Our Christmas tree has been up for a few weeks now, and the boys are enjoying it immensely. This is the first year that they were both actually old enough to “help,” and James was extremely excited (and impatient) for the decorating to begin. He started asking about it before Thanksgiving, and every day after, especially since many of our neighbors displayed their yard decorations over the holiday weekend in November. So, the first weekend in December, Ryan climbed into the attic, brought down our tree, and we all got to work.
Oh, you didn’t think we hiked into the woods and chopped down our tree, did you? That job is reserved for our Canadian friends.
(Rhys removing the first of many fake pine needles. This is just a part of the tree-putting-up process.)
(James and Rhys stretching out the lights. Years ago, our cat helped us do it, and this part always makes me think of her.)
(James was such a great helper, and he even listened as I told him the story behind each ornament.)
(Rhys was tired after posing for Christmas pictures, so he relaxed with a well-deserved lollipop.)
(And finally, our beautiful tree, glowing at night.)
We had so much fun decorating the tree with the boys, but I’m fairly certain they won’t be as excited to help me take it down.
My dad turned 70 over the weekend, and while this was a milestone as far as birthdays go, he is one of the youngest people I know. Seriously. My oldest son is named after him, and Papa is such a wonderful role model for my boys, who follow him around like little puppies.
I’ve always thought of my dad as a true Renaissance Man and a Jack-of-all-Trades. He’s like Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans and Crocodile Dundee, with a little Lonesome Dove thrown in for good measure. He loves to hunt and fish, and he clears mesquite and builds fences in the heat of the Texas summer. For fun. He’s also a retired math teacher and a veteran, and he helped me with my homework, patiently taught me to drive and to balance my checkbook, and guided me through my first long year of teaching middle school. In my eyes, he can do anything, and I know my sons feel the same way.
Last Saturday, my family gathered to celebrate our beloved dad and Papa, and it was a wonderful day.
(Papa laughing with his older grandboys.)
(The littlest grandson, up from his nap.)
(Lots of delicious barbecue, my dad’s favorite.)
(And his favorite chocolate cake.)
(And plenty of playtime for everyone.)
I’m so blessed to have a wonderful dad, and his birthday party was the happiest of celebrations. I wish you a wonderful year, Daddy!
I love my blog. I know that sounds silly to some of you (and totally normal to others), but working on it brings me so much joy that, even when I’m not writing posts, I still play around behind the scenes. Right now, I’m really loving a minimal look, so I cleaned up my sidebar a bit. And then, over the weekend, I tried changing the post format, so what you now see is the entire post, instead of the excerpt and a thumbnail. I like it for a change, though it involves more scrolling, and I hope you’ll be honest and tell me what you think about it.
When I switched to self-hosting, I chose a free theme from WordPress (like a template on Blogger), and I’ve adapted it very slightly. It fits my needs currently, but at some point (maybe next year), I’m hoping to do more with the overall design. The problem is my total lack of knowledge in that area, and I’m constantly working to improve it.
Right now, I’m taking an eCourse via Pugly Pixel, and it’s a great way to learn and practice very basic coding skills. The class is actually set up for use with Blogger, though some of the techniques can be applied to any format. Katrina Tan is an awesome teacher (she was one of the instructors in the blog class I took last summer), and she makes everything extremely simple to understand. And, not that it’s important, but she has a very calm, relaxed voice, so it’s very easy for me to follow along with her at night, when I’m exhausted from chasing after my noisy boys and suffering from sensory overload. I definitely recommend her classes, and they are incredibly affordable.
While I played with my blog this past weekend, I couldn’t find a way to remove the thumbnails that appeared next to the post excerpts. I could easily show the entire post, by changing one small word of code, but, even after days of searching and searching, trying and experimenting, nothing worked to remove those tiny pictures. Finally, in absolute desperation, I posted my problem on the WordPress.org forum, and a very helpful gentleman walked me through the steps to change it successfully. I admit I was a bit nervous, because, as Ryan says, “coders don’t suffer fools,” and I willingly admit that I know almost nothing about the behind-the-scenes blogging stuff. But this guy was very patient, and I was able to make the change.
Still, I want to learn to control my own blog, and I’m doing my best to soak up as much knowledge as I can. I realize it’s a bit bizarre to blog about blogging, but I’m fascinated with all aspects of blogging right now, and I often scroll down to the bottom of blogs, just to check out their themes and designs.
I also think I’ve come as far as I can, at the moment, with any major blog changes, but watch out! I’m a little dangerous and I’m learning more every day.
Please be brutally honest and let me know what you think of the new format. If you’d prefer to see fewer posts on the main page, feel free to tell me. Your comments are important to me and I want to make my blog easy for you to read.
