney. she not only took our pictures. she picked out all of our clothes, many of which came from our actual closets, but ahem, i still could not have picked them out. (actually…whitney’s picking out my clothes for me is a whole other post all unto its own.) and she encouraged my reluctant family members to get them done, which would include all the male chinos. and she takes amazing pictures. she will very soon be running her own photography business, so call her while she is not having to pay rent somewhere.

she gave me my pictures yesterday and i have been playing with them on snapfish ever since. they have like a million different ways to arrange your pictures. and you can use more than one photo. it is so much fun. here’s one of my favorite pictures that she took. i am ordering it for my house but i’m not using it on my christmas card. it just captures for me how much all three big chinos adore that baby brother.

four chinos

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