My Christmas Collage

During Christmas I had this collage as the topper for my page. Now that Christmas is over and I have changed toppers, I wanted to post it here so it would be a permanent part of my page. I took all the photos at my church. The women do such a beautiful job decorating. Many of these pictures are in a separate post further down, but I wanted to just save this topper. I love the way it turned out. If you click on it, you can see it full screen.

Join Us For Some New Year's Fun

Kelli over at There's No Place Like Home is hosting some New Year's fun. Simply "post the first sentence of your first blog post of each month. You can also add a favorite picture from each month." It's that easy. You can list your post with Mr. Linky over at Kelli's page. Here is mine:

May, 2008: E.S. Bouton ~ True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by. (This was my only post - no photos.)

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June, 2008: It's been a rough past week.

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July, 2008: Even though today is the 4th of July - my son still had to work.

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August, 2008: Yesterday, my daughter and I were out in the car and decided to stop and take some pictures.

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September, 2008: Earlier this year, a dear friend took my daughter out of town a little ways to a beautiful field of flowers.

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October, 2008: (Turn off the playlist sound so you can hear.)

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November, 2008: A new haircut deserves a special photo shoot :).

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December, 2008: Kali and I visited Downtown Disney this past week.

This was fun! It was interesting to see that none of the photos matched up with the first sentences! Thanks, Kelli, for a great idea!

Taylor Landscape

This is my son, Jason. On Christmas Day, Jason, Kali, and I spent time documenting my mom's residence. Jason wanted to try out some different settings on his camera. I opted to take shots of Jason and Kali. Of course, I couldn't leave out the flowers, statues, and ornamentation around the grounds.
With it officially being "winter", the flowers were few and far between. This next shot is of a sweet little wildflower we found near the statue in the following shot.

And, yes, I have posted shots of this statue here before. I just really, really like this one. I love the little deer wrapped around the man's legs.

We were trying to figure out how to photograph this ball without our own likenesses showing on the ball itself. After five or six shots, we decided...who cares! I think the photo of the three of us is awesome!

I LOVE this shot of Kali! She thinks it's creepy :).

And, of course, these last two shots are my favorites also :O). It's hard to pick just one favorite!

Christmas at Taylor Manor

Merry Christmas to my mom. She is living in an assisted living residence and absolutely loves it there. Mom loves the staff and all the activities. She was so proud of their Christmas decorations and wanted me to take "pictures" of everything for her :). Here is Christmas with my mom.

Mom and my son, Jason, getting ready to eat our Christmas dinner of turkey, dressing and gravy, sweet potatoes with butter, steamed carrots and green beans, ambrosia, rolls, apple pie and pecan pie. Yummy!

Then we opened presents in Mom's room. I made her a Shutterfly book with almost 100 photos that I took. Mom loved it.
My dad died at Christmastime 3 years ago. Kali and I had this ornament made special for my mom. Daddy was retired from the U.S. Navy.
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Here is mom with some of the staff. She loves them all.

Kathleen is the activity director. Her son was visiting for the holidays. I took the opportunity to stand them in front of one of the many beautiful Christmas trees to get some shots of them :O).

There were so many beautiful decorations to enjoy. Here are just a few.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Go, Burger King!!!

I didn't believe my eyes when I first saw this sign in Callahan. I literally turned in my seat (I was not driving, thankfully - lol) to make sure I read it correctly. By that time, Mark was already down the highway a bit. We stopped on our way back home tonight so I could get this photo. I was amazed that a business as high-profile as Burger King (forget that it was in Callahan) believed strongly enough to put this on the main highway running through town. All I can add is, "You go, Burger King!" High 5's all around. Let's none of us forget the truth of Christmas. God so loved - you and me - that He gave His only Son. Merry Christmas!

Celebrating Jesus

This is a season to celebrate Jesus. To celebrate His birth and to remember what He did for us. It is a season to share Jesus with others. Here is my Friday Show & Tell post...on Saturday.

I am a small group leader in the student ministry at our church. Below are some of my girls :O). This was taken at our party to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Our awesome Christmas tree is shown above. It is a far site better than last year's tree. Last year we met in a storage room - literally. My daughter and I decorated a stack of chairs and dubbed it our "Chairmas Tree." I think this year's tree works better :).Below is my daughter and some of her friends showing the cream cheese snowman they made. It was awesome! The best tasting dessert at our party...by far! Although, everything was good :).

The rest of these photos are of the decorations in the sanctuary of our church. My new topper is made up of shots I took Wednesday night. Aren't they all beautiful! Our women do a wonderful job!

There are more pictures of this beautiful nativity in my topper.

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Below is a self-portrait. I borrowed the idea from Pam. Pretty fun! Thanks, Pam!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from our family to yours. May God richly bless you and keep you safe!

Thanks for visiting...you are always welcome in

The Shadow of the Cross.

Falling Leaves

A few days ago I showed you some flowers blooming here in mid-December. I took the above photo two nights ago in my church parking lot. If you click to enlarge the picture, the leaves almost look 3-D. As you can see, the leaves (such as they are) are finally changing colors. Yes, it's almost January, so it's about time. We have warm weather, in the 80's today, blooming flowers, leaves changing colors, Christmas decorations - all at the same time. Welcome to the south.

No One Does It Like Garfield

Blooms Like This in December???

Can you believe all these beautiful flowers blooming this close to Christmas? Amazing! And, they were so pretty.

Of course, this little fellow isn't a flower, but I thought I'd include him anyway. Just because I can. Hey, it's my blog :O).