My Dad's Retirement Card

Good morning! We spent the weekend at my parent's house, helping my Dad celebrate his retirement. When I sat down to make his card the other day I couldn't find an image that I really liked for this occasion. I knew I wanted something that represented at least one of the activities that I know he will be devoting a lot of time to during his retirement. I went to Mo Manning's store and found the perfect image. The image is called Big Guy's Garden and the face that he is gathering tomatoes made this the perfect choice for his retirement card. My Dad is a passionate gardener and takes special pride in his tomatoes. Some of the things in his garden, including some of his tomatoes, are from seeds that have been passed down for many generations in his family. After coloring the image with Copics, I remembered I had this fun paper from Cosmo Cricket. I kept the embellishments simple as I do with most masculine cards and just added some twine and some little silver studs at the bottom. The challenge on Mo's challenge blog is "Anything Goes", so I am entering this in the challenge over there.

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I decided to include some pictures from his reception we did at their church yesterday.

This is the oh so happy retiree.

This is my Mom and Dad.

This is my family; my parents, my sister, her husband their son Silas, my brother and his son Cole and daughter Zoie, and me and Kip. Silas has new sunglasses.

This sweet lady is someone I have known my entire life, she was also taught me and my sister in first grade. She is a beautiful soul, inside and out.

This is one of my youngest cousins and her husband and new baby Addison.

 This is a good friend of my Dad's. If you are even in Cleveland, TN you must have breakfast at the Rebel. The best sausage and gravy anywhere. The restaurant has been in their family for many year and is where my parents went on some of their first dates. This weekend when we drove in, we drove straight to the Rebel as we often do and stop there before we see anyone in my family. They have other delicious food too, but we always go for breakfast.

This is my Mom and my Granddad Bill.

Thanks for looking at my photos and really, if you are ever near Cleveland stop and visit the Rebel!!

Christmas Recap + lots of pics

We woke up to a white Christmas. This is the first time in seventeen years that the middle Tennessee area has had snow on Christmas so it was a pretty big deal for us. Where we live it was perfect, lots of snow on the grass and trees but the roads were pretty clear. The plan was that we would travel to my parent's house to celebrate Christmas with them. We were going to head out around lunch time, but got a call from my Dad and they had a lot more snow than us and everything was a mess. We weren't able to go there as planned so our celebration with them got canceled until this past weekend. I wanted to share some photos of my Christmas but wanted to wail until we were officially over Christmas! 

We started out on Christmas Eve at my in-laws. We always have dinner over there on Christmas Eve. It is always fun, we have a core menu that is planned and then mu SIL and I bring over a sampling of all the different things we have been making and baking. I think we both got carried away, we had so many sweets, but everything was just delicious. 

My niece and nephew opening presents.

I caught this sweet picture of my MIL and FIL holding hands while we were all opening presents. I love this picture and going to have to do something with it for their anniversary or something.

Then we went to my friend Judy's house. We always spend Christmas night with her and her girls. Santa's elves always bring us all new PJs to wear. Jenna and Samantha made individual bags of reindeer food for each of the reindeer, complete with labeled bags!

They were so excited before bed, but finally calmed down enough to go to sleep. The fist time the woke up and asked if it was time to open presents? 2:30 AM!

All of our stockings lined up, even the dog and cat has a stocking.

Samantha checking out Kip's new puzzle from me. He can't decide if I buy him these things because I love him and know he loves puzzles or if I do it to drive him crazy! That large wooden snake will (supposedly) fold back up to make a solid cube.

Kip opening his big gift from me. 

Jenna had asked for Prisma pencils so we got her those and a sketch pad.

Samantha got her own die cutter. I have had this for a while because I know she wanted one, but was waiting for her to get old enough that I didn't have to worry about her mashing her fingers. She was very excited! 

Then this weekend we finally go to have Christmas with my side of the family. In an earlier post, I showed the box of cards that I had decorated for my niece. She was so excited with her box of cards. It made me feel good to get such an excited reaction from her because it took me forever to decorate 50 card fronts for her! But they are ready to go, the cards and envelops are all there, all she has to do is stamp and color her image then add them to her cards. 

And this was her stamp kit. She has some stamps, some ink pads, adhesive and coloring pencils that she can use to make her cards.

Thanks for sharing part of my Christmas with me! We had a wonderful Christmas and hope you did too. 

Granddad's Birthday Card

Tomorrow is my Granddad's birthday. I am posting this a day early for a couple of reasons; he doesn't have a computer so there is no chance he will see it and the other reason is a funny story. When I was younger, I would always call him on March 10th to wish him a happy birthday and when I got old enough to drive, I would always go and visit him on March 10th to wish him a happy birthday. I was like twenty five when I found out his birthday is really March 11th, not the 10th!! I asked him why he never mentioned that I always celebrated his birthday a day early and he said he thought that I just wanted to be the first one every year. So in honor of that, I am posting his card a day early. 

The card uses the TAC set Fore. I stamped the imaged in Memento ink, Rich Cocoa, I think is the name. All the paper is DCWV and those tiny, tiny little brads are from Making Memories. I thought the would look like little golf balls, lined up ready to be hit. I remember now why those little boogers have been sitting in my stash for so long, they aren't the easiest things to set! My Granddad has always been a golfer and still is even though he will be eighty four tomorrow. You would never know it though, he still thinks and acts like a much younger man. He used to let my sister and me hit golf balls in the back yard. Of course we never hit them that far but he would always put his hand up to his eyes, like he was looking far off in the distance, searching for our balls.

My mom's surgery today was a success. when I spoke with my dad tonight she was resting. Still in quite a bit of pain but the doctor said that the surgery went very well. She injured her knee several months ago in a car accident and it never has really gotten any better so surgery was her option at this point if she wanted to alleviate the pain. Hopefully this will do the trick. If you read this far, thanks for stopping by tonight and listening to me ramble about my family!