Peace, Faith, Love, Hope

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Yesterday was one of those days you want to do over and over again because it was filled with so many wonderful things...  As a result, it was definitely feast and not famine with possible pics for my daily today too.

I had a short doctor's appointment, and afterward Donnie went with me and the boys to Chick-fil-A and then to West Point Mill on the Eno.  The boys wrestled with Donnie in the play area at CFA.  In the park, we walked around the mill and over the pedestrian bridge and down by the damn.  It was gorgeous!  I have lots of collages to show you our day...

My crazy boys would rather wrestle Donnie than climb the playground structure!

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We didn't get a lot of rain at my house Thursday night, but 30 miles north and west in Durham, they apparently had a flood!  The Eno River was very high.  Under the sidewalk in the pics below, there was a whirlpool created by water rushing through the large pipes.  The kids (all ages) had fun sending leaves and sticks through to the other side.  There's a SP of me in the whirlpool pic.

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A series of shots showing nature's beauty in the park follow:

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Me trying to be Stevie Nicks:-)

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Me:

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My handsome guys!

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Later in the day Madi was over for our yearly present exchange.  I think it's fair to say that the kids were pleased with what they got.  Joey got Mario Kart 7 for his 3DS and Madi got a Whappy Dog and game for her DS and Johnny got several Cars items.

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And finally, we all went to the Lake Myra Christmas holiday light show near Wendell.  This is our second year going, and it's a joy to see this huge light display flashing to the music!  I have one shot that I'm sharing as my daily today, and then I think another to share as my daily tomorrow.  There was talk at the show of moving the display to downtown Wendell next year.  Cool!

I hope your holiday joy is in full swing today with family coming, good food to share, and warm hearts.

The Elves and Then Some

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It all started 2 years ago when Joey was in first grade in Mrs. Cherry's class.  At Christmas time, she got out Henry her Elf on the Shelf and started Joey's imagination running wild.  Soon after, we ended up with our own Elf on the shelf named Chocolate:

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Santa sent several more elves from the North Pole and mom bought several off eBay and at Hallmark.  Before we knew it, we had quite the menagerie, and each holiday season we add a few more.

Some of you will understand the collection and others of you will think we're nuts:-)

Joey got the idea a few days ago that we should photograph each of our elves and make a slide show.  Yesterday we took some time to walk through the house and get a picture of each of the elves in their current landing location.

Now I really don't want or need to know how many there are.  It's besides the point.  We just enjoy them and are sharing with you today.  Someday Joey and Johnny will have the Elf on the Shelf at their house.  Madi too.

Speaking of Madi...  Santa sent her 2 new elves yesterday.  She went out on her porch last night to find a round cookie style tin with her new friends in it:-)  She called me beaming with excitement.  Ah...the magic of Christmas!

Pictured are Sleepy on the left and Giant on the right.  Joey and I found these guys at Guardian Angel Thrift 2 years ago, and they are my personal favorite elves in the collection.

Our collection:

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Johnny and Joey helped me wrap presents yesterday.  Johnny took this shot of me putting the curling ribbon on one of Donnie's gifts.  I was impressed that it was sharp and had some nice dof!

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Holiday Card Creations

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The kids and I were busy making a few Christmas cards yesterday morning.  This is the front of one of the ones I worked on.  The inside is a secret:-)  I have a pretty large rubber stamp collection considering I never sold Stampin' Up! stuff.  Notice the line of lights on the right is multicolor.  You can use markers to color the stamps different colors instead of just pressing on a single color ink pad.  Blow on the ink with hot breath before pressing on the paper to make sure it's wet enough.  It's a nice effect to add a little extra touch to stamped cards.

Aunt Debbie came to visit and exchange Christmas gifts.  The boys LOVE to see her just like they do Donnie.  Try as she might to talk to me for a few minutes, Johnny in particular just wanted to wrestle.  Here's a shot of Joey giving Aunt Debbie the cards and gifts that he had worked on for her earlier in the day.  Johnny watches.

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This shot shows the only way she could get a break for a minute:

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The following shot is a test shot to see if I could change the shape of the bokeh obtained with my camera by holding a piece of cardstock with a star punched out in the center of it over my lens.  The answer...yes.  Now,   how to apply it to something we'd enjoy seeing...  I probably need the star or other shape to be a tad bigger.

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The North Woods Bean Soup I made last night:

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Johnny ate around the beans and Joey ate around the carrots, but otherwise, it was a successful meal:-)

Santa Train

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Joey, Johnny, Madi, Teen, and I rode the Santa Train last night at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham.  The Santa Train is a big fundraiser for the museum each year, and I heard them announce last night that over 10,000 people had ridden the train this holiday season.  We were on at 7PM, and the last run of the year was at 8PM.  I had picked last night to go because the kids got out of school for winter break yesterday.    We got very lucky with the weather.  It hovered near 58 degrees at ride time, and we only felt one or two drops of rain during the evening.  Although we enjoyed the complimentary  hot chocolate, we weren't desperate to use it to get warm.  The kids made reindeer food and colored and Madi even got a cardinal painted on her cheek.  This year Santa and Mrs. Claus were at a different location on the normal train route.  They had landed on their sled for a brief visit at the museum, and the area they set up for that came across as quite magical.  So glad we went this year (our 2nd time after going for the first time last year).

