Smile for the Camera (please!)

This morning we went to an ornament making event at the library. Everything was well organized (fortunately, since there was quite a crowd), and the kids made some cute ornaments. Katie cannot wait for us to get a tree and put some lights up -- she points out every decorated house we pass, with a "They have their lights up!" On the drive back home we noticed that at least every third car we saw had a tree strapped on the roof, so I guess it really is That Time.


By the time we got home I noticed that Travis was awfully quiet. He admitted that his throat hurt, and I sent him to rest on the couch, but then Ed reminded me that today was Picture Day. Ed feels that Christmas cards ought to be sent out before Christmas, and, as he has pointed out to me several times recently, time is getting short for taking a picture, ordering cards, receiving cards, writing and addressing cards, and mailing cards. So, Ed got Travis up off the couch, offered him some undisclosed (to me) but very effective bribe to make him smile, and we got to work on the picture. I take my metaphorical hat off to large families who send Christmas pictures. Even with only two children, taking a picture in which both children have their eyes open, pleasant expressions, and aren't blurred or halfway out of the frame is for us a monumental task. When Travis wasn't laughing at our stupid jokes, he was slumped and glassy eyed, and Katie was just silly, but we finally ended up with one or two acceptable pictures (not wonderful, mind you, but tolerable) and let Travis go back to his couch. Now I only need to find the Perfect frame design at Shutterfly, compose the Perfect holiday greeting (probably the same thing I used last year, and the year before that), and we will be right on schedule!
(None of these is The Picture. We have a very hard time finding that happy place between expressions of boredom and "when will we be through with this?" and falling down laughing.)


Travis is now throwing up. I called the lady at our church who is running the Christmas play and who requested that we show up an hour and a half early for the first of four rehearsals and told her husband that we wouldn't be at church tomorrow but that we'd start practicing if she e-mailed us the script. Ed, the eternal optimist, piped up in the background that we might be there, if Travis stopped throwing up. Maybe it's a mom thing, but I just don't think that a kid who is throwing up on Saturday night should be in church on Sunday morning. Or at least he shouldn't take communion.