I'm Back!

I didn't really go anywhere, but have been very busy with life.  My last post of Nov. 7th shared pics of some of our family celebrating my hubby's 77th birthday [a week early] on November 5th. On November 10th our youngest son and family came from Zeeland to celebrate Landon's 15th birthday along with Jerry's birthday. It's special that grandfather and grandson share the same birthday [Nov. 12th].  We had birthday cake on Friday night because I had to work on Saturday when they were all going out to breakfast together. 

A Boston Cream Cake

Photo below is the birthday boys on Saturday morning going to breakfast.  Of all weekends for The Whitney to be extremely busy [118 guests for Mansion Tea] I had to go to work earlier than usual and couldn't join them, but everyone had a good time without me. ;-)  After breakfast Landon [and family] were off to his maternal grandparent's house.

I decided to make Jeremy [our youngest son] a Shutterfly photo album for Christmas containing pictures from High School, College and his first teaching job in Colorado.  What a project it turned out to be.  I'm a picture taker so there were many [non-digital] pictures to sort through. Two dresser drawers full that weren't in photo albums... 

One tote [mostly pictures of my mom's that I inherited when she passed away]...

And one armoire of albums.  Wow!  That was a lot of pictures to go through.

I scanned almost 500 photos [the main reason I've been missing from my blog] and then had to arrange them in a Shutterfly album.  The album will be 111 pages - the maximum size possible, and I still had pics leftover that wouldn't fit into the album.  I FINALLY finished it last night [Sunday] and sent it off to Shutterfly.   A 10 x 10 hardcover book with maximum pages figured up to $388.31 but with coupon [free unlimited pages] my total was $124.70. The coupon expired at midnight Nov. 19th so that's why there was a time crunch.   My Hewlett-Packard computer is almost 10 years old [very old for a computer's life] and it almost died twice during the project, but thankfully limped along until the album was completed.  A new computer is on my agenda.

Here's a screenshot photo of the album's cover taken from my project's page at Shutterfly.  The actual album isn't scheduled to arrive until Dec. 2nd.  This the 23rd Shutterfly photo album I've made.  I should have stock in the company!  ;-)  Have you made Shutterfly albums?

A lovely woman [who was widowed young] at my church has taken the teen girls under her wing and established a Friday night group called FlourisHERS.  They are just concluding a charm class which included a segment on etiquette.  She thought it would be fun to bring the girls to The Whitney for Mansion Tea to put their etiquette skills into practice, and yesterday was the day.  We left right after morning worship service and I met them at The Whitney.  I arranged with my general manager beforehand to take the girls on a tour of the mansion before tea time.   Initially I was going to leave right after the tour but I ended up staying and having tea with them.  We had our own private room on the second floor, which was originally one of Mr. Whitney's daughter's, and it was a lovely afternoon.  There are 10 girls in the group, but only four could make it yesterday.

This is Thanksgiving week and a busy one.  My son and daughter-in-law, Steve and Sharon, will be hosting the family this year, but I will be making the turkey and dressing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and rolls and transporting them.  Sharon will fill in with other side dishes and my daughter will bring desserts.  Jeremy and family have opted to stay in Zeeland for the holiday as it's about a three hour drive to our side of the state.  They will join us on Christmas Eve.

How will you be spending Thanksgiving Day?  There is SO MUCH to be thankful for this year.