I Love Christmas

Some of the things I love include, the cooler temperatures, decorations, delicious food and parties. Most importantly, it is the celebration of my Savior's birth. One of my favorite things is giving and receiving Christmas cards. Every year since we have been married Mike and I have sent out a picture of us together. We are usually doing something outdoors and something kind of exciting or fun. That wonderful tradition actually started by accident. After we were married people sent us wonderful gifts and it was about Christmas time when I was sending out Thank You cards. I used a professional wedding photo to send out to our most favorite people. That was the start of our photo tradition. It was actually more fun and easier to do the picture than to find a card that expressed how we felt about the people we loved. The beautiful thing about this tradition is that forces us to take many pictures throughout the year. We have many great photos of us together and we make sure to have a camera on hand because you never know when the next Christmas photo will be taken. I saved one from each year and after 10 years I had a collage of them put up on the wall in our hallway. When people come to visit they usually stop and spend some time checking out my collage of Christmas photos. They usually say things like, “ I have never seen this one”. I advise young couples to start this tradition when they are getting married.

Pictures are so important we take them for granted everyday. Only a short while ago I lost a young friend in a car accident and I was put in charge scanning his photos for the video slide for his funeral. It was a blessing for me to finally understand that my obsession with taking photos had a purpose. I had taken so many pictures of Ryan and I now can enjoy them for the rest of my life. He is gone but I can sit down with an album and remember our fun times together.

My advice to each of you, buy a decent camera and take the time to learn how to take a good picture. It is worth your time. Take lots of pictures because it takes many pictures to get one good one. Back up your pictures and make sure you don't leave the copies in the same house. When you have a fire/theft/flood they might not survive. You know that credit card commercial that says camera 200 dollars, disc to back up pictures 1 dollar, picture with your Mother in the Texas bluebonnets. Priceless!