The Annual Christmas Card Family Portrait

My ever-so-patient and long-suffering Dudes (big and small) allowed me exactly THREE tripod shots to get this year's portrait. I'm just relieved I liked one of the three.

Triops = the "new" Sea Monkeys

This sucker grew super-duper fast. The boys got Triops and Sea Monkeys for their birthdays. This week we plan to drop a couple Sea Monkeys into the Triop jug and watch what happens. Stay tuned...

The Big Dude was hanging Christmas Lights...

When all of a sudden ....

The Blue Angels flew right over our home (we think they must have been preparing for the USC/UCLA game).

The Littlest Dude supervised it all and found it satisfactory.

I'm not crafty, but...

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Dad wanted to surprise Mom with Christmas Lights and Decor this year. And he delegated to me...

And my oldest Dude (who has maddeningly run AWAY from my camera the last couple years, but has recently, curiously begun to jump INTO all my photographs, wanted or not...) lends a sense of scale to the size of this wreath.

So, these are the two wreaths I pulled together - one (with the ribbon) for the front balcony and one for the back balcony.