Christmas Card Past

I think this might be the earliest we've got our Christmas cards mailed. Got 99% of them in the mail today...still need a few more. So keep an eye on out for it. Here is a look back at some of the homemade cards we've sent out this decade. To check out all the photos for the making of some of these cards, CLICK HERE.

Christmas 2008: Holly was 8 months preggers last December. Our whole year was mostly about the boys, obviously. Knew we wanted to use the boys sonogram pics for the card. Somehow came up the idea of taking a picture of our Raider Christmas tree and photoshopping the boys pics in as ornaments. Jordan is on top, the 3-D pic. Jeremy never was in a good position for sono's after about month 5...so his is an older regular sonogram pic.

Christmas 2007: I think I was just going through pics to look for something to use for the card and spark an idea. Came across a sleeping doggy pic and ended up with the idea of the dogs and cat sleeping and dreaming about what they love doing. Jezebel (top) is dreaming of playing in her kiddie pool. T-Bone (middle) is dreaming of going out for a run with me...and carrying his own leash. Tiger II (a.k.a. "dumb cat", bottom) is dreaming about sleeping.

Christmas 2006: Don't remember how we came up with this idea, but it was one of the best times we had. The idea was to try and get a good shot, but include a bunch of "blooper" type shots. Trying to stage bloopers is not as easy as you'd think, but it sure was fun. My 2 favorite bloopers are the one of T-Bone who ended up in the shot alone and the one of Jezebel with her back to the camera and Holly caught in a blink. Good times.

 Christmas 2002: We moved in to our new home in February of 2002...this was our first Christmas at "home." So we used that for the card. I knew once I had my own house I would use the same ceramic bulbs I used to string up on the house growing up to decorate. Still using those lights today! Although now the 2 little trees out front are much bigger.

Christmas 2000: This is a recycled card. The original pic was taken in '98 and did not include Jezebel. We only had Spyncer (cat), Kukoc (parakeet, named after a player on the Chicago Bulls back when the NBA was still fun) and T-Bone. The original "photo shoot" was hilarious. Trying to get the cat, bird and dog to all sit still for the pic was a lot of fun. Not sure if we ever sent the original out or not...but eventually in 2000 when we got Jezebel, I photoshopped her in and used that for our card.

EDIT - no idea what happened to the missing years in between. I know one year we sent out Scooby-Doo Christmas cards that were store bought. Haven't the foggiest about the rest of the years. Maybe we didn't send cards...maybe they were store bought? You're guess is as good as mine.