Last year I was frustrated that I didn't have a tripod, so this year I carried in my lightweight one, and Teen helped carry it around some, and I was very pleased with the shots that I was able to get.  Definitely worth bringing it in!

The POTD train shot was taken on my camera at f4.5 first and then f8.  The f8 produced much nicer light bursts. Again, so glad I had the tripod.  The background for today's shot is a bokeh Christmas light shot from a few nights ago.  I used Color Variations in PSE to adjust the warmer colors into more purple/blue to match the train lights.

The f4.5 shot:

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You can see that the Christmas lights are much flatter.

Here are my favorite family pics of the night:

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The kids squabbled a bit last night.  Sigh...  It's not always as perfect as the pics might convey.  However, without a doubt, we had a great evening and a super fun time!

The beautiful lights around the Magic Wings Butterfly House and train station:

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Madi's cheek with a cardinal painted on it:

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And posting this shot that Joey took in the kids' daily gallery:

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Joey was so excited to try to take a few pics with me last night!  With the tripod and the self timer, he was quite successful I think.

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

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I came home from the school run yesterday afternoon to find my power off.  First hint...none of the Christmas inflatables in the yard were up.  Oops!  It was the transformer serving my house and 5 others and not a major outage.  Still, Progress Energy was out pretty quick and 3 hours later they had fixed whatever was wrong.  I heard 'damage to our equipment'.  Donnie to the rescue offering us dinner at his place.  The boys and I really enjoyed that.

The boys and I looked at Christmas lights on the way home.  I tried to retake a shot of a red and green spiral tree that I shot the other night trying to get it 'just right'.  I got a few intentionally blurry shots that were about what I wanted and one in focus shot and set about trying to decide just what to do with them that would make for a daily.  I'm not real happy with what I posted.  We can consider it a desperation shot since I don't have anything better to share, OK?

Here's the tree in focus:

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A train nearby:

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Madi and the hat made by Tina Marie.  It's such fun!

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Tonight we get to go on the Santa Train at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham.  It is the boys' last day of school until the 4th week in January, and it's my last day of work for the year.  We ought to all be very excited at school pick-up time today!

Details:
I used a solid green layer and then added a texture from OnOne's PhotoFrame.  It's easy to create a text layer and then use it as Overlay or Screen or Normal with reduced opacity.  The tree layer has a simple line frame from PSE on it which I also added a Drop Shadow too.

Chili with a Smile!

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I didn't take any pics really worthy of sharing with you guys today, but I did take some fun shots and videos.

The daily is Joey (and Johnny) making chili (con carne) for the first time.  I find that the kids eat new dishes better when they help prepare them, and regardless, they have a lot of fun doing it.  The recipe came out of my Hunt's cookbook which I don't readily see online to refer you to.  Sorry.  I use sausage instead of hamburger and less chili powder and a bit of pickled jalapeno peppers chopped instead.

The sunglasses you ask?  Well, to protect the eyes from onions of course!

Besides the chili, we had the nicest fire in our fireplace and a Sonic Christmas kid show from Redbox.

We were at a park earlier in the day, and Johnny looked so cute in the sandbox one minute and running to Joey to play tag the next.

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Notice the stop sign behind Johnny's head lower right.  I thought that was funny with him running and the sign saying otherwise.

This video is pretty cute too:

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Of course if us adults spun ourselves like that we'd be sick!

I have a new bird feeder attached to my kitchen window.  I don't think it's going to yield great pics, but it is fun to watch the birds so close!

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The boys have parties at school today.  Wish I could go...  2 days and counting until our year end holiday starts, though!

Angels Watch Over Us

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The kids and I went to Lights on the Neuse last night.  The best way to describe this experience is that you go on a 30 minute hay ride covering over 40 acres of farmland with thousands of lights.  It's cold, but it's so beautiful that it's worth it.  After the ride, you can walk through a 3D barn that has all sorts of Christmas-themed artwork on the walls.  You wear glasses, and there are special lights on the artwork paint, and the figures seem to come alive.

It is hard to take pics of the lights on the hayride.  The tractor only stops in a few places, so even shooting at a very fast speed to avoid blur doesn't always work.  I did the best I could.  I really needed a tripod in the 3D barn.  I found a few places where I could rest the camera on something to keep it reasonably still.

My daily is one of the shots from inside the 3D barn.  I used Color Efex Pro to alter the colors.  Here are a few more shots from the 3D barn all of which had about the same color theme of blue and pink.

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Here's a favorite shot I took of the boys while we waited in line.  Johnny has on the hat that Tina Marie made.  We love how it's a scarf too!  And green Johnny's favorite color.  It was 32 degrees at ride time, and we were outside for about 3 hours total, so we have on the warmest winter gear that us central NC folks have:-)

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Here's a quick collage of my favorite lights on the hay ride:

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Last year I said that we needed to come to the farm in October because they have harvest themed fun going on then too.  This year I am going to say the same thing:-)  Someone remind me;-)

Also, the boys and I browsed the Hallmark store yesterday:

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Somehow we managed to walk away without the lifesize elf...it wasn't easy.  It was a Gund.

And we also went to see Alvin and the Chipmunks in Chipwrecked:

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A pretty shot from David Anthony's in Fuquay:

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