Christmas Decorations and New Camera

We got home from San Antonio and started putting up Christmas decorations.

Then I noticed the shadow appearing on all my pictures.

Turns out I had broken my camera.  The zoom housing now tilts when it comes out.  So this next picture was taken while I held it still with the pinky of one hand, held the camera, and pressed the button to snap the photo.

Yep, it was determined that I officially broke another camera.  That makes 2.5 for me and 1 for Brandon.  (2.5 because I broke one, we fixed it but then I broke it again).  Don't even ask me what my cell phone count is.

So we did a little research and based on a comment from one of Brandon's friends, decided to go with the Canon PowerShot D10.  It's waterproof, freezeproof and SHOCKPROOF.  That means I can drop it (which I will/have already).  Hopefully it is Amy-proof.

SO then it arrived (thank you Amazon 2 day free shipping!).  I decided that I needed to play with it before Christmas and our Disney trip.

Playing video games



My Christmas spread

This was a new addition this year - the hoilday garland on the stairs.  I tied ribbon to it and hung all the cards we got.  It looked really neat on Christmas Day - full of cards (this obviously was taken on Dec 1 or so).

I figured out the "indoor" setting and like this better than the warmer pictures I was taking at first. 

This the girls' tree.

Playing with the outdoor/nighttime settings 

We do a Secret Santa name exchange thing every year in my Mom's Group.  This is what my Secret Santa made me - how cool is that?!!? 

And this is a "redo" of a retro Christmas decoration.  My grandfather made a sleigh and my grandma wrapped a bunch of little boxes.  EVERY year, it was displayed.  I can very vividly remember playing with it.  So when Grandma and Grandpa passed away, my Aunt Pat got all of their decorations.  She sorted through it and sent me some of the things she thought I would want - sleigh included.  But it was getting a little worn.  So Brandon and I took pictures and traced it and measured dimensions and Kevin built me 2 new sleighs!  I rewrapped the gifts (over the original paper though - I could bring myself to tear it off!) with scrapbooking paper to hopefully stand up to the ages a little more.  And then I painted and decorated one of the sleighs.  What do you think?

This picture cracks me up.  I got out the Fisher Price Little People Nativity and Christmas Village for the girls.  Almost immediately, they went upstairs and grabbed the Zoo animals, Farm animals and whatever else they could find.  Almost daily, we'd find the animals in new configurations (the best was ALL the animals/people surrounding baby Jesus and the Angel).

Here we have the sheep (Christmas/Nativity), the penguin (zoo), the dog (Christmas village), the cow (zoo), the reindeer (Christmas village), the hippo (zoo) and the other cow (Christmas/Nativity) all hanging out on the coffee table